Obama must act decisively on Syria – McCain

On the heels of his trip to Syria and stops in Jordan, Turkey and Yemen, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday delivered this address at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. on “U.S. policy in Syria and the broader Middle East”:

Senator John McCain at Brookings yesterday

Thank you, Martin (Indyk), for that kind introduction.  

It is always a pleasure to return to the Brookings Institution, this bastion of conservative thought. It is nice to see so many friends, as well as a few enemies, in the audience this afternoon. I would like to make a few opening remarks, and then I’d be happy to respond to any comments, or questions, or insults you may have.

As most of you know, I traveled last week to Yemen, Jordan, Turkey, and Syria. This was my twelfth separate trip to the region since the events known as the Arab Spring began in December 2011. And what I can say categorically today is that I am now more concerned than at any time since the darkest days of the war in Iraq that the Middle East is descending into sectarian conflict.  

The conflict in Syria is at the heart of this crisis. Last week, together with General Salim Idriss, the chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council, I met with more than a dozen senior Free Syrian Army commanders in southern Turkey and northern Syria. They came from cities across Syria, including Qusayr, Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo. Many of them were joined by their civilian counterparts. And all of them painted the same grave picture of the state of the conflict in Syria.

Assad has turned the tide of battle on the ground. His foreign allies have all doubled down on him. Iran is all in. Russia is all in. Shiite militants are flowing into the fight from Iraq. And Hezbollah fighters have invaded Syria by the thousands. They were decisive in retaking the critical city of Qusayr, and now they are leading the attacks on Homs and Aleppo. Assad is using every weapon in his arsenal, from tanks and artillery, to air power and ballistic missiles. And according to a recent U.N. report, there are, quote, “reasonable grounds” to believe that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons. The President’s red-line appears to have been crossed, perhaps more than once, and it should come as no surprise that new claims of chemical weapons use by Assad are already surfacing, as I heard in Syria.

The result of this onslaught is that Syria as we know it is ceasing to exist. More than 80,000 people are dead. A quarter of all Syrians have been driven from their homes. The Syrian state is disintegrating in much of the country, leaving vast ungoverned spaces that are being filled by extremists, many aligned with al-Qaeda. Some now put the number of these extremists inside Syria in the thousands. They are the best armed, best funded, and most experienced fighters. And every day this conflict grinds on, these extremists are marginalizing moderate leaders like the commanders I met last week – Syrians who don’t want to trade Assad for al-Nusra.

The worsening conflict in Syria is now spilling outside of the country and stoking sectarian conflict across the region. Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are each straining under the weight of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Indeed, ten percent of Jordan’s population is now Syrian refugees. This would be equivalent to the entire population of Texas suddenly crossing our own border. And that number is expected to double this year. Terrorist bombings have struck Turkey, and Syrian groups are firing rockets into Shiite areas of Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria. Old sectarian wounds are being reopened in Lebanon.

The situation is even worse in Iraq. The conflict in Syria, together with Prime Minister Maliki’s unwillingness to share power, is radicalizing Iraq’s Sunni population. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is back and stepping up its attacks on Iraqi Shiites. In response, Shiite militias are remobilizing and retaliating against Iraqi Sunnis. More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed last month alone, the highest level of violence since 2007. Some experts now believe that one watershed event, similar to the bombing of the Golden Mosque in 2006, could tip Iraq back into full-scale sectarian conflict.

Extremist forces are also gathering momentum elsewhere in the region. The fall of governments across the region has opened up ungoverned spaces that now stretch from the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, across North Africa, all the way down into Mali and even northern Nigeria. Al-Qaeda affiliated extremist groups are now on the march throughout these vast ungoverned spaces. Iran is also seeking to exploit the present chaos. Indeed, every Yemeni and U.S. official I met last week in Sana’a said that Iran is a greater threat in Yemen today than Al-Qaeda.

Put simply, the space for moderate politics is collapsing as the Middle East descends deeper into extremism and conflict. A sectarian battle-line is being drawn through the heart of the region – with Sunni extremists, many allied with al-Qaeda, dominant on one side, and Iranian-backed proxy forces dominant on the other.  

What is more disturbing, however, is how little most Americans seem to care. Most are weary of war and eager to focus on domestic issues. But some hold a more cynical view: They see the Middle East as a hopeless quagmire of ancient hatreds and a huge distraction from worthier priorities, whether it is rebalancing toward Asia or nation-building at home. For those of us who believe otherwise, and who believe the United States must lead more actively in the region, we have to answer a fundamental question: Why should we care about the Middle East?

