Diplomacy & Crisis News

If President Donald Trump accomplished anything during his four years in office, it is that he broke the pre-existing U.S. foreign policy consensus, upending previously held beliefs regarding China, Arab-Israeli relations, European dependence on Russian energy, and more. While many may decry and fight over the particular details of his administration’s policies and changes, no one disputes that his term in office brought marked change to America’s foreign policy.

Yet despite Trump’s legacy and the new opportunities that he created for change in America’s foreign policy, the Republican Party is now entering the U.S. presidential primary season with a significant problem on its hands: a weak foreign policy agenda.

This has led to some confused head-scratching. The past few years have seen much energetic discussion on the future of conservative and Republican foreign policy, yet relatively little in terms of concrete proposals. The most recent example of such is an essay in Foreign Affairs written by Dan Caldwell, the new(ish) vice president at the Center for Renewing America. In his essay, Caldwell persuasively lays out the case for why Republicans should adopt a more restrained foreign policy. He correctly notes the hard “economic, military, and political limitations” that the United States faces and suggests quite reasonably that policymakers should make necessary adjustments, with a few broad recommendations worth considering.

Yet these types of articles, and the discussion they encourage, miss the point. The problem Republicans face is not in determining what set of principles or values should guide U.S. foreign policy: that issue has more or less been intellectually settled in most Republican circles in favor of restraint. Even foreign policy elites who disagree must operate in an environment where public opinion is very much in favor of restraint-oriented views; running for higher office without endorsing such positions is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, it is likely that restraint-oriented policies will only become more widely accepted as policymakers come to grips with the reality that the country does confront real limitations amidst a changing global geopolitical context.

Rather, the real problem is that Republicans are unable to formulate, advocate, and implement specific policies due to political and ideological constraints.

American Foreign Policy has Factions…

Understanding Republicans’ current inability requires diving into unfolding factional politics within both the Republican Party and the broader U.S. foreign policy establishment. Majda Ruge and Jeremy Shapiro, experts at the European Council on Foreign Relations, proposed a suitable framework last year that works rather well, describing three “tribes” that have emerged within conservative foreign policy. I will borrow some, but not all, of their terminology—starting by noting these groups are more factions than tribes, as they are less cohesive in their loyalties and cohesion than the word “tribe” would indicate.

In any case, there are three primary factions in conservative U.S. foreign policy: the Primacists, the Pragmatists, and the Restrainers.

Primacists, as their name implies, believe in the primacy of U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic leadership, and believe that such should be maintained worldwide. They reject—or at least, contest—the idea that the United States lacks the necessary resources for maintaining this foreign policy stance, and often advocate for a strong engagement abroad in all forms.

Restrainers, by contrast, hold the opposite view: they believe in the exercise of restraint, especially military, in the conduct of foreign affairs, and that Americans are better served focusing on domestic priorities. Restrainers believe America should lead by example, rather than through direct leadership, and that, given limited resources and capabilities, strong foreign engagement should be reserved only for when the most important of national interests are at stake—a categorization which, they contend, is often abused by primacists, who tend to classify everything as a significant national interest.

Between these are the Pragmatists. Shapiro and Ruge use the term “Prioritisers” instead, though I disagree with its usage, on the basis that the latter implies agreement with Primacists on American leadership but disagreement over its focus. Pragmatists are not necessarily wedded to that notion of U.S. primacy—they agree it holds significant advantages and can be a force for “good,” but are cognizant of its material and reputational costs. Like Restrainers, Pragmatists note that U.S. resources—and thus U.S. foreign policy options—are limited, but do not take the view that such should preclude the United States from being actively engaged abroad. They believe that there is a strict hierarchy of U.S. national interests and that each issue should get the attention and resources it warrants.

…and Sub-Factions

What Ruge and Shapiro’s framework misses, however, is that within these factions are various competing sub-factions, each with their own agenda and set of beliefs. They both cooperate and compete both with sub-factions and without their respective factions for political capital, resources, and policy-setting power. It is here that the Republican Party’s problem starts to appear.

I would like to note that the following list of sub-factions is neither exhaustive nor authoritative—I have no doubt that more could be conceived and described, and that many will debate over various aspects of my categorization. While I welcome such debate, I would just like to note that at present my intention is simply to help illustrate to readers the dynamics at play within U.S. foreign policy.

For example, within the Primacist camp there are neoconservatives, neoliberals, and hegemonists. Neoconservatives believe in using military power and interventionism to spread liberal democracy and American values throughout the world. Closely tied, but not necessarily the same, are the neoliberals, who are more economically oriented and support the spread of free market capitalism and the reduction of impediments to the free flow of capital. Hegemonists, compared to neoconservatives, are more defensive in nature; they firmly believe in the benefits of U.S. primacy (both to the country and to the world at large), and perhaps even that it is a force for good, but do not take the view that defending such requires actively spreading American values through force of arms.

Restrainers are more varied. On the political Right, Paleoconservatives draw heavily from traditional conservative values and advocate for a non-interventionist foreign policy. Less partisan are the Multipolarists, who both accept and advocate the transition from an American-led unipolar international order to a multipolar one as a matter of practical necessity—and this begins with exercising restraint in foreign policy. Finally, as a small but very real (and controversial) minority are the Neo-Isolationists, who stand for avoiding international entanglements and focusing on domestic issues, while opposing involvement in foreign conflicts or alliances, including NATO.

Pragmatists, as per their nature, are perhaps the most technically oriented (broadly understood) of the lot. Because of this, intra-pragmatcist debates center on how foreign policy issues should be practically approached, rather than debating underlying principles and values. Defense Prioritizers, for example, focus on addressing the highest kind of national interests—strategic interests—from a military perspective. Less martial are the National Developmentalists: devout Hamiltonians who approach issues from an economic perspective, firmly believing that considerations about the nation’s economy and national industry should form the true basis of foreign policy decisionmaking. After all, a nation cannot fight a war if it can’t even produce the requisite hardware and ammunition, which in turn requires all sorts of supply chains and industrial capacity. Diplomatists, meanwhile, approach problems from a diplomatic perspective, and take the view that far more could be done to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives via burden-sharing and off-loading responsibilities to American allies and partners—and that the U.S. foreign policy community in general, from the diplomatic corps to the intelligence community, does a poor job understanding what is actually happening abroad.

These various groupings are not equal in terms of size, political strength, and influence. When you factor in their diverse interests and agendas, one can start to see how collaboration and competition, both within and without, become necessary. This leads to constant politicking, as each sub-faction seeks to form a coalition with like-minded groups on one issue or another. This, however, also creates the potential for failure, which is what the Republican Party may be experiencing right now.

The NatCon Revolution and its Discontents

For the past thirty-odd years, the Republican Party’s foreign policy has been dominated by primacists, particularly neoconservatives and neoliberals. Restrainers maintained a steady opposition to this state of affairs—especially paleoconservatives. Trump’s election and presidency shattered the GOP establishment’s dominance over policy, with primacists (neoconservatives and neoliberals) specifically targeted for their culpability in advocating for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, among other ruinous and expensive foreign interventions, geoeconomic and trade policies, and so on.

The political movement that Trump spawned, the National Conservatism (NatCon) movement, is playing the long game, aiming to take over the GOP and its various institutions. Already it has achieved measurable progress, helping elect new legislators and influencing sitting ones. Yet while the movement seems to be coalescing on its domestic policy prescriptions, foreign policy remains muddled. There are five reasons for this, and they all have to do with factional dynamics.

First, there is sharp disagreement between the various sub-factions over what America’s immediate foreign policy priority should be. Paleoconservatives and other culture-war-focused groupings have established a dominant position within the NatCon movement, and argue that tackling domestic cultural issues, especially the “woke” movement, should be of utmost concern. They contend that America’s orientation toward a primacist foreign policy is significantly influenced (if not wholly determined) by liberal ideology. Thus, fundamentally reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward greater restraint requires focusing on fighting the culture war at home.

Others are of a different opinion. Primacists, many pragmatists, and even some other restrainer sub-factions take the view that focusing overwhelmingly on the domestic culture war is misguided at best, and politically reckless at worst—especially given that the U.S. public is more concerned about inflation, the economy, and other material issues. Many of these sub-factions instead argue that addressing China should be America’s foremost foreign policy priority, only to be met with counter-arguments (including from within their own sub-factions) that an aggressive focus on countering China risks opening the door for neoconservatives to take over again. These voices, which include many national developmentalists, contend that the primary focus should be addressing pressing material realities—the international competition for key resources, the state of the economy, and so on—and that China should be the focus insomuch as it serves as a threat by which various policies and budgets can be justified.

Second, even without fully determining what Republicans’ foreign policy priorities should be, there is strong disagreement over how they should be addressed. Consider, for example, the intra-pragmatist debate on China. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, perhaps the most prominent defense prioritizer, strongly advocates that the United States should pursue a strategy of denial to contain China’s territorial ambitions, with Taiwan being key to this entire endeavor. Meanwhile, David P. Goldman, a notable national developmentalist and Spengler columnist for Asia Times, views this as a misguided endeavor—the real competition with China is happening in the realms of technology and economics, and America will lose if it does not properly prioritize, fund, and reform how it conducts research and development.

