The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has no clear-cut signs of “victory.”  The administration of President Barack Obama tried to negotiate a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.  When that did not work out to the satisfaction of Washington, the United States – contrary to its strong proclivity for having a long-term stay in Iraq – withdrew its forces.

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq was an ideal development, from the vantage point of Iran’s strategic interests.  Iran’s adversary, the United States, spent billions of dollars and shed the blood of thousands of its own troops and that of the Iraqis to transform Iraq from a staunch adversary of Iran to its strong friend.  In fact, in Prime Minister al-Maliki, Iran has a powerful ally.  One of Iraq’s chief adversaries in the area, Saudi Arabia, has been a strong supporter of al-Maliki’s nemesis, Iyad Allawi, the head of the al-Iraqiya party, a secularist, and a person preferred by the Sunni Iraqis.  Thus, Iran, by ensuring the prolonged existence of the government of al-Maliki, is definitely enjoying the upper-hand in keeping the Saudis at bay.  The unstated aspect of that development is that Iraq has emerged as an arena for the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and by proxy, the United States, which is very much in the corner of Saudi Arabia in undermining Iran’s growing power and influence, not only inside Iraq, but also in the Middle East.

This gathering storm is unique, in the sense that when the Persian Gulf states sided with the United States in 1991 to end Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait, they were not interested in destroying his regime.  In the case of Iran, there do not seem to be any red lines in the sand drawn by the Arab states that the United States should not cross in taking military action against Iran.

But the preceding is a minor subtext of the growing animosity between the United States and Iran.  The chief subtext is Iran’s continued nuclear research program, which the U.S. categorically depicts as aimed at developing nuclear weapons.  Iran’s denial to the contrary has few takers in the West.  Thus, while the United States is assiduously weaving complex webs of economic sanctions against Iran, Israel prefers military action against it – either of its own or that of the United States – to put an end to Iran’s nuclear research.

Viewing the issue from Israel’s point of view, if Iran indeed develops nuclear weapons, the Jewish state would lose its nuclear veto against any ambitious states in the Middle East – a veto that was strategically developed by the founding fathers of that country.  Even though a nuclear armed Iran would be no match against Israel’s military power, the mere fact that such a development is about to happen is alarming to the leaders in Jerusalem, and they have kept their pressure on the Obama administration for action against Iran.

Considering the fact that the Islamic regime of Iran has been under threat by the United States for the sake of regime survival, the Ayatollahs may be considering having nuclear weapons in the future.  Even though it has been serious about creating the circumstances for regime change in Iran, the United States – even though it denies it – does not think that Iran’s predilections for acquiring nuclear weapons has a legitimate or a rational basis.  Therein lies the rub: what Iran considers as a necessary requirement for regime survival, the United States regards as a threat to regional stability “justifying” waging another war.  Listening to the Republican presidential candidates casually talking about taking military action against Iran, and even the Obama officials’ frequent references to the phrase that George W. Bush and his officials used to iterate – that all options regarding Iran are on the table – it appears that the American political leadership is suffering from a collective sense of amnesia regarding the instability and destruction that resulted from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In the rising cacophony of claims related to ‘threats’ regarding Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons, the Arab regimes’ siding with the United States, in reality, has an entirely different real reason.  Those states have long considered Iran as a threat to their own aspirations involving the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) capacity to manage regional stability.  For instance, GCC propaganda is trying to persuade the international community that political protests in Shia-dominated Bahrain are sponsored by Iran instead of being a manifestation of the Bahrainis to transform the shape of the tyranny of the Sunni regime.  Saudi Arabia – the dominant state of the GCC – has long regarded Iran as a threat to its own aspirations to dominate the larger Middle East.

Iran has deftly outmaneuvered the Sunni Arab states, but, most importantly, has outsmarted the United States in Iraq and in the Levant by creating a nexus with Syria.  That nexus, in turn, has dominated the distribution of power inside Lebanon in favor Hezbollah.  Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East in the aftermath of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq created a sense of long-term defeat among the Sunni rulers in Riyadh, Cairo, and Amman.  They did not know what countermeasures to take in order to undermine Iran’s enhanced power and influence.  America’s near obsession of “containing” Iran through the pretext of depriving it of nuclear weapons was perceived as a fantastic opportunity to outsmart Iran.

The upside of this American-Arab maneuvering is that Iran is likely to be forced to continue its nuclear research but would stop just short of developing nuclear weapons.  The downside is that political explosion in the Persian Gulf in particular – and in the Middle East in general – happens suddenly and with calamitous consequence.  And the next war, if it comes, promises to be highly explosive and equally catastrophic.

A number of students of global affairs are steadily predicting a power shift from the West to the East and the consequent emergence of a post-American era.[2]  In reality, however, the global power shift might not be from the West to the East, but a multi-directional one, as we also witness the emergence of Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa as new global centers of economic dynamism, along with the PRC and India – two spectacularly rising powers.

Perhaps recognizing that it has long been stuck in the dizzying whirlpool of the Middle East and the need to catch its breath by refocusing on its dominance in the Asia-Pacific, President Barack Obama has already withdrawn America’s forces from Iraq; and has redeployed 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan.  This is part of his promise to bring about complete withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.  However, the United States is opening a new military base in Australia.  By withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, the lone superpower might also be tacitly conceding its defeat.  The politics of Iraq remains as volatile and divisive as ever.  Except this time, along with the explosive Shia-Sunni division, it is also characterized by the growing presence of al-Qaida.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, continues to prove itself to be the graveyard of empires.  As such, the war in that country continues to underscore the mounting power of the Taliban.

The Asia-Pacific, on the contrary, is welcoming the United States’ decision to escalate its presence, with open arms.  China — whose escalating hegemony appears ominous from the perspectives of small nation-states of East Asia – is creating ample apprehension among them.  Thus, these nation-states initiated a policy of “circling the wagons,” and appear determined to balance the power of China by asking for a resurged presence of the old hegemon, the USA, which has an established record of creating a benign hegemony.[3]  Washington could not have been happier.  The East Asian nations’ welcoming of America to their region only complemented the insistence of the Obama administration that America is a “Pacific power.”  President Barack Obama reiterated that resolve during his trip to Australia by stating that “…we are here to stay.”

India and China, the poorest countries of the not-too-distant past, have long passed the label of “rising powers.”  Now, they appear to be the economic power houses, indeed superpowers, of the future.  China is way ahead of India in this race, and thus remains a focal point of America’s attention.  As the foremost rising power of our time, China has the American example of the post-World War II era to follow.  Its rise not only has to be peaceful, but it also should be eminently constructive in revamping the rules underlying the functioning of the premier global political and financial institutions, like the U.N., the World Bank, and the IMF, etc.  Thus far, however, its leaders have not impressed the world by their proactivism or imagination for playing a constructive role.  They are standing on the sidelines, while being critical of the U.S. and Europe for not being “responsible” in their respective economic policies.  In the meantime, China continues to act as a rising power most comfortable in implementing parochial and inward looking policies of currency manipulation, as well as a heavy reliance on pushing its merchandise to the West.  It behaves as if it is only interested in reaping the benefits of appearing to be a superpower of the future without paying the political or economic price for being one.