One reason is that we have enduring national interests in the Middle East that will not be diminished – not by our fatigue with the region and its challenges, not by our desire to focus on domestic issues, not by the growing importance of other parts of the world, and not even by the prospect of American energy independence. The Middle East has always been more important than oil. It still is.  

The United States has friends and allies in the Middle East who depend on us for their security, and who contribute more to the defense and well-being of our nation than most Americans will ever know. But believe me, Americans will know it very quickly if global trade and energy flows, not to mention U.S. warships, can no longer transit the Suez Canal, through which approximately 8 percent of the world’s seaborne trade passes. They will know it if we lose key Arab partners, such as the Kingdom of Jordan, along with their vital military, intelligence, and counterterrorism cooperation. And they will absolutely know it if Israel becomes beset on all sides by even more hostile governments and more violent extremists.

In short, if the Middle East descends into extremism, and war, and despair, no one should think America would be able to pivot away from those threats. Our national security interests will suffer. That is an inescapable reality. It is the lesson of September 11, 2001. And to believe otherwise is not only naïve; it is dangerous.  

The Middle East also matters because much of the rest of the world views it, rightly, as a test of American credibility and resolve. For decades, Presidents of both parties have said the United States will deter our enemies and support our friends in the Middle East. They have said we would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapons capability. And they have said, as this President has said about Syria, that we would not tolerate the use or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. If the United States now signals that it is unwilling or unable to meet its own stated commitments and enforce its own declared red-lines, that message will be heard loud and clear, far beyond the Middle East. It will demoralize our friends, embolden our enemies, and make our world a far more dangerous place for us.

But ultimately, there is a more positive reason why we have to care about the Middle East. This region is now experiencing a period of upheaval unlike any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Over the past three years, we have seen millions and millions of ordinary men and women rise up peacefully, and lift their voices, and risk everything on behalf of the same values we hold dear: freedom and democracy, equal justice and rule of law, human rights and dignity. They are doing so against impossible odds and, at times, in the face of merciless oppression and violence. These brave men and women are taking a chance on themselves, many for the first time. And they are asking us to take a chance on them – not after they have succeeded in their struggles, but now, when they need it most, when their fate hangs in the balance, and when American leadership can still be decisive.

I know some of our initial hopes for the Arab Spring have dimmed quite a bit – in part because of a lack of U.S. leadership.  But these hopes have not gone out. And so long as men and women across the Middle East still harbor hopes for a future of peace, and freedom, and prosperity, the Arab Spring will remain the greatest repudiation of everything that al-Qaeda stands for. Ultimately, this is how our long fight against global terrorist groups will be won. This is how conditions of lasting peace will finally be secured across the Middle East. Not through drone strikes and night raids alone, but by helping people across the region lift up democratic governments and growing economies that offer hope.

The entire Middle East is now up for grabs, and our enemies are fully committed to winning. Moderate forces and aspiring democrats are fighting for their futures and their very lives. The only power that is not fully committed in this struggle is us. And as a result, leaders and people across the region who share our interests and many of our values are losing ground to violent extremists.  

Our friends and allies in the Middle East are crying out for American leadership, as I heard again last week. We must answer this call. We must lead. We need an alternative strategy that creates space for moderate leaders to marginalize extremists and for people to resolve their differences peacefully, politically.  

An alternative strategy must begin with a credible Syria policy. I want a negotiated end to this conflict. But anyone who thinks that Assad and his allies will ever make peace when they are winning on the battlefield is delusional. I know that the situation in Syria is hugely complicated, and that there are no easy or ideal options. But we have to be realistic: This conflict will grind on with all of its worsening consequences until the balance of power shifts against Assad and his allies. And the longer we wait to take action, the more action we will have to take.

No one should think that we have to destroy every air defense system or put thousands of boots on the ground to make a difference in Syria. We have limited options. We could use our stand-off weapons, such as cruise missiles, to target Assad’s aircraft and ballistic missile launchers on the ground. We could enable a provisional government to establish itself in a safe zone in Syria that we could help to protect with Patriot missiles. And we could organize a full-scale operation to train and equip Syrian opposition forces. After all, Assad is getting weapons. Al-Nusra is getting weapons. The only forces in Syria that are not getting weapons are moderate commanders like those I met last week, who said their units desperately need ammunition and weapons to counter Assad’s tanks, artillery, and air power.

