Tag Archives: US foreign policy

Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States

The folly of boots on the ground in Iran

US-IRAN WAR

Intro: After the pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s almost inconceivable the US would again send troops to the Middle East – but its president is desperate and narcissistic

Concern and anguish are justifiably growing that a cornered Donald Trump will send US ground troops into combat on Iranian soil to avoid being personally and politically humiliated in a war of attrition he started, mismanaged, and cannot end. Such a self-serving escalation, however – even if limited in scope and duration – could itself prove catastrophic for him and the American people. Think what happened in previous US-led military interventions. In sum total, he’s caught in a modern-day catch-22. Pick your own metaphor for dumb. Trump’s stumped, hoist by his own petard, stuck between a rock and a hard place, and up the creek without a paddle. The creek in question is, of course, the Strait of Hormuz.

Firmly ensconced in his strange parallel universe, Trump insists the war is all but won, Iran is suing for peace, and talks are making good progress. In the real world, Iran is still fighting on all fronts, Israel is still relentlessly bombing, the strait remains largely closed, and the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has joined the war, attacking Israel and potentially blocking Red Sea trade routes. The US and Iran have each issued maximalist demands, but there is no sign of actual negotiations. They are poles apart, further even than they were before Trump, egged on by Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoned diplomacy four weeks ago. Sometime soon, Trump will be forced to confront the huge gap between what he wants and what’s on offer. At that point he could turn to the troop buildup amassing in the Gulf and order ground attacks.

How did it come to this? It’s incredible to think that after all the mortal agony and pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, a US president is once again seriously contemplating boots on the ground in the Middle East. It’s even more amazing the president concerned is Trump, a noisy and outspoken critic of costly foreign adventures. Yet this is no unlucky break, no accidental misfortune. It’s the result of deliberate policy. If the US is facing impossible choices, the responsibility is entirely Trump’s, though he will surely blame and scapegoat others. For one, Pete Hesgeth, the Pentagon’s troubled comic-book warlord, is in his gun-sights.

Ignoring facts on the ground, the White House continues to spout lies and bombast. Trump is plainly in denial, claiming “regime change” has already been achieved with the assassination of Ayatollah Khamanei. Trump has this strange habit of behaving like a spectator, detached from the chaotic events he himself sets in motion. He acts and behaves as if the global energy shock, the US’s abject failure to defend the Hormuz strait and its Gulf allies, Iran’s unyielding defiance under fire, and the absence of the much-predicted popular uprising in Tehran, have nothing to do with him. He doesn’t understand Iran is fighting an asymmetric war, that even the biggest bombs cannot obliterate pride and ideology, faith and history.

Trump is increasingly isolated and out on a limb. His wealthy Arab business cronies no longer trust him. US bases on their territory now resemble a liability, not a defence. When he demanded NATO’s help, Europe said: we’ll let you know. Likewise, Iran’s ethnic Kurds are less than eager to die for a muppet. Support for the war among the US public and the MAGA right, always weak, is a fast-vanishing mirage. Having egged him on, Netanyahu refuses to bail him out – or to stop bombing everyone in sight. Trump believed Israel’s assurance of quick victory. As for Iran, its surviving leadership, dominated by ultras, reckons it’s winning. Its hard line gets harder by the day.

Imagine being one of the thousands of US marines and paratroopers now deploying to the Gulf. With a commander-in-chief like Trump, who needs enemies? Except plenty more lie in wait. Iran’s armed forces number 610,000 active-duty personnel, with reserves of 350,000. The regime may no longer be able to fight in the air or at sea. But on land, treading familiar terrain and ultimately willing, perhaps, to sacrifice “human waves” of troops, as in the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war, it remains a formidable foe. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it’s ready to carpet-bomb its own territory if invaded.

If ground attacks were to materialise – both Trump and Netanyahu have publicly discussed the possibility – the targets would most likely be the coastal batteries, missile defences, and concealed armed speedboat bases dotting the northern flank of the Hormuz strait. An attack on the Kharg oil export terminal further up the Gulf is also predicted. Ominously, Kharg is known as the Forbidden Island; it may be easier to overrun than hold. Such incursions would be intended to force the reopening of the strait, thereby easing the energy crisis, and strengthening Trump’s negotiating hand.

The inherent, inescapable military risks are daunting. Causalities would be inevitable. Even if operations went well in the short term, questions would immediately arise about potential escalation when Iran counterattacked, expansion of the operational area, and duration of the occupation. If they went badly, the cry would go up for reinforcements – a scenario grimly familiar to anyone who recalls mission-creep in Iraq and Afghanistan. More risky still, to the point of suicidal, is another floated option: sending US and Israeli special forces deep into the interior to snatch Iran’s hidden, physically volatile stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

For all his childish threats of epic fury and maximum punishment, does Trump really want to unleash this nightmare? A rational person would strive to avoid it. At one level, his desperate-sounding, fiercely disputed claims that Iran is privately “begging” for peace reflect a realisation that a bloody, open-ended land war could destroy his presidency. His problem is that Iran’s regime knows this too. So, entirely logically, it will continue to rebuff his maximalist 15-point “peace plan” – which amounts to a call for complete surrender – while upping its own demands. They include a permanent end to US-Israeli aggression, undisputed sovereignty over the Hormuz strait, financial reparations, and lifting of sanctions.

