From Sykes–Picot
to civil war: the delusions of American power
There are various
ways of doing a history of the present, or a history that follows the tracks of
a theme of relevance to the present. In the short time that I have I want to
trace the genealogy/archeology of the theme of the middle eastern nation-state,
as it has emerged in the space of a century in US domestic and foreign policy
since the dismemberment/demise of the Ottoman Empire, up to the present. I want
to argue that the nation-state has become the
forgotten concept, having been replaced by national security and the constant
threat of terrorism and the fear of terrorist groups in particular in Islamic societies.
Defeating so-called terrorist groups has given precedence over concerns as to
what stands as a modern nation-state in those disturbing and disturbed times.
But what if defeating jihadic groups is the biggest fallacy of all times? I
want to narrow down that line of reasoning to specifically presidential
campaigns in particular in the aftermath of September 11.
The failure of the
middle eastern nation-state and the rise of jihadic groups represent a case of
historical and material restrictions on what is said and in their relations
with the exercise of power, which goes beyond the classical divisions of left
versus right, democrat versus republican. I am interested in what is said, how
what is said is framed within a discursive reality at a specific historical
juncture. We want to examine things that
are said, how they were said, and the occasion that made such statements
possible. There were rules or “regularities” in what is said at a given time
and place, and that these rules govern not just the kind of things that are
talked about, but also the roles and positions of those talking about them.
This summer we’ve
celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Sykes–Picot agreement which divided
what is now the East of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan between
British and French zones of influence, versus zones of direct control, colored
on the map as zones A and B respectively. Sykes–Picot is usually read in terms
of the borders that were imposed, not so much the borders of the 1916
agreement, but the actual borders of the 1920s, which turned out very different
from those anticipated barely a decade earlier. There has been so much in the
century since Sykes–Picot on the “fairness” of the borders, and whether they
made sense, or whether they were justified at all.
What I want to
propose in my brief intervention is that it is not so much how the borders were
mapped, but to question the genealogy of the nation-state. I want to argue that
various administrations, in particular in the aftermath of WWII, have erred
from placing a priority on the nation-state, and the difficulty of such requirement.
What has replaced the nation-state are concerns regarding security and US or
NATO interests, where the fight against terrorist jihadic groups took
precedence.
The American
response to Sykes–Picot came rather rapidly within the framework of the
King–Crane Commission in 1919, in the aftermath of WWI and the Paris Versailles
peace conference attended by Woodrow Wilson.
In his
fourteen-point address to Congress in January 1918 Wilson promoted
self-determination. The twelfth point concerned the Ottoman Empire:
The Turkish portions
of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the
other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an
undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of
autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a
free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international
guarantees.
What matters in such
statement, notwithstanding “secure sovereignty,” is the concept of “nationality.”
What does this mean?
When it comes to
“Syria” and the “Syrian people” the King–Crane Commission spoke of a Mandatory
Administration that would take hold of the newly formed territory for the sake
of a “democratic state,” and “the development of a sound national spirit.” And
the text adds: “This systematic cultivation of national spirit is particularly
required in a country like Syria, which has only recently come to
self-consciousness.” Self-consciousness is what would ultimately lead to
self-government (p. 21 in The Israel–Arab Reader, fifth edition).
What we can retain
thus far from the awareness of the Commission apropos the uniqueness of a
historical situation of the formation of “nationalisms” that have only recently
come to self-consciousness is that the newly formed nation-states are fragile
and always in danger. The process of their coming into being could be aborted
for the simple reason that they are “imagined communities,” as Benedict
Anderson would say, which implies the formation of a vernacular culture in
support of nationalism.
What happened in the
decades following the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the end of colonial rule
is the establishment of nation-states that for the most part are autocratic at
best. How to deal with troubled nation-states—or the existence of states with
“nations” divided among many ethnic lines and loyalties—is what has preoccupied
US foreign policy since WWII and without much success. The problem has only
gotten worse with “states” and “nations” falling apart since the Arab revolts
in 2011–12. Not only the nation-state has become an impossibility, but the
hyphen between “nation” and “state” seems irreversibly lost. The situation is
new, but also as old as the problems that have emerged with the fall of the
Ottomans and colonialism.