Would any of this immediately end the conflict? Probably not. But could it save innocent lives in Syria? Could it give the moderate opposition a better chance to succeed? And could it help to turn the conflict in Syria into a strategic disaster for Iran and Hezbollah? To me, the answer to all of these questions is yes.  

More decisive action in Syria could create new leverage to defuse sectarian tensions and counter Iran’s ambition of regional hegemony. In the Gulf, this would mean making the military threat more credible and apparent as Iran continues its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. And in Lebanon, this would mean making the strategic defeat of Hezbollah in Syria the centerpiece of a wider campaign to target its finances, cut its supply lines, delegitimize its leaders, and support internal opposition to its role as an armed force in Lebanese politics.  

An alternative Middle East strategy must also include a greatly enhanced effort to build the capacity of security forces across the region, especially in North African. Egypt needs a new police force. Tunisia needs help with border security. Libya is trying to build new national security forces from scratch. Mali basically needs a whole new army. One bright spot is actually Yemen, which is engaged in a promising restructuring of its armed forces and internal security units. These governments, and others like them, don’t want al-Qaeda affiliates exploiting their countries any more than we do. They have a lot of will to resist these groups. They just need help with the means. The U.S. military can play this role better than any force in the world. And it is in our interest to do so far more than we are currently.

More broadly, we must renew our leadership on behalf of human rights and democracy in the Middle East. This will take different forms in different countries. In Yemen, for example, where a managed transition is proving more successful thus far than many could have expected, we must continue to provide assistance as requested. In Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf states, we must shore up the stability of these vital partners while also urging them to continue responding to their peoples’ desires for change, including through greater political reform.  

And then there is Egypt, where the high hopes that many of us, and many Egyptians, had back in January 2011 are being deeply disappointed. I am a friend of Egypt and a long-standing supporter of our assistance relationship. But after this week’s conviction of 43 NGO workers, Congress must reevaluate our assistance to Egypt. Our foreign aid budget is shrinking while the demands on it are growing. As a result, Egypt must show that it is a good investment of our scarce resources – that the return on this investment will be a freer, more democratic, more tolerant Egypt. If not, Congress will spend this money elsewhere. That is just a fact.

At the same time, we must make it clear that the United States does not align itself with any one ruler or group in Egypt. Rather, we stand for the principles and practices of democracy, for the freedoms of civil society, and for the basic rights of all Egyptians. We must not simply exchange a Mubarak policy for a Morsi policy. We need to have, at long last, an Egypt policy.  

Finally, any strategy to bolster moderates in the Middle East must include an effort to seek peace between Palestinians and Israelis. As always, such an effort must be weighed against its opportunity costs. With so many urgent priorities now demanding high-level attention in the region, especially Syria, I hope the President and his new national security team are carefully considering these trade-offs.

Each of the steps I have described today is necessary if we are to have a more effective strategy to advance our interests and values in the Middle East. But none of these steps will be sufficient without one additional factor: the sustained, outspoken, and determined leadership of the President of the United States.

Only the President can explain to the American people how high the stakes are in the Middle East. Only the President can change public opinion and rally the American people behind him. Only the President can push our government to be bolder, and more imaginative, and more decisive than it is inclined to be. Only the President can pull our friends and allies together and shape their individual efforts into decisive, unified international action. Only the President can do these things. And that is what we need from him now more than ever. We need him to lead.

That is also what our friends and allies in the Middle East want from our President. They want him to lead, and they want America to lead. That is what I heard last week in Jordan. That is what I heard in Yemen. That is what I heard in Turkey. And that is absolutely what I heard in Syria. That is what people and leaders tell me again and again as I travel throughout the region. They tell me they want America to lead because they are confident that America can still be decisive in shaping the future of the Middle East. In short, our friends and allies still believe in America. What they want to know is whether we still believe in ourselves.

Renewing American leadership in the Middle East should be a Republican goal. It should be a Democratic goal. And if the President makes it his goal, he will have my full support. 

The Middle East is falling apart at the seams

Painting by Syrian artist Wissam Al Jazairy

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat newspaper, penned this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition

Times are hard for the Middle East. It has to find a recipe for coexistence, drawing in the Muslims, Jews and Christians, which is not easy.

It has to search for a coexistence formula binding the Turks, Persians, Kurds, Arabs and others and a coexistence blueprint joining ethnicities, nationalities, religions and sects. This is not simple either.