India is gradually learning to act as a rising power in its neighborhood.  It has enhanced its presence in Southeast Asia by deciding to explore for oil in the South China Sea and in its cooperation with Vietnam, which has been one of the most vocal critics of China’s assertiveness in that region.[4]  India also has escalated its military presence along its border with China by announcing “$13 billion plans to raise a new mountain strike corps and four mountain divisions.”[5]  That was a clear response to China’s reported buildup on the Sino-Indian borders.   However, the jury is still out regarding the future performance of the successors of the Sun Tzu and Kautilyan styles of Realpolitik.

Europe is facing a crisis related to the future of the Eurozone, which was recently depicted as “a crisis of apocalyptic proportion” by Radoslaw Sikorski, Foreign Minister of Poland.[6]  As Europe is standing at the edge of a precipice, Turkey is emerging as the new power center of Europe.  In that capacity, it is implementing a “truly multidimensional foreign policy” in which it secretly conducted a joint air force exercise with China last October.[7]  In economic affairs, Russia became Turkey’s number one trade partner, replacing Germany.

Turkey is playing a similarly spectacular role in the Middle East.  Its intermingling of secularism and Islam is emerging as a popular example for the next corps of Arab leaders replacing the autocrats in the aftermath of the Arab Awakening.  In view of these developments, Turkey is transforming itself from a “peripheral state of Europe” into a “central power” of that region.[8]  Its model of secular democracy is already being emulated in Tunisia; and chances are that it would also be emulated in Egypt, as Islamists are winning electoral majority in that country but promising to opt for a coalition with the secularist parties.

The Arab Awakening (aka Arab Spring) continues to capture the world’s attention.  As the aging dictators fall, Islamists are emerging as some of the most prominent leaders of the Arab world.  The question is not an imminent one, but should be asked:  What is the Arab world going to look like in the next 3-5 years?  Are there prospects for the emergence of democracies, Islamic democracies, or would some of those Arab countries slide under the rule of theocracies?  Three current models of theocracy – Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – have not made those countries places of economic prosperity, political stability, or the focal point of enlightenment.  If anything, obscurantism is on the rise in Pakistan, and theological autocracy is the order of the day in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If the convergence of Islam and pluralistic democracy occurs in the post-awakening Arab world, then the opportunities for people of that part of the world are enormous.  There is tremendous human potential waiting to be liberated, educated, enlightened, and to make a dash toward the globalized world from which it was more or less excluded because the autocrats feared progress related to the information age.  And they were right for fearing it, because modernity was bound to become their enemy.  The Arab Awakening arrived in the Middle East and North Africa riding on the shoulders of some of the most recent advances in social/electronic media.  It was the power of social media that the autocratic and archaic control machine could not control, fight, or stifle.

One of the secrets of the Arab Awakening is that it has been an inclusive movement.  Another shocking aspect of it is that there were no leaders who could issue commands for the masses to follow, or whose arrests or assassinations by the ruling autocrats could have seriously undermined the movement.  As liberated Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are struggling to create a constitutional system of governance, the most important question is whether they will adhere to the principle of inclusiveness, or will they become victims of fissiparous tendencies for which their societies have been notorious?

One has every reason to be wary of the Islamists of the Arab world.  They have spent long years in the dungeons of the autocrats and the Pharaohs.  They have no experience with governance.  They have repeated the slogan, “Islam is the solution,” without having the responsibilities for spelling it out into specific policies.  As they become part of the ruling elites, it will be a test for them.  Their ultimate success may not be that they govern well, even though that would be a wonderful outcome.  Their ultimate success as participants in a democracy is their willingness to accept defeat, if or when they are voted out of office.

One “odd man out” in the rising tide of political change in the Middle East is Iran.  It has increased its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, most ironically, because of the dismantlement of the Taliban regime and that of Saddam Hussein by its arch enemy, the United States.  However, the Green Movement’s abortive attempt to bring about regime change in Iran has left that country exposed to the covert shenanigans of the United States to overthrow the rule of the Ayatollahs.  Iran’s recent capture of the CIA’s, RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone is evidence of that reality.  The CIA’s monitoring of Iran is only the exposed aspect of its covert actions against that country.  The covert actions that are unbeknownst to the theocratic rulers of Iran are likely to hurt their regime the most.[9]  To add insult to injury, Iran’s strong ally, Syria, appears to be the next country to undergo a bloody regime change.  The loss of Syria would also seriously damage Iran’s presence and influence in Lebanon.

However, Iran is not the only country increasingly troubled by the prospects of regime change in Syria.  Israel is equally concerned, because the ouster of the Assad regime promises to bring about the rising presence and clout of the Islamists, who are not likely to loathe the Jewish state any less than the current Baathist/Alawite rulers of that country.

The emerging realignment of power should be worrisome, especially for the great powers of the West, because it is not only aimed at threatening their erstwhile privileged status in the global hierarchy of nation-states, but it also promises to bring to prominence actors and forces that have not been viewed by them as particularly friendly or cooperative.  There are likely to be many uncertainties, even the outbreak of minor or even major military conflicts, before a new hierarchy of nations is formulated.  The emergence of China and India does not promise the evolution of a Sino-Indian condominium of power.  Instead, the two rising powers might be headed toward an era of increased friction and even military conflict, especially on the issue of border dispute.  One minor example of that friction is underscored by the fact that India’s new Agni-V long-range ballistic missile is being dubbed by its defense analysts as the “China-killer.”

The lessening of the economic status of European states and the rising power of Turkey direly requires the emergence of a new set of “rules of engagement,” whereby Turkey can decide whether it is still interested in joining the EU, and, if so, on what terms?  The “sick man” of Europe toward the conclusion of the first decade of the 21^st Century is Europe, not Turkey.  The rising presence and influence of Islam requires a new rapprochement between the Islamists and the secularists for the emergence of Islamic democracy or a new model of democratic pluralism that resembles the Turkish model.  All of these are tall orders.  But they are also in need of acceptance by the powers of the past and the future.

When the Hezbollah party was created by Iran in the early in 1980s, it was based on the ideology that carried out the Islamic revolution, which had ousted “America’s Shah.”  That ideology was brimming with Shia pride.  The establishment of an Islamic government in Iran was not only a revolutionary idea in its own right, but it also created the possibility that such a major change had also paved the way for creating Islamic governments in other Muslim countries.  As participants of the Islamic revolution, the representatives of Iran went to Lebanon in their zealotry to politicize the Shias of Lebanon, who were disenfranchised and marginalized by an anachronistic Sunni-Christian power system that was ruling Lebanon.  The Mustadafeen (the deprived or dispossessed ones in the vocabulary of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini) of Lebanon had to be empowered through a process of militant politicization.  Hezbollah was created out of that endeavor.  Iran’s politicization of the Shias of Lebanon gave them a new self image.  They were taught that the Sunni-Christian power arrangement was highly corrupt, and that, in order to acquire what is their right, the Shias of Lebanon had to fight for it.

Consequently, the Shias of Lebanon erupted on the political scene with a vengeance. They had had enough of being pushed around by the corrupt elites of their country.  They were also getting especially tired of becoming victims of Israeli retaliations in response to the attacks launched on the Jewish state by the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon.