There are several
chapters that are worth exploring in this regard, beginning with Israel’s
declaration of independence in May 1948; the Free Officers’ revolution in Egypt
in 1952; the overthrow of Moṣaddegh in 1953; the nationalization of the Suez
canal and the tripartite war against Egypt in 1956; the Iranian revolution and
the hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979–1980. One could add
other episodes, in particular the coming of the Baath in Syria and Iraq in
1963.
In the 1950s as the
United Kingdom was reluctantly acknowledging the end of empire, the US was
filling the vacuum in the Middle East. But while the British had an 80,000-man
garrison in Suez, the American method of influence was no troops on the ground.
More importantly, the US supported any ruler that could bring order at home,
leaders as diverse as the Shah of Iran, Nasser, Saddam Hussein, or Syria’s
Asad. There was that attitude of accommodating oneself to such leaders, as long
as they were not overtly hostile to US interests, in an era when terrorism was
not there yet. There was no concern at the time, nor is there any concern in
the present, as to what kind of nation-state was in the process of formation.
As the concept of Realpolitik became fashionable in the 1970s, dictatorships
could be “authorized” as long as they kept order and civil peace inside. Nor
was the existence of the Israeli “model” of nation-state, which stood
side-by-side to other hostile state formations, scrutinized in terms of its
originally western political roots: it was rather a fait accompli that could be
useful for the stability of the region. The US became distracted by the issue
of the “fairness” and legitimacy of Israeli existence, and the parallel issue
of Palestinian rights, both of which were projections from neighboring Arab
states. With the stability of the region perceived in relation to “full”
Palestinian rights for an autonomous state, if not the right of full return,
the US took it for granted that a stable peace means overall stability.
But now, with the
excitement of the Arab Spring behind us, such concerns seem not only out of
hand, but we’re back to where we had originated with the fall of the Ottomans,
namely, the question of the
nation-state. It is impossible to understand the “success” of the Israeli state
since its inception without looking at how the ideology of “Jewish labor” was
formulated in the 1880s and later at the turn of the century.
In the last century,
since Sykes–Picot and the King–Crane Commission, we can detect the following
discursive formations in US foreign policy towards the middle east. I
understand discursive formation in relation of what things could be stated
under specific circumstances. Discourse is a space that organizes language at a
historical juncture. It tells us how things are linguistically structured, and
how such structures have been historically shifting.
In US middle eastern
foreign policy several topoi have emerged since WWI:
Self-determination
and the emerging nationalisms have become prominent with the dismemberment and
demise of the Ottomans. The coming of nationalisms assumes autonomous
nationhood and statehood, jointly understood as the formation of an autonomous
nation-state. Autonomous in the aftermath of WWI means that the nascent
nation-state should be free of western (or other) “tutelage” or colonialism or
imperialism. The King–Crane Commission for one forcefully argued that in the
transition from Ottoman rule to autonomous nationalism there should be a
Mandate and a Mandatory power that would ease the process of self-determination
(which should be taken in relation to an international right of national
existence). What remains uncertain was the concept of “nationalism,” used in
the context of “Syria” in its plurality as “nationalisms,” without any further
elaboration as to what stands as “nationalism” in a context of multiple
ethno–nationalisms, as we refer to them today. Should the Kurds, Armenians,
Christians, Druze, Alawis, etc., be considered different brands of
“nationalisms” that should “melt” into some kind of political “Syrian” entity?
[Careful examination of the text of the King–Crane Commission versus Arab
texts: the Syrian delegation in Paris.] Self-determination is the discourse
espoused by Woodrow Wilson and his administration: it simply states the
melting-pot of empires has ceased to exist and that nationhood has emerged all
over the world and is not anymore the privilege of the rich and the powerful.
Beyond that, self-determination is remarkably deficient at elaborating on
transitions—from empire to nation-state—and even more so on the melting of
“nationalisms”—or ethno-nationalisms—into one coherent nation-state. This was a
question that was a left-over, and over which British and French had to
struggle with in their respective Mandates over Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan,
Syria, and Lebanon.
