The USA and the Middle East: Great Sacrifices, Small Rewards
Economist, 29 Dec 10: American and the Middle East: Great Sacrifices, Small Rewards
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Has America’s obsession with this region been worth it?
The Middle East holds a giant chunk of the world’s energy reserves, and also generates its biggest political headaches. Small wonder that the United States has long had an outsize interest in the place. Since September 11th 2001, and the rise of radical Islam as the sole violent challenge to an American-shaped international order, America’s focus on the region between the Nile and the Indus rivers has been obsessive. Yet all the attention would seem to have been in vain. America’s influence has dwindled everywhere with the financial crisis and the rise of emerging powers. But it seems to be withering faster in the Middle East than anywhere else....
Washington Can’t Solve the Identity Crisis in Middle East Nations
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Washington Can’t Solve the Identity Crisis in Middle East Nations
The Arab world is caught up in a broader struggle. It is being whipsawed between competing and not entirely satisfying notions of what it should mean to be Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, Yemeni or Lebanese — to name just a few places where conflicts over nationalism, identity and citizenship are most pronounced. Until Arabs figure out who they are and what kind of countries they want to live in, there is little Washington can do to help.
http://www.cfr.org/middle-east-and-n...nations/p33349
Like the Missionaries of the past, the US cannot bring 'civilisation' to the world. It is time for the US to analyse their foreign policy and strategy so as to not spook the world by acting in haste and projecting itself as the sole arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.
In today's world, where the natives are no longer 'running naked in the bush' and instead are educated and economically empowered, they realise and acknowledge the pangs what Bishop Tutu's immortal words encapsulated in a metaphoric manner - When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
One's land, one's identity is greater than the sagacious wisdom that maybe thrown their way out of sheer charity of a good Samaritan.
One cannot cut his nose to spite one's face.
All this confrontation is creating chaos around the world and making it volatile. Of course, if the geostrategy is to cause chaos and stand far and watch the rest of the world explode, then the US is on the right lines.
However, the flip side is that it is driving the world away from the US and forcing them to seek solace elsewhere to make the world even more a dangerous place than before.
In fact, it is only encouraging the closing the gap amongst other 'power centres' to the detriment of the world and the US.
US is no longer the economic powerhouse and its unquestioned military supremacy has been eroded, having been bloodied by ragtag Islamic 'unorganised' hordes in Irar and Afghanistan and China, never missing a chance to cock the snook.
This allusion to the reality may upset many a poster, but then that is how its viewed elsewhere.
It is time for the US to get mature and look at its activities more pragmatically and restore its lost sheen.
Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
A different article and by an American, not a Syrian, not an Arab or anyone else from the region, but Robert J. Kennedy (the son of the late RJK). The article's sub-title:
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They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil.
Link:http://www.politico.eu/article/why-t...-intervention/
He starts with:
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In part because my father was murdered by an Arab, I’ve made an effort to understand the impact of U.S. policy in the Mideast and particularly the factors that sometimes motivate bloodthirsty responses from the Islamic world against our country. As we focus on the rise of the Islamic State and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology. Instead we should examine the more complex rationales of history and oil — and how they often point the finger of blame back at our own shores. America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria — little-known to the American people yet well-known to Syrians — sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIL. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely only to compound the crisis.
Worth a read, although you may pause and argue with points he makes.
I've never heard of him before. Wiki hs this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy,_Jr.
The US cannot win the Middle East: six reasons why
Via Open Democracy an article by an Arab heritage academic based in the UK and it starts with:
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This article explores why realist views alone cannot explain the complexity of insecurity in the Middle East and why internal and regional conflicts in the Middle East, since 2003, look endless. What are the alternatives to advocating a single international relations theory to explain different regions with different socio-cultural, political, historical, economic, and security specificities? The Middle East’s particularities can prove the United States wrong in addressing the region’s problems by adopting hard-power policies, at least so far, as it did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
(Ends with) Borders and states might be artificially created but they are contested. Bombing and launching missiles may be considered a strong political message which serves a politician’s domestic interests, but they can never resolve the regional security complex in the Middle East. So far, and for so long, international powers have been serving and seeking their national, economic, military, and political security, but hardly ever pursuing human security.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/alam-saleh/us-cannot-win-middle-east-war-military-six-reasons-why?
Israeli Officers: You’re Doing ISIS Wrong
A curious article via Twitter via Politico by a reporter after a visit to Israel and apparently multiple conversations with IDF officers. It is rare for me to spot such comments. Added here as this thread is general enough to include it, even though the focus is within Syria.
Link:http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...s-wrong-215172