Allies, Adversaries & Enemies

Allies, Adversaries & Enemies: AMERICA’S INCREASINGLY COMPLEX ALLIANCES A DIVISION OF THE FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES WASHINGTON, D.C. Copyright © 2014 by FDD Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition For more information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to: [email protected], or Permissions, FDD Press, P.O. Box 33249, Washington, D.C. 20033 ISBN: 978-0981971278 Cover design: Beth Singer Design / www.bethsingerdesign.com Publication design: Basis / www.basisbranding.com Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 When U.S. Allies Are Also Adversaries and Enemies: A Growing Trend ........................................................................... 1 Jonathan Schanzer and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross PAKISTAN CHAPTER 2 A Handcuffed Superpower: The U.S., Pakistan, and the Afghanistan War ......................................................................... 13 Daveed Gartenstein-Ross CHAPTER 3 Pakistan’s Proxies, Al-Qaeda’s Allies .......................................... 21 Thomas Joscelyn CHAPTER 4 Back to the Future: The Return to a Pre-9/11 World in Pakistan and Afghanistan .......................................................................... 33 Reuel Marc Gerecht SAUDI ARABIA CHAPTER 5 Sources of American Frustration with Saudi Arabia ................ 43 David Andrew Weinberg CHAPTER 6 The Sequel: How the Saudis are Letting the Radicalism Genie Out of the Bottle, Again ................................ 51 Steven Miller CHAPTER 7 Saudi Arabia: Terror Finance Before and After 9/11 ............... 57 Jonathan Schanzer QATAR CHAPTER 8 Qatar’s Muslim Brothers: A Failing Regional Strategy ............ 65 David Andrew Weinberg CHAPTER 9 Qatari Foreign Policy and Islamist Violent Non-State Actors .... 75 Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Luke Lischin CHAPTER 10 Qatar’s Support for Hamas: A Pattern of Support for Militancy .................................................................. 93 David Barnett TURKEY CHAPTER 11 Turkey Exploits Iran’s Golden Loophole ................................... 99 Mark Dubowitz, Rachel Ziemba & Gary Clark CHAPTER 12 Turkey’s Role in Syria ............................................................... 113 Tony Badran CHAPTER 13 Turkey’s Risky Business with Hamas ....................................... 121 Jonathan Schanzer CHAPTER 14 Iran’s Turkish Proliferation Networks ..................................... 125 Emanuele Ottolenghi CHAPTER 15 Turkey’s Human Rights and Press Freedom ........................... 131 Karen Kaya CONCLUSION CHAPTER 16 Navigating a World of Allies, Adversaries, and Enemies ....... 137 Clifford D. May Acknowledgements This book is the product of more than a year of research and thinking about an emerging problem set that is increasingly a challenge with which America will be forced to contend. As with any contribution to our field, this study cannot be considered definitive: We see this volume as a starting point for studying the Allies, Adversaries and Enemies (AAE) model, with the hope that other scholars will contribute to the discussion about where such alliances may lead, and how they will impact U.S. foreign policy. We would like to extend special thanks to Erin Elfrink of The Dershowitz Group. Erin exhibited unparalleled patience and professionalism during the writing, editing and production of this volume—characteristics shared by all members of The Dershowitz Group’s team with whom we have had the pleasure of working. From the team at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, we would like to thank David Barnett, Henry Appel, Winchester Eubank, and Phil Heaver for research contributions that helped us flesh out the contours of the U.S.’s relationship with the various states examined in this volume. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the exceptional peer review we received from select members of FDD’s National Security Network: Matthew Braffman, Josh Cohen, Michaela Dodge, Zack Gold, Josh Grundleger, Reza Jan, Karen Kaya, Brian Miller, Blaise Misztal, Armin Rosen, Jonathan Ruhe, Jared Sorhaindo, and Alex Vatanka. Beth Singer Design LLC and Matthew Langley deserve praise for the cover design and layout, respectively. Debbie Rubin, now FDD’s go-to proofreader, flagged mistakes and inconsistencies. Finally, we offer our deepest thanks to Steve and Rita Emerson. Without a brainstorming session in the summer of 2013, this project would never have seen the light of day. —Jonathan Schanzer and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Washington, D.C. iii When U.S. Allies Are Also Adversaries and Enemies: A Growing Trend JONATHAN SCHANZER & DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS Foreign policy in the Muslim world has never been simple, but it has become strikingly more complex in recent