That was the kind of
discourse maintained by the US until WWII. By that time, the above countries
had gained their independence, and new problems began to emerge. When the
Truman administration recognized the state of Israel in 1948, as the former
Soviet Union did, US foreign-policy discourse was still operating under the
banner of self-determination, but with a twist: the western and eastern Jews
which constituted the bulk of the population of the newly formed Jewish state
were not for the most part an outcome of the demise of the Ottoman political
framework. As they “competed” for nationhood with the “native” “Palestinians,”
they were able to formulate their own Jewish nation-state. With the Truman
administration, therefore, the novelty consisted at giving “privileges” to a
particular nation-state: one that was to be democratic and prosperous, and western
friendly. [cf. Balfour declaration]
The real challenge,
however, was not placed in the Israel’s declaration of independence, nor in the
Israeli–Palestinian–Arab conflict for that matter. What in the Woodrow Wilson
era was aptly labeled “national self-determination” became more of a reality in
the 1950s with post-colonialism and the end of the British empire. Neither
Eisenhower nor his fervently anti-communist secretary of state, John Foster
Dulles, understood this transition from British to American hegemony in
strictly geopolitical terms. However, national self-determination was the
beginning of a long and confusing line of biased politics. It took several
decades, with the Camp David agreements, to finally acknowledge some form of national self-determination
for the Palestinians. The US successfully plotted in 1953 to overthrow the
democratically elected Muhammad Moṣaddegh in Iran who was undermining the
shah’s authority; yet at the same time it saw credibility in Nasser’s emerging
pan-Arab nationalism.
The roots of America’s
Mideast delusion are not so much in having taken sides by recognizing the
existence of Israel under the Truman administration, but at an inability to see
what the likes of Nasser were fermenting across the region. Nasser’s politics
consisted at capitalizing on the logic of civil war in countries that were weak
on the rule of law and civil society, and where social networks, which were kin
based, were meant to protect “society” from an obtrusive state. It was not the
logic of pan-Arabism that Nasser was asserting as norm, but rather a hegemonic
rule where weak states were held hostage to more assertive ones. In the
ill-fated Union with Syria, for example, what became the “northern province”
under the Union saw its political and military infrastructures undermined in
favor of the “southern Egyptian province.” By bargaining on civil war and weak
states, Nasser created the practice of ruling by weakening the adversary. The
real opponent wasn’t so much the state of Israel as the other Arab states, in
their failed attempts to create normative post-Ottoman and post-colonial
polities.
At first sight, it
seems incomprehensible that the US would undermine the authority of Moṣaddegh
in Iran, while favoring Nasser as a hero of self-determination. The truth
dawned—but slowly. When Nasser executed his master stroke, nationalizing the
Suez Canal in July 1956—Egypt’s declaration of independence—Britain demanded
that Washington join it and France in what became the tripartite Suez war
against Egypt. Eisenhower demurred, thinking that he would alienate Arab public
“street” opinion, only to realize that Nasser was the big beneficiary of the
war, and began purchasing weapons from the Russians.
The Nasser episode,
his so-called pan-Arabism, nationalism, and self-determination, the fiasco of
the Suez war, not to mention the “restitution” of the shah’s authority over
that of Moṣaddegh, would in toto point to the imbroglio that American foreign
policy would find itself into up to presidents Bush and Obama. With nationalism
and self-determination waning in the background, the US would stand with the
“strong man,” even if that implies inconsistent policies.
Other episodes come
to light here: the six-day war; the Iranian revolution; Lebanon’s civil war and
Israel’s intervention in 1982; the Camp–David agreements and Sadat’s
assassination; etc. Perhaps it is too easy to speak of inconsistencies. In all
those chapters (failed or successful) US intervention, whatever its merits or
failures, was done off-hand from a distance. That is the major change with
Afghanistan and Iraq.
I want to explore
such inconsistencies in the chapter on Afghanistan, which is the forgotten
episode of the current presidential election.
Let us divide US
foreign policy into four periods based on the economic performance of the US.
1. from Sykes–Picot and King–Krane to WWII
and the recognition of the state of Israel in 1948.
2. from WWII to 1973 and the Yom Kippur war.
This is the 30-year period which for the US and Europe and probably the world
at large has witnessed the ultimate economic prosperity fuelled by rebuilding
economies after the massive war destruction. The changes were infrastructural
due to a redirecting to the war industries to civilian ones.
3. from 1973 and the Iranian revolution up to
9/11.
4. from 9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan
and Iraq, the Arab uprisings, and the coming of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
What are the
advantages of a periodization that looks at US foreign policy in the middle
east (and the world at large) in relation to US internal growth (development)
and economic performance?