Long lulls are deceptive. They feign that old conflicts have been assigned to the history books. This is not true -- any sudden twist is liable to rekindle old feuds streaming with blood.

Nation-states that were configured in the aftermath of World War One either curbed these conflicts or gave them other names. Once these nation-states’ repressive machines crack, the old demons resurface.

We’re clearly on the way to a ghastly, rather than a new, Middle East – one where the coexistence chapter drawing together its various components ends, heralding the reconfiguration of nation-states and maps.

We are unmistakably facing something more cataclysmic than the fall of the Berlin Wall or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

We are facing a Nakba worse than the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinian people, one marking the demise of coexistence.

We are into violent cross-border designs and aspirations tackling maps like an inmate treats his prison walls.

Don’t accuse me of being a prophet of doom. The pointers are everywhere in the print and audiovisual media, supported by rivers of corpses and declarations promising endless wars.

A suicide attacked a Husseiniya (Shiite house of worship) in Kirkuk, and the response was a spectacular offensive against Sunni mosques in or near Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed remnants of the “Baath” and “sectarian hatred.” His adversaries accused him of being a “sectarian bigot.”

Protesters in al-Anbar province treat the Iraqi army as a “Shiite militia” or the cover for one.

The Sunnite Iraqi says he won’t accept to be a second-class citizen, which is what the Shiite Iraqi was saying in decades past.

We’ve moved from the Arab-Kurd crisis to a Sunni-Shiite-Arab-Kurd predicament. It’s as if the whole Middle East has turned into the knotty problem of the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Both sides in the Syria war are keen to deny its sectarian character. One side paints it as a war on inflowing terrorists and the opposite side depicts it as a revolt against a dictatorship.

So how do we explain the presence of Chechen fighters in Idlib, the arrival of Libyans to support their Sunni brethren or a funeral for a young Iraqi in Basra killed defending the Shiite shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in Damascus?

Also, how do we explain the funeral for a young Sunni in the North Lebanese port city of Tripoli killed trying to infiltrate into Syria and the funeral for a Hezbollah member felled while on “jihadist duties” there?

Why does the Sunni Lebanese support the Syrian revolution and the Shiite Lebanese hinder it?

Why didn’t Alawites flee before rebels entered their villages or Sunnis take to their heels before government and allied forces stormed their townships?

Do the slogans of “objection” and “resistance” justify the military involvement of Iran and its allies in the Syria war? The counter-meddlers could be asked the same question.

What you hear in Lebanon, which used to be a model of and a proving ground for coexistence, is worrisome and unnerving.

Yesterday, I heard a prominent member of Gen. Michel Aoun’s “Free Patriotic Movement” accuse other Christians of treason. His charge sheet says the other Christians agreed to an electoral law allowing Muslims to have a weighty say in the election of 10 Christian legislators out of the 64 allotted to Christians in parliament.

A retreat to self-made islands won’t solve either Lebanon’s problems or the problem of its minorities. The biggest danger for Lebanon now is the growing number of risk-takers walking on thin ice.

Clearly, we are toughing out the eclipse of coexistence.

Our nation-states, our societies and our armies are breaking up.

The inviolability of international borders has evaporated. We’re in the midst of a regional civil war caused by a stream of cross-border projects. I am afraid we’re on the way to a period awash with statelets, militias, cemeteries and “cleansed regions.”

"The Dangerous Price of Ignoring Syria"

A must read op-ed contributed by Vali Nasr to The New York Times. I missed the piece when published by the paper earlier this week. Here goes:

By Vali Nasr

President Obama has doggedly resisted American involvement in Syria. The killing of over 70,000 people and the plight of over a million refugees have elicited sympathy from the White House but not much more. That is because Syria challenges a central aim of Obama’s foreign policy: shrinking the U.S. footprint in the Middle East and downplaying the region’s importance to global politics. Doing more on Syria would reverse the U.S. retreat from the region.

Since the beginning of Obama’s first term, the administration’s stance as events unfolded in the Middle East has been wholly reactive. This “lean back and wait” approach has squandered precious opportunity to influence the course of events in the Middle East. There has been no strategy for capitalizing on the opportunity that the Arab Spring presented, or for containing its fallout — the Syrian crisis being the worst case to date. The president rewarded Burmese generals with a six-hour visit for their willingness to embrace reform, but he has not visited a single Arab country that went through the Arab Spring.