Around the same time, the Israeli government invaded Lebanon to “finish off” the Palestinian “terrorist” attacks.  However, in the process of invading Lebanon, the Israeli leaders also decided to become the kingmakers of that country by forging an alliance with the Christian Phalangists.  In fact, according to one source, creating a Christian state in Lebanon has been a long dream of the Israeli leadership.  Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was of the view that Israel “should prepare to go over on the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria. The weak point of the Arab coalition is Lebanon for its regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established, with its southern border on the Litani River. We will make peace with it.”[1]

It was during the initial phase of the Israeli invasion and the occupation of Lebanon that Hezbollah intensified its activities.  Its shadowy predecessor was blamed for the mass assassination of the U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.  President Ronald Reagan, as much as he was interested in cooperating with the Israelis about promoting a Christian dominant regime in Lebanon, wisely decided to pull out the American forces from that country.  And Hezbollah continued its presence and dominance of the Lebanese political scenes.

Hezbollah’s finest hour was the 2006 war against Israel.  During that short war, the Jewish state swore to eradicate it, and unleashed a campaign of intense bombing of Lebanon.  However, when the dust settled, Hezbollah was bruised but still standing.  In the Arab world, the outcome of that campaign was interpreted as a “victory” for Hezbollah over Israel.  In the aftermath of that episode, the political popularity of Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, witnessed new heights in the Arab world.  No Arab leader had the reputation of challenging the military might of Israel and surviving it.  In fact, before the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war, Israel had the reputation of handing a crushing defeat to the Arab armed forces, thanks to its decisive victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Along with Hezbollah, Iran’s political reputation as the chief backer of that party also grew in the aftermath of the 2006 war, as the entire Sunni Arab leadership watched with a mixture of envy and frustration. Even the United States, whose occupation forces were then fighting an uphill battle with the Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida-related Islamists, appeared vulnerable to encountering a defeat in Iraq. While the Arab leaders were attempting to hide their envy of Iran and Hezbollah by coining highly pejorative phrases such as the threat of the rising so-called “Shia crescent,” Hezbollah proceeded to further dominate the internal
power distribution of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanese politics might have lasted for quite awhile, except for the Arab awakening that is currently sweeping through the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. One of the current targets of that movement is the growing revolt inside Syria – one of the chief backers of Hezbollah.  As Bishara Assad has turned loose his killing machine against his citizens, his regime, instead of getting strong, is looking increasingly desperate and weak. That is bad news for Hezbollah and Iran, which had been playing a major role in Lebanon, thanks to the Syrian occupation of that country since 1976. Even though that occupation happily ended in April 2005, Syria remained an influential actor inside Lebanon because of its geographical proximity to that country, and also because of the highly proactive resolve of both Iran and Syria to influence the internal power
dynamics of Lebanon through their support of Hezbollah.

As the future of Bishara Assad’s murderous rule appears bleak in Syria, Hezbollah, and its long-standing nexus with Syria and Iran, looks increasingly anachronistic.  If or when the Assad regime falls, Iran’s influence in Lebanon will also suffer a major setback.

One option for Hezbollah is to revise its strategy of dependence on Syria and Iran.  But there is no alternate strategy for Hezbollah to fall back on.  As a Shia entity, it was heavily reliant on Shia Iran and on the Alawite-ruled regime of Syria.  Even though the Alawites (a minority Shia sect) comprise no more than 10 percent of the Syrian population, they have been ruling that country for several decades.  Hezbollah has no other friendly state supporting it.  In fact, some rare good news for the Sunni Arab leaders — who have been highly wary about Iran’s rising influence in Lebanon and Iraq, and who were also manifesting their antipathy toward Iran by airing their concern through muttering the phrase “Shia crescent” — is that the future of Hezbollah’s continued dominance of Lebanon’s  internal politics also appears shaky and highly questionable.

The Arab awakening is the revolutionary movement of today.  How it will change the political face of the Middle East is not yet known or understood. But, like the aging monarchs and dictators of the Middle East, Hezbollah has little reason to be optimistic. The march of history in the Middle East promises to throw Hezbollah — the revolutionary of yesteryear — into the dustbin of history.

Two important points should be made about the relationship between the president and the U.S. military.  First, not knowing the military culture or the military frame of mind does not imply that a president does not know when to use the military.  At the same time, the military does not go to any sitting president and advise him to wage war as a solution to a conflict.  On the contrary, the U.S. military has a record of not readily opting for the military solution to a conflict.  One recent example that comes to mind is General Colin Powell’s utter sense of shock when the then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked him, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”  Powell’s reaction was summed up in his own words as follows: “I thought I would have an aneurysm.  American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.” 

Second, just looking at recent American history, the militarization of the U.S. foreign policy has been carried out primarily by the civilian leaders who wanted to “win” the Cold War against the Soviet Union.  After the end of the Cold War, one of the foremost politico-military institutions of that era – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – not only was allowed to exist, but it became even more relevant in seeking the membership of the former Warsaw Pact countries.  Throughout that process, the U.S. presidents – Bill Clinton as well George W. Bush – continued to assure Russia that Washington had abandoned the policy of containment of that country. Needless to say, no Russian leader believed that claim. 

While the world was waiting and wondering what major conflict would replace the discord of the Cold War era, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States caused it to “declare war” on global terrorism.  That was yet another deliberate and most ambitious decision that militarized the U.S. foreign policy for at least the next several decades.  The U.S. military did not play any significant role in that decision.

This militarization of U.S. foreign policy nullifies all warnings that Ike gave to his fellow citizens about the danger of MIC taking over the decisionmaking process.  On the contrary, the civilian authorities have become zealot champions of assigning the MIC a dominant voice in the policy process of this country.

As a general rule, whenever a sitting president decides to use the military option as a response to a conflict, he definitely becomes dependent on the military’s advice, because doing otherwise would open him up to enormous criticism from his domestic critics.  If the conflict is of major proportions – for instance, Vietnam and the Gulf War of 1991 – the most prudent option for a president is to heavily rely on what the generals and admirals want him to do.  The apocryphal catechism that only the generals know the intricacies of conducting a war takes over the calculus of the civilian leaders in the executive and legislative branches of the United States government.

That is what happened in the Gulf War of 1991.  Even in the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pretty much told General Tommy Franks to wage a war with “less forces,” President George W. Bush continued to give his generals a major voice in the conduct of that war.

A very important fact in this regard is that, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the fact that Bush, wittingly or unwittingly, became heavily dependent on military leaders and their roles by declaring a “war on terrorism” – a move that left him no choice other than to allow military leaders a major voice.   Bush invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq.  After Iraq became a quagmire, he had to rely on General David Petraeus’ “Surge” strategy to save his presidency from being described by future historians as responsible for a losing war.

As much as the candidate Obama criticized Bush’s war in Iraq as a war of choice, he became a victim of his own rhetoric when he depicted the war in Afghanistan as a “war of necessity” or the “right war.”