Given an environment of limited resources and political capital, such debates over what should be politically prioritized matter a great deal.

Third, the very framing of these debates—focusing on pressing priorities—means that various topics receive practically zero consideration. There is, for example, almost no discussion on what NatCon (and Republican) policy toward Africa and Latin America should be, to say nothing about what Republican policy toward specific countries within these regions should be. At most, there are general calls to challenge Chinese encroachment and, in the Latin American context, for the reimposition of the Monroe Doctrine—an idea certainly not welcome by the region’s inhabitants. Diplomatists are in veritable despair at the lack of consideration being given to these issues.

Fourth, Republicans (and conservatives in general) are currently in an unfavorable position in regard to foreign policy hiring. The profession, by its nature, imposes various requirements on its practitioners: holistic proficiency in a variety of intellectual subjects (history, economics, diplomacy, military science, etc.); strong critical thinking skills; knowledge of a foreign language (or several); an understanding of and exposure to foreign cultures, customs, and mores; a strong capacity for writing/arguing well; geographical residence in more-expensive urban environments for proximity to relevant/key institutions; and so on. Not all of these are necessary for an individual to be involved in foreign policy decisionmaking, of course. But even then, the requirements are such that foreign policy tends to be an elite-dominated profession, with a minor tendency to skew to the political Left due to the concentration of jobs and institutions in major metropolitan cities, which trend politically liberal.

As such, conservatives tend to have a harder time recruiting professionals in foreign policy-relevant fields. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that most existing conservative non-university supplementary educational institutions overwhelmingly focus on teaching conservative political philosophy, to the detriment of other subjects. This affects foreign policy factional composition. For example, there are far more paleocons than pragmatists, relative to the general population. Particularly rare are Republican Diplomatists with experience living abroad or serving in the State Department. The overall resulting lack of expertise and experience means that Republicans, and especially the NatCon movement, face an uphill battle.

Fifth, restrainers are constrained by the fact that major key institutions and talent pipelines—Congressional offices, think tanks, major publications, government agencies, and so forth—remain politically dominated by primacists. Pragmaticists suffer from the same issue but to a lesser degree, as they can collaborate with and take advantage of primacist-dominated institutions and programs. Although both factions have begun building new rival training programs, policy journals, popular magazines, professional associations, and policy-focused think tanks, along with efforts to change existing institutions, these will take time, financing, and concentrated effort. Moreover, worries over who specifically controls these new institutions and the agenda-setting process may hamper overall efforts.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Republicans’ inability to advance from agreement on underlying foreign policy principles has left them stuck, unable to formulate and implement a coherent foreign policy. In the meantime, the party has become vulnerable to being outflanked by Democrats, who now take NatCon/Republican ideas and pursue them with vigor.

For instance, though the Trump administration reintroduced protectionism and industrial policy into public discourse, arguing such measures are necessary to bring back manufacturing jobs from China, it is Democrats who have marched ahead with these changes. See no further than the Inflation Reduction Act, de facto a $500 billion green industrial policy bill, or the CHIPS Act, which two commentators accurately described as a “market-shaping measure designed to eliminate systemic geopolitical risk to the supply of critical goods, while also recasting the socioeconomic geography of domestic industrial production.” In other words, the sort of stuff that Republican national developmentalists advocated for during the Trump administration.

Other examples abound. The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) essentially builds upon the Trump-era 2018 NDS. The Biden administration’s trade policy is a continuation of Trump’s policy, with some improvements. Likewise, the push toward great power competition, pioneered by the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy, has been kept and expanded.

Republican restrainers are in an increasingly awkward position: unable to fully claim credit for restrain-oriented policies—such as Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the potential forthcoming repeal of the Iraq War authorization for the use of military force. Their positions are being normalized, but by Democrats. Meanwhile, restrainers are also confronting the reality that the present Republican Party gridlock has created an opening by which primacists can reassert themselves. This is playing out in debates over U.S. support for Ukraine, what should be done about Mexico’s drug cartels, the contours of U.S. China policy, and so on. Pragmatists, on the other hand, are growing frustrated by the situation and a perceived lack of Republican seriousness on various issues—and are reconsidering their options, especially in light of Democrats’ newfound interest in adopting pragmatists’ preferred policy prescriptions.

Much can still change in the coming months, especially as the U.S. Republican presidential primary begins to heat up. The campaign trail will force both candidates and their supporters—including would-be foreign policy advisors, key institutions, and others—to become serious about their foreign policy agenda. Whether this will be enough to overcome existing divisions and disagreements, however, remains to be seen.

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

In mid-March, the White House issued a major ultimatum to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance: divest from the popular social media app or risk fighting a national ban. It took the Biden administration too long to take action, but it is now following its predecessor’s lead and reinvigorating the pressure campaign that began in late 2020. Given TikTok’s record of censorship, legitimate espionage concerns, and the platform’s legal obligation to comply with an authoritarian regime that has, for decades, committed egregious human rights violations, it’s about time that Washington clamped down on the controversial company.

TikTok became a household name during the early days of the pandemic and has not waned in its global popularity, with its current user base exceeding one billion. The video-sharing platform has even prompted legacy competitors, like Instagram and YouTube, to roll out features that mimic the short-form content models that TikTok provides. In many ways, the app is an exemplar of innovation organically displacing dominant incumbents—the powerful “Big Tech”—in a market that many lawmakers believe has insurmountable barriers for new competitors. TikTok provides a conduit for free expression, a source of income for content creators, and a means by which users can find levity and entertainment. These are valuable societal benefits. Yet they do not negate nor supplant the company’s inseparable ties to the Chinese government.

As Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers said during this week’s TikTok hearing, “ByteDance is beholden to the [Chinese Communist Party], and ByteDance and TikTok are one and the same.” Her statement is accurate: Article Seven of China’s National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, states that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to the law.” This responsibility can manifest in a variety of forms. The state can require TikTok to grant access to user data, circulate disinformation, or modify the recommendation algorithms that filter content.

Organizations and citizens must also protect “any state intelligence work secrets of which they are aware.” TikTok’s CEO claims that the government has never asked for assistance with espionage, and that the company would not comply with such requests if asked. Given these legal obligations, however, such promises are cold comfort.

Despite the CEO’s comments, evidence suggests that TikTok is heeding the state’s orders. In 2020, Elizabeth Kanter, a TikTok executive, admitted during a British parliamentary hearing that the company censored videos about the humanitarian crisis in Xinjiang. Kanter stated that there were “some incidents where content was not allowed on the platform, specifically with regard to the Uyghur situation.”

The Chinese government exercises this discrete yet influential form of control, especially in the technology sector. It has recently moved to acquire, by compulsion, “golden shares” in private firms like Alibaba and Tencent, giving officials an even greater foothold in the business world while bolstering its power and surveillance capabilities. These realities should inform how the U.S. government perceives TikTok as a national security threat.

In 2019, the social media platform promised to stop accessing clipboard content on users’ devices. Several months later, Apple’s privacy transparency feature revealed the practice continued unabated. TikTok has been fined for collecting information from minors and sued for harvesting personal data, all without consent. As a general rule, private companies should not need to earn political favor in order to operate in the United States. But compounded with China’s propensity to involve itself with its businesses and engage in espionage—let’s not forget the spy balloon—this unwillingness to respect privacy is problematic.

Other countries are attuned to this threat as well. The United States, in addition to the United Kingdom, the European Union, New Zealand, and Canada, have restricted government employees from downloading TikTok on their work devices.   

Banning TikTok or forcing divestment will not give the United States an upper hand in the ongoing conflict with China. But it will impede the Chinese government from leveraging a platform that has become ubiquitous in American society. 

Rachel Chiu is a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Economic Opportunity and a contributor for Young Voices. She tweets @rachelhchiu.

Image: rafapress / Shutterstock.com

In early March, oil and gas firms Chevron and Talos Energy announced their intention to triple the size of the proposed Bayou Bend carbon capture and storage hub, which will collect and store greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities along the Gulf Coast. The expanded hub could store more than one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), making it one of the largest carbon storage projects in the world upon completion.

Not everyone is convinced that recent progress on large-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects is good news. Critics argue that CCUS technology is costly, unproven, and will give fossil fuels an undesirable “new lease on life.” But if the world is serious about addressing climate change, we should welcome forward momentum on this critical technology.

CCUS technology—which captures CO2 emissions from industrial facilities and reuses or stores them underground—supports the energy transition in several ways. These include reducing emissions from existing power plants; providing decarbonization solutions in hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, iron and steel, and chemical manufacturing; supporting the rapid scaling up of low‐carbon hydrogen production; and enabling negative emissions technologies like direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.

