Rudderless in the Storm
American Foreign Policy in the Middle East
The analogy of a government as a ship, is, perhaps, an outdone trope, but it still works. “The ship of state,” brings to mind the complex workings of sea-going vessels, especially 18th or 19th century warships. Each part of the ship has its own particular role that must be rigorously tended to in order for the whole to work. A sailing ship of war was a floating fortress that required exact and disciplined seamanship to guide it, trained sailors and gunners to fight it, and a clear-headed, independent, and innovated captain to lead it. The success or failure of a ship depended on the skill of all of its parts. A warship was also vulnerable to external influences: weather, enemy, and sickness, being a few. So too, a government is the sum of its parts. It requires skilled and disciplined leaders with a vision and an endstate to steer towards. It also has external influences that play on it: economics, foreign actors, and natural disasters.
As the United States emerged from World War II as a global power, the vision that it propagated was one of a free and democratic world, where peoples were self-determining and economically free. This vision was opposed by the specter of the Soviet Union, which rapidly came to be the United States’ ideological and economic adversary. The goal of the United States was to stop the spread of the Soviet ideology and build democratic partnerships across the world. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the USS United States could fly its banners in victory and change its rudder to a new course. Except that the rudder was jammed. Call it stuck in a rut, call it short-sighted, but the United States was so caught up in its role as the defender of democracy that it never changed course as it sailed into the dangerous waters of the Middle East.
The United States has been an actor in the Middle East since the First Barbary War in 1801. It continued to be involved in the region throughout the Cold War, as it backed both Israel and Saudi Arabia as opponents of Soviet aggression in the area. Democracy was, as always, the watchword as the U.S. backed different states and actors in the volatile region. Economics was, is, and always will be the main operating factor for U.S. foreign policy, with the caveat that democracy must follow for economic freedom.
Yet installing democracies and self-determining governments has really only worked once in our history: the Marshall Plan. The post-World War II rebuilding of Europe and Japan was incredibly successful. Too successful. It created the theory that by sinking tremendous amounts of money into governments they could, with some military and administrative assistance, become stable democracies. This theory, combined with democratic ideals, gave us military actions in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, El Salvador, Libya, Grenada, Honduras, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Serbia, and Afghanistan. The casual observer will note that most of these countries are still on the list of global hotspots rather than stable democracies (with the exception of perhaps South Korea).
When the goal was containing and defeating communism, the U.S. was more or less successful; the Soviet Union no longer exists. However, as an exporter of democracy, the U.S. has been far less successful. Recent experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are still in debate, but show small likelihood that the pattern will be broken. With global communism no longer the threat, should the U.S. even try to export democracy at all? Might it not be better to kick the piece of wood out of the rudder and tack a new course towards economic development that is free of political restrictions?
Economic growth is dependent on stability, and stability comes from working with other nation-states and partners to help them meet their goals, rather than our own. For too long the U.S. has dictated foreign policy in the Middle East around an American vision for the area. We should be instead developing partnerships that offer true self-determination for countries based off of their regional goals.
Obviously, the problem is far more complex and intricate than I present it here. But breaking from our current pattern of nation-building is a start. Future strategies for the Middle East must include partnership with all countries (yes, including Iran) that offer nations their own path towards stability. This may come in the form of economic or military partnerships to assist each nation (e.g., fighting Daesh), but the states of the Middle East must be in the lead. A stable Middle East, regardless if it is democratic, will be the only way that the U.S. can begin to withdraw from the region and focus on other parts of the world. To continue with a strategy of “democracy first” or the present purely reactionary strategy (if one can call it that a strategy) is counterproductive. Wiser and better paid heads than mine will have to sort out this out; if they don’t, we are headed for a rocky collision with the shoals of reality.
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