When he became president, the die was cast.  He had no choice but to wage that war against al-Qaida and the Taliban to “liberate” Afghanistan.  Then the question became how many forces he was going to insert, since the blueprint of “victory” in Iraq was based on Petraeus’ Surge strategy, which was essentially a military solution (if one is to stretch the imagination and conclusively call Iraq a success for the United States!).  In order to further entrench himself (wittingly or not) in the military option, the next question was how many troops Obama would introduce.  That was how the whole controversy started between him and his hand-picked General, Stanley McChrystal.  That was when McChrystal differed publicly with Vice President Joe Biden’s known preference for counterterrorism, as opposed to McChrystal (and Petraeus’) predilection for a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Goodman is right in observing that the military is wielding too much influence under Obama in matters of defense spending as “the leading policy on both security and diplomatic issues.”  In this regard, President Obama is also emulating his predecessor.  Even though he buttressed  the most sacred principle of civilian supremacy in the U.S. political system by firing McChrystal when he did, the fact remains that Obama is heavily dependent on another General (Petraeus) for victory in Afghanistan, just as much as (if not more than) Bush depended on the same General in Iraq.  Another related fact is that Obama needs a victory in Afghanistan (or at least some semblance of it) around the next presidential election, as much as Bush did before his reelection in 2004.

President Obama won the presidency by harshly criticizing Bush’s very decision to wage a war in Iraq.  He is likely to be severely criticized by a Republican presidential candidate in the next presidential election, if the war in Afghanistan were to turn sour in the coming years.  One wonders how much time Obama spends thinking about the similarity of his fate as a president and the prospects of reelection with that of his predecessor, who is not exactly his idol.

An important question that comes to mind is whether Obama would have fired General McChrystal for the same interview if the war in Afghanistan was going well for the United States. Under such circumstances, replacing a winning general would have been well nigh impossible. Then, Obama could not have said, as he did after relieving McChrystal of his command, that war is bigger than any one man. He would have still chastised the general for imprudent remarks, but would have moved on by saying that “the war in Afghanistan is too important for me to be swayed by some minor irritants like this interview.” While McChrystal was presiding over a failing war, he was a readily dispensable commodity for a highly ambitious American president, whose vision is fixed on winning a second term. And even some semblance of success in Afghanistan toward the end of 2011 becomes an important factor in Obama’s reelection.

In the meantime, President Barack Obama is developing an uncanny profound commitment to a strategy in Afghanistan that does not seem to be working. There are several problems with that strategy.

The foremost one is that it is promoting Hamid Karzai’s administration, which seriously lacks legitimacy. The doctrine on Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, outlines a number of indicators of legitimacy for a government that U.S. troops are trying to defend in a country. At least three of those indicators are worth-mentioning: the ability to provide security for the populace, selection of leaders in a manner deemed just and fair by a majority of the populace, and a high level of regime acceptance by social institutions. Needless to say, the Karzai government is decidedly ‘flunking’ on all of these three variables.

The United States can do very little to legitimize the government of Hamid Karzai. In fact, it is stuck with him. That very fact, and the regular news items about the high degree of corruption and the constant parceling out of billions of dollars from Afghanistan to foreign banks and other safe havens are providing convincing evidence that the “rats know the ship is sinking, and they have started the process of abandoning it.”

We also hear reports that President Karzai, after becoming convinced that the United States would not stay in Afghanistan for long, has already started negotiating some sort of a deal with Pakistan that would provide stability to his country in the post-American era. As much as Pakistan is maligned by Washington and other Western countries, it might be the only source on which Karzai can count for alleviating the rising power and influence of the Taliban. The United States and other Western troops have an option of leaving Afghanistan; however, Pakistan is “doomed” to stay next door to Afghanistan forever for geographical reasons!

The second significant problem with America’s strategy in Afghanistan is that, thus far, American commanders have not found a way to win the war. The campaign in Marja turned out to be a “bleeding ulcer,” as it was candidly depicted by the departing Commanding General McChrystal. The Taliban side has been watching closely, and with much glee, the mounting confusion among American commanders about implementing new tactics. As General David Petraeus takes charge of the military campaign, the most significant thing to watch is how different his tactics are going to be about the use of force, destroying the property where the insurgents are allegedly hiding, and the use of air power. These issues – referred to in military jargon as “courageous restraint” – were reportedly causing a lot of grumbling and resentment among the foot soldiers and Marines that their hands were being tied in the name of winning the hearts and minds.

General Petraeus promised, during his confirmation hearing to replace McChrystal, that he would take a closer look at the issue of courageous restraint. At least the Republican Senators will be watching closely to see whether he really means to bring about any change. McChrystal’s critics do not care to remember that, in implementing courageous restraint, he was only following what Petraeus’ COIN doctrine had advocated. However, Petraeus is also characterized as a “political general.” But does the war in Afghanistan need a political general or a general who is willing to stay loyal to tactics purely on the basis of his military judgment? The answer to this question is obvious.

If the chief reason for the alleged success of the Surge Strategy in Iraq was its capacity to exploit the resentment of al-Qaida among the Sunnis of that country, there is no evidence that something akin to that tactic has yet been found in Afghanistan. Ethnic resentment between the Pushtoons and the Tajiks might be just one reason for the acute unpopularity of the Karzai government. Even though he is a Pushtoon, he has surrounded himself with the Tajiks.

The third problem related to the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan involves Ambassador Carl Eikenberry and Special Envoy “Bulldozer” Richard Holbrooke. Both of these individuals publicly clashed with Karzai and McChrystal. By getting rid of McChrystal while leaving these individuals in their places, President Obama is demonstrating that he is really limited in his choice of competent personnel. The reports are that both Eikenberry and Holbrooke are on notice to get along with Petraeus. But that artificial restraint might still turn out to be problematic in the sense that it is likely to stifle honest disagreements that should still be debated in order to avoid the pathology of “group think.” These officials can still disagree without becoming disagreeable and without attempting to score points by conveniently leaking their disagreements to the press.

What President Obama ought to do is to look for another strategy right now as a fallback option. He ought to look into why Karzai and the Pakistani government are so eager to cut a deal. Perhaps the United States ought to consider becoming a party to it. Another option ought to bring Iran into the negotiating process on Afghanistan as part of the “regional influentials.” It would be a mistake to conclude that Iran would destabilize Afghanistan in the post-American era. After all, an unstable Afghanistan would be very detrimental to Iran’s interests. The same thing applies to Pakistan. A third option is to put pressure on both India and Pakistan to look for a rapprochement on Afghanistan that involves broader issues of negotiations between those two acute rivals. Fourth, for the development of his next strategy, President Obama ought to stop looking at the Brookings Institution or other think tanks in Washington to hand him over a nicely packaged – but highly flawed – strategy. He might be well advised to let the South Asian nations and Iran play a distinct role in hammering out ways to stabilize Afghanistan. The United States can still play an important role in such a process. With the passage of each week, the current strategy is looking more like a failed one. It badly needs to be replaced by a new one, if the United States wishes to find a winning way of exiting the Afghan quagmire.

Every new president’s approach to major unresolved issues is entirely different from those of his immediate predecessor, simply because the predecessor’s approach is regarded as inept or even wrong-headed. So, the successor proceeds to ‘reinvent the wheel’ on those issues by approaching it entirely differently. Since Barack Obama entered office criticizing Bush’s involvement in and his handling of the Iraq war, his own war – the one in Afghanistan – was going to have his ‘superior’ mark on it.

