Both domestically and on the world stage, the MEC's central impetus has been planned decline - what we here at LITD call The Great Leveling Project. The results have been a success by his standards, and a feeble economy, cultural rot and national endangerment by ours.
Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, examines the foreign-policy component of the Great Leveling Project in an important article at Middle East Quarterly. It's lengthy, but every paragraph is indispensable.
He says the MEC has given lip service to a "pivot to Asia" that has yet to actually materialize, and that he has done so quite consciously at the expense of attention to, and application of anything like a consistent policy toward, the Middle East, the region where jihad of both the Sunni and Shiite varieties originates.
From his early days in power, President Barack Obama has pursued a grand strategy of retrenchment based on the belief that the Bush administration's interventionist policies had severely damaged U.S. standing and that a very different strategy was required: a non-aggressive, multilateral, and noninterventionist approach.[1] This has resulted in the erosion of U.S. clout in several regions, notably Eastern Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East.[2]
Most unambiguous was Obama's intent to reduce the U.S. presence in the Middle East, and the rationale for this policy shift is clear: The region is among the world's most volatile areas with anti-U.S. sentiments particularly rampant.[3] U.S. forces had fought two costly wars there in the past decade, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in an attempt to prevent these states from becoming hotbeds of terrorism and to promote their democratization, only to be taught a painful lesson about the limits of power and the need for greater foreign policy realism.[4] As Washington's deficiency in political engineering in the Middle East became clearer, overseas interventions became less popular at home. This evolution in domestic attitudes facilitated Obama's strategic shift.
The desire for a lower profile in the Middle East was not the only factor behind Washington's retreat from the region. Dependence on energy resources from the Persian Gulf has been reduced, thanks to new technologies that can extract natural gas and oil within the continental United States. The country has, in fact, become an influential producer in the global energy market and is heading toward energy independence. According to an Energy Department report, even with low prices, U.S crude oil production was expected to hit a new record in 2015.[5] Under these new circumstances, the Middle East appears less directly relevant to U.S. interests. However, in the long run, this perspective might prove short-sighted as the decline in energy dependency could be temporary.
The preference to downgrade U.S. involvement in the Middle East was reinforced by Washington's pronounced decision to "pivot" toward China, an emerging global challenger. While Asia has always been important for the United States, Obama emphasized that his administration would no longer be diverted by secondary arenas such as the Middle East and would instead elevate Asia to top priority.[6] Despite such declarations, however, "pivoting to China" remains primarily a slogan with little policy content, only underscoring Washington's inaction and weakness.
As a result of this re-prioritization, the Obama administration has reduced military assets available for projecting power in the Middle East. To take one example, there was a recent period during which there were no aircraft carriers in either the eastern Mediterranean or the Gulf—an unprecedented situation since October 2015. And while officials within the Navy continue to recognize the need for a permanent aircraft carrier presence in the gulf or in its vicinity, the department is going ahead with plans for longer periods during which there will be no carriers in the area at all. A U.S. spokesperson has said that the reduced presence is due, not to lack of need, but to the availability of fewer carriers and the prioritization of the Asia-Pacific.[7]
As President Obama's reluctance to act in the Middle East became clearer, his policies were often viewed within the region as unwise, projecting both weakness and a lack of understanding of Middle Eastern politics. One early example was the administration's initial inclination to try to engage foes, such as Iran or Syria. Other defining moments were the passive approach toward the mass protests against the rigged June 2009 Iranian presidential elections; the desertion of long-time ally Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in February 2011; the "leading from behind" strategy in the Western intervention in Libya in March-October 2011, and the retreat from threats to use force against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for crossing a chemical weapons "red line" that Obama himself had promulgated in August 2012. These decisions contributed to widespread perceptions, both in the Middle East and beyond, that Obama is a weak, unreliable ally with a questionable grasp of regional realities.[8]
The campaign against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sha'm [Greater Syria]) provides additional evidence of the retreat of U.S. power in the Middle East. In August 2014, after a long and confused decision-making process, Washington concluded that ISIS's land conquests were evolving into a significant threat to U.S. interests and ordered its air force to attack ISIS installations and forces in Syria and Iraq.[9] By the summer of 2015, the territory in those areas under ISIS control had indeed shrunk, but ISIS had made gains elsewhere. Unfortunately, the gap between the administration's goals and its willingness to allow its troops to pursue them on the ground has only bolstered ISIS's dual message about the weakness of the decadent West and the group's ability to withstand military pressure.[10] The campaign also illuminated the daunting political and logistical challenges involved in organizing proxies to fight ISIS.[11]All this has implications for the roles of players such as Turkey, Russia and China as well as the nation-states and non-state forces cited above. These countries have some strategic ambitions that, were this still the United States of America, would most definitely run counter to the USA's interests.
The presumptive candidates for president in each of post-America's major parties inspire exactly zero confidence in any informed observer that he or she would be able to repair this damage at all.
The window for injecting any other possible scenario than what we look to be facing narrows by the hour.
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