Obama sees Syria as a tragic humanitarian crisis without obvious strategic implications for the United States. “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” he asked in a New Republic interview in January. When the president visited the region last month he chose to focus on the Arab-Israeli peace process rather than Syria. The peace process is now at the top of Secretary of State John Kerry’s agenda.

The plight of Palestinians is a perennial concern, but it is in Syria that the future of the region hangs in the balance. Choosing the peace process over Syria underscores not the administration’s interest in the Middle East but its determination to look past it.

Washington has wasted precious time in using diplomatic, economic and military levers to influence the course of events in Syria. That neglect has allowed the conflagration to rage at great human cost, radicalizing the opposition and putting at risk U.S. allies across the region.

America cannot and should not decide the fate of the Middle East, but it should be clear about its stakes there, and not shy away from efforts to at least nudge events in more favorable directions as this critical region faces momentous choices. A “lean back and wait” posture toward unfolding events is dangerous.

The paroxysm of violence in Syria is expected to kill tens of thousands more and produce as many as three million refugees by the year’s end. That is a humanitarian tragedy to be sure, but one with immediate strategic consequences. American insouciance in the face of that devastation is fomenting anti-Americanism. The waves of refugees will constitute an unstable population that will be a breeding ground for extremism and in turn destabilize the countries where they take refuge. Syria’s neighbors are not equipped to deal with a humanitarian disaster on this scale.

The longer the devastation goes on the more difficult it will be to put Syria back together, and failing to do so will leave a dangerous morass in the heart of the Middle East, a failed state at war with itself where extremism and instability will fester and all manner of terrorists and Al Qaeda affiliates will find ample space, resources and recruits to menace the region and world.

Worse yet, the conflict in Syria could spill over its borders. Syria has become ground zero in a broader conflict that pits Shiites against Sunnis and shapes the larger regional competition for power between Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Syria’s paroxysms if allowed to drag on could potentially spread far and wide and even change the map of the region. America may think it does not have any interests in Syria, but it has interests everywhere the Syrian conflict touches.

Lebanon and Iraq are each deeply divided along sectarian lines, and both countries teeter on a knife’s edge as tensions rise between their ascendant Shiite populations who fear a setback if Bashar al-Assad falls, and the minority Sunnis in their own countries who support Syria’s Sunni-led opposition. Sectarian tensions stretch from Lebanon and Iraq through the Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain and on to Pakistan where sectarian violence has exploded into the open.

It is time America takes the lead in organizing international assistance to refugees. America should not hide behind the Russian veto. It should pursue a concerted diplomatic strategy in support of arming the rebels and imposing a no-flight zone over Syria. That would not only hamper Assad’s ability to fight, it would allow refugees to remain within Syria’s borders, thus reducing pressure on neighboring countries.

It is time the U.S. took over from Qatar and Saudi Arabia in organizing the Syrian opposition into a credible political force — failure to do that accounts for the chaos that has paralyzed the group. There are powerful economic sanctions that the U.S. could use to cripple the Assad regime.

Finally, America should build ties with the Free Syrian Army with the goal of denying extremist groups the ability to dominate the armed resistance and gaining influence with groups that will dominate Syria’s future. It was failing to build those ties in Afghanistan that allowed the resistance groups who opposed the Soviet Union to disintegrate into the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The Syrian crisis has become a Gordian knot that cannot be easily disentangled. As daunting as the crisis looks, there is a cost to inaction — in human suffering, regional instability and damage to America’s global standing. And as the Syrian crisis escalates, America and the world will only rediscover their stakes in the Middle East. If Obama truly wants to pivot away from the Middle East then he has to help end the bloodletting in Syria.

Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat.”

A propos Iran, the U.S. and Saudi foreign policy

U.S. and Iran footballers: A lesson for politicians?

Saudi foreign policy has to grapple with two key problems à propos change in the region and the world order.

One is Iran, which is not exactly a new problem. The other is the Obama Administration forging ahead with its strategic pivot from the Middle East to East Asia.

Saudi academician and writer Khalid al-Dakheel, in his weekly column today for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, believes the two problems have taken new dimensions.

He explains:

After gaining a foothold in Bilad al-Sham through its alliance with the Syrian regime, Iran proceeded to plant Hezbollah as its military arm in Lebanon.

Ironically, this was done under the smokescreen of “resistance” (to Israel) and a Saudi-Syrian “understanding” on Lebanon.

Having then bagged Iraq from U.S. occupation forces and enthroned its surrogates in Baghdad, Iran is now out defending the Syrian regime and striving to be the paramount power in the Gulf as a step to expand its influence throughout the Arab Mashreq.