Bush invaded Iraq on the pretext of freeing the regime of Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction, which did not even exist. There were no plans to create a viable post-conflict government in Iraq, a reality that is largely responsible for immersing that country in a near-civil war situation.

Obama was to develop his rationale of enhancing his country’s involvement in Afghanistan by developing a strategy and even by establishing an “exit date.” He read in Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster of the Vietnamese imbroglio, in order to create a blueprint of how to avoid future disasters in Afghanistan; he put together an AfPak strategy before inserting more troops into Afghanistan; and held numerous brainstorming sessions with his own team of the “best and the brightest” to avoid potential political landmines and blinders related to conflict in that country. He insisted on holding clean elections in Afghanistan, and maintained a highly palpable ambivalence toward the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, whose reelection was allegedly based on a lot of fraudulent practices, including stuffing of ballot boxes. The frequent teleconferencing between the White House and Karzai’s presidential palace during the Bush administration instantly disappeared when Obama entered the White House. Karzai was left with no doubt that the new administration was symbolically holding its nose while dealing with him. News dispatches on the corrupt practices of the Karzai government became regular items.

The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, dispatched two cables to the White House in November 2009, which were promptly leaked to the press, about Karzai not being an adequate strategic partner. In those cables, Eikenberry also opposed further increases in American troops in Afghanistan. There were reports that Richard Holbrook, Obama’s Special Envoy to South Asia, did not get along with Karzai. Another U.S. official, Peter Galbraith, even went to extent of stating that Karzai is unbalanced and an opium addict.

The general public’s manifestations of an overall condescending and disdainful attitude toward Hamid Karzai by prominent U.S. officials created an intense response from the Afghan president. He turned the tables on the Obama administration by accusing the “West” – which was his euphemism for the Obama administration – for conducting a fraudulent election. He insisted on being treated as an elected head of a sovereign state. Karzai did not take kindly to reports that U.S. forces were threatening to put his half-brother, Wali Karzai, on the military’s “Joint Prioritized Engagement List,” a euphemism for “kill or capture” list. Wali Karzai has been regularly mentioned as one of the chief symptoms of the problems of corruption and nepotism afflicted on his brother’s administration. The most publicized anger incident of Hamid Karzai toward the United States was when he threatened to join the Taliban, a statement that stunned the Obama administration.

Another prominent U.S. official in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has an entirely different approach toward Karzai. McChrystal, Commander of the NATO forces, not only treated the Afghan president with abundant respect, but worked with him closely, an attitude that caused ample friction between him and Eikenberry. McChrystal is totally immersed in implementing the American military’s COIN doctrine. That doctrine gives primacy to politics – hence on cooperating with the top political representative of that country, Hamid Karzai – and to winning the hearts and minds of the populace, not merely through the use of rhetorical hyperbolas, but through implementing nation-building. In this approach, gaining the support of the local civilian authorities and the Afghan populace is so intricate and pursued so single-mindedly that its practitioners (McChrystal and his staff) strongly disagreed with those who frequently insisted on inserting priorities decided in Washington (Ambassador Eikenberry, Holbrook, and their staffs).

In this constant tug-and-pull between McChrystal’s ‘nativist’ and Eikenberry’s Washington-centric approaches, President Obama – without publicly saying so – has thus far sided with Eikenberry. This type of bickering and Washington’s messy way of managing its occupation of Afghanistan – which also happened in the case of Vietnam and Iraq – was music to the ears of the Taliban and al-Qaida. That reality also perfectly suited their argument that Karzai is merely a puppet, and that Afghanistan is an occupied country, which needs to be liberated.

However, before these disagreements between Karzai and U.S. officials became irresolvable, a brazen sense of realism seems to be dawning in Washington recently. President Obama is reported to have instructed that Karzai should be treated with “more respect” by his national security team, and that he should be regarded as a “partner,” which means as a legitimate chief executive of Afghanistan.

Obama knows that his administration would sink or swim with Karzai in the driver’s seat in Afghanistan. Consequently, his treatment of Karzai during his upcoming Washington trip will be warmer and more respectful, which is a marked departure from the American president’s publicized surprise trip to Afghanistan in May 2010 during which he is reportedly lectured Karzai to clean up his government. Needless to say, no other action of the U.S. government underscored the potency of the Taliban propaganda regarding the puppet nature of the Karzai government more than the international media’s report on Obama’s trip.

The United States almost lost in Iraq by not remembering an important lesson of the Vietnam quagmire, which states that foreign wars are not won by substantially relying on military power. Rather, they are won through a healthy comprehension of the intricate role of politics, and then incorporating political variables into developing a winning comprehensive strategy.

Even though America has not yet fully secured Iraq, the concept of giving primacy to politics in that country – of which the COIN-related Surge strategy was a good example – has emerged as an approach that should be rigorously emulated in Afghanistan. When or if victory comes to the American forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal’s notion of working closely with Karzai (while privately emphasizing good governance and working unstintingly to develop policies to enhance it) is likely to play a crucial role. In the final analysis, it is only through establishing the legitimacy of his government, and by adopting a slew of policies aimed at enhancement of good governance that Hamid Karzai will win against the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus in Afghanistan.

American Muslims – a great number of them – do not seem to have gone through the kind of socialization process that other Americans have about developing a strong sense of belonging to this country. I am not questioning their patriotism; and I am certainly not stating that there is any sympathy among them toward any terror groups. What I am saying is that Muslims anywhere in the world grow up with an overarching love for, and commitment to, Islam, which overrides all other sentiment. That issue does not cause any problem with their loyalty to a nation, or steadfastness to a secular idea, as long as there is no tension – or worse yet – contradiction between their commitment to a nation or to a secular idea and their religion. That has never been the case until al-Qaida and other Islamist groups started to emphasize in the post/911 era that Islam is under attack. The United States’ invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq made that argument for some American Muslims, if not necessarily credible, at least not as contentious as it is generally thought in the West.

However, no equally powerful voices emerged in the world of Islam to counter the claims of the Islamists. The Sunni Muslim regimes – who always suffered from a lack of domestic legitimacy for their rule, and who persistently exploited Islam to seek that legitimacy by co-opting Sunni Islamic scholars to endorse their autocratic and illegitimate rule – were not going to stick their necks out by countering al-Qaida’s Islam-related argument. That is not to say that they agree with that terrorist entity.
For Sunni Muslim regimes, to defend the United States – which remains the chief occupying force of two Muslim countries, and which is waging a “global war on terrorism” – has become a highly risky proposition in the world of Islam.

Besides, the Bush administration, as part of its confused strategy of intimidation in the Middle East between 2003 and 2006, waged a public campaign of vilifying major Sunni Arab governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt for not being democratic, as if Washington had discovered that fact only after it was attacked on September 11, 2001 by the 19 young Arab hijackers of three U.S. airplanes. The lone superpower was being swept away by its then newly-found logic that terrorism in the non-democratic states of the Middle East was growing, and that the autocratic regimes were tacitly encouraging the terrorists to terrorize the outside world so that they would not focus their energy on destabilizing or overthrowing those governments.

Another major Muslim country, Pakistan, once again became a “frontline” state in another of America’s major wars within a span of a little over ten years. As a frontline state, Pakistan was gradually being pushed toward an era when its own Islamist forces would become a major threat. Thus, the major focus of Pakistan’s dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, was to make sure that his country remained a faithful player in America’s war against terrorism, which was increasingly viewed inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a war against Islam.