The first period
witnessed a collapse of the financial and monetary system and the recession of
the 1930s which saw the coming of the new-deal. It was WWII that finally turned
the economy over. This was the aftermath of Sykes–Picot, when British and
French created the borders of the middle east and the emerging economies of the
nation-states. Like all emerging economies it was a period of robust growth in
spite of the recession in the US and Europe, which was propelled by
urbanization and the growth of public services. Middle Eastern societies would
remain however by and large overwhelmingly agrarian, with all kind of
industrial plans that will have a hard time to take off. With British and
French colonization, the US had little to propose politically and economically.
The recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 should not be overestimated and
looked upon as ushering a new era in foreign policy. It rather comes as an
attempt to fill out the vacuum left over by the British in the aftermath of
their withdrawal in 1947.
The second period
is more interesting politically and the most prosperous economically, but it
also marks all the impasses and accusations of American-centrism, racism, and
colonialism that US foreign policy has stepped into. That’s when the US finally
takes over from British and French colonialism and establishes itself as a
world power in the cold war era. Unprecedented productivity growth around the
world made the Golden Age possible. In the 25 years that ended in 1973, the
amount produced in an hour of work roughly doubled in the US and Canada,
tripled in Europe and quintupled in Japan. Unemployment in industrial countries
was unknown.
It was in this
period of prosperity that confronted middle eastern countries in their
postcolonial experience. Postcolonialism is more than a time frame denoting
national independence, as the national élites were still operating within the
framework of colonialism, of societies that were hostile to the emerging
states, of economies that were subdued to the world order, and of stumbling
industrialization plans. The stability and prosperity of the industrialized
world is faced with turmoil on the eastern Mediterranean and the middle east.
This is the era where the colonial national élites were to be run over by
military dictatorships, beginning with the free officers in Egypt in 1953; Iraq
in 1958; Syria in 1963; Libya in 1969; and the Iran in the aftermath of the
revolution of 1978–79. Not to mention the Yom Kippur in 1973 which marks the
end of three decades of western prosperity. Both the Iranian revolution and Yom
Kippur went “unforeseen” by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
The US took side
with the shah of Iran against the democratically elected Moṣaddegh. It then
forced its hand on the shah in 1963 in what became known as the “white
revolution,” whereby the long awaited agrarian reforms meant distributing land
to lower classes and peasants from the small group of large landowners. Such
reforms were already under way since the late 1950s in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.
The militarization of the régimes in such societies did not seem to have much
troubled the US. Indeed, there are many that the US “encouraged,” if not fully
supported, the first military coup in Syria in 1949; that it saw in Nasser a
populist “national” much better rooted than the defunct monarchy that he
overthrew; that even the pro-British Hashemite monarchy in Iraq did not merit
much praise. What has emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the first two decades of
American power, is probably not much different from the kind of discourse that
became predominant in Latin America in the same period and later: namely, there
was that submission to right-wing military “populist” dictatorships, on the
basis that they would stop any possible communist threat; maintain a neoliberal
economy; and fully open up to the industrial west. More specifically, in the
case of Arab countries bordering Israel, populist military régimes would also
accept the existence of the Jewish state. Such beliefs, however, would not
stand for a long time. Nasser for one was staunchly anti-communist (even in his
brief tenure on Syria under the Union), but this did not prevent him to buy
arms from the former Soviet bloc and become one of their many allies. From
Nasser to Saddam Hussein the US has learned how to be disillusioned: those were
dictators that were neither popular nor western friendly, nor did they
implement liberal strategies. They were simply good survivors, who locked all
communists and other activists at home, but nevertheless bought all their
weapons from the former Soviet Bloc. Needless to say, it is the collapse of
such order, which the US did not create, but which it de facto accepted, that
sits at the heart of the current uprisings.
Nasser had duped
Eisenhower. “Nasser proved to be a complete stumbling block,” Eisenhower
confided to his diary as his Arab–Israeli peace efforts failed. “He is
apparently seeking to be acknowledged as the political leader of the Arab world.”
He has concluded “he should just make speeches, all of which breathe defiance
of Israel.”
Herein lies one of
the biggest misplaced fallacies of American politics, namely, the thought,
which comes from Arab leaders and their militarized régimes in the first place,
that the Arab–Palestinian–Israeli problem constitutes the prime conundrum in
middle eastern politics; finding a solution to the “Palestinian state” would
undermine all kinds of hurdles in the Arab world, perhaps bring social welfare
and equity at a larger scale on the long run. By the time the second Bush was
president, and in the wake of 9/11, such “optimism” gave way to something much
more radical. The problem is not the absence of a Palestinian state (its very
existence could pose more problems), nor is it Islam, but nation-building,
failed economies, and the radicalization of Islam for specific purposes.