The world’s leading energy and climate bodies agree that CCUS will play a significant role in a net-zero world. The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its Net Zero by 2050 flagship report, cites CCUS as a “key pillar of decarbonization” that could account for up to one-fifth of global emissions reduction requirements. Of the seven “Illustrative Mitigation Pathways” that limit global warming to below 1.5°C identified in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, the sole pathway that does not include CCUS also requires global energy demand to halve in the next three decades—an unrealistic scenario given that energy demand is expected to increase as developing countries industrialize and urbanize. If we trust that climate change is as urgent and dangerous as the world’s leading scientists say it is, we should also take their word on the necessity of CCUS.

Today, nearly 80 percent of global energy supply comes from fossil fuels; these cannot be replaced by renewables overnight. Even if global fossil fuel use declined, in a straight line, to zero in 2050, the cumulative CO2 emissions over that period from the energy sector would amount to roughly 500 gigatons of CO2. Without CCUS, these emissions would make limiting global average temperature rise to 2°C extremely difficult, if not impossible, in light of emissions from other sectors before these can be eliminated. Clearly, CCUS is not only important but close to indispensable for meeting internationally agreed targets.

CCUS has a proven track record of safe, effective use across a range of applications. CO2 injection and storage in the subsurface has been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) since the 1970s. Pure storage, without EOR, began in 1996. CCUS is often dismissed as prohibitively expensive, but there are around thirty-five commercial CCUS facilities already in operation today, and improved tax incentives, like those in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, are making it increasingly economically competitive. Moreover, technological improvements, experience and learning, and scaling up will almost certainly drive the cost down over time, just as they did for wind and solar over the last twenty years. But concerns about price perhaps miss the point: the cost of CCUS pales in comparison to the climate damages it could prevent. It would be folly to invest only in the cheapest climate solutions.

CCUS is the key to satisfying the “energy trilemma”—our often-conflicting pursuit of energy security, affordable energy access, and environmental sustainability—which has been made more salient by the war in Ukraine. CCUS will play a particularly important role in retrofitting Asia’s existing fleet of predominately coal-based power plants, which are some of the youngest and most efficient in the world. With CCUS retrofits, these plants can avoid early retirement and continue operating with substantially reduced emissions—averaging 85 percent CO2 capture—providing affordable, reliable electricity while still delivering on national and global decarbonization and energy security goals. U.S. leadership on CCUS could provide a technological path to help major emitters like China and India accelerate their domestic deployment of CCUS.

We’re going to need every tool in the toolkit, including CCUS, to solve the climate crisis. Today, CCUS projects are already burying millions of tons of CO2 each year, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed. Despite recent progress, currently planned CCUS capacity for 2030 represents just 20 percent of that required in the IEA’s net zero emissions scenario. To get on track for 2050, we need a swift and major ramp-up, with more large-scale CCUS hubs like Bayou Bend to turn those millions of tons into billions.

Mohammed Al-Juaied is a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a Courtesy Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the Clean Combustion Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. He has more than twenty-five years of experience in R&D, commercialization, and project management of emerging energy technologies, including carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

Image: Anne Coatesy/Shutterstock.

The Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement, formally known as the Joint Trilateral Statement, was brokered by China in Beijing on March 10 and has since been hailed as a significant diplomatic breakthrough. This development could have far-reaching implications for countries where Iran and Saudi Arabia vie for regional influence and fuel proxy conflicts, including Lebanon. The agreement has drawn expert analysis and commentary from both regional and global sources, evaluating the broader and more specific consequences of the deal on the security of the region, particularly for the Gulf states. This follows decades of animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which reached a fever pitch in 2019 with drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group amidst widespread suspicion that Iran was the actual perpetrator behind the attack.

The agreement gives Iran and Saudi Arabia two months to restore full diplomatic relations and reopen their respective embassies after having formally severed ties in 2016, following the execution of Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia. Most notably, the trilateral statement asserts that both sides agree to respect the principle of state sovereignty and the “non-interference in internal affairs of states.” Although China led the agreement, it came after two years of prior mediation efforts by Iraq and Oman, which facilitated formal bilateral talks between both sides since early 2021.

Lebanese analysts and commentators are speculating whether this Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement will help alleviate tensions simmering across Lebanon and lead to the election of a compromise president for the country. Lebanon has been grappling with a persistent presidential election deadlock for over four months and is in the midst of a severe economic crisis, which the World Bank has deemed as one of the worst since the 1850s. The nation has also been governed by a caretaker government with limited powers since the parliamentary elections in May 2022.

While observers and politicians generally concur that it is too early to gauge the deal’s impact on the Lebanese situation, some believe it may ease tensions between political parties and foster a positive environment for sustained negotiations. Nevertheless, caution remains the prevailing sentiment, as intra-Lebanese dialogue might prove more difficult than anticipated, given the country’s prudence amidst a national crisis, and rapidly evolving geopolitical consequences.

To date, Iran has not officially commented on the potential repercussions of the agreement on Lebanese politics or the current deadlock. However, a few hours after the announcement, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Faisal Bin Farhan, provided the only official statement from a senior Saudi government official. He remarked that Lebanon requires “a Lebanese rapprochement and not an Iranian-Saudi one,” adding that Lebanese politicians must prioritize Lebanon’s interests above all else. In a related development, the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Boukhari, met with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri on March 13. When asked if there were any positive developments for Lebanon, Boukhari briefly replied, “certainly.”

However, following the announcement of the Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement, attention naturally shifted toward the reaction of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Nominally, the group welcomed the deal. However, in a televised speech shortly after the announcement, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah struck a cautious tone. He emphasized that while the deal is an “important development”—if it follows its natural course—Hezbollah is firmly convinced that it should not come at its expense. Nasrallah added that Iran does not impose its stances on Hezbollah.

Similarly, Hezbollah’s opponents in Lebanon also expressed caution following the agreement’s announcement. Samir Geagea, a prominent Lebanese politician and leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, which is close to Saudi Arabia and made significant gains in the 2022 parliamentary elections, emphasized that the presidential election battle is a local concern. He stated that it is “in the hands of the 128 parliamentary deputies who are ready to vote to elect a president today before tomorrow,” adding that the presidential election should not be influenced by external factors. Lebanese Forces member of parliament (MP) Pierre Bou Assi expressed skepticism about the deal, doubting its potential benefits for Lebanon. Fares Saiid, a former Christian MP and staunch critic of Hezbollah and Iranian influence in Lebanon, suggested that the effects of the deal might take months to reach Lebanon. He emphasized that Christians in Lebanon and its constitution should uphold their Arab identity, given Hezbollah’s and its allies’ allegiance to Iran. 

Following Nasrallah’s speech, several observers, including Geagea, highlighted one of his statements made just a few days before the agreement. Nasrallah had said that those expecting an Iranian-Saudi deal to resolve the presidential stalemate would have to wait for a long time, leading some to conclude that he had no prior knowledge of the upcoming agreement. This prompted online commentators to derisively question the extent to which Iran consults with Hezbollah on its affairs, given the significance of the deal.

In general, when considering the entire deal and its broader regional implications beyond Lebanon, Saudis appear more cautious and moderate in their expectations, while Iranian officials and observers tend to frame it as a victory against the United States and Israel. This perspective seems to arise against the backdrop of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. For example, Faisal Ben Farhan recently attempted to temper grand expectations for the deal’s all-encompassing regional impact, stating that while the agreement aims to pave the way for restoring diplomatic relations, it will not necessarily resolve all disputes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In contrast, Yahya Safavi, the Iranian top military advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, expressed high hopes, framing the agreement as the beginning of the decline of American and Zionist hegemony in the region.

Similar overstatements were also reflected in some of Hezbollah’s statements following the deal. The group began publicizing the agreement as a victory for Iran’s axis of resistance in the region, claiming that Saudi Arabia prioritized Yemen over Lebanon because it seeks to exit the brutal Yemeni war. For instance, Nabil Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s Central Council, said that with the deal, the Middle East has now entered a new phase detrimental to US and Israeli interests, as their aspirations to normalize relations with Israel did not lead to Iran’s isolation. 

At its core, the presidential election stalemate in Lebanon is primarily due to a political standoff between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies on one side, and pro-Western Sunni and Christian groups backed by Saudi Arabia on the other. The conflicting parties have been at odds since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 and Syria’s subsequent withdrawal from Lebanon after decades of occupation.

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Lebanon dates back to years before the Syrian withdrawal and is largely shaped along sectarian fault lines. Since then, Saudi Arabia and Iran have more aggressively supported opposing factions in the country. Post-Syria Lebanon saw Saudi Arabia primarily seek to mobilize the Sunni sect, largely represented by the Future Movement party founded by the late Rafik Hariri. Meanwhile, Iran aimed to grow and entrench its influence through its proxy, Hezbollah. Most consequentially, the Shiite-Sunni conflict in post-Syria Lebanon reached a crisis point when Hezbollah and its major ally, the Shiite Amal party, took control of West Beirut in a military operation on May 8, 2008. This was in retaliation for then-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government’s decision to disband Hezbollah’s telecommunications network and oust the airport security chief affiliated with the group.

