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9/4/2015

TheCurseoftheObamaDoctrine|ForeignPolicy

The Curse of the Obama Doctrine


Take each of the Middle Easts crises they will all get worse before they get better.
BY DAVID ROTHKOPF

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

The Middle East is the place that introduced us to the idea of known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
But even in a region thats now swirling with more uncertainty, mystery, and doubt than ever before, there
are nonetheless a few key known knowns. Examining them produces a picture of a deeply unsettling and
dangerous tomorrow. It also reminds us that at a time of justifiable celebration in the White House over
the Iran deal the president will likely leave behind a map of the region in which that victory is surrounded
everywhere by defeats and setbacks whose negative consequences may only grow worse.

What are the known knowns? First, we know that the Iran deal will happen. Its all over but for the
shouting, and there will surely be plenty of that. But the president will prevail over Congress, and the deal
will go into force. Next, as we look around the Middle East we know, the region is in worse turmoil than it
has been at any time in modern history. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya are in the midst of conflicts that
could redefine the very nature of each of them as nations. The spillover from those conflicts is
burdensome and threatening to neighboring states like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The Israel-Palestine
conflict is at an ugly impasse. Egypt seems sure to struggle further. The Gulf States are being increasingly
drawn into and threatened by the regions conflicts. And Afghanistan, not part of the Middle East
technically but bordering Iran, also seems heading for further crisis.
But I would argue another known known is that this grievous situation is not going to get better anytime
soon. Do the exercise yourself. Project out five years from now: Is it likely Syria will have stabilized? Is it
likely Iraq will have? Yemen? Will Libya? In recent weeks, Ive posed these questions to various experts
from the U.S. military and diplomatic community and from the countries within the region itself. Their
response was always that in all these cases its more likely than not that turmoil will persist not only for
the next five years, but quite possibly for much, much longer than that.

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TheCurseoftheObamaDoctrine|ForeignPolicy

These experts might all be wrong about one or two of these cases. Butit seems unlikely they are wrong. But
heres the one known unknown you can take to the bank: The Middle East is in a period of protracted crisis
and instability, and, as we have seen with each passing day, the collateral damage and knock-on effects
grow worse. While Syria is already the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, having endured more than four
years of war, with hundreds of thousands dead and more than 7 million internally displaced, many more
months and years of war will clearly only exacerbate that. Some 6 million are at severe risk of famine in
Yemen. Libyans crowd onto small rubber rafts and pack into boats in the often vain hope of making their
way to Europe. Refugee camps are posing a potentially unsustainable burden in Jordan and Lebanon.
Unrest is begetting more unrest. One U.S. military leader told me that the Islamic State was reducing its
recruitment efforts because it did not need them more would-be extremists were volunteering.
Continuing in the same vein, try the thought experiment yourself: Do you consider it more or less likely
that extremism will add to the number of countries in crisis in the next five years? In North Africa? Sinai?
Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan? How will falling oil prices exacerbate this? The meddling of a reenergized
Iran?
As bad as all this portends for the Middle East, the current trajectory of these crises now is starting to pose
more material and significant threats to the United States, our allies, and other major powers worldwide. I
am not just talking about the spread of so-called foreign fighters or extremists returning home to places
like Europe and North Africa, real as that likely lingering problem may be.

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TheCurseoftheObamaDoctrine|ForeignPolicy

For example, Europes current refugee crisis is only going to get worse in this scenario. The countries most
seriously impacted will be those in Europes south, already economically weak and likely only to be
weakened further by a coming global economic slowdown. As refugees pour in, what is the inevitable
reaction? Nationalist and right-wing parties will gain as they play on the anxieties of local populations
who fear the economic and social impact of the waves of new arrivals. One of the beneficiaries of this will
be a current patron of those parties Vladimir Putin. He would like to see a weakened European Union,
and his friends in Frances National Front and Italys Northern League and other such groups are his ticket
to pushing back against the progress of EU integration and the strengthening of EU institutions. The
Middle East refugee crisis in this respect is not only a potentially destabilizing burden for Europe, it is also,
therefore, a threat to the Atlantic Alliance and a boon for a troublemaker like the Russian president.
Deteriorating conditions will help other potential bad actors, troublemakers, or rivals. Extremists looking
to destabilize our allies in the Middle East will and they will seek new regions into which they can
extend their influence, as they are already doing in Africa and Southeast Asia. Iran most certainly will. Not
only will they get the vaunted windfall of sanctions relief. Better yet for them, they will get the ties the end
of sanctions will bring. The tens of thousands of business people who will travel to that country in search
of deals will return home to the EU, Asia, and the United States, press for more openness in the
relationship, and advocate on Irans behalf. They will gain a whole new cadre of champions and with them
greater status and leverage. Their sales of oil will also strengthen dependencies on them, notably with
countries like China and India.
Speaking of China, as a big consumer of Middle East oil, the country will also gain leverage in the region
(becoming a major obstacle to putting further pressure on Iran). Beijings One Belt, One Road strategy is
already strengthening ties not only across Southeast Asia but also with key countries bordering the Middle
East, like strategically important and mercurial Pakistan, and is bringing China more influence in
Afghanistan.

