<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Why Washington Clings to a Failed Middle East&nbsp;Strategy]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="byline">by Gareth Porter / February 1st, 2011 | Dissident Voice</p>
<p>The death throes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt signal a new  level of crisis for a U.S. Middle East strategy that has shown itself  over and over again in recent years to be based on nothing more than the  illusion of power.  The incipient loss of the U.S. client regime in  Egypt is an obvious moment for a fundamental adjustment in that  strategy.</p>
<p>But those moments have been coming with increasing regularity in  recent years, and the U.S. national security bureaucracy has shown  itself to be remarkably resistant to giving it up.  The troubled history  of that strategy suggests that it is an expression of some powerful  political forces at work in this society, as former NSC official Gary  Sick hinted in a commentary on the crisis.</p>
<p>Ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979,  every U.S. administration has operated on the assumption that the United  States, with Israel and Egypt as key client states, occupies a power  position in the Middle East that allows it to pursue an aggressive  strategy of unrelenting pressure on all those “rogue” regimes and  parties in the region which have resisted dominance by the U.S.-Israeli  tandem:  Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.</p>
<p>The Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq was only the most extreme  expression of that broader strategic concept.  It assumed that the  United States and Israel could establish a pro-Western regime in Iraq as  the base from which it would press for the elimination of resistance  from any of their remaining adversaries in the region.</p>
<p>But since that more aggressive version of the strategy was launched,  the illusory nature of the regional dominance strategy has been laid  bare in one country after another.</p>
<p>* The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq merely empowered Shi’a  forces to form a regime whose geostrategic interests are far closer to  Iran than to the United States;<br />
* The U.S.-encouraged Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 only  strengthened the position of Hezbollah as the largest, most popular and  most disciplined political-military force in the country, leading  ultimately to the Hezbollah-backed government now being formed.<br />
* Israeli and U.S. threats to attack Iran, Hezbollah and Syria since  2006 brought an even more massive influx of rockets and missiles into  Lebanon and Syria which now appears to deter Israeli aggressiveness  toward its adversaries for the first time.<br />
* U.S.-Israeli efforts to create a client Palestinian entity and<br />
crush Hamas through the siege of Gaza has backfired, strengthening the Hamas claim to be the only viable Palestinian entity.<br />
* The U.S. insistence on demonstrating the effectiveness of its  military power in Afghanistan  has only revealed the inability of the  U.S. military to master the Afghan insurgency.</p>
<p>And now the Mubarak regime is in its final days.  As one talking head  after another has  pointed out in recent days, it has been the lynch  pin of the U.S. strategy.  The main function of the U.S. client state  relationship with Egypt was to allow Israel to avoid coming to terms  with Palestinian demands.</p>
<p>The costs of the illusory quest for dominance in the Middle East have  been incalculable. By continuing to support Israeli extremist refusal  to seek a peaceful settlement, trying to prop up Arab authoritarian  regimes that are friendly with Israel and seeking to project military  power in the region through both airbases in the Gulf States and  semi-permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the strategy has  assiduously built up long-term antagonism toward the United States and  pushed many throughout the Islamic world to sympathize with Al  Qaeda-style jihadism.   It has also fed Sunni-Shi’a tensions in the  region and created a crisis over Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Although this is clearly the time to scrap that Middle East strategy,  the nature of U.S. national security policy-making poses formidable  obstacles to such an adjustment   Bureaucrats and bureaucracies always  want to hold on to policies and programs that have given them power<br />
and prestige, even if those policies and programs have been costly  failures.  Above all, in fact, they want to avoid having to admit the  failure and the costs involved.  So they go on defending and pursuing  strategies long after the costs and failure have become clear.</p>
<p>An historical parallel to the present strategy in the Middle East is the Cold War strategy in East Asia, including the policy of<br />
surrounding, isolating and pressuring the Communist Chinese regime.  As  documented in my own history of the U.S. path to war in Vietnam, <em>Perils of Dominance</em>,  the national security bureaucracy was so committed to that strategy  that it resisted any alternative to war in South Vietnam in 1964-65,  because it believed the loss of South Vietnam would mean the end of Cold  War strategy, with its military alliances, client regimes and network  of military bases surrounding China.   It was only during the Nixon  administration that the White House wrested control of national security  policy from the bureaucracy sufficiently to scrap that Cold War  strategy in East Asia and reach an historic accommodation with China.</p>
<p>The present strategic crisis can only be resolved by a similar<br />
political decision to reach another historical accommodation — this time  with the “resistance bloc” in the Middle East.  Despite the  demonization of Iran and the rest of the “resistance bloc”, their  interests on the primary issue of al Qaeda-like global terrorism have  long been more aligned with the objective security interests of the  United States than those of some regimes with which the United States  has been allied (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan).</p>
<p>Scrapping the failed strategy in favor of a historic accommodation in the region would:</p>
<p>* reduce the Sunni-Shi’a geopolitical tensions in the region by supporting a new Iran-Egypt relationship;<br />
* force Israel to reconsider its refusal to enter into real<br />
negotiations on a Palestinian settlement;<br />
* reduce the level of antagonism toward the United States in the Islamic world; and,<br />
* create a new opportunity for agreement  between the United States and Iran that could resolve the nuclear issue.</p>
<p>It will be far more difficult, however, for the United States to make  this strategic adjustment than it was for Richard Nixon and Henry  Kissinger to secretly set in motion their accommodation with China.  Unconditional support for Israel, the search for client states and  determination to project military power into the Middle East, which are  central to the failed strategy, have long reflected the interests of the  two most powerful domestic U.S. political power blocs  bearing<br />
on national security policy: the pro-Israel bloc and the militarist  bloc.  Whereas Nixon and Kissinger were not immobilized by fealty to any  such power bloc, both the pro-Israel and militarist power blocs now  dominate both parties in the White House as well as in Congress.</p>
<p>One looks in vain for a political force in this country that is free  to press for fundamental change in Middle East strategy.  And without a  push for such a change from outside, we face the distinct possibility of  a national security bureaucracy and White House continuing to deny the  strategy’s utter failure and disastrous consequences.</p>
<p class="author">Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and  journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback  edition of his latest book, <em>Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam</em>, was published in 2006. <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/author/GarethPorter/">Read other articles by Gareth</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/02/why-washington-clings-to-a-failed-middle-east-strategy/">Why Washington Clings to a Failed Middle East Strategy | Dissident Voice</a>.</p>
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