What exactly is the post-American Middle East? Part I

 A recent article in the New York Times about sectarian violence in the Middle East grabbed my attention for its use of an interesting foreign policy watchword gaining traction:

“But for all its echoes, the bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing: the emergence of a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds [emphasis added].”

I find it curious how effortlessly the idea of a post-American Middle East has been accepted (if not touted) by some policymakers and reputable foreign policy experts and how outwardly reasonable it sounds within the confines of the article. 

To be fair, the Times did not coin the phrase. I’ve read it recently in other major newspapers, editorials, in reports by the D.C. foreign policy think tank community, and seen the post-American label applied to other regions. Although it could just be a poor choice of words in an otherwise innocuous story about strife in a region long beset by strife, I feel the term hints at a larger political narrative advanced by certain corners of the U.S. foreign policy community that has developed over the past year or so that seeks to define contemporary U.S. policy in the Middle East as failed (I’ll expand on this more in a later post).

The post-American Middle East narrative is centered around the argument that the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 2011 and the aftermath Arab Spring in which several U.S.-backed regimes (and a few not so friendly) fell or were greatly weakened. This has resulted in a dangerous power vacuum that Islamist groups and states with sectarian agendas are ruthlessly exploiting. 

With the guiding hand of American power that supposedly ensured peace and stability among the regional players absent or otherwise constrained and weak, the Middle East is spiraling deeper into conflict and sectarian bloodletting. My chief problem with the post-American Middle East narrative (there are many) is how blatantly disconnected it is with reality and how bizarrely no one else seems to have noticed this given recent events.

Let’s just quickly review a few of the U.S. actions in the supposedly post-American Middle East over the last few months:

• In September, the United States struck a last minute deal with Russia and Syria that required the latter to forfeit its chemical weapons as an effort to avert a U.S. strike against the Assad regime in response to its large scale use of the weapons against rebel-held areas in late August. Apart from international inspections to ensure the Syrian military destroyed its own chemical weapons arsenal, the deal involves a joint military effort between the United States, Russia, China, and several Europe states to shepherd dangerous precursor chemicals out of Syria in order to destroy them at sea on a U.S. naval vessel (Strangely, the destruction at sea only became necessary after no country would allow the chemicals to be disposed of within their borders in an international case of Not In My Backyard).
•  In November, the United States struck a landmark interim deal with Iran in which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear weapons program in exchange for Washington agreeing to ease the international sanctions it imposed over the past few years which have hobbled the Iranian economy.
• In recent weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing forward Middle East peace talks between a reluctant Palestinian Authority and an even more reluctant Israeli government.
• Later this month, a peace conference will hopefully take place in Geneva between the Syrian rebels (although there are several major Islamist opposition groups refusing to attend) and the Assad regime which has been principally arranged by the United States.

Let’s also look at a few broader aspects of U.S. power in the post-American Middle East that are sometimes overlooked. (I’ll keep it to “hard power” for the sake of brevity):

• The United States has military bases in Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti.
• The United State is the key supplier of military hardware and training to the above countries’ armed forces in addition to Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
• The United States maintains a large naval and air presence in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea and without a doubt possesses military superiority over every other country in the region.
• Within the past year, the United States has taken direct covert military action (drone strikes and/or raids by Special Operations Forces) in Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
• The United States is pivotal in either directly supporting or assembling international support (in terms of financing the governments, arranging for peacekeepers, and providing military and police training and equipment) for the makeshift governments in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon and even the Palestinian Authority.
• Oh, and let us not forget the very close U.S.-Israeli military, political, and economic relationship.
• The United States is also the guarantor of Arab-Israeli peace and to this day maintains a small garrison of military observers in the Sinai.

So I’m curious how a post-American Middle East is emerging (or has emerged) while the United States clearly remains the most powerful and influential actor in the Middle East. The United States seems to be wielding its power everywhere in the region and on the diplomatic front the Obama administration seems to be getting its way left and right (whether you think these deals are good or bad is aside the point).

The idea that U.S. power in the Middle East has receded and left swirling chaos in its wake is a bit absurd. That is not to deny, however, the fact there is swirling chaos in several parts of the region. But the United States has never and will never be in control of events in the Middle East. The post-American Middle East narrative confuses power with control (or sometimes termed influence or authority) and therefore identifies weakness at nearly every turn.

Power is the relative distribution of capabilities among actors. The United States remains by far the most powerful actor and thus the most influential actor in the Middle East. But whether U.S. policies are effective or ineffective; or produce unintended outcomes or undesirable second-order effects is a different matter entirely.