Nations have to be built from the bottom up, with their social institutions
carefully monitored for the sake of more egalitarian political institutions.
The financing of the new wars, in their military and civil portfolios, is an
offshoot of the transformation of the international financial system in 1971
when overseas military spending forced the US dollar off gold. US Treasury
bonds had become a proxy for gold, which were supplied by the US economy
running a balance-of-payments deficit.
The 1973 oil crisis
meant more than just gasoline lines and lower thermostats. It shocked the world
economy. But it wasn’t the price of gasoline that brought the long run of
global prosperity to an end. It just diverted attention from a more fundamental
problem: Productivity growth had slowed sharply. The economic crisis of the
industrial world has opened up national frontiers to globalization. The cultured
financial and industrial élites would seek projects beyond their national and
nationalistic borders in favor of capital accumulation worldwide. This
non-commitment at the national level would institute an inside rift between a
populist streak at home and successful international business. Right-wing
movements (some of which are plainly xenophobic) which have become more common
in Europe in the last decade and in the US as well, are hangovers from the
1980s decline. Neither Carter’s pessimism not Reagan’s optimistic supply-side
tax cuts will bring post-war productivity levels. It is such atmosphere of
great depression that the US will live the Iranian debacle, Lebanon’s civil
war, the unpopularity of the Camp David agreements, and, last but not least,
September 11.
In spite of the
dot.com boom of the 1990s, George W. Bush became president at a time when
neoliberalism was experimenting in various ways to catch up with post-war productivity,
while deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, balanced budgets and rigid
rules for monetary policy, have become normative for the industrialized nations
and the world at large, imposed by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank as
the sine qua non for international loans and to indebted nations.
It was in such atmosphere
of strained productivity and growth that president Bush would risk two major
wars abroad. Even though Bush Sr. had already broken the golden rule of a
hands-off approach towards the middle east in the liberation of Kuwait, it was
indeed the younger Bush that will usher a new ground with the full occupation
of two sovereign countries.
Obama’s failed
legacy in Afghanistan
With the emergence
of ISIS and the battle of Mosul (and possibly Raqqa) in the foreground, not to
mention the Syrian wars, Afghanistan is hardly mentioned these days—not even in
the presidential campaign. Even “smaller wars” like Yemen and Libya have
eclipsed the American involvement in Afghanistan to the point that what is
going on over there, after over a decade of investment, hardly matters at all.
The legacy in
Afghanistan, like Obama’s foreign policy record as a whole, is troubled at
best. At points he had the elements of the right approach—more troops, more
reconstruction assistance, and a counterinsurgency strategy—but he never gave
them the time and resources to succeed. Obama came into office rightly
arguing that the war was important but had been sidelined, and promised to set
it aright. Yet Obama’s choices since 2009 reflect a more conflicted stance,
and it is not clear he ever settled on a coherent strategy. He deployed more
troops than needed for a narrow counterterrorism operation, but not enough for
a broader counterinsurgency campaign. He initially increased reconstruction
funding because he believed, rightly, that effective Afghan governance was an
essential condition for victory, but quickly second-guessed himself and
subsequently reduced civilian aid every year thereafter. Most damagingly, Obama
insisted on the public issuance of a withdrawal deadline for US troops, undermining
his own surge—which eventually became so obvious that he finally reversed
himself. Obama’s belated decision to sustain a small force of some 5,500 troops
in Afghanistan beyond his term in office is likely to keep the Afghan army in
the field and the Taliban from outright victory—but this is at low bar compared
to what Obama once hoped to achieve there.
The good war:
2007–09
Before leaving
office president Bush argued in a favor of a report for a more
counterinsurgency effort, including more troops and civilian resources.
The report found a
receptive audience because Obama had been making the same case from the
earliest days of his campaign. He wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2007, “We must
refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan—the central front in our war
against al Qaeda—so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run
deepest.” In July 2008, in a major speech on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
he rightly noted the situation in Afghanistan as “deteriorating” and
“unacceptable.” He promised, “As president, I will make the fight against al
Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we
have to win.” He pledged to deploy at least two additional brigades and spend
an additional $1 billion in civilian assistance every year.
