Mark Weisbrot
Vacillating US threats of war against Iran, debates over troop levels, drone strikes, and bellicose rhetoric infuse the entire region with new levels of uncertainty. This article outlines the anatomy of the escalation with Iran, examining Trump’s quasi new “dual containment” and “America first” policies.
Speculation about the next looming US military misadventure in the Middle East belies no less than a crisis of democracy. Its main symptoms? A failure to constrain hawkish leaders, even if democratically mandated.
Democratic Peace?
Democracies may uphold some norms of not engaging one another via use of force. Yet these same paragons of liberty continually depend on cohorts to advance imperialist agendas using the full gamut of covert and overt options. Nothing undermines democracy as much as overseas muscle-flexing. Sometimes it is wrapped in moral values: interventions to “protect.” Sometimes it is to police nuclear proliferation: Iraq in 2003—on false pretenses, of course.
Here lies the total myth of the democratic peace—or “imperial peace”. Chaos, not the dissemination of global civic norms and a democratic culture, seems to reign. Commanders-in-chief accountable at home, but unaccountable abroad. “Over there,” the so-called “zone of peace” is displaced by killing fields flattened and fueled by the trigger-happy US hyperpower and its coalitions.
Trump is no war-mongering pioneer. US drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia killed thousands, up to 15% of them civilians, on the watch of the Nobel- laureate president with a secret kill list.
Then there is Bush’s Iraq travesty. Its 300,000 human casualties,, of the nearly half a million deaths in these $5.9 trillion “9/11 wars, ” are likely a low estimate. There are few signs that the proclivity for war will abate. Yet US presidents emerge unpunished, unscathed from the rubble.
Dual Containment Redux
The Trump dynamic brings something new to Uncle Sam’s rampant militarism. It is almost a reverse of war by proxy, where powerful states manipulate dependent militias and regimes to do their “dirty” work. ‘Proxy war in reverse’ is exemplified by the escalating Iran-US crisis. The US may be assuming belligerent posturing on behalf of allies, read dependent, regional interests and actors.
But there is no free lunch, much less from Trump’s America. Lucrative arms deals have risen sharply, up 33% in 2018. Middle Eastern states accounted for 49% of US arms sales between 2013-2017. Topping the list of buyers are Middle Eastern states, which purchased over a quarter of total US weapons, in addition to Arab and Gulf clients. The grand total of (much-debated figures of) US arms sales to the Gulf under Trump has been about $32.8 billion for 2017-8, according to estimates. This Middle Eastern arms race has generated some pushback in Congress. Yet Trump vetoed a resolution calling for an end to US involvement in Yemen’s war.
America first, says Trump. Middle East-side, this mantra is a refiguring of Clinton-era “dual containment”. The US sought to isolate Iran and Iraq politically and economically, pursuing regime change in Iraq. Trump’s quasi-dual containment is a reversal of Obama’s disengagement. Its updated twin pillars are first, maximization of power and interventionist policies (e.g. threat of war with Iran). Second, a Smithian capitalist modus operandi driving monetary extraction – e.g. recycling of petrodollars. The US exacts a “tax” on clients (e.g. the Gulf states), as if to subsidize its war machine by extracting income from surplus-endowed economies.
‘Offensive Realism’ and the Gulf?
America first is the mantra of a non-stop warring state. It bespeaks global hegemony. The relative restraint of defensive realism is traded for offensive realism: power through offshore power projections and deployments. Military bases span the globe, many in the Gulf states and Central Asia, including possibly dozens surrounding Iran. Aggressive economic nationalism and a trade war with China. Declining goodwill to international institutions, as advised by “bomb, bomb Iran” John Bolton.
The international system is populated by actors who may domestically rehearse democratic games. But overseas they play war games.
America First: Not in the Middle East!!
A calculus of power predicated on power accumulation and projection--military and economic—is less than rational. Soft power and public diplomacy have fallen by the wayside. This creates a perpetual logic of conflict. Bases, sanctions, threats set in motion a spiral of violence—in a Middle East already ablaze in counter-revolutionary civil and regional wars, Russian intervention, Israeli occupation, socio-economic deprivation, and refugee crises.
However, trumpets of war against Iran are misguided. The Middle East needs serious smart (fair-minded) US diplomacy that does not bully region-- peoples and elites -- into surrender. A blind eye to human rights abuses by key allies, costly wars in Libya and Yemen, a free hand to Israeli expansion, support for authoritarian rule (e.g. Egypt), and indifference to human suffering (Gaza), are far from the reengagement the region looks for.
Bluster and threat will not win the US friends amongst publics of the Middle East. The US offers no creative thinking as an international leader. “America First” and “Deal of the Century” are merely grandiose speech: pageantry without substance.
What is the moral and political basis for starting another war in the Middle East? It will not be a straightforward case of a jus ad bellum (just war). The Iraq war is a case in point. To paraphrase St Thomas Aquinas, the US will not be advancing some kind of obvious “good” (for whom? Whose criteria?), nor fending off a clear “evil”. That would be a naive dichotomy. It reflects not many a reality on the ground throughout the Middle East.
Trump’s US seems to be running counter to people’s aspirations for freedom and dignity (Arab Spring), multilateralism (such as defusing Gulf-Gulf tensions, and upholding the Iran nuclear deal ), or statehood and genuine peace (Palestine). US realism and blind support to autocrats in the past helped create al-Qaida, and later on, ISIS. A war with Iran will only deepen the spiral of violence and distrust of foreign meddling. Even if the US has the strategic capability to overwhelm Iran, it will lose for waging an unnecessary war. Even “America first” cannot ignore the waves of defiance spelled by peoples who will resist even if their political elites act like pawns on a chess board. That wave will drown the sounds of Trump-ets of war.
Larbi Sadiki is a Professor at International Affairs Department, Qatar University and a Non-Resident Scholar at Brookings Doha Centre