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TheCurseoftheObamaDoctrine|ForeignPolicy

Many of the factors that have led the world to this point are endemic to the countries in crisis including
failed regimes, bad governance, economic mismanagement, greed, corruption, historical trends, new
technologies, and the cultivation of extremist views. But it cannot be denied that a contributing factor has
been the policies of the Obama administration. President Barack Obama and those around him have, for
reasons understandable in the context of the failures and missteps of George W. Bushs administration,
sought to disengage from the Middle East. They have argued that the United States should leave these
problems for others to resolve. They have suggested that if there were no clear paths to victory against
potential threats, we should not undertake containing them. They suggested the problems would burn
themselves out or that unnamed others would, despite decades of history to the contrary, resolve them. In
the name of prudence and caution and a desire to avoid past errors, they have embraced a less-is-more
foreign policy that was predicated on the idea that the world and America would be better off if the
planets sole superpower were more reticent, less engaged, and more hesitant not just to use force but to
leave it unclear whether we would use force or not. In fact, I am not sure I blame anyone so much as I
blame the ideas underlying this policy, ideas that crop up periodically in America that we can leave the
business of the world to others and not pay a price.

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Syria was the great test case of this approach. When it was clear that the use of chemical weapons red
line had been crossed (repeatedly), Obama considered action and then thought better of it. While Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad murdered his people and then other extremist groups compounded the problem
with their own brand of mayhem, we contemplated action, but we focused more on finding excuses not to
act than we did on finding effective measures we and others could take that might actually improve the
situation. There were no easy paths forward, no clear good guys among the warring factions, and no ways
we could be assured of satisfactory outcomes. Perhaps most important was the calculation that if we took
no action or very little action, it would not be a problem that impacted us or our allies in any material way.
Of course, this last calculation has proven to be profoundly wrong. That the humanitarian costs of our
inaction have been so grievous only compounds how wrong this thinking was and makes it all the more
poignant. Now, however, virtually any future we can reasonably imagine for Syria makes the extravagant
tragedies of today and the recent past seem small by comparison to the suffering and upheaval likely to
come.
I recall once talking to Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, former top aide to Dwight Eisenhower both in World War
II and when Ike was president. We were talking about the debate over the dubious intelligence that led to
the Iraq War. He scoffed and said Eisenhower would have had little patience for the discussion, because as
an experienced leader he knew intelligence could often be wrong or hazy. He cited an instance when in
1944 Eisenhower was told to ignore German activity near the Ardennes Forest. Two weeks later, the Battle
of the Bulge began. He spoke to me about the doubts that leaders had to deal with and work through,
reminding me that Eisenhower had drafted the letter apologizing for the failure of D-Day before that giant
risk was undertaken. He noted that great leaders often took action because they had to, even when their
options were poor and the outcomes were in doubt, because only through action could they forestall worse
outcomes and create the possibilities that might ultimately bring them to victory.

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TheCurseoftheObamaDoctrine|ForeignPolicy

Cautious and unimaginative leaders never create such chances. And while they may avoid catastrophes
like the Iraq invasion, they also open the door to unintended consequences that actually make their
situations materially worse. (Even if they were not the authors of the problems they created, even if they
could not solve them single-handedly, and even if it would be better, more just, or reasonable that
someone else took the lead.) Further, and sometimes through repeated application of the same brand of
caution, they compound their errors. Getting out of Iraq too quickly helped foster the conditions that led
to the creation of the Islamic State, as did the failure of the United States to act or to effectively lead a
collation in acting in Syria. Coming to the fight against the Islamic State too late and half-heartedly
when we did has not helped. The chaos in Syria and Iraq has now profoundly impacted Turkey, Lebanon,
Jordan, and indeed everywhere that the Islamic State has sewed its poisonous seeds. And it has
empowered Iran greatly.
As a result, even a well-intentioned, potentially positive step like the Iran deal when placed in the
context of a region in turmoil can have profoundly negative consequences if it upsets the regional
balance of power. It further makes already apprehensive neighbors more apprehensive and can trigger
actions among those states predicated on growing anxiety (that we played a role in exacerbating), among
other things.
History, the war in Iraq, and countless other factors have brought the Middle East to where it is today. But
what is also quite clear is that, in conjunction with those things, the abrogation by the worlds leading
power of its leadership responsibilities has contributed to the contemporary tragedy we are witnessing.
Moreover and more importantly it is setting the stage for a future in which future U.S. leaders may be
asked to take risks far greater than those Obama sidestepped in order to contain the cascading
consequences of his inaction, inexperience, and his overabundance of caution.
Photoillustration by FP

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