However, in recent years, Saudi Arabia has largely disengaged from Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s growing influence in Lebanese politics, its sway over the Lebanese state, and its reported military support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been involved in a proxy war with Iran. According to a report by the New York Times, Saudi Arabia’s dismay with Iranian and Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanese politics came to a head in 2017 when former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, resigned from his post in a televised statement from Riyadh. Hariri was reportedly forced to do so after being detained in the kingdom; both Hariri and Saudi Arabia denied the allegations. However, more recently, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states recalled their envoys from Lebanon in October 2021 over criticism by the then-Lebanese Information Minister of Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ intervention in Yemen. The ambassadors returned to Lebanon in April 2022, signaling improving relations. 

In essence, the conflict in Lebanon is primarily a consequence of a power struggle between sectarian groups competing for political influence and enhanced socioeconomic advantages, rather than being solely the result of regional strife. This strife is compounded by a sectarian power-sharing system, which has been in place since Lebanon’s independence in 1943 and often comes at the expense of a strong state. Due to this power-sharing agreement, sectarianism in Lebanon has consistently played a fundamental role in shaping politics, often serving as a form of socioeconomic and political power that intersects with domestic, regional, and international contests. These dynamics are further marked by ever-shifting domestic alliances that mirror mutating regional and international power dynamics.

In parallel, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also largely political, contrary to what many analyses characterize as being merely sectarian, involving proxy wars across the region. It represents a ceaseless search for leadership over the Muslim world since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. As Lebanese journalist and political analyst Nadim Koteich notes in a recent lecture, Iran embraced Shiite doctrine in the sixteenth century as a result of a political decision, and since then, Shiism has served politics, not the other way around. He adds that sectarianism is a tool employed by regional powers to serve broader interests.

In concluding their agreement, both Iran and Saudi Arabia now appear to have prioritized the prosperity of their economies and the reduction of regional security tensions. Iran is facing an economic crisis and increasing isolation due to its nuclear program and, more recently, its evident support for Russia in the Ukrainian war. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia seems to have chosen to return to a calmer foreign policy for the sole purpose of focusing on its economic Vision 2030, free from Iranian security threats. 

However, Iran and Saudi Arabia are not the only significant foreign actors in Lebanon. Notably, France and the United States also collaboratively play essential roles in Lebanese politics, with the United States being indispensable in potentially reintegrating Lebanon into the international financial system amidst the country’s imminent economic collapse.

As Mohanad Hage Ali opines at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, Saudi Arabia is part of a five-country coordination group over Lebanon’s financial crisis, which includes the United States, France, Qatar, and Egypt. This group collectively coordinates any new policies regarding Lebanon, which potentially entails coupling “economic incentives with painful reforms.” In fact, the Lebanese parliament is currently working on a series of laws that are prerequisites for potentially obtaining $3 billion in IMF funding. Most recently, in February 2023, France hosted a summit in Paris, attended by the group, aimed at ending the political and social deadlock in Lebanon.

The US’s involvement in Lebanese affairs dates back long before the current crisis. The list of its engagements is extensive, whether through direct military intervention to protect Lebanon’s independence from regional interference in 1958, participation in multinational peacekeeping forces during the Lebanese civil war in 1982, or its role in supporting the principles of Taif Agreement which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1990. The United States also exerted considerable pressure, along with France, in 2005 for Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. More recently, in October 2022, the United States successfully mediated the conclusion of a maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon to conduct offshore gas exploration, following a decade of contentious negotiations. 

The United States essentially welcomed the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran but cast doubt on whether Iran would adhere to the deal, while emphasizing the resolution of the war in Yemen as a crucial test. For example, commenting on the agreement, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on March 10 that the United States welcomed the deal and any efforts that help put an end to the war in Yemen and broadly reduce tensions in the Middle East, expressing doubts that the Iranian regime would honor “their side of the deal.” Later, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on March 15 generally expressed support for a China-brokered agreement that could help reduce tensions in the region but added it depends on whether "Iran follows through on the commitments."

Particularly on Yemen, most observers and regional/international officials, including U.S. officials, seem to assess that the success of the agreement to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia will hinge on settling the Yemeni war first before moving forward with resolving other respective disputes across the region – although until recently, Iran has denied any claims that it was involved in funding or arming the Houthis. Indeed, in a clear indication of the preeminence of the Yemeni issue contingent on ending the proxy war based on the agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported on March 16, citing U.S. and Saudi officials, that Iran had agreed to halt supplying the Houthis with weapons as part of the agreement.

Thus, while both Iran and Saudi Arabia clearly retain interests in Lebanon, Yemen appears to be Saudi Arabia’s top priority at the moment, given the proxy conflict and its proximity to Saudi Arabia. Consequently, according to most commentators, reaching an agreement in Lebanon, including ending its presidential election stalemate and potentially reviving its economy provided that reforms are enacted, is contingent on resolving the Yemeni conflict. 

At this stage, though, the deal primarily constitutes a roadmap and, in the words of many, is merely a declaration of intent. While a seemingly low-profile online media outlet has published confidential security clauses, allegedly as part of the agreement, that embedded agreed-upon security imperatives for the two sides beyond the restoration of diplomatic relations, no official corroboration of such clauses has yet occurred. The clauses generally allege that both Iran and Saudi Arabia will abstain from engaging in any security, military, or media activity that destabilizes either state.

The agreement is still in its early days. Nevertheless, specifically with regard to Lebanon, as the major details of the agreement remain unknown, the Lebanese debate persists, revolving around an assessment of which party the Lebanese file would be relegated to in the agreement. According to some analysts, an Iranian delegation may soon visit Lebanon to discuss the development with Hezbollah, and potentially the presidential election matter. However, Kareem Pakradouni, a veteran Lebanese analyst and former president of the Lebanese Christian Kataeb Party and former minister, cautioned in an interview a few days ago that the Lebanese should wait and see which party involved in the agreement will first mobilize and visit Lebanon before concluding to which party the Lebanese file has been delegated, Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Rany Ballout is a New York-based political risk and due diligence analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East. He holds a master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Montreal in Canada and a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Image: Shutterstock

Turkey may have an opportunity to fix its relationship with Egypt, which it broke a decade ago. The outcome will depend entirely on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy choices, and whether he remains the country’s president after the May 14 elections. It will be difficult to normalize ties between the two countries, however, as Cairo has a list of tough demands and Erdogan is obstinate. To achieve progress, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently met with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, but the meeting did not end as Cavusoglu would have liked. Shoukry informed Cavusoglu that three things had to happen before normalization: Turkey would have to terminate all its military activities in Libya, extradite all members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey that are wanted by Egypt, and resolve its differences with Cyprus and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean.

To put things in context, although Egypt is a priority for Erdogan, Ankara has been exploring the possibilities of mending fences with several Arab states as well as Israel since 2021. Obviously, had Erdogan not spent the last decade torpedoing his relationships with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean powers, he would not need to knock on doors today. So why mend fences now? This is relatively easy to answer: The biting reality of Turkey’s regional isolation is forcing Erdogan’s hand to attempt to roll back his hatred for regional competitors. Egypt, Syria, and Israel would all be interested in rebuilding ties with Turkey, but they all have big asks.

Beginning in 2013, Erdogan tore apart Turkey’s bilateral relationship with Egypt, a country that is arguably the leader of the Arab World and a close U.S. ally, Egypt. Following the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected, albeit Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president, Mohammed Morsi, Erdogan disparaged Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a brutal “tyrant,” whom he refused to recognize. The ensuing fallout resulted in the termination of diplomatic ties between Ankara and Cairo. Soon, Erdogan began touring the world, professing that the “world is bigger than five!”—a reference to the unfair and ineffective composition of the UN Security Council’s permanent five member states, who willingly turned a blind eye to dictators and persecution of Muslims. While he was comfortable criticizing the Egyptian regime being ruled by an unelected military dictator, Erdogan conveniently remained silent on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims by China, as well as the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, where he swore to protect the region’s Muslim Tatar minority, and then forgot about them.

In the late 2010s, Ankara has taken to pursuing unacceptable positions toward Cairo. Erdogan threw his support behind Libya’s Fayez al-Sarraj much to the chagrin of Cairo, who supports his counterpart Khalifa Haftar. The decision to back Sarraj resulted in the Libyan government delimiting its maritime borders with Ankara, in an agreement that is not recognized by any other government in the region, as it cuts across much of Greece’s maritime borders by ignoring the existence of Crete. The move also conflicts with existing maritime borders established by countries under the umbrella of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF)—which Egypt is a member of. While maritime borders are a vital element of national sovereignty, in this case, their importance is heightened owing to the existence of natural gas deposits underneath the sea, which all countries would like to monetize and consume. While EGMF members go about this in a diplomatic and legal manner, Turkey acts as a belligerent spoiler. It does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus, contests the maritime borders of Greece and Egypt, and has sent in its own exploration and drilling ships into contested waters, escorted by military vessels.

Egypt’s approach to foreign policymaking shows that since coming to power, Sisi has not been idle. He has made himself palatable to the United States and invested a significant amount of diplomatic capital in establishing robust ties with other notable regional actors such as Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. The EGMF is perceived to be legitimate and has strong international support. If Erdogan seeks a reset with Sisi, he will have to abandon his existing Libya and Mediterranean policies.