It is no surprise
therefore than when he took office Obama pledged in March 2009 “to disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent
their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.” His policy explicitly committed the
US to “promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in
Afghanistan,” which required “executing and resourcing an integrated
civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.” In light of this,
he ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, quadrupled the number of US
diplomats and aid workers, and increased civilian assistance by an impressive
$2 billion from 2009 to 2010.
The turn: 2009
In summer 2009
violence worsened dramatically, as insurgent attacks increased by a staggering
65 percent compared to the previous summer, and that year 355 US soldiers were
killed in Afghanistan, more than double the previous year. Add to this the
mistrust and disrespect that the Obama administration nurtured towards Afghani
president Hamid Karzai.
But the event that
had the most dramatic impact on the new Administration’s view of the war was
the initial assessment of the new Commander of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), General Stanley McChrystal, in August 2009. He warned
that the current situation will undermine US credibility and embolden the
insurgents. He called for 80,000 more troops to maximize chances of success; or
40,000, with medium risk. He also developed a third option: deploying just
20,000 more troops and abandoning counterinsurgency in favor of a leaner
counterterrorism mission with high risk.
McChrystal’s
report, his request for more troops, and the cost of the war appalled the Obama
Administration and triggered a major reassessment. But it is unclear why Obama
reacted the way he did. The crises of 2009 would not have unsettled a more
experienced Administration.
Obama’s attempt was
only to compromise, which only led to strategic incoherence. First, he ordered
another surge, this time of 30,000 troops, bringing the total to more than 100,000
by mid-2010—far more than required for a narrow counterterrorism operation.
Afghanistan, the third-largest military operation since Vietnam, had definitely
become Obama’s war. But Obama deployed far fewer troops than McChrystal
recommended for a counterinsurgency campaign. In contrast to his campaign
rhetoric, Obama spent the rest of his presidency carefully avoiding saying that
the US aimed to “defeat” the Taliban or “win” the war. The aim was narrower
than resourced counterinsurgency or nation building. It wasn’t until May 2014
that Obama finally set a deadline—by the end of 2016—to withdraw all US forces
from Afghanistan. According to an account by Bob Woodward, Obama stated in an
internal deliberation that “I can’t lose all the Democratic Party… And
people at home don’t want to hear we’re going to be there for ten years… We
can’t sustain support at home and with allies without having some explanation
that involves timelines.” Obama was right about one thing: The
Democratic Party solidly opposed the surge and supported the deadline. By
2011 Obama decided to exit even if the job was far from complete, even if there
was no guarantee that gains made in the past decade could last.
The surge worked. Fatalities
of US troops began to decline in 2011, and the number of Afghan civilians
killed in the war declined in 2012 for the first time. Poppy cultivation
appeared to be holding steady well below its 2007, while opium production plummeted
in 2012. However, by the be beginning of 2013, the withdrawal was well
underway: There were 65,000 US troops in Afghanistan at the start of 2013;
40,000 in 2014; and just 9,800 in 2015.
We will take out
ISIS
Iraq represents
another one of those missed opportunities, even more aggravating than that of
Afghanistan. This is a country with more resources than Afghanistan, with an
oil wealth and an urban and educated population. Women are an important part of
the labor force, and have more freedom in public. Yet, it is very much divided
along sectarian and religious and regional lines. American occupation, like
that of Afghanistan, involved the ambitious operation of nation-building. But
to keep up with his campaign promises, and in order not to alienate the
Democratic Party any further, Obama withdrew all US troops by December 2011.
With the surge of ISIS in 2014–15 and its control of Mosul, Iraq’s second
largest city, American special operation forces are back as “partners” to the
Iraqi army, police, and security forces. The number could be around 5,000.
There is a reason
why the Afghani war, and the advances of the Taliban, have no place in the
current presidential campaign. We’ve seen Obama avoiding in his two-term as
president the language of “winning” a war against the Taliban, not to mention
nation building, which has dropped from usage in the Obama administration.
Instead we have a more diffuse language of a status quo ante, of simply
letting the survival of the Afghani régime, its army, police, and security
apparatuses as they are. Nothing more, nothing less.
When it comes to
Iraq in the grammars of the current presidential campaign, the language now is
to “win” the war against ISIS, but nonetheless without much deployment of US
troops there.
Watch Hillary
Clinton discuss her plan for Iraq in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist
attacks in November 2015.
Mrs.