So, different Muslim regimes were involved in their own struggle to survive and were not interested in becoming chief defenders of the United States against the rhetorical barrages of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups which stated that the lone superpower was waging a war against Islam. Even if one or more Muslim regimes were to make an audacious stand to defend America’s global war, they would not have made a convincing case in the eyes of the Muslim masses. It is the nature of Sunni Islam that allows no monolithic authority—a la the Catholic Pope or even an Ayatollah of Shia Islam—to become the chief interpreter of Islamic theology. Those who criticize Muslim leaders for not authoritatively condemning terrorism and becoming a convincing “voice” of Islam are either uninformed of this reality, or choose to ignore it.

In the meantime, two aspects of the United States’ handling of terrorism are emerging as its chief sources of resentment among Muslims. First, the continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is adding further fuel to the Islamist argument that the lone superpower is determined to establish its firm grip on Muslim countries and to make sure that they remain subservient to its policies and its resolve to maintain the supremacy of Israel in the Middle East. The second source of anti-Americanism is President Barack Obama’s determined approach to heavily rely on counterterrorism (CT) – which has been symbolized by the heightened use of UAVs to kill al-Qaida forces in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or in any other Muslim country where Islamic forces are gathering momentum. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s application of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, developed by General David Petraeus, emphasizes nation-building on a mini-scale (the “clear-hold-build” approach that was proved effective in Iraq). The United States hopes to remain popular among the masses in Afghanistan by applying the COIN approach to dealing with the Taliban, yet it is so insistent upon applying the CT approach in Pakistan. The inherent contradictions between the two approaches are becoming obvious to people of those two countries, and to Muslims at large, on a daily basis.

From America’s point of view, the CT approach is most effective and least damaging. It is also popular inside the United States, because it requires no troops on the ground, no casualties, and no body bags. If in the process of using the UAVs there are civilian casualties, the United States government issues the usual statement of regrets or apologies, or worse yet, it calls it “collateral damage.” But the fact that, more often than not, the UAV attacks also result in the loss of innocent civilian lives creates ample resentment among Muslims toward the lone superpower.

America’s global war on terrorism – even though it is no longer labeled thus by the Obama administration – has created an environment where a number of Muslims, even inside the United States, are having a hard time developing a sense of shared rationale for its related military actions, violence, death, and mayhem.

However, alternatives to America’s current approach to fighting terrorism are easy to proffer; they are hard to implement. Despite that fact, I will offer a few suggestions.

The foremost suggestion is to end America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, because the conventional wisdom among Washington officials is that both countries would descend into chaos. It may be that the U.S. occupation of those countries might create the same result over the long run. But no serious examination of that proposition is taking place inside the United States. There are, to be sure, a number of stated deadlines regarding the redeployent of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; but no one really believes that they should be taken as serious commitments. The Obama administration, like the preceding one, wants no part of becoming responsible for “losing” in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The second alternative for Washington is to fully focus on nation-building both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the United States has introduced nation-building through the Kerry-Lugar legislation. However, the use of a CT approach in that country is overshadowing the good will that should stem from the Kerry-Lugar Bill. President Obama has ruled out an ambitious commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan, regardless of the fact that it holds promise for stabilizing that country.

As the mid-term congressional election gets closer, the Obama administration, in an attempt to minimize electoral losses of Democratic candidates, is likely to be focused on making populist choices regarding its dealings with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That means there is going to be an increased emphasis on CT tactics over implementing a comprehensive nation-building strategy. However, in order to win against terrorist forces in South Asia, the need for now is to make realistic choices, which means earnestly thinking about conducting nation-building campaigns in both of those countries. The growing popularity of the al-Qaida mentality of creating chaos and mayhem in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is proof that killing terrorists does not equal defeating terrorism.

The third approach is to consider developing Joseph Nye’s concept of “smart power” into complex policies aimed at nullifying al-Qaida’s potent argument that Islam is under attack. Nye has defined it as follows: “Smart power is about tapping into diverse sources of American power, including our soft power, to attract others. It is about how we can get other countries to share our goals without resorting to coercion, which is limited and inevitably costly.”

As promising as the notion of smart power is, it still requires considerable tweaking to deal with the complex strategic realities of South Asia and elsewhere. For instance, the goal of the United States in Pakistan and in Afghanistan is to enhance stability and democracy and to defeat and minimize, if not eradicate, the Islamist influence. The first two goals are laudable. Washington is not likely to have any problem persuading either of those countries to pursue it. However, on the issue of minimizing the influence of the Islamists, the Obama administration faces a major problem. It is relying heavily on the use of military power (or in the words of Nye, “hard power”).

There are additional problems inside Pakistan that are coming into conflict with America’s objectives related to that country and neighboring Afghanistan. India’s increased presence in Afghanistan has become a major problem from Pakistan’s perspective. When the United States asks India to train the Afghan police or military forces, Pakistan views that development with considerable alarm. The Indian-trained Afghan security forces are likely to be anti-Pakistan. That is just a perverse reality of South Asia that has yet to be taken into consideration. Despite its long-term involvement in South Asia, the United States either does not understand the overarching nature of regional rivalry between India and Pakistan, or is choosing to ignore it at its own peril.

Using Nye’s notion of smart power, the Obama administration must find a way of minimizing Pakistan’s strategic concerns over heightened interest and the presence of India in Afghanistan. Otherwise, Pakistan is not likely to cooperate with the United States wholeheartedly as long it remains wary about India’s enhanced presence in Afghanistan. It has shown its displeasure allegedly by conniving about, if not directly supporting, two terrorist attacks on India’s Consulate in Afghanistan.

At this time, India, after getting encouragement from the United States about its involvement in stabilizing Afghanistan, has even approached Russia to seek avenues of cooperation with that country. India is also conducting a separate dialogue with Iran on the subject. The Obama administration may be too overwhelmed with its domestic politics to fully study the implications of Indian overtures toward Iran and Russia in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s reactions to them.

Lately, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s Army Chief, has been quite candid about his country’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and India’s heightened presence therein. He has resurrected the concept of “strategic depth” that was first mentioned by General Zia ul-Huq in his interview with the American Journalist, Selig Harrison, in the mid-1980s. The upside of Kayani’s candor is that the Obama administration is receiving an earful of what Pakistan really wants in Afghanistan as a price for its cooperation with the United States. The downside is the fact that the Pakistani Army, once again, is proving that democratically-elected leaders in that country continue to play second fiddle to the Army. In any event, it is up to Washington to decide what policy to develop by fully utilizing the concept of smart power.

America’s involvement in Afghanistan and its ties with Pakistan have to be properly advertised, once again through the use of smart power, both in the world of Islam and inside the United States. The purpose of such a strategy is to consciously develop “Muslim stakes,” both domestically and internationally, regarding America’s fight with the Islamist forces. The congruities between American strategic and Muslim interests have to be acutely and incessantly developed by the U.S. government using the blueprint of the congruity between American and Israeli interests.