Per Cairo’s suggestion, Ankara does have the option of dropping its antagonistic approach to maritime borders and joining the EGMF. This will be hard to achieve, however, owing to the long-standing maritime disputes between Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. That being said, instead of trying to force its hand, Ankara could try to achieve its goals through diplomacy rather than belligerence. On the other hand, Erdogan could satisfy Egypt’s demands on the Muslim Brotherhood without much effort. The Brotherhood’s footprint in Turkey is much smaller than it used to be. Many of its members have left the country and steps were recently taken by authorities to close down a television station affiliated with the brotherhood. Inaction on the other hand is not really an option for Turkey, and Erdogan knows this.

His decision to shake Sisi’s hand at the opening of the FIFA World Cup in 2022 was not a chance encounter. Rather, it was a carefully choreographed photo opportunity, as well as a tacit admission that his entire Middle East foreign policy over the last decade is a failure. Erdogan’s fantasy to be surrounded by a region that is ruled by leaders close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he hoped to notionally lead, has all but vanished. From Egypt to Tunisia to Iraq to Syria, there is presently a zero chance of establishing Sunni regimes that are close to the brotherhood’s worldview, which Erdogan has long admired. Instead, they are all led by strongmen who have succeeded in eliminating contenders. This is the reason why Erdogan is also attempting to “normalize” ties with Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, whom he sought to overthrow, presumably to have him replaced by a Sunni alternative. For this to bear fruit, however, Assad is demanding the removal of the Turkish military presence inside of Syrian territory—yet another bitter pill for Erdogan to swallow.

Finally, there’s Israel, a state which Erdogan is seeking a rapprochement with once again. In 2007, Erdogan accused Israel of being a “baby killer,” and followed up this statement by attempting to breach a naval blockade of Gaza in 2010 that resulted in an armed confrontation and an end to diplomatic ties. Like Egypt, Israel did not sit on the sidelines. Its signing of the Abraham Accords and participation in the EGMF have helped the Jewish state establish substantive relationships with the Arab states in its neighborhood and marginalized Ankara. To overcome this, Israel and Turkey have recently succeeded in reestablishing diplomatic ties at the ambassadorial level. However, a relationship built on trust is unlikely to materialize unless Turkey satisfies some key Israeli demands such as the expulsion of Hamas leaders from its territory, as well as shutting down its offices.

Wherever you look, Erdogan wants a “reset” and “rapprochement.” But in every single case, there will be a price to pay. The states he wants to build relationships with have a long list of justified grievances against Erdogan. Addressing these grievances is a tall order, but Erdogan doesn’t have many options. Turkey is pretty much alone and will continue to be, unless bold choices are made.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). He is also an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Command and Staff College-Marine Corps University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He tweets @sinanciddi.

Image: Shutterstock.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently finished his first tour of Central Asia. His visit began in Astana, Kazakhstan, where he met with the C5+1 Foreign Ministers during a C5 Ministerial Meeting and ended in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on March 1. In Uzbekistan, in response to a self-imposed question regarding Russia’s disregard for other countries’ sovereignty, Blinken stated, “That’s exactly why we remain committed to standing for the sovereignty, the territorial integrity, the independence not only of Ukraine, but for countries across Central Asia and, indeed, around the world.”

Although Blinken’s visit may be characterized as a refresh in relations between the United States and Central Asian countries, his rhetoric of pledging support for Central Asia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence is beating a dead horse.

Blinken’s rhetoric aligns with a 2020 report released by the State Department, United States Strategy for Central Asia 2019-2025: Advancing Sovereignty and Economic Prosperity. The report stressed “border security” and “stabilizing Afghanistan” as crucial policy issues. Additionally, the recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) frames Russia and China as presenting “different challenges” in Central Asia. The document asserts Russia “poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system.” Meanwhile, Central Asia perceives itself to be in an anxiety-inducing situation facing challenges on two fronts with the potential of spillover of terrorism from Afghanistan and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Militarism has long characterized U.S. involvement in Central Asia, as the United States established military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan during the war in Afghanistan. However, it is not the United States’ responsibility to preserve the sovereignty of all foreign nations. On top of this, Central Asia is not facing the threat of subjugation to a regional hegemon as Russia, China, and to a lesser extent, the EU have stakes in the region. Instead, the United States should prioritize commercial engagement with Central Asia partners and avoid establishing security commitments.

Russia’s influence in Central Asia has waned recently following its invasion of Ukraine; for instance, Moscow has withdrawn troops from the region to serve as reinforcements on the Ukrainian frontlines. On the diplomatic front, Central Asian leaders have protested Russia’s aggression by not voicing support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion, providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine, not allowing its citizens to participate in the war, and accepting Russians fleeing Putin’s mobilization efforts. However, the United States must avoid viewing this as an opportunity to fill the security void left by Russia. Military engagement like the Steppe Eagle exercises in Kazakhstan should be discontinued, given that the United States faces no credible threats in Central Asia and they expose U.S. troops to potential unnecessary blowback.

Additionally, given the war in Ukraine, it is difficult to conceive of a successful Russian assault on the Central Asian countries. Russia is primarily concerned with stability in Central Asia rather than conquering the region by brute force. A Russian invasion would absolutely undermine security in an area that Putin has long viewed as “Russia’s most stable region.”

Instead, the United States should focus on commercial partnerships with the Central Asian countries without expecting political favors that would agitate Russia or China. Central Asian countries clearly do not want to be vassals of Russia or China but do not want to sever ties with these great powers completely. As Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko explicitly stated, Kazakhstan would not “allow its territory to be used to circumvent sanctions” and would bear that in mind “when it comes to assessing any potential new initiatives.”

Amid sanctions on Russia, Central Asia has shown itself to be open to doing business with new partners, such as the United States. Energy and rare-earth minerals are abundant commodities in Central Asia that the United States needs to maintain a high standard of living. The minerals found in Central Asia, such as neodymium and lanthanum, are used to produce technology such as loudspeakers, hard drives, wind turbines, and television screens. Therefore, the United States should focus on securing these resources while maintaining open and transparent commercial relationships with Central Asian countries and other great powers like Russia and China. In addition, the United States can enable Central Asian countries to adopt more environmentally friendly extraction methods of energy and rare-earth minerals to reduce contributions to climate change. Russia and China would also benefit from these improved methods.

Openness and transparency will also be necessary for future diplomatic actions in Central Asia as well. The United States can lead an initiative for inclusive diplomatic forums and meetings via the C5+1, along with similar groups like “Japan plus Central Asia” and European Union partners. Transparency and openness with the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be critical to incorporating China and Russia into future discussions and negotiations. Red lines and expectations should be established and abided by to address sources of friction between the great powers.

The United States must focus on concrete, narrow interests in Central Asia that are realistically attainable. Central Asian countries, now more than ever, are looking to expand their commercial partner base amid the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Peaceful cooperation should be the U.S. strategy, not unnecessary entanglement.

Alex Little is an MS graduate of Georgia Tech and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs.

Most people assume military innovation and transformation are two sides of the same coin, and in many respects they are. Many also believe military innovation and transformation are good, never bothering to “look under the hood” and ask the hard questions about the integration, testing, and validation needed to assure a positive outcome and bring about genuine improvement in operational capability

Two recent articles address the virtues and pitfalls of redesigning a military force, albeit from different perspectives. These articles deserve a closer look given ongoing innovations and transformations across the military services. The poster child for both revolutions is the United States Marine Corps, which is well down the road of redesigning and restructuring itself for what it perceives, correctly or not, are the challenges of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the unwise strategy of “divest to invest,” the Marines have shed approximately 50 percent of the combined arms capabilities needed to fight and win today to acquire new weapons and technology for specific future threats. These new capabilities are at least six to eight years away from being fielded in sufficient quantities to be operationally relevant. The Marine Corps is foolishly gambling that potential enemies will ignore the window of opportunity these misguided actions present them. 

The first article, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” is authored by Kendrick Kuo. One of Kuo’s most important cautions is “The notion that innovative and better military performance go hand in hand is thus intuitive. It is also wrong.” True innovation is the result of a well-developed and tested operating concept that can be vetted through a robust combat development process to determine integrated requirements necessary to effectively implement the concept. The enablers include doctrine, force structure and organizations, training and education, equipment, and facilities and support. A good example of failed innovation is the flawed Pentomic Army Divisions developed between 1957 and 1963 to counter the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Conversely, an example where innovation succeeded was the Army’s Air-Land Battle concept that was developed to counter the Warsaw Pact’s plan to overrun NATO defenses in Europe in the 1980s and was later validated during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. 

A valuable second observation by Kuo is 

“harmful innovation is more likely to occur when military services … make desperate gambles on new capabilities to meet over ambitious goals while cannibalizing older capabilities. The military services treat innovations as a silver bullet and endorses destroying traditional capabilities before innovation advances can justify their beliefs about the new one’s effectiveness.” 

“Harmful innovation” is exemplified by Marine Corps Force Design 2030. The Corps has mortgaged its current and future capabilities as a global force-in-readiness and combined arms team valued by combatant commanders for the allure of long-range precision weapons and associated technology that are experimental and may not perform as expected.