Clinton said that “to be successful, airstrikes will have to be combined with
ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.” But, mindful that
her 2002 vote to authorize force in Iraq largely contributed to her loss in the
2008 Democratic primary, she was quick to say these should be local Sunni
troops, and “we cannot substitute for them.”
“Like
President Obama, I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American
troops in combat in the Middle East,” she said.
Similarly,
she called for more air power, but only in cooperation with Persian Gulf
allies. And she acknowledged in a question-and-answer session that Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates had halted their air attacks on the Islamic State
to focus instead in Yemen.
The 100,000 figure
seems revealing: that was the number in troops in Afghanistan by mid-2010, and
Obama began their withdrawal in 2013. Clinton not only seems to be in line with
Obama on possible troop deployment, but she also consolidates a dogma of the DP
on the mission of Americans abroad. There is a war to be “won”—a vocabulary
that was dropped regarding the Taliban—and this could be done through
“partnership” with the Iraqi, Iranians, Russians, and whoever wants to join
in—as long as there is this common enemy called ISIS. The unsaid has
more importance than what is actually said: no one knows for sure how the
“liberated” territories will be “governed” once the war is “won.” How can a
“coalition” of “partners” with different agendas and economies form a system of
“governance” in the aftermath of ISIS. But a more intriguing question is, Will
there be an aftermath to ISIS? There could be a linguistic rollover from the
Taliban to ISIS: sooner rather than later we could witness a wavering to the
claim of “winning” over ISIS. If ISIS is not simply an organization of terror,
but a dense nexus of social relations, can ISIS be “defeated”?
Does the expression
“defeating ISIS” means anything?
The debate we
are not having in the campaign, we will continue not to have, how to foster a
modern state that doesn’t metastasize corruption, cronyism, élites helping
themselves? That would
bring us away from defeating presumed “enemies.”
The debate on the
Iraqi disaster usually lingers on that other disaster—Syria. Iraq and Syria now
look “connected” for no other reason but their common Islamic State rule. But
here the Obama’s presidency is total passivity. Since the early years of the
war, particularly in 2012–13 when the Asad régime began using an air-technology
known as explosive barrels, various opposition groups and humanitarian agencies
have requested that the US and NATO begin implementing a no-fly zone at least
in the north, in the Idlib and Aleppo provinces.
Clinton in
November 2015, based on the NYT
Expanding
on her previous call for a no-fly zone, Mrs. Clinton said it should be limited
to northern Syria, where Turkey has proposed a buffer zone to protect
civilians, and enforced by many countries. That, she said, “will confront a lot
of our partners in the region and beyond about what they are going to do.”
She
took a particularly hard line against Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations who
she said had been complicit in the rise of the Islamic State. “Once and for
all, the Saudis, the Qataris and others need to stop their citizens from
directly funding extremist organizations,” Mrs. Clinton said.
The
core of Mrs. Clinton’s argument for a faster, more aggressive military
operation was her contention that it would reinforce Secretary of State John
Kerry’s diplomatic effort to negotiate a cease-fire, and ultimately a political
solution, in Syria. Administration officials said it closely resembled the
arguments Mr. Kerry has made to Mr. Obama — but Mr. Kerry has not yet persuaded
the president, who remains hesitant about the risk of being sucked into a
ground war.
Asked
whether Mr. Obama had underestimated the Islamic State when he referred to the
group as the “J.V. team,” Mrs. Clinton said, “I don’t think it’s useful to go
back and replow old ground.”
But
in a new break with the administration’s stated policy, Mrs. Clinton declared
what some White House officials have privately said for months: that the
fight in Syria is no longer about ousting President Bashar al-Assad.
“We
had an opportunity, perhaps,” for a regime change, Mrs. Clinton said.
But given the current circumstances, she added, “We need to get people to turn
against the common enemy of ISIS.”
In
saying so, Mrs. Clinton seemed to align her strategic approach more closely
with those of Russia and Iran, who are backing Mr. Assad, though she criticized
both nations in her speech Thursday.