The recent fatwa of a leading Pakistani Muslim scholar, Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, condemning terrorism is the second revolutionary development in the Sunni world; a similar fatwa issued by India’s Deoband Madrassa in June 2008 being the first one. Even considering the highly independent nature of Sunni Islam, these fatwas are eminently better than any official statements issues by any U.S. or Western agencies condemning terrorism. Even though they do not instantly become a source of Muslim consensus, the legitimacy of condemnation by Dr. Qadri and the Deoband Madrassa are incontrovertible. They already have been given ample publicity by the world media. As an important aspect of the use of its smart power, the United States ought to incessantly publicize it to condemn terrorism.

America’s efforts to defeat the Islamist extremists will only succeed when they become comprehensive and dynamic in the sense of ever-changing to suit altering circumstances. For this purpose, the U.S. should use smart power ingeniously, and launch a highly visible campaign (i.e., public diplomacy) to publicize all Muslim condemnations generated in different corners of the world of Islam. In the final analysis, the best way to use smart power is to fight the Islamists’ attempt to legitimize terror in the name of Islam with the endeavors of highly credible Muslim sources to condemn it as inherently anti-Islamic.

Such an approach is direly needed, not just in South Asia, but in a number of failing and near-failing Muslim countries and also for educating American Muslims about America’s approach to the Muslim world. That is the best way to curtail the long reach of al-Qaida.

Iran refuses to close down its nuclear research program; and, despite all its assertions that it is not interested in making nuclear weapons, Washington believes that that is precisely the direction Iran is heading.

Iran also has a very active ballistic missile program. And the United States is afraid that it is just a matter of time before Iran will not only put all the systems together to build a bomb, but it will also be able to integrate its nuclear weapons with its delivery system.

There is also much substance to the United States’ suggestion that Iran might have already acquired a bomb-making capability and might be waiting on an appropriate time for its “breakout” announcement — a term used, in the parlance of nuclear proliferation, to describe a surprise announcement of a country whereby it renounces the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) and uses it capabilities to build a small nuclear weapon.

The most striking aspect of the Obama administration is that, in the past several weeks, while it was involved in issuing its nuclear posture review and signing a new nuclear arms reduction treaty and then holding a “summit” on the issue of “loose nukes,” it never interrupted its focus on Iran.

Russia, while signing the nuclear arms reduction treaty, falsely created an impression that it was willing to side with the United States in imposing sanctions on Iran. A more correct interpretation of Russia’s attitude toward Iran is that it still wants to discuss the option of negotiating with that country, and is not at all interested in imposing the kind of harsh sanctions that the pro-Israeli elements in the United States would love to see implemented.

The same thing is also true for China. In fact, after the loose nukes summit, China has made it clear that it is not as much in the corner of the United States as the American media made it out to be immediately prior to, and in the aftermath of, that summit.

The presence of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in the thick of policy discussions on Iran becomes important when one considers his long experience in the realm of national security, and the fact that he is very much in the forefront of developing a comprehensive strategy.

However, the role of Admiral Mike Mullen remains a source of concern when one considers the fact that one of his top “informal” advisers on the Middle East is a woman by the name of Dr. Lani Kass, a holder of Israeli and American citizenship. One is befuddled by the fact that a holder of dual citizenship is given top Department of Defense clearance, while Israel’s use of such persons as spies against us is a known fact. Dubbed as “Dr. Strangelove made in Israel,” an essay written by a former CIA agent, Philip Giraldi, describes Kass as rabidly anti-Iran and an equally staunch Islamophobe.

As reported by Giraldi, Kass told her U.S. Air Force audience that, “the long war against the Islamists will end ‘when they learn to love their children more than they hate us,’ a comment originally attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.” On another occasion she said, “radical Muslims hate the western world because Europe took their dominant political position away and they want it back.” This is a diatribe that Bernard Lewis has been peddling to the Western audience in the name of his “expert analysis.”

She is also on record as being more audacious than she was in the afore-cited quotes. This time, she disposed of the nuance between Muslims and radical Muslims and included all Muslims in her fictional “expertise” on the world of Islam. Giraldi notes, “In her speech she explained that Muslims hate western culture and want to dominate the world, adding that because radical Islam has a ‘culture of death’ all those who do not submit to Islam must die, an assertion so absurd that one suspects her political analysis derives from the Free Republic website.” Not surprisingly, no one in her audience questioned the veracity of that comment or demanded any evidence.
Regarding Iran, Kass is totally sold on the use of military option. She is reported to have said, “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?” In other words, she is very much gung ho on going to war against Iran. Her comments remind one of two other women who were way ahead of even the Bush administration in their fictional belief that, between 2001 and 2003, Iraq was fully engaged in making weapons of mass destruction: Judith Miller of the New York Times and Laurie Mylroie, who coauthored a book on Iraq. A detailed narrative of the roles of these two women is provided in Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.
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The question that is uppermost in my mind is why has Admiral Mullen decided to rely on such a highly partisan source for advice on the Middle East. Don’t we already have enough of a horrible image on being extremely one-sided when it comes to the strategic affairs of that region? More to the point, why is Admiral Mullen not getting his cue from the White House, which seems bent on pursuing policy options to take into consideration, first and foremost, American interests?

If America’s miserable record of going to war against Iraq on imaginary evidence, the cherry picking of intelligence, and in some instances even deliberately relying on highly deceptive sources (see the above-cited source), the only option that stands out in dealing with Iran is to avoid the military option at all costs. The only viable option is to negotiate, negotiate, or negotiate with that country.

First and foremost, it unwittingly underscores the fact that most of the world of Islam is on fire. Just look at the trans-Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. To the east of that continent, the Arabian Peninsula has been experiencing increased amounts of turbulence in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Across the Persian Gulf, Iran does not look too stable; its two neighboring states, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are where the United States is fighting its war against religious extremism. That phrase is President Barack Obama’s euphemism for George W. Bush’s GWOT.

If you continue travelling east of Afghanistan to Central Asia, it appears serene. But don’t be fooled by that palpable serenity, and certainly don’t tell the Chinese that their neighboring states are likely to remain stable. Leaders in Beijing (with the full cooperation of the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) are being proactive in suppressing the Muslim Uighurs, who are yearning to secede from China in its Western province of Xinjiang. Continued turbulence in the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation is also making the Chinese leader very nervous.

The second aspect of the current FP issue that I noted (but remained totally unimpressed about) is what type of strategy the US government should use in its ongoing wars in Muslim lands. The Surge strategy, which has been given credit for stabilizing Iraq (even though that credit remains only partially correct), is being applied in Afghanistan. Edward Luttwak, a U.S. military strategist and historian, argues for the use of strategic bombing in Afghanistan as the best way to deal with the Taliban. He wants the United States to arm the Afghan anti-Taliban militias to the teeth, and to let them do the fighting and dying instead of U.S. soldiers. That worked in the 1980s against the Soviet Union because it was occupying Afghanistan. However, the United States is envisaged now by the Afghans as the occupying force. So, arming the Afghans to the teeth might also result in increased U.S. deaths if or when they were to turn their guns against their American masters. He has completely glossed over that fact. Regarding Luttwak’s suggestion of the use of strategic bombing, I am amazed at how callous some Western strategic thinkers remain about the insignificance of the so-called huge collateral damage that will surely stem from that measure in any part of Afghanistan. While advocating strategic bombing, he has nothing to say whether the US should continue to use the Surge strategy or completely abandon it. Obviously, arming the anti-Taliban Afghan will defeat the very rationale of General Stanley McChrystal’s Surge strategy. Bad suggestion, Ed! My advice to you is that you need to clean your foggy strategic lenses!