Iran’s aim is to be the nation-state of the region’s Shiites and to be recognized as such by Washington.

To realize this dream, after ensnaring Syria and Iraq, Iran has to face the bigger challenge posed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt – more so Saudi Arabia because it is the Gulf’s richest country, sits on Iraq’s doorstep and is home to Islam’s two holiest mosques (al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina).

Iran is aware that undermining Saudi Arabia is a tall order: the ethnic, sectarian and historical impediments are simply formidable and countless. That’s why Tehran chose instead to surround the kingdom with Iranian clients and hotbeds of unrest – northward in Iraq, southward in Yemen and eastward in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Egypt is as impregnable as Saudi Arabia, except that Egypt lies further away geographically and is currently beset with political and economic problems. This explains why Iran is trying to lure Egypt away from the Gulf with promises of financial aid and a collaborative solution for Syria.

With the Syrian regime now on its last legs, Iran can recognize the expiry of its sell by date, cut its losses and facilitate the transfer of power in Damascus. Or, it can continue backing the regime at the price of walking away with no more than a piece of a fragmented Syria.

Iran’s predicament is also the region’s. Therein lies the future significance of Saudi foreign policy and Washington’s pivoting from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region.

President Barack Obama’s pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region is all about China.

While the U.S. was off fighting its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, China’s amazing growth and the promise of its huge and expanding market turned the Asia-Pacific region into the global economy’s center of gravity.

A report last November by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expects the United States to cede its place as the world’s largest economy to China as early as 2016.

Washington is equally concerned by China more than doubling its declared military spending from 2006 to 2012, roughly in keeping with economic growth.

There are two unmistakable signs Obama is forging ahead with steps to pivot U.S. foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia.

One is his perseverance in “leading from behind” on Syria. The other is keeping his “extended hand” to Iran.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as U.S. National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter, says the U.S. can deter and contain a nuclear Iran, such as it is still deterring North Korea from using its nuclear weapons against South Korea and Japan.

Also, confirmation of Chuck Hagel, Obama’s pick for defense secretary, remains blocked because he is soft on Iran and previously called for talks between Washington and Tehran without preconditions.

It seems America’s strategic shift to Southeast Asia, the accumulation of Arab crises and the Arab’s impotence in solving albeit one of them are pushing many Americans to support a political deal with Iran.

Strangely, all U.S. talk of such an understanding with Tehran makes no mention of Saudi Arabia.

So how would Saudi Arabia react? Could it face such an eventuality with its same old foreign policy tools and premises?

Saudi foreign policy needs to update its perceptions and tools to match up with America’s strategic rebalancing, Iran’s agenda and the current winds thrashing the Arab world, not to mention the sea changes in Saudi society, the region and the world order.

Can the foreign policy adopted at the height of the Cold War by King Saud and King Faisal, God bless their souls, remain unchanged after 50 years?

Clearly, the policy that failed in Iraq and Syria, was half-successful in Yemen and Bahrain and missed setting up stable and enduring alliances in the region needs reappraisal and revision.

Obama’s escape from the Middle to the Far East

Obama with, from top, Thailand's Yingluck Shinawatra, Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Cambodia's Hun Sen

Once he clinched a second term as U.S. President, the world expected Barack Obama to appear in the Middle East. Instead, he popped up in the Far East.

Obama's impression, the doyen of Arab commentators Samir Atallah writes in his daily column for Asharq Alawsat, is that democracy has taken hold in the Middle East – end of story.

Proof is that Hillary Clinton, who witnessed the birth of democracy at Tahrir Square, is not staying on. She is bowing out after fitting the exploit and a fragrance of the Arab Spring into her bag.

Hillary Clinton’s predecessor at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice, thinks otherwise. She believes the war in Syria “may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it” (see below Rice’s think piece for the Washington Post titled “Syria is central to holding together the Mideast”).

Atallah says Clinton cut short her trip with Obama to Myanmar – formerly known as Burma, as in George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days – and flew to Egypt for Israel’s sake. Such a move would not have been made for Syria’s sake. Otherwise, she would have called for arming the Syrian opposition months ago. Or when Obama said the regime in Damascus is in its last days.

Instead of Obama locking horns with China at the UN Security Council to stop the bloodbath in Syria, he chose to hassle Beijing on its turf in Asia and try to pinch allies from China’s “back garden” in Burma and Cambodia.