Let us note a
couple of things in this regard. First of all, in what seemed back then in
November 2015, in the wake of the Paris attacks, like a campaign promise to get
tougher on Syria, is already obsolete. Back then the Russian involvement was
only a few months old and aimed at “maintaining the Asad régime,” as the reference
to the “Syrian state” goes. But since then the Russian (not to mention Iranian)
involvement has gotten much deeper to the point that eastern Aleppo has been
annihilated, and the small Russian naval base in the Mediterranean city of Tarṭūs
is being expanded into a permanent base. So, ironically, for the Russians too
it is not longer a question of ousting Asad or maintaining him—that’s the
common ground with the Americans—but it’s about Russian power in Syria and the
middle east at large. US passiveness was a conduit to Russian expansiveness.
The fact that ISIS is our common enemy and that Russians and Iranians are with
us on this one is pure nonsense. What is never enunciated is what kind of state
and society are at work in those civil war countries.
In the second
presidential debate Clinton reiterated her position.
We’re making
progress. Our military is assisting in Iraq. And we’re hoping that within the
year we’ll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then, you know, really squeeze
them in Syria.
But we have to
be cognizant of the fact that they’ve had foreign fighters coming to volunteer
for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top
priority.
And I would
also do everything possible to take out their leadership. I was involved
in a number of efforts to take out Al Qaida leadership when I was secretary of
state, including, of course, taking out bin Laden. And I think we need to go
after Baghdadi, as well, make that one of our organizing principles. Because
we’ve got to defeat ISIS, and we’ve got to do everything we can to disrupt
their propaganda efforts online.
The entire logic
when it comes to ISIS and al-Qaʿida, and previously the Taliban, is that
they’re presented as a cancer that metastases “outside” society, so that we can
killed them and kill their leadership too. But that’s the kind of language that
was adopted for the Taliban and then was dropped under Obama. Will ISIS follow?
In the same
debate Trump responded the following.
Well, first I
have to say one thing, very important. Secretary Clinton is talking about
taking out ISIS. “We will take out ISIS.” Well, President Obama and
Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq, because they
got out — what, they shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, the way
they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.
So she talks
about taking them out. She’s been doing it a long time. She’s been trying to
take them out for a long time. But they wouldn’t have even been formed if they
left some troops behind, like 10,000 or maybe something more than that. And
then you wouldn’t have had them.
Or, as I’ve
been saying for a long time, and I think you’ll agree, because I said it to you
once, had we taken the oil — and we should have taken the oil — ISIS would not
have been able to form either, because the oil was their primary source of
income. And now they have the oil all over the place, including the oil — a lot
of the oil in Libya, which was another one of her disasters.
Trump’s strength is
on the “getting out” of Iraq, but to do this, he’ll have to constantly deny
that he ever requested any US involvement in Iraq, in spite to contrary
evidence. But the whole debate on whether either candidate endorsed the
occupation in 2002–03 or later is a misplaced argument. What matters is that
the withdrawal in December 2011 should not have happened at all, in spite of
the fact that staying in Iraq would have been unpopular for both Democrats and
Republicans.
Notice here for
both candidates the “taking out” of ISIS and their leadership (and also the
Qaʿida and Taliban). The logic of the bipartisan discourse of “taking out”
so-called terrorist groups, be it the Islamic State, the Qaʿida, and the
Taliban (in their distinct metamorphoses between Afghanistan and Pakistan),
which has the power image of a surgical operation which can separate cancerous
cells from their healthy background, does in fact suggest that terrorist groups
can be indeed separated from their background. Such discourse tends to isolate,
in the case of ISIS, for example, how the group came into being in Iraq (before
expanding to Syria) in the middle of a failed and struggling US occupation of
the country, when the Iraqi army and its intelligence services have been
totally disbanded in order to reshape all security apparatuses into something
more robust and cohesive, something that would make more sense for a modern
state. In short, is it possible to understand the likes of the Islamic State
without going over the troubled history of Iraq from the end of Ottoman rule,
to the Hashemite dynasty, and the various military coups from 1958 and on that
undid whatever the monarchy attended to do. What is crucial for our purposes
here is the suppression of Shiʿa politics and political parties under the
Baath, and then the coming of the groups from their exiles once the Americans
occupied the country. It is not enough to claim, however, that the coming of
the likes of Zarqāwī and Baghdādī was an “outcome” of the disbandment of the
Iraqi army and its intelligence apparatuses. The claim that “the Americans made
the Islamic State possible” comes with own pretensions and fallacies. What
needs to be examined is the infrastructure of the Iraqi state under the Baath
in relation to the (predominantly) Sunni groups that it had fostered and others
it had suppressed, Sunni opposition, Kurds, Shiʿa, or otherwise.
