10SvnenhSre,NW,Wsigo,DC 03 0.6.80www.aei.org 202.862.5800 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 F empires—most notably, theRussians.AsDavid across theMuslimworldwithotherEuropean era, Londonwasengagedinitsown“greatgame” nineteenth century. Duringmuchofthatearlier some sensetothatoftheBritishEmpireduring position vis-à-vistheMiddleEastcomparablein throughout thetwentiethcenturyinageopolitical vent theRussiansfrompushingin. to ensurethattheoilkeptflowingoutandpre- in theregion,butatadistance,jugglingitsproxies shore balancing,”kepttheUnitedStatesengaged and morallegitimacy. Thisstrategy, knownas“off- of localgovernments,irrespectivetheirpolitical economic, andmilitarypowertopropupanarray quo. Consequently, Americaapplieditspolitical, flated withstability, andstabilitywiththestatus the aftermathofWorld War I.Securitywascon- of thegreaterMiddleEastasroughlyestablishedin United Statessoughttopreservethepoliticalorder cially duringthedecadesofColdWar, the For muchofitshistoryasaworldpowerandespe- By ThomasDonnelly Iraqi FreedomandAmericanHistory regimes oftheMiddleEastagainst European “Britain’s [strategy]wastosupportthenative Thomas Donnellyisaresident fellowatAEI. by definition,agenerationalcommitment. American powerisnowactivelyengagedinreshapingthepoliticalorderofIslamicworld.Thisis, States soughttopreservethestatusquobysupportingarevolvingrogue’s galleryofnativeregimes, American strategyinthegreaterMiddleEast.Inplaceof“off-shorebalancing,”whereinUnited of 2001andthatIraqinthespring2003togethermarkasignificantdeparturefromlongstanding endeavor towhichthepresidenthascommittedournation.TheinvasionofAfghanistaninautumn policy. Itisimportant,however, toplacetheserecentdevelopmentswithinthebroadercontextof there isanewsenseofconfidenceandoptimismaboutthedirectionBushadministration’s foreign W romkin arguesin ith thecaptureofSaddamHusseinanddiminishingnumberattacksonU.S.troopsinIraq, In thisregard,theUnitedStatesfounditself A PeacetoEndAll , cal orderintheMiddleEast accelerated, with tuous yearthatthedisintegration oftheoldpoliti- to theeventsof1979.Itwas during thistumul- dle Easttoradicallyremaking itisintrinsicallytied seeking topreservethepolitical orderintheMid- reading ofhistorymightotherwisesuggest. pol laying thebasisforaninterventionistforeign power becamedrawnintotheMiddleEast— by whichtheirpolitical,economic,andmilitary ber 11attacks.Butforbothnations,theprocess W for thistransformationcameintheformofWorld Middle East.ForBritain,theimmediatecatalyst in favorofdirectmilitaryinterventionthe States ultimatelyabandoned“off-shorebalancing” are attempted—andbothBritainandtheUnited affairs—regardless ofthecenturyinwhichthey doing so.Throughoutthe19 region, buttokeepanyotherEuropeanpowerfrom expansion. Shedidnotdesiretocontrolthe invasion.” against Europeaninterference,subversion,and propping upthetotteringIslamicrealmsinAsia British governmentsthereforepursuedapolicyof ar I;fortheUnitedStates,itwasSeptem- For theUnitedStates,progressionfrom But suchbalancingactsareinherentlydelicate icy—was moreincrementalthanacursory 1 th century, successive J anuary 2004 anuary

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Saddam Hussein openly coming to power in Baghdad, address to articulate America’s willingness to do pre- the Islamist revolution toppling the Shah in Iran, and the cisely this: Soviet Union invading Afghanistan. In many ways, what 1914 was to the old order in Europe, 1979 would be to Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by the Middle East. any outside force to gain control of the Persian At the time, of course, developments in Iran and Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the Afghanistan appeared to be of far greater urgency to vital interests of the United States of America, and American decision makers than the appearance of such an assault will be repelled by any means nec- another dictator in Iraq. And indeed, the United States essary, including military force.2 largely confronted the former challenges in its traditional manner—that is to say, by attempting to balance them Carter’s declaration came with an unspoken but signif- from afar. The rise of fundamentalist Iran, for instance, icant caveat. The United States simply did not have any drove both the Reagan and first Bush administrations to robust conventional military capabilities in the Persian support Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to the mul- Gulf. As Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg later lahs. And while the CIA helped lead a fierce war against recalled: “We knew that we didn’t really have the teeth the Soviets in Afghanistan, it did so largely in the form of to back up the [threat of force in the Middle East]. We covert assistance to another proxy force: the mujahedeen. had nuclear weapons, but not the conventional forces to make it stick if the Soviets chose to challenge it.”3 Maintaining the