A final reflection by Kuo is during combat, “…the military service is likely to discover that it has overspecialized in the new capability to its own detriment. To improve performance, the service may try to downgrade the centrality of the new capability and restore traditional capabilities that remain surprisingly relevant and necessary.” This conclusion highlights the unacceptable risks associated with “divest to invest.” In the case of the Marine Corps, traditional capabilities for global response have been lost today because the equipment, personnel, and logistics required have been drastically reduced or totally discarded.

The second article, “Transforming the Marine Corps for an Uncertain Future” by General Charles Wilhelm, USMC (Ret), compares and contrasts two different approaches for transforming the Marine Corps. One approach resulted in a more relevant and capable service with a global focus. The other approach will result in a less relevant and less capable service with a narrow geographical focus.

The first transformation began in the late 1980s. The Marine Corps commandant began to refocus the service on its traditional core competency as the “first to fight” with a new emphasis on the doctrine of maneuver warfare and the intellectual development of Marines. In Wilhelm’s words, “Marines would outfight and outthink their adversaries.” The Marine Corps was better configured to support the combatant commanders, as specified in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. Marines were made more capable of supporting and participating in joint and special operations.

The next two commandants built on and solidified these principles and established a systems-based approach to identify and develop future capabilities: the Marine Corps Combat Development Process. The process allowed Marines to remain ready, relevant, and capable of responding to constantly shifting threats and national security priorities. Concepts led the way to the identification, prioritization, and integration of doctrine, force structure, equipment, training and education, and facilities and support. Current capabilities were maintained until new capabilities were developed, tested, and fielded.

The second transformation begun in 2020 rejected the systems-based approach in favor of one based on intuition and hope. The range and depth of capabilities needed to fight and win today are being eliminated or significantly degraded to acquire future, experimental capabilities, creating a window of opportunity for our adversaries. Marine forces are being optimized for one task, against one enemy, in one specific location. According to Wilhelm, the Marine Corps is being transformed into a “less tactically and operationally capable and less strategically relevant force than the one that emerged from the previous transformation.” 

Both articles raise concerns about military innovation and transformation that should alarm the new Congress. Congressional oversight is needed, to include hearings where witnesses for and against ongoing transformations are asked hard, thoughtful questions about whether the services, especially the Marine Corps, are transforming in a manner that supports current and future U.S. national security objectives. The Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies. To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, our elected representatives can trust but they must verify.

Brigadier General Jerry McAbee (USMC, Ret) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-six years on active duty.

Brigadier General Mike Hayes (USMC, Ret.) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-three years on active duty.

Image: DVIDS.

The 118th Congress is working at a fever pitch to find ways to economically punish China.

With headline-grabbing titles like Fair Trade with China Enforcement Act, Ending China’s Developing Nation Status Act, and Neutralizing Unfair Chinese Export Subsidies Act of 2023, a flurry of bills in both the House and Senate seek to impose costs on China for its coercive economic and national security policies. Many of these bills are a step in the right direction. Others are simply political theatre. While bashing China is undoubtedly in vogue, the costs and benefits of these bills need serious scrutiny. Good intentions can backfire; these bills might hurt the US more than China.

Take, for example, the China Oil Export Prohibition Act of 2023. Penned by Senator Marco Rubio, the bill calls for banning US exports of oil products to China. It follows on the heels of the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, which forbids the drawdown of US strategic oil reserves for sale to China. The latter will do little to hurt China, which accounts for just 7.5 of the 296 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserve Washington put up for sale. In any case, that window has closed. Rubio’s bill, which one study says has a 20 percent chance of passing, lacks support from Democrats, yet could pick up steam in the wake of China’s balloon incident.

What’s important about Rubio’s bill is that it excludes natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG). But this might change for several reasons, not all of which are about Beijing. For example, a ban on LNG exports to China could complement the Democrats’ push to move away natural gas.

Still, banning LNG exports to China would be a mistake. It would amount to the expropriation of US assets dedicated to fulfilling contracts with China, and force Beijing closer to Moscow.

In 2021, China imported more LNG than any other country. That year saw U.S. LNG exports to China reach an all-time-high of 400,000 million cubic feet. By 2022, this figure had plunged to 100,000 cubic feet, in part due to political uncertainty about the prospect of future sales. This puts American jobs on the line. It also positions Russia, as China’s third-largest supplier of natural gas, to pick up the slack.

In an essay titled “How Congress Can Protect Americans from Communist China’s Bid for Domination,” Rubio explains that “[f]irst and foremost, we need to prevent markets from enriching Beijing-controlled firms.” To this end, he’s sponsored no fewer than eight bills taking aim at China, covering everything from corporate corruption to “fair trade” and investment in companies on the US government’s blacklists. No one can excuse Rubio of “being soft” on China.

That said, Rubio’s China Oil Export Prohibition Act of 2023 would do far more harm than good for the United States if LNG were to be included in a subsequent draft, or in a related bill.

In his remarks on the twenty-year anniversary of China joining the World Trade Organization, Rubio said that U.S. approval “was rooted in a flawed assumption” that put “economic integration” over “our national security.” This view is also held by the Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), which asked the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence to “examine the national and economic security implications of China’s actions to contract for significant volume of US LNG for periods of up to 20 years.” But this national security argument doesn’t hold water.

That’s because, as the IECA further notes, China is “also locking up large volumes of LNG from Russia, Australia and Qatar.” That’s the point: if the United States were to ban LNG exports to China, Russia would make up the difference, solidifying an alliance that is a growing threat to U.S. national security.

The implication of Rubio’s bill is that an export ban, like “our national security,” can’t be viewed in a vacuum. The global economy is replete with trade partners. A ban on U.S. LNG exports would only imperil good American jobs and investments, and deepen China’s alliance with Russia.

Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition. Follow him on Twitter @marclbusch.

Image: Shutterstock.

Earlier this month, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties after seven years and signed a China-brokered agreement in what is being termed a breakthrough deal for the region. How does this impact and alter America’s geopolitical stature in the region? What are the first and second-tier consequences of weakening the U.S. presence and position in the Gulf in favor of Washington’s main geopolitical rival?

While some see the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement as a striking diplomatic success for China, others claim it is nothing more than Beijing attempting to insert itself into a strategic region and play peacemaker. After all, the failure of China’s “Going Out” campaign, aimed at increasing foreign investments and infrastructure development abroad, caused multi-billion-dollar losses. Beijing’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, where officials exhibited aggressive and insulting behavior, backfired. However, the newly-reached détente between the Middle East’s leading Sunni and Shia rivals improves China’s ability to leverage energy ties in the region, while great power rivalry in the Gulf may heighten tensions there. 

The United States has found it difficult to help its allies neutralize the Iranian nuclear program and multipronged Iranian extremist and imperialist stratagems, which include supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Simultaneously, the United States allowed its relationship with long-time ally Saudi Arabia to go from bad to worse. All the while, China was expanding its influence in the Middle East. Thus, a power realignment in the energy-rich region was unfolding while America slept. It’s time to wake up.

The latest Saudi-Iranian development did not come out of nowhere. China has developed robust political and economic relationships with the Middle East through increasing trade and investment in the region. By maintaining a steady cash flow, Beijing has transformed economic partnerships into political ones. As the British used to say: “soldiers followed traders.”

There are several strategic vehicles the Chinese use: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was expanded to several Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran and Turkey, as “dialogue partners.” This calculated growth did not come overnight; it demonstrates the deliberate pace of Beijing’s growing influence. 

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s flagship venture, the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) is aimed at gaining access to natural resources in the Middle East and beyond. Recent contracts under the BRI include three ports, two in Israel and one in the United Arab Emirates; thousands of miles of railroads and highways; twelve 5G contracts; a drone factory; and even an expansion project on the Suez Canal valued at $8.5 billion, with China investing close to $5 billion in the canal’s economic zone. The cumulative Chinese investment in the Gulf is $137.27 billion, while it reached $213.9 billion in the broader Middle East between 2005 and 2021.

China is also the biggest customer for both Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil, which explains Beijing’s interest in moving forward with a settlement between the two and their place among the top beneficiaries of the BRI. The Chinese have agreed to a $400 billion investment over the next twenty-five years in Iran’s banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, healthcare, and information technology sectors in exchange for a heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil. 

Even leaders who might be amicable to the West won’t push back on China’s creeping influence in regional matters given the economic benefits their countries can gain through ties with Beijing. The United States needs to come to grips with the depth of China’s financial reach and strategize to counter Beijing’s clear political intent.

The United States is also heavily invested in the Middle East, not just for economic interests, but for regional security—which directly affects its own national security. These investments are too important to jeopardize by ignoring China’s calculated attempts at undermining America’s role.

The next logical step for the United States is to push for Iran’s full compliance with the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, giving up all its highly enriched uranium, and allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities. The United States should also enhance its military cooperation with the Gulf states as the Iranian threat will not wane.

