American foreign policy needs radical revision
By Patrick Seale
Gulf News, August 27, 2004
Whether George W. Bush or John Kerry wins the United States presidential elections in November, a radical change of course in American foreign policy will be urgently required. The blunders of this administration, especially in the Middle East, have been breathtaking. They have spread mayhem around the world, gravely endangering the national security of the US and its major allies.
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair bears a special responsibility for the disastrous state of affairs because, instead of restraining Bush - as he could and should have done on the key issues of Iraq and Palestine - he rashly followed in his wake, lending his seal of approval to America's follies.
The result is a full-blown revolt by Muslim militants, many of them ready to die for the cause, as has been seen in several terrorist outrages. The 9/11 attack on the US is so far the most spectacular, but governments in many parts of the world are also in the firing line.
No doubt the Islamic revolt against the arrogance and brutality of the west has been brewing for a very long time - perhaps ever since the carve-up of Arab Asia by Britain and France after World War I and the subsequent encouragement of Zionist colonisation in Palestine - but actions in the past three or four years by the Bush administration and the Sharon government in Israel have piled fuel on the fire.
America's war in Iraq and its tolerance of Israel's destruction of Palestinian society have aroused unprecedented anger and protest in many parts of the world. In the Arab and Islamic world, the US and its Israeli ally are today seen as the source of all evil.
Even though the Middle East is a long way from the US, the American public is at last waking up to the sharp deterioration in its country's international standing in a vital region, on which the US depends for its energy supplies.
According to the Pew Research Centre, foreign policy has displaced jobs and healthcare at the top of American concerns. A poll earlier this month revealed the most striking shift in American opinion since the Vietnam War: 46 per cent of Americans now consider foreign policy the most important problem, whereas only 26 per cent give priority to the economy.
As casualties and costs soar, support for the war in Iraq is declining steadily. "Why are we here?" GIs in Iraq are asking, according to a recent headline in the New York Times. "Why do they hate us?" has become a general American refrain.
This awakening to the dangers of the outside world could have a considerable impact on the coming election, probably favouring Kerry, the Democratic challenger for the presidency. When Kerry called for a more "sensitive" foreign policy in the war on terror, Vice President Dick Cheney ridiculed him.
"A 'sensitive' war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans," Cheney said. But it is precisely the hard-boiled approach of men like Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that has drawn America into a quagmire.
Forget, for the moment, the fraudulent reasons for waging the Iraqi war, the faulty intelligence, the poor planning for the post-war era, the gutting of the Iraqi state, the large-scale killing and wounding of civilians in Fallujah, Najaf and other places, the wanton material destruction, the use of heavy weapons against built-up areas, the sadistic torture of prisoners.
These might be described as failures of execution, the blundering of a careless superpower, drunk on its bloated military budget and trapped in the belief that complex political problems can be solved by the use of overwhelming force.
But events have shown that military means alone are unable to quell a shadowy, "stateless" organisation such as Al Qaida or a nationalist insurgency such as the US is battling in Iraq. No effective strategy for either type of conflict has yet been devised by the US.
At the heart of America's failure lies the administration's refusal to recognise that the contemporary roots of terrorism are to be found in American policies. Although the whole world sees terrorism as essentially a response to American policies, senior American officials - and particularly the neo-conservative "friends of Israel" among them - angrily reject any such link.
It has nothing to do, they argue, with America's wars or Israel's brutal occupation. More effort should be made, they say, explaining American values to Muslim opinion!
High illiteracy
The committee investigating the 9/11 attacks recommended that the US government provide "much larger resources" to support broadcasts to Muslim audiences; rebuild scholarship and exchange programmes; help fight high illiteracy in the Middle East; do more to encourage economic development and trade - in fact do every thing except change American policies!
Not only is this approach fundamentally wrong-headed, but it provides the US with an alibi for not addressing the "roots of terror" - that is to say the anger, desperation and rampant political grievance which cause men and women to want to hit back against their tormentors, even at the cost of their lives.
For example, instead of stopping Israel's infamous wall and its expanding colonies (illegal settlements) - as it alone could do - the US is doing the exact opposite!
The American dilemma in Iraq - which a future president will have to face - is that that it cannot afford either to pull out or to stay. Both courses are extremely perilous. In the meantime, the battles in Najaf and elsewhere risk turning the mass of the Shiite population against the US, with potential repercussions far beyond Iraq.
The war in Iraq compounded the error of 13 years of punitive sanctions which shattered Iraqi society and brought the country to its knees. Future historians might well conclude that had the US - and Iraq's neighbours - handled Saddam Hussain more intelligently after the Iraq-Iran war, he would not have invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the whole cycle of violence and destruction might have been avoided.
Having contained the Ayatollah in a bitter eight-year war, Saddam wanted to be recognised as America's prime interlocutor in the Gulf. With skilful diplomacy he might have been tamed and even converted into a responsible statesman. Overthrowing him was not a vital US national interest, and certainly not a British one. But Israel and others saw him as a threat to be confronted and brought down.
The US may be about to make a similar error in its relations with Iran. Many Iranians, including leading figures in the conservative camp, are ready for a serious dialogue with the US.
But, instead of engaging with Iran - the one power, with Syria, which could help stabilise the situation in Iraq - the US accuses Iran of "meddling" in Iraq and threatens it with sanctions, or worse, if it does not give up its nuclear ambitions.
As in the case of Iraq, Israel seems to be inciting the US against Iran. Anxious to retain its regional nuclear-weapons monop-oly, Israel has even hinted it may attack Iranian plants, in the same way as it destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.
Amazingly, the US has failed to warn Israel publicly against such madness. America is poorly served by its two major allies: Britain has done too little to influence American policies, while Israel has arguably done a great deal too much.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs. He can be contacted at: pseale@gulfnews.com |