Status Quo To give substance to the “Carter Doctrine,” the presi- dent authorized the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint The events of 1979 also had more a profound and long- Task Force, an ad hoc military organization that would lasting impact on U.S. policy in the Middle East, how- later be formalized in 1983 by President ever. On the one hand, the hostage crisis—and with it, as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). CENTCOM the disastrous Desert One raid—reinforced the trepida- did not play a significant interventionist role in the Mid- tion among America’s reigning political class about mili- dle East during the 1980s, but instead directed its atten- tary intervention and the unwillingness of the public to tion initially more toward Libyan-led insurrections in accept casualties. In this regard, the American failure in Africa—Operations Early Call and Arid Farmer in Sudan Iran—as subsequently reinforced in Lebanon, Somalia, and Chad, for instance. However, when Saddam Hussein and the aftermath of the U.S. embassy bombings in launched his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the existence of 1998—taught Middle Eastern tyrants, from Saddam CENTCOM (coupled with the implosion of the Soviet Hussein’s Baathists to Osama bin Laden’s jihadists, that Union) provided President George H. W. Bush with far Washington could be defeated by wearing down its greater latitude in mounting a military action in the Mid- willpower through desultory terrorist attacks. Perversely, dle East than had been institutionally available to any of America’s determination to maintain the status quo in his predecessors in the White House. the Middle East—by avoiding too much entanglement Operation Desert Storm still required a massive logisti- with it—helped encourage those within the region most cal and diplomatic effort to deploy a half million troops determined to overrun it. to the Persian Gulf theater. And despite the overwhelm- At the same time, 1979 challenged the ingrained ing force at his disposal in the region, President Bush put assumptions of military planners and strategic thinkers in forward a set of objectives consistent with the conserva- the United States. The collapse of America’s premiere tive, status-quo mindset that governed American foreign proxy state in the Middle East and the specter of Soviet policy in this part of the world. power in South Asia prompted them to imagine a world “The immediate, complete and unconditional with- in which our erstwhile allies failed to turn back the drawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the restoration of enemy. What would the United States do, then, if off- Kuwait’s legitimate government . . . and the restoration of shore balancing became itself unbalanced? security and stability in the region”—this was the defini- Clearly, in such an eventuality, the United States tion of the war that the rest of the world could live with.4 had to be prepared to apply direct military force in the Beating Saddam’s legions back across the border would region—if only as a last resort. Thus, in January 1980, reestablish the preexisting state of affairs in the Middle President used his State of the Union East; pushing on to Baghdad would disrupt it. Thus, even - 3 - as the Bush administration made clear that it would prefer flights under Operation Southern Watch alone), and that Saddam be ousted from power, it was stubbornly punctuated by periodic strikes such as Operation Desert unwilling to aid either the Kurdish or Shia uprisings that Fox in 1998, the American war against Saddam Hussein’s aimed to accomplish precisely this. If there were to be a regime continued for more than twelve years. successor to Saddam, he would ideally be another Sunni military strongman; the policy, in the words of one admin- Challenging the Status Quo istration insider, was to get rid of Saddam, not his regime. The first Bush administration’s approach to Iraq was But whereas through the 1990s, America’s massive mili- consistent with its general approach to national security, tary capability in the Persian Gulf was justified in the as manifest in its management of the Soviet collapse: it name of preserving the status quo as established in the tended to fret about the unraveling of old power bal- aftermath of the Gulf War, President George W. Bush has ances rather than celebrate the liberty of formerly cap- explicitly rejected this formulation. As he remarked in his tive nations. As General Colin Powell, then chairman groundbreaking speech before the National Endowment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained in his biography: for Democracy in November: “Our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bit- Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accom- terly hostile to the United States.”5 Quoting historian modating the lack of freedom in the Middle East John