The influence of oil and gas trade on the region’s politics is too big to ignore. Energy markets are significant to geopolitical relationships—even if some U.S. stakeholders prefer a foreign policy independent of the hydrocarbon economy. Finally, it is also important to engage with the Gulf nations in their efforts to diversify their economies, where the United States has much to offer in high technologies, internet technologies, health, education, and other industries.

As Xi visits Moscow pretending to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, checking China’s influence in strategic areas of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, is becoming vital for U.S. national security. Competition with China in science, technology, business, diplomacy, and global security has become the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The Iranian-Saudi deal brokered by China is a test of Washington’s power and skill. It is a challenge the United States cannot afford to fail.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Director of the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the founder of International Market Analysis Inc www.IMAStrategy.com

Image: Salma Bashir Motiwala / Shutterstock.com

On March 14, Lebanese banks renewed a nationwide strike in response to ongoing investigations and recent rulings regarding their policies and practices since the start of the country’s brutal economic collapse in 2019. The bank strike, spearheaded by the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL), which represents Lebanese commercial banks, has all but frozen transactions for the average Lebanese citizen in the name of fighting so-called judicial overreach. But even the most casual observer of the eastern Mediterranean country’s political discourse can quickly understand what truly underpins the strike: a zero-sum demand from Lebanon’s political and economic elite for the right to rob the country blind.

The bank strike first began on February 7 as a result of Judge Ghada Aoun’s years-long investigation into money laundering and corrupt practices in the Lebanese banking sector. The investigation is particularly focused on commercial banks, although Aoun is also investigating the Banque Du Liban (Central Bank of Lebanon) and its long-running governor, Riad Salameh. Aoun charged Salameh with illicit enrichment on February 21 following a long-running investigation into his efforts to transfer public funds into his brother’s bank accounts in Switzerland and other European countries.

Lebanese banks wasted little time responding to the investigation, especially after Aoun charged two senior bankers from Bank Audi and Audi Group with money laundering for refusing to lift banking secrecy terms connected to the accounts of senior bank officials. ABL also took issue with another early-February ruling by the Court of Cassation against Fransabank regarding a lawsuit from two Lebanese citizens, Ayad al-Gharabaoui Ibrahim and Hanane Maroun al-Hajj Ibrahim, who demanded access to their bank deposits. The suit was ultimately decided in the plaintiffs’ favor, leading the ABL to strike as early as March 2022, when the first of many decisions against the bank were made regarding the same case.

The Fransabank ruling is substantial as it orders the banks to pay the plaintiffs in cash following their account closings. The bank originally preferred to pay by check to avoid losses in bank holdings given the disparity between the Lebanese lira and U.S. dollar. Such a ruling is crucial, as it sets a precedent protecting small depositors from harmful bank practices—arguably the major economic sticking point for Lebanese citizens since 2019.

While the ABL originally announced an indefinite strike, political intervention led it temporarily suspend the nationwide strike for a week, beginning on February 24. “Based on the Prime Minister's wish, the banks' sensitivity to difficult economic conditions, and the need to secure banking services to all citizens at the end of the month, [the ABL] have decided to suspend the strike temporarily for a week,” the bank noted in an official statement.

Indeed, the Lebanese political system was again swooping in to save the banking system. Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced on February 23 that he would ask the security forces and Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi to not act on Aoun’s orders, citing “an overstepping of authority.” Mawlawi complied with this order. Further, Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Ghassan Oweidat, ordered Aoun to “temporarily suspend [her] investigative procedures until decisions are taken on the issue raised.” Aoun described the actions as “a total breakdown of justice” and “an unprecedented interference in the work of the judiciary.” Amid Aoun’s continued efforts, the banks renewed the strike on March 14 and again on March 21-22, announcing an end at the start of Ramadan.

Unfortunately, as evidenced by the ABL’s ongoing intransigence this month, Aoun’s statements define how Lebanon has landed in such a precarious economic and political situation. Since the 2019 October Revolution, the Lebanese people have continuously protested what they rightly describe as open corruption, but to no avail. Rather than reform the system collapsing around them, Lebanese elites in banking and political circles have consolidated their wealth, security, and power within a Ponzi scheme resembling a glass house of cards set to collapse. The World Bank’s assessment of the country’s economic state described this in the starkest of terms in a 2021 report, highlighting the situation as one of the worst economic meltdowns in modern history. The ABL’s actions, as well as that of the prime minister, are a continuation of the direct lines of corruption long evident in Lebanon and undergirding this meltdown.

A natural response to such a scenario is reform, which Lebanese citizens, world leaders, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have aggressively called for in recent years. Central to this debate are the capital controls and banking secrecy laws that would, if drafted along the IMF’s standards, fight back against shady banking practices and protect individual depositors as opposed to wealthy, connected elites. Unsurprisingly, the ABL rejects the IMF’s recommendations and that of the Lebanese people’s basic right to access their bank accounts, as well as basic international transparency standards. This is not an objective position on the part of Lebanon’s banking sector—it is an intentional ploy to avoid accountability for robbing Lebanese citizens of their savings while attempting to wait out the crisis until international support arrives (as has occurred in the past).

However, international support does not appear to be on the horizon this time around. World leaders are fed up with Lebanon’s ruling class for its refusal to change and reform. Rather than read the tea leaves, Lebanese elites will opt to not allow investigations to challenge the status quo. The Beirut Blast investigation is a case in point given the political interventions surrounding it, presenting a scenario in which it is difficult to see other investigations succeeding, especially without stronger international pressure. In this light, keep an eye on scapegoats (i.e., Salameh) who could be sacrificed to the people in exchange for window-dressing reforms.

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst focused on the Middle East and North Africa. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service. Follow him at @langloisajl.

Image: Shutterstock.

Mexico’s presidential elections are more than a year away, but the jostling has already begun. The president is already limited to one six-year term, and the left-wing governing party, MORENA, has already narrowed it to two viable candidates: Mexico City’s Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. Officially, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—or AMLO, as he’s popularly known—states that MORENA supporters will choose the candidate by a poll. Still, some observers expect the president to use el dedazo to select his successor unofficially. Regardless of the primary’s results, the presidential candidate will be elected in July 2024. Yet with MORENA likely keeping the presidency and possibly Congress, some wonder whether Mexico is returning to an era of one-party democracy. While there are some indications that MORENA can lead Mexico without meaningful opposition for decades, there are several questions about whether the party can successfully be in power without AMLO as its head.

Mexico’s Democratic Moment

Mexico has had a long-experienced history of authoritarian rule, whether openly so or not. In the twentieth century, this took the form of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which was founded to preserve the power structure that emerged after the turmoil in the 1910s. While the country was officially a democracy, PRI’s monopolistic control of Mexico’s political institutions remained strong until the late 1980s, thanks to the party’s repression of dissidents, co-option of interest groups, and electoral fraud. Their grasp of the country fell only due to economic turmoil starting in the 1970s and a split between the party’s left-wing base and its neoliberal elite. Mexico’s democratic moment was short-lived, as the rise of competitive elections spawned political violence that plagues the country today.

Furthermore, the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), the conservative party, proved to be no less capable of promoting social equity or clamping down on corruption than their PRI predecessors. With the failure of the PAN to live up to this moment, many Mexicans became disillusioned about democracy, turning to AMLO and his left-wing, anti-establishment MORENA party. In 2018, MORENA won a historic victory, as AMLO was the first candidate in thirty years to win with an absolute majority, cementing both his presidency and his party’s dominance.

Can MORENA be the new PRI?

On the surface, MORENA appears capable of re-establishing Mexico as a one-party democracy for two main reasons.

First, the opposition remains fractured and discredited after decades of misrule from both the PAN and the PRI. While both parties cooperated under the alliance Va Por Mexico and had some success in the 2021 midterm elections, their coalition wasn’t enough to prevent MORENA from winning four gubernatorial elections last year. Moreover, the coalition could split the vote if the parties ran separate candidates for the presidency. But another reason is that MORENA seems to have captured most political institutions, solidifying its control over the government. This can be seen partly by the party using the military and national guard to provide security and social services. Additionally, a recent election law passed by the party in the Mexican Congress cut the national electoral institute budget and election oversight. Most Mexicans do not approve of these reforms, and the country was awash in protests to prevent the law from being passed to no avail. Without a strong bastion of political or bureaucratic opposition, MORENA is at the cusp of having a monopoly of political power for decades.

Second, as powerful as MORENA is today, whether the party can sustain its power permanently remains an open question. It has failed to deliver a new era of peace, prosperity, and order to Mexico, despite the lofty promises made in its foundation. AMLO’s proclaimed “Fourth Transformation” has been a series of contradictory policies that haven’t delivered the robust economic growth seen from 1950–1980, or become mired in bureaucratic boondoggles, such as the Maya Train or energy reform. Some of his changes will indeed take longer to bear fruit, such as the recent nationalization of Mexico’s lithium reserves, though MORENA’s legitimacy will corrode if they cannot provide faster economic growth.

MORENA without AMLO?