Any deal that fails to satisfy bottom-line US and Israeli demands – namely, a definitive end to Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programmes, a halt to Tehran’s support for allied regional militias, and guaranteed freedom of navigation in the Gulf – will be seen as a defeat for Trump. He now plainly wants to end the war but on his terms, with a deal superior to that secured by Barack Obama in 2015 (and subsequently trashed by Trump). Iran – angry, wounded, yet resilient – will not give it to him. Trump’s choice: cave or escalate.

At this dreaded juncture, what is there to say or think? This illegal war should never have been launched. Trump acted foolishly and opportunistically. Netanyahu, too, is greatly to blame. The threat was not “imminent”. And the war’s most persuasive justification – a promise to free Iranians from tyranny – has been abandoned. Negotiations, unconditional on both sides, are the only sane way out. Trump must swallow his pride, admit his error, eat humble pie. Yet, as all the world knows, the very idea that this most ignorant, reckless, and narcissistic of US leaders might actually do so is utterly ridiculous.

Not only was the second Trump presidency going to end in disaster, but the US-Iran war will be the greatest of all disasters of its foreign interventions.

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China, Donald Trump, Europe, Military, Poland, Russia, United Nations, United States

The United States and other global risks

UNITED STATES

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Poland and the Baltic states feel threatened by Russia’s recent deployment of nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian territory wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The U.S. has responded by sending troops and reinforcements to Poland.

Intro: We need to turn away from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed and concentrate on some of the more worrying developments that the United States are involved in.

Much of the attention in the United States over the past week has been on Donald Trump and what the Russians may or may not have got on embarrassing material about his business and private life. The revelations have been fascinating, the risk of Mr Trump being held for blackmail on any hidden agenda with Russia lurid, but, nevertheless, it is no wonder such news has dominated the headlines.

Beneath all of this, however, there has been much more serious global developments with US involvement, eclipsed by the shenanigans and salacious disclosures of the incoming president’s behaviour. But it is best that they do not go unnoticed.

The first was the biggest deployment of U.S. troops in Europe since the end of the cold war. Some one thousand troops (of a promised four thousand) were deployed to Poland, part of President Barack Obama’s response to the nervousness of central European states in the face of Russian aggression. Agitated concerns have been expressed in many European states ever since Russia’s belligerence and actions in Ukraine and the Crimea. Notably, this is the first-time U.S. troops have been permanently stationed along Russia’s western border.

More than 80 main battle tanks and hundreds of armoured vehicles have already arrived in Germany and are being moved into eastern Europe by road and rail.

The Kremlin has been angered by the deployment, branding the arrival of tanks and reinforcements as a threat to Russia’s security.

Last October Russia sent nuclear-adaptable Iskander missiles to the Polish border and in December deployed Bastion anti-ship missile launchers to the Baltic. America has now responded to that threat given its commitment to peace in Europe. An old-fashioned arms build-up is now taking shape.

This is not the only part of the world where Russia and the U.S. are squaring up to each other. In another scenario, Russia has a powerful partner – China. The Asian economic powerhouse has also said U.S. actions in the region, namely in the South China Sea, are a threat to its national security.

In recent days China has sent its only aircraft carrier into the Taiwan Strait, largely seen as a provocative move amid ongoing tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. China claims that Taiwan is its rightful province.

China is also deeply resentful about a joint plan between the U.S. and South Korea to deploy an advanced missile defence system, ostensibly a defence system against any missiles fired from North Korea. China is North Korea’s only ally.

It is understood that representatives from Beijing and Moscow met last week and that they had agreed to take ‘further counter-measures’ in response to the U.S.-South Korea plan. It is not known what those counter-measures will be but it is likely that will be from a range of economic, military and diplomatic relations they have at their disposal.

Mr Trump is already heightening tensions in the region, first with his earlier decision to break diplomatic protocol and call Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen, and then his secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson saying the U.S. should deny Beijing access to new islands it has built in the heavily disputed waters of the South China Sea. Many in China, reinforced by editorials in Chinese newspapers, believe such U.S. action could result in war.

Rather than being obsessed and preoccupied with Mr Trump’s Twitter feed we should be concentrating instead on the bigger, more pressing, issues.

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Government, History, Politics, Society, United States

Barack Obama and foreign policy

UNITED STATES

barack-obama

President Obama gave his valedictory speech on Tuesday 10 January, 2017. Despite critics, he has achieved much on foreign policy.