years. The Arab Uprisings blindsided U.S. planners (even regional specialists failed to see what was coming when revolutionary upheaval was just weeks away) and prompted tough foreign policy questions. Should the United States hasten revolutionary change in order to align with the “Arab street,” as it did in Libya, even though it had little idea what political factions it would empower? Should America instead prefer the stability of longstanding autocrats who, though brutal, at least squelched jihadist movements? Should the United States back heavy-handed counterrevolutionary forces that at least shared certain mutual interests, as it did following Egypt’s 2013 coup? What about countries whose policies simultaneously advance and jeopardize U.S. interests—as is the case with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which (like the United States) have worked to topple Bashar al-Assad, but also allegedly back rabidly anti-American jihadist groups? While questions about complicated American alliances aren’t new, the increasing complexity of some of them is now palpable. A growing list of countries can be considered allies, adversaries, and enemies, all at the same time. To be sure, tensions and imperfect alliances are common in foreign policy: Every country maintains cordial or even close diplomatic ties with others that have sharp differences or diverging interests. For example, it isn’t uncommon to see countries maintain a trade relationship even when their foreign policies clash. Washington’s relationship with China is a case in point. But countries that can be considered allies, adversaries and enemies (AAEs) simultaneously are distinctive in several ways. An ally is a state that cooperates with another for a particular purpose, whether military or otherwise. The distinction between adversary and enemy is somewhat subtle, yet real. When a state is an adversary, there is a real clash of interests or values, but room for compromise. As Michael Ignatieff, a former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, put it, “Today’s adversary could be tomorrow’s ally.”1 In 1 ALLIES, ADVERSARIES & ENEMIES: AMERICA’S INCREASINGLY COMPLEX ALLIANCES contrast, Ignatieff states that “an enemy is someone you have to destroy,” and rather than being laudable, compromise with an enemy “is appeasement.”2 Put another way, a state would like to best its adversary but not destroy it, while conflict with an enemy is a zero-sum game. During the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China was a U.S. adversary rather than an enemy following President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit, which helped produce the normalization of relations between the United States and China. The Soviet Union, in contrast, was an enemy—although it can be argued that the U.S.-Soviet relationship evolved into that of adversaries after Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms finally produced a discernable thaw between the two. What is truly unusual about the AAE phenomenon, from the U.S. perspective, is that an increasing number of countries are now behaving as allies, adversaries, and enemies all at the same time. Consider the case of Pakistan, the U.S.’s first post-9/11 AAE. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship went through several sharp oscillations. Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan had soured by the end of the 1970s because of the military coup that brought General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to power, as well as U.S. concerns about Pakistan’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. But when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan was transformed from pariah into critical strategic asset. The United States and Saudi Arabia channeled enormous sums of money and weaponry to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) to support Afghanistan’s mujahedin factions. Pakistan’s strategic importance declined significantly after the Soviet withdrawal and end of the Cold War, after which American planners viewed events in Afghanistan (inaccurately) as a third-tier problem. Just before the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan had again become a pariah for the same reasons that its international status had plummeted in the late 1970s: nuclear issues (it tested a nuclear weapon in 1998), and a military coup (by General Pervez Musharraf). But the 9/11 attacks again transformed Pakistan into a vital strategic partner due to its geographic proximity to Afghanistan—and also, ironically, because Pakistan had been a major sponsor of the Taliban, which hosted al-Qaeda. American planners wanted to be able to route supplies for military operations in Afghanistan through Pakistani territory, and also ensure that Pakistan ended its 2 INTRODUCTION support for Islamist militant groups. For these

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