Rational Americans and Irrational America

What new ideological (and strategic) model can the United States adopt to go along with the major changes in the Middle East? Four American thinkers and strategic planners — including two former national security advisors, Brzezinski and Scowcroft, and two prominent experts in Middle Eastern affairs, Robert Malley and Peter Harling — tried to rationally answer this question. The first two did so by presenting advice to the Obama administration about the necessity of pursuing a foreign policy which “puts the United States in the same boat as the international political awakening that has changed the face of the world today,”* and the last two focused on changing all the current American approaches toward the Middle East.

The points that the four thinkers agreed upon are summarized as follows: For a long time, the West viewed the Middle East as a conservative, stagnant region that is impervious to change. The Europeans, before the Americans, made this mistake in the middle of the 20th century, since they didn’t understand the significance of the rise of the Arab Nationalist Movement, and they paid the price dearly. Now Americans are threatened with the same outcome if they don’t understand the major changes that are occurring right now in the Middle East and act accordingly.

Washington still approaches the region from the standpoint of balancing the regional powers of two opposing camps: a moderate camp, whose followers it is necessary to support and strengthen, and an extremist camp, consisting of followers of Iran who must be contained. However, an approach like this is completely dissociated from reality, since it misunderstands and doesn’t appreciate the roles of prominent new players like Turkey, a country impossible to place in either of these two camps and whose main principles are based on erasing the decisive boundaries between them.

In addition to that, how, for example, is it possible to understand Saudi Arabia’s renewed dialogue with Hamas or improvement of its relations with Syria or keeping the lines of communication established with an internationally besieged Iran? And how is it possible to understand a regime in Damascus that simultaneously ships weapons to Hezbollah and intensifies its security and intelligence ties to Tehran when it opposes important Iranian goals in Iraq and perhaps also in Lebanon? And the most important thing is, in what framework should we put the Turkish multilateral diplomacy that simultaneously establishes strong ties to the West and the Atlantic Pact and relations with Syria, Iran and Hamas?

The only way that it is possible for the United States to adapt to these changes is for it to abandon the model of “the moderate camp” and “the extremist camp” that it inherited from the Cold War and that sharply laid the foundation for Bush’s wars in the Middle East. It should replace it with a new model, which, for example, is based on forming “a working team,” which includes Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in order to determine [what is in] the Palestinian interest as a preliminary step toward bringing the Israeli–Palestinian issue to a close. It should establish strategic dialogue with Syria in order to come to an agreement on its regional role and open the channels of communication with Hamas and Hezbollah. It should encourage the countries surrounding Iraq to give it a chance to achieve security and political stability, and it should support the mediating role that Turkey is carrying out with Iran.

In other words, the four thinkers and experts urge the United States to carry out the role of facilitating solutions in the Middle East — not obstructing them, if it wants to have a constructive role in this region.

Will Washington be able to tie up its internal economic problems and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and soon with Congress) in order to achieve this radical transformation in its approaches toward the Middle East? Don’t ask President Obama — not now, at least.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, though translated accurately, could not be verified.