Intro: Critics of Mr Obama’s foreign policy also often fail to acknowledge some of the significant accomplishments the President has achieved

Barack Obama has given his farewell address as US president from McCormick Place in Chicago, the venue for his election victory speech in 2008. This is the first time in US history that a president has returned to his hometown to deliver a valedictory speech to the nation, and Mr Obama vacates office on a seven-year high approval rating of 56 per cent (according to a poll conducted by Gallup).

Traditionally, farewell addresses have represented a legacy-defining opportunity for presidents to set out their accomplishments and by articulating a vision for the future. In many cases, the outgoing head of state has focused in large part upon foreign affairs, especially in the post-war period of US international leadership. This, too, became a central point of Mr Obama’s speech.

Harry Truman, for example, used his address in 1953 to talk about the emergence of the Cold War on his watch. On his departure from presidential office he said not a day had passed which had not been dominated by the conflict between those who love freedom and those who would have us return to the days of slavery and darkness. President Truman also outlined his rationale for using atomic weapons in Japan.

George W Bush defended his foreign policy and wider national security legacy in 2009. Despite approval ratings of just 34 per cent on leaving the White House, Mr Bush included in his triumphs that Afghanistan was no longer ruled by the Taliban. He also cited changes to the US security apparatus that he said contributed to the homeland avoiding attack in the seven years after 9/11.

Referring to some of his controversial calls, including the highly contentious decision to invade Iraq, Mr Bush said that he hoped people would understand that he was willing to take tough decisions.

Mr Obama’s farewell speech has been given at a time when there is rising criticism of his administration after Russia’s successful intervention in Syria to shore up the Assad regime, and the unravelling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has caused angst with allies in the Asian Pacific. Critics have asserted that Washington has become significantly diminished on the world stage with weak presidential leadership responsible for the collapse of the TPP.

Others, however, will argue that this is too simplistic. For instance, while Mr Obama has not advanced his Asian “pivot” as fully as he would have hoped, it is actually President-Elect Donald Trump’s opposition to TPP that looks to have consigned the trade deal to history, not the Obama team (which has tried to cultivate it for years).

While Mr Obama has made multiple mistakes in the Middle East, his strategically political decision to downsize the US presence in the region was taken in the context of the mandate he perceived himself to have won after his election victory in 2008 – when a war-weary nation seemed to endorse his call that the Iraq conflict had been a costly mistake, and that the United States was militarily overstretched during the Bush presidency.

Critiques of the Obama doctrine on foreign policy also tend to omit that, whilst the United States is still regarded as the most powerful country in the world – certainly in a military sense – it is not by any means an all-powerful hegemonic power. This core fact has been demonstrated recently in Ukraine and Libya, but was also true of America following Somalia in 1993 and of Iraq and Afghanistan post 9/11.

Current geopolitical fault lines – where there are no easy, quick fix ways for the U.S. to enforce its policy preferences – are wide and varied. They include tensions with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea; the nuclear stand-off in the Korean peninsula that may yet intensify following impeachment proceedings of South Korea’s president; continuing instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; the bleak prospects facing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and terrorism remaining a significant international concern a decade and a half after 9/11.

Critics of Mr Obama’s foreign policy also often fail to acknowledge some of the significant accomplishments the President has achieved, particularly given the backdrop of the high-risk political and economic landscape in which he has operated. One big positive, for instance, was the leadership taken by the United States in tackling global warming. Mr Obama’s efforts led to the climate change deal agreed in Paris in 2015 which was signed by more than 170 countries. Crucially, the deal will form the basis of a new post-Kyoto framework, essential if global warming is to be properly tackled. The Paris agreement was ratified and came into effect last November.

Another example is the 2014 nuclear deal with Iran and six other powers. The agreement, which Mr Trump has criticised, could enhance global nuclear security, as well as constituting an important win for longstanding efforts to combat nuclear non-proliferation.

Despite the incoming president’s rhetoric, there are many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, including the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who openly recognise the benefits the nuclear deal with Iran will bring. They are calling for it to be more strictly enforced, rather than being scrapped.

The resetting of relations with Cuba was also instigated on Mr Obama’s watch. In December 2014, the two countries announced they would restore diplomatic relations, and Mr Obama became the first US president to visit the country in 90 years. He announced a new suite of measures that further eroded the bilateral sanctions regime introduced during the Cold War era. The President-Elect has threatened to reverse all progress that has been made with Cuba.

In his speech on exiting the White House, Mr Obama robustly defended his foreign policy record at a time of growing unease and criticism. The outgoing president has achieved significant accomplishments, but, he knows much of his legacy now risks being rolled back. Mr Trump will have a very different vision and agenda to how he sees America shaping the world order.

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