Keegan, Powell insisted that Desert Storm fulfilled did nothing to make us safe—because in the long “the highest purpose of military action: the use of force run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of in the cause of order.”6 In their memoir, A World Trans- liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place formed, President Bush and his national security adviser, where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a Brent Scowcroft, likewise made clear that regional sta- place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready bility in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East was the for export. And with the spread of weapons that primary goal. Otherwise, they wrote, “We would be com- can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to mitting ourselves—alone—to removing one regime and our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status installing another. . . . We would be facing some dubious quo.9 ‘nation-building.’”7 The idea of a “desert democracy,” as Powell put it, was “naïve.”8 This recognition is a remarkable departure from previ- This was the accepted wisdom among those in power ous policy. In this regard, too, it is useful to take a page at the time of the Gulf War, with the Middle East still a from history. While Britain largely succeeded in its mili- security concern secondary to Europe. But in the after- tary and diplomatic attempt to redraw the Middle East, math of this conflict, it became readily apparent that the the effort stumbled on the home front: containment of Saddam would itself require a significant military commitment by the United States. Although Between 1914 and 1922, Britain changed, and then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had promised British officials and politicians changed their minds, the Saudis, “We will stay until justice is done but not so that by 1922—when they formally committed stay a minute longer,” America’s military capability in themselves to their program for remaking the Mid- the Persian Gulf remained, by necessity, robust through dle East—they no longer believed in it. . . . Britain the 1990s. [thus embarked] on a vast new imperial enterprise Indeed, there was no real break in contact between the in the Middle East—one that would take genera- U.S. and Iraqi militaries from the March 1991 ceasefire tions to achieve, if its object were to remake the agreement at Safwan until the March 2003 launch of Middle East as India had been remade—at the very Operation Iraqi Freedom. From Operation Provide Com- time that the British public was turning to a policy fort in 1991, a belated measure of protection to the Kurds of scaling down overseas commitments and was in northern Iraq following their uprising against Saddam, deciding it wanted no more imperial adventures.10 through the establishment of the “Northern Watch” and “Southern Watch” no-fly-zones (which resulted in a It remains to be seen whether American society will greater number of aircraft sorties than Operations Desert endorse the president’s vision for a new Middle East pol- Storm and Iraqi Freedom combined—more than 150,000 icy; the election next November will in part be the first - 4 - referendum on it. While every creditable Democratic http://www.artsandmedia.net/cgi-bin/dc/newsdesk/ candidate acknowledges the necessity of deploying mili- 2003/03/18_centcom_1?t=print. tary force against the forces of terrorism, the central 4. George H. W. Bush, “Letter to Congressional Lead- tenet of the president’s Middle East policy—that the ers on the Deployment of Additional United States people of the United States will be made safe only when Armed Forces to the Persian Gulf,” November 16, 1990. the people of the region are made free—is certain to Available at http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1990/ remain a point of intense debate, even within the Bush 90111614.html. administration itself. 5. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (: Random House, 1995), 531. Notes 6. Ibid, p. 528. 7. George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World 1. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, (New Transformed (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 433. York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), 27. 8. Powell, My American Journey, 527. 2. President Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union 9. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at Address,” January 21, 1980. Available at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/ for Democracy,” November 6, 2003. Available at speeches/su80jec.phtml. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/ 3. Jennifer Huang, “A Cold War Legacy of 20031106-2.html. Persian Gulf Conflict,” Newsdesk.org. Accessed at 10. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 19.

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