The saying earlier was that America is in the Middle East for oil. The saying today is that America will be self-reliant by 2020 (through new technology including hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations). Or as sagacious European Javier Solana one stated, “The Atlantic is the past, the Pacific is the future.”

Chances are señor Solana and Obama are both jumping the gun and simplifying matters much too soon. As Condoleezza Rice wrote, allowing the Middle East to fall to pieces is unwise. This is not a matter of oil.

In today’s Global Village, the Middle East is a pivotal strategic spot more than at any time. Confessional and sectarian wars threaten not only the region but security far and wide. If America can dispense with Arab oil as señor Solana suggests, Europe cannot – not for the coming 50 years, at least.

Burma won’t make America the world’s sole superpower. No would Cambodia or Thailand.

Obama didn’t convince his voters of his Asian tour days after reelection. When he escaped to Burma, Gaza blew up in his face.

____________

Following is Condoleezza Rice’s think piece for the Washington Post:

Syria is central to holding together the Mideast

By Condoleezza Rice, Published: November 24

Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state from 2005 to 2009

The civil war in Syria may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it. The opportunity to hold the region together and to rebuild it on a firmer foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability is slipping from our grasp.

Egypt and Iran have long, continuous histories and strong national identities. Turkey does as well, except for the matter of the Kurds, who are still largely unassimilated, mistrusted by Ankara and tempted by the hope of independent nationhood.

Every other important state is a modern construct, created by the British and the French, who drew borders like lines on the back of an envelope, often without regard for ethnic and sectarian differences. The results: A Bahrain that is 70 percent Shiite, governed by a Sunni monarch. Saudi Arabia was created with a 10 percent Shiite population in its richest provinces to the east. Iraq is 65 percent Shiite, 20 percent Sunni Arab, and a mix of Kurds and others, all ruled until 2003 by an iron-fisted Sunni dictator. Jordan’s population is almost 70 percent Palestinian. Lebanon is roughly divided among Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. And then there is Syria: a conglomerate of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and others, ruled by the Alawite minority.

The fragile state structure of the Middle East has been held together for decades by monarchs and dictators. But as the desire for freedom has spread from Tunis to Cairo to Damascus, authoritarians have lost their grip. The danger now is that the artificial states could fly apart.

In Iraq, after overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the United States hoped that a fledging multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy could do what authoritarians could not: give all of these groups a stake in a common future. To an extent it has, with elections repeatedly producing inclusive governments. But the institutions are young and fragile, and they are groaning under the weight of the region’s broader sectarian explosion. The conflict in Syria is pushing Iraq and others to the breaking point. At the same time, U.S. disengagement has tempted Iraqi politicians to move toward sectarian allies for survival. If Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot count on the Americans, he will take no risks with Tehran.

The great mistake of the past year has been to define the conflict with Bashar al-Assad’s regime as a humanitarian one. The regime in Damascus has been brutal, and many innocent people have been slaughtered. But this was no replay of Libya. Much more is at stake.

As Syria crumbles, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are being drawn into a regional web of sectarian allegiances. Karl Marx once called on workers of the world to unite across national boundaries. He told them that they had more in common with each other than with the ruling classes that oppressed them in the name of nationalism. Marx exhorted workers to throw off the “false consciousness” of national identity.

Today’s Karl Marx is Iran. It envisions the spread of its influence among Shiites, uniting them under the theocratic flag of Tehran — destroying the integrity of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran uses terrorist groups, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in southern Iraq to do its bidding. Syria is the linchpin, the bridge into the Arab Middle East. Tehran no longer hides the fact that its security forces are working in Syria to prop up Assad. In this context, Tehran’s sprint toward a nuclear weapon is a problem not just for Israel but the region as a whole.

In response, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other neighboring powers arm and support Sunni factions. The Turks are being drawn into the conflict, desperately fearful that the Kurds will break away in Syria and push their brethren in Turkey to do the same. Missile and mortar strikes are increasingly common across the borders of Israel and Turkey. Ankara’s cries to NATO for help last month should have gotten our attention.

But where is the United States? America has spent months trying to get the Russians and the Chinese to agree to toothless U.N. resolutions to “end the bloodshed,” as though Moscow will abandon Assad and Beijing really cares about chaos in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is not a sentimental man. But if he believes that Assad can survive, he will do nothing to undermine him.