The mega-conflict of the 21st Century – how to deal with Islamist insurgency and how to “cure” the failing and failed Muslim states – defies any consensus on the modalities of a comprehensive solution. In the absence of that consensus, the use of “kinetic” force remains the sole tactic to fight it. However, relying on this tactic alone will not guarantee any victory for the United States.

The United States is manifesting a similar amount of eagerness about imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which has remained much more defiant than Saddam Hussein ever was in terms of challenging the America’s dominance of the Middle East. It is important to ask whether Iran will meet a similar fate as Iraq, perhaps not a direct military invasion, but other actions whose purpose would still be to bring about regime change. President Obama has already stated that his administration would consider aggressive sanctions on Iran.

Iran remains the last major state that consistently rejects any proposition of kowtowing to American diktat or its hegemony in the Middle East. It has accumulated ample clout in that region in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The United States, either for propaganda reasons or merely in order to underscore the nature of Iran’s anti-Americanism, consistently harped on the growing Iranian influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, if the U.S. assertion of Iran’s role in the political turbulence in Iraq between 2005 and 2007 was true, it can be safely concluded that Iran played a crucial role in America’s decision to actively seek an exit strategy. After all, it was largely as a result of intense political instability emanating from the violent role played by the Iraqi insurgents and Islamists groups that forced Washington to calculate that it could not stay in Iraq for long. Iran had strong ties with a number of those insurgents. That was a coup de grace from the perspective of Iran’s interests in Iraq, because the neoconservatives – working as the brains of the Bush administration – had an elaborate plan to make the entire Middle East a part of pax-Americana.

Iran’s military and material support of Hezbollah was very crucial in that organization’s ability to withstand the punishing Israeli attack on Lebanon during the short war of July-August 2006. The resultant general perception in the Arab world was that Hezbollah won that round of the battle against the Jewish state. Iran’s strategic dominance in that region was emerging as a new phenomenon regarding which neither Washington nor Jerusalem could produce effective countermeasures. Consequently, U.S.-Iran ties became even more antagonistic than before.

A major strategic shift from the Bush administration to the Obama administration in the Middle East and South Asia is that, in terms of conducting military operations, the U.S. would rely on a multilateral approach. The military operations conducted under the auspices of NATO in Afghanistan emerged as the best multilateral vehicle. However, the constraining aspect of the role of NATO is that it cannot be used anywhere without the approval of the entire Alliance; and that approval is very hard to secure. That fact ties the hands of any future American president who would develop any notion of adventurism a la George W. Bush in Iraq. That reality also prevents the United States from taking any military action against Iran, even in the wake of its intransigence about abandoning its nuclear research program.

The preceding constraint might be a major reason why the United States would heavily rely on the use of covert operations. President Obama has become the most prolific user of such operations by regularly ordering drone attacks against Islamist groups in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. One can only guess how many other covert operations involving U.S. Special Forces are being carried out presently in South Asia, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries.

Because of an inordinate technological gap between the United States and the Islamist forces in the aforementioned countries, the use of covert operations has emerged as the most convenient weapon of the strong. As long as American soldiers are not returning home in body bags, U.S. public opinion remains highly supportive of such operations. That is why the United States is likely – if it hasn’t already been doing so – to use covert tactics in Iran in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

According to a report prepared in July 2008 by the muckraking journalist, Seymour Hersh, the United States secretly allocated up to $400 million to underwrite covert operations against the Islamic Republic. Such operations “involved ‘working with opposition groups and passing money.’ The Finding provided a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong.”

The chief problem that President Barack Obama faced when he first became president is that there is no proven record of diplomatic encounters between the United States and Iran since the days of President Jimmy Carter. Even Carter – one of the most ardent promoters of justice and constitutionalism in the Middle East and the most successful former president – did his best to oust the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980, while he was still in office. All American presidents who followed him spent a lot time and capital in their attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic, even by going to the extreme of cooperating with Saddam Hussein during his brutal aggression against Iran in 1981.

In the wake of Iran’s refusal to buckle under the pressure of the United States to abandon its nuclear research program, Obama could have made a courageous decision to abandon the covert operations that Bush had started. However, the United States’ heavy reliance on covert operations in Pakistan tells us that Obama envisions such operations as safe alternatives to any bold new measures, which still might not persuade Iran to cooperate with the United States. In the meantime, the hyperactive Israeli lobby has made sure that any actions other than imposition of harsh economic sanctions are unfailingly condemned as “appeasement” of the Ayatollahs.

It should also be noted that the Iranian leaders did nothing to make their own case in the court of the world’s public opinion when they seem to have fraudulently stolen the election from the reformist candidate, Hussein Moussavi, last June. In the aftermath of those elections, it was interesting to watch how adamant the anti-Iranian forces inside the U.S. Congress were in their insistence that the President strongly condemn the Iranian leaders for allegedly stealing the elections. One should contrast that eagerness with the deafening silence inside the U.S. government following the murder of the Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, allegedly perpetrated by Mossad in Dubai.

Given the strategic environment that is marked with a high degree of hostilities and intense distrust on both sides, the chances of the resolution of the nuclear program-related crisis through peaceful means are slim, at best. The United States has even attempted to go to the extent of creating Arab endorsements for its harsh economic sanctions on Iran. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, went to Riyadh asking the government to persuade China to agree to sanctions on Iran, which Saudi Arabia wisely rejected. However, Gates was not about to give up. He proceeded on the same mission to the UAE. His chances of gaining a somewhat favorable reception from that country are pretty decent, given its long-term tensed relations with Iran. But the UAE is not Saudi Arabia. Even its endorsement of U.S. sanctions on Iran would not sway any other major Arab state.

As the United States’ diplomatic choices regarding Iran narrow, Israeli pressure for military action against that country is likely to intensify. The question is whether or how long Obama is likely to withstand it. A lot depends on whether he becomes politically stronger as a result of a potential passage of the healthcare bill in the next few weeks.

At least for now, the government of Benyamin Netanyahu has been digging a diplomatic hole for itself by allegedly orchestrating the murder of the Hamas leader in Dubai. To further deteriorate its case, Israel, during a visit of the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, announced the building of new housing projects in East Jerusalem. However, no one should underestimate the Israeli hubris concerning its strong support inside the U.S. Congress. The Jewish state has long understood the nature of its political support inside the U.S. and has assiduously worked through its tool, AIPAC, to solidify that support. Just based on that fact, chances are high that it would push President Obama hard to take military action against Iran. How wise is such an action likely to be from the viewpoint of American strategic interests in the Middle East? It would be very foolish, indeed. However, Israel has not been known to waste time thinking about what is best for America in the Middle East. Friends of Israel inside the United States incessantly, and without even giving it a second thought, confuse Israeli interests with American interests. So, the world should not rule out the high probability of U.S. military action against Iran in the coming months, which would create another hell for American strategic interests in that region.