The USA and the Middle East: Great Sacrifices, Small Rewards

[Wyatt]

With a handful of exceptions, the USA is so far doing only one mistake after the other, and getting involved in ever more affairs that make absolutely no sense -

You must be omnipotent if you have a grasp on the totality of US foreign policy and its implementation.

[CrowBat]

Perhaps. But frankly: I neither care nor have a clue (if one has to be 'omnipotent' or not).

What I do is to study 'obscure' air forces in the Middle East and Africa (sometimes Asia too, see Modern Chinese Warplanes, praised as providing 'the objective and detailed description of China's air forces that has long been missing', by nobody else but Norman Polmar in his review in Proceedings, from June 2013), reasons why they become what they are, why are they equipped and trained the way they are, how they operate, what are their 'lessons learned' etc. Nowadays often outright despised, I consider this practice a follow-up of highly respected 'know your enemy' studies from the 1970s and 1980s.

It might sound surprising at first, but most of the times the air forces in question are developing in the way they do precisely as effect of US foreign policy.

And most of the times that foreign policy has the qualities of what one can only expect to be produced in some kindergarten.

'Classic' example - and then related to the Middle East: I wanted to find out why various Arab air forces began buying 'MiGs' (i.e. Soviet-designed aircraft), their experiences with these, lessons learned etc. That's how the book-series 'Arab MiGs' came into being (here and here the links to Volume 1; presently, we're in the process of putting finishing touches on Volume 5, which is to cover the first few days of October 1973 Arab-Israeli war and is due out in late October this year).

To my big surprise, it turned out this story began with the USA. Why? After Nasser rose to power, he opened peace negotiations with Israel, and negotiated a withdrawal of British troops out of Egypt. Talks with Israel were going on when the clique around Ben Gurion decided to sabotage these negotiations through a series of terrorist attacks on US and British representatives in Egypt (see 'Lavon Affair'). After that, pursuing Ben Gurion's policy of Zionist expansionism (nicely and frankly described to US representatives already in 1947), the Israeli military launched a series of raids against Egyptian border posts too. Under pressure to protect his country, Nasser turned to USA with request for arms (plus economic aid). Washington conditioned delivery of these on Egyptians providing bases for US military. This condition was something Nasser simply could not accept.

Why? Egypt was just about to get rid of British bases and nearly a century of British influence (plus few mileniums of foreign occupation in total). Nobody in Egypt wanted foreign troops in the country any more and thus no sane Egyptian politician could afford letting any other foreign power station its troops in the country.

Result: when Americans turned him down, and British refused to deliver, Nasser turned to China. When China proved unable to deliver, he turned to Czechoslovakia - because this was the very same party that was arming Israel during the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War. The Czechoslovaks agreed to deliver, yet what they had to deliver were 'only' locally-manufactured variants of MiG-15s etc. And so the story of 'Arab MiGs' (a title that symbolises a period of - more or less 'intensive' Soviet involvement- and thus the Cold War in the Middle East too) began. Not trough Egyptian, not through Soviet, but through ill-advised foreign policy of the USA.

Would you describe such negotiations of the administration in the DC for 'clever' or 'well-advised'? Am I 'wrong', perhaps even 'anti-USA' (and, oh, what a horror: 'anti-Israel') if I frankly state that I do not think they were 'clever' or 'well-advised'?

And must I be 'omnipotent' to research, assemble and put this story within its proper context, and draw corresponding conclusions?

[Dayuhan]

I wouldn't know about omnipotent, but if you're seriously claiming to be able to deduce the totality of US policy in the Middle East purely by studying obscure air forces, that could be interpreted as a claim of omniscience... or as a few other things.

[CrowBat]

One thing is sure: I definitely have no trace of comparable skills in denying the obvious - like you do.