In recent days, France, Britain and Turkey have stepped into the diplomatic vacuum to recognize a newly formed opposition that is broadly representative of all Syrians. The United States should follow their lead and then vet and arm the unified group with defensive weapons on the condition that it pursues an inclusive post-Assad framework. The United States and its allies should also consider establishing a no-fly zone to protect the innocent. America’s weight and influence are needed. Leaving this to regional powers, whose interests are not identical to ours, will only exacerbate the deepening sectarianism.

Certainly there are risks. After more than a year of brutal conflict, the most extreme elements of the opposition — including al-Qaeda — have been empowered. Civil wars tend to strengthen the worst forces. The overthrow of Assad could indeed bring these dangerous groups to power.

But the breakdown of the Middle East state system is a graver risk. Iran will win, our allies will lose, and for decades the region’s misery and violence will make today’s chaos look tame.

War is not receding in the Middle East. It is building to a crescendo. Our elections are over. Now, America must act.

After Sandy, a hurricane to slam the Arab world

Hurricane Sandy on October 25 (Wikipedia)

By Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat daily, writing in Arabic

I watched in awe superstorm Sandy wreak havoc across the U.S. East Coast. I saw homes in ruin, flooded streets, cars floating downstream and boats stacked atop one another. TV screens kept everyone informed about Sandy’s powerful gusts and storm surges, the human and material losses it was causing and its likely impact on the impending Election Day.

Nature’s power can at times be so destructive and devastating as to wreck all Man’s endeavors and inventions and send them spinning.

But despite the killer-storm pounding New York and other places into submission, I felt envious. The Americans have a state, a president and a Congress to legislate and oversee the executive branch. They have fire brigades, civil defense authorities and a president to declare “major disaster” areas, where the number of deaths is nowhere near the daily quota of massacre and suicide fatalities in our cheerful capitals.

A guilty conscience nagged at me for focusing on a distant hurricane. So I switched back to TV channels focusing on Damascus, Maarat al-Nouman, Beirut, Baghdad, Sana’a and other such “disaster” cities.

Watching the news leads me to believe a megastorm is moving to the Middle East, where it could change long-established maps and sweep regimes and countries, precipitating rivers of blood in the process. The gusts of wind and rain gathering ahead of the hurricane’s landfall are the following:

1.   The Israel-Iran war did not break out yet, but we’ve seen some of its preambles; the assassination of scientists; the targeting of tourists; the bombing of Iranian weapon and ammunition depots in Sudan; and the sending from Lebanon of an Iranian-built drone to fly over Israel. The drone’s mission shows Iran at Israel’s doorstep via Hezbollah. It also confirms South Lebanon will flare up on the outbreak, or eve, of the war. It’s difficult to imagine the United States staying out of the fray, if only because Iran’s expected retaliation will necessarily undermine American interests in the region.

2.     It’s not difficult, however, to imagine the explosive nature of the ongoing conflict in Syria. The Iranian regime cannot tolerate concomitant defeats on her Syrian and nuclear fronts. Iran will most probably play all her cards to protect her Syria outgrowth and nuclear ambitions. This war will be more dangerous than the Iraq War for many reasons, given the looming war’s multiple theaters.

3.   The worsening of Sunnite-Shiite relations is unprecedented. A look at the situations in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and other places will suffice. Bloody flashpoints are sprouting across borders.

4.     Despite the “spring” nature of the early stages of the uprising in Syria, the blood-soaked conflict there cannot be dissociated today from the crisis among Syria’s constituent elements or the fate of Iran’s nuclear program or the Sunnite-Shiite estrangement.

5.   The fact international borders are no more sacrosanct is noteworthy. Whenever turmoil besets a country, it becomes a magnet for roving fighters who proceed to impose their ways, colors and slogans on events, creating unsightly scenes incompatible with “spring.” At the same time, masses that overthrew despotic rulers are disappointed to see the new powers that be sailing to the past, not the future. Add to these masses’ disenchantment the growing despair from the international community’s empty rhetoric of a two-state solution.

Everything suggests the hurricane is approaching. The Arabs are the more vulnerable side in the region. That’s why they are in the eye of the megastorm. The settling of Iranian-Turkish accounts on Syrian soil is evident. Iraq has clearly failed to mend its national unity. Lebanon is insisting on defying the monster storm. Jordan is frantically fumbling around its borders.

Poor hurricane Sandy – it barreled a U.S. region and left. It might still look like a breeze compared to the hurricane about to pummel our lands in the absence of safety valves. It is no exaggeration to say the Arabs can expect to be hit by a hurricane. They are already in its clutches.