For now, MORENA’s failures haven’t dampened its popularity, thanks to the charisma and popularity of AMLO. Yet his enduring popularity masks an issue of whether the party can succeed without him at its head. Political parties that depend on an individual for power have difficulty surviving without their charismatic leader, such as UKIP’s Nigel Farage in the UK. The only way parties can survive is through a measure of institutionalization, which develops talent through the party and provides a measure of political cohesion. The PRI was adept at this, as there was massive coordination and organization in the party from the federal government to the municipalities. So far, AMLO hasn’t created much of an organization within MORENA, as he made the party into his electoral campaigning with almost no consideration for the party after his departure. With AMLO’s successors experiencing ongoing criminal issues or lacking charisma, MORENA’s standing power will likely not last long after its leader’s departure.

If MORENA wishes to sustain itself in power, it must develop a campaigning and political organization separate from AMLO’s personality to survive. Unfortunately for the party, AMLO has demonstrated remarkably little interest in supporting a political movement that he is not leading. This bodes poorly for AMLO’s successor, as that candidate will struggle to develop his (or her) own independent administration. In other words, AMLO will not really leave the presidency—he will instead allow his successor to wear the sash while he remains in the background. This bodes poorly for Mexico—historically, such arrangements do not last long, providing further political instability in a country already awash in poverty and violence.

Heberto Limas-Villers is a management consultant living in Washington, DC. He was previously a graduate fellow at the National Defense Industrial Association focusing on naval policy and the defense industrial base.

On Thursday, a drone attack on a U.S. base in northeastern Syria served as the latest reminder that the United States remains at war in Syria and U.S. personnel are at risk. The drone attack, which U.S. intelligence swiftly concluded was of “Iranian origin,” killed one U.S. contractor and wounded six others, including five U.S. service members. In response, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to carry out precision airstrikes against facilities belonging to groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing eight fighters. The tit-for-tat escalation continued into Friday morning, when “lots of rockets” were fired at a different U.S. base in Syria, this time in the southeast of the country, though no casualties were reported.

This is not the first time that U.S. personnel have been targeted in Syria—and it is unlikely to be the last. American soldiers have no shortage of enemies in the country and have faced regular attacks since they arrived more than seven years ago. What began as a U.S. regime change effort against the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has since morphed into an open-ended confrontation—where the official mission of suppressing the Islamic State has obscured U.S. efforts to counter Russia and Iran. These ambiguous objectives have ensured that the United States is no closer to leaving Syria than it was when it first put boots on the ground.

Americans in Syria are confronting real dangers. According to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Iran Projectile Tracker, Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. service members with at least seventy-two munitions since 2017 (not including this week’s attacks), with more than 90 percent of those occurring in the last two years. Notably, this data does not include attacks by the Syrian government or Russia-backed forces, including the infamous Wagner Group, which launched a daring, massive assault on about forty American commandos in 2018 that left 200 to 300 of the attackers dead. Nor does it account for the Russian military’s harassment of Americans in Syria. Just last week, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Russian Air Force has increasingly been flying over the positions of U.S. troops in a “provocative” manner. This behavior has also occurred on the ground: Russian troops have rammed U.S. convoys and, as an inspector general report to Congress recently found, “increased their violations” of agreed-upon deconfliction arrangements.

The Biden administration has vowed to continue defending the 900 U.S. service members in Syria for as long as they remain in the country—an apparently indefinite timeframe. Despite Biden moving to end or drawdown the United States’ other “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, this policy has not been extended to Syria. Rather, Washington is ostensibly committed to fighting ISIS and pressuring the Assad regime, which continues to be squeezed by a robust, U.S.-directed sanctions regime.

Yet Washington is certainly aware that Damascus is not as isolated as it once was. Regional rapprochement with Syria is already in full swing; not only have the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman opened their doors to the Syrian government, but even Turkey and Saudi Arabia, once Assad’s fiercest enemies, are looking to reconcile.

Coming on the heels of a Chinese-brokered agreement that codified Saudi Arabia’s détente with Iran, the emerging Saudi-Syrian peace deal stands to further shift Middle Eastern geopolitics. If successful, Moscow’s assistance in restoring Riyadh and Damascus’ diplomatic ties after a decade of war will be a remarkable victory for another U.S. adversary—as well as for the entire region. In this regard, it will further impress upon regional elites that they have options beyond America to advance their political and security objectives.

Indeed, it is China and Russia—America’s so-called “great power competitors”—whose regional policies are now helping to stabilize the Middle East and support U.S. interests. China portrays itself as a friend to all and an enemy to none, allowing Beijing to position itself as an honest intermediary that can address the region’s problems in ways Washington cannot. Russia, too, is seen as a dependable partner—one that has stood by its Syrian ally through thick and thin—and an interlocutor that has proven its sensitivity to the needs of capitals as different as Damascus, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and Tehran.

In contrast, the U.S. record is more troubled. It was the United States that invaded Iraq twenty years ago this week, unleashing chaos and violence across the region. It was also Washington that unilaterally blew up the international nuclear agreement with Iran—after the Obama administration had dragged its regional allies kicking and screaming to support the accord—setting Tehran on a glide path toward a nuclear weapons capability and increasing tensions in the Persian Gulf. The United States subsequently declined to defend Saudi Arabia and its Arab partners from Iran’s escalation in 2019 (ironically prompting Riyadh to later reconcile with Tehran), to say nothing of the fact that Washington has vacillated between pulling out of and leaning into the region across the last three presidential administrations.

Yet despite these doubts about U.S. reliability, and Washington’s concerns about perceived challenges from Russia and China, the United States must check its knee-jerk tendency to interpret all Russian and Chinese actions as coming at its expense. The Middle East is big enough for the United States, Russia, and China, especially since Beijing has a significant stake in regional stability so it can continue importing the region’s energy resources. The U.S. role in the region, as the UAE and Saudi Arabia continue to make clear, is not going away, but it is changing. Washington, therefore, needs to recognize that it should not and cannot try to do it all in the Middle East. Instead, it must reassess where its efforts can make the most positive difference, and where its most vital national interests truly lie.

Adam Lammon is a former executive editor at The National Interest and an analyst of Middle Eastern affairs based in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this article are his own. Follow him on Twitter @AdamLammon.

Image: DVIDS.

This month marks twenty years since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The bloodshed that followed cost Iraq and America dearly. Yet there was a winner in the chaos: Iraq’s neighbor and rival Iran. The invasion removed Iraq as a check on Iran; Tehran no longer had to fear the nation that invaded it in 1980. Ever since, U.S. strategy in the Middle East has had to deal with the consequences of a more powerful Tehran. “U.S. forces,” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Baghdad on March 7, “are ready to remain in Iraq.” Blocking Iran there and elsewhere has become a U.S. job that will never end. 

The invasion and the subsequent dismantling of the Iraqi state prompted lawlessness and the emergence of a new order rooted in violence, sectarianism, and corruption. A weak Iraq left the door open for Iranian influence. Tehran built militias and political movements within Iraq’s Shia majority and used these groups to target U.S. interests. The groups demanded a veto in Iraqi politics, using force when they didn’t get their way. 

The militias contributed to a sectarianization of politics and society that saw Baghdad segregate itself and religious minorities flee. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s own efforts to make the Iraqi military loyal to him alone contributed to its collapse against the Islamic State in 2014. An army that had received a decade of U.S. training and equipment abandoned Iraq’s second-largest city under pressure from a small band of lowlifes. 

ISIS’s rise (itself an aftershock of the Iraq invasion, which spawned ISIS predecessor Al Qaeda in Iraq) strengthened Iran’s hand further. As the Iraqi army failed, militias answered the call. Many of these militias were backed by Tehran. Efforts to integrate the militias into Iraq’s armed forces only bandaged the problem. These militias remain outside the state’s control, and have routinely shot rockets at the U.S. embassy and U.S. bases. In 2019, they stormed the Green Zone when the United States hit back. Counterbalancing these militias’ influence has become a major justification for the continued presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq. Countering the militias is a mission that will never end. 

The militias also smuggle arms into Syria and Lebanon. These weapons have triggered an Israeli interdiction campaign that has been a headache for U.S. efforts in the region. The weapons flow contributes to the Israeli military’s warnings that its next war with Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah will require a fast, aggressive air campaign that could have huge costs in Lebanon. U.S.-made bombs plunging into Beirut apartment blocks, even if aimed at Hezbollah bunkers below, will hurt America’s image in the region. And blocking the Iranian supply lines into the area has become a justification for keeping U.S. troops in Syria. Blocking roads our invasion opened is another mission that will never end.

The problems stretch beyond Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Gulf states fear an Iran unchecked by Iraq and seek a security guarantor. America is their best choice. The Iraq War and the Global War on Terrorism drew a huge U.S. troop presence to their shores; fear of Iran, plus big Gulf investments in the U.S. policy and defense advisory sectors, have helped keep them there. Crises with Iran have seen deployments of scarce U.S. assets like Patriot missile batteries.

At bottom, the invasion reflected a shift in U.S. Middle East strategy away from seeking balance and towards seeking transformation. We thought a free Iraq would inspire a wave of democratization in the region. This did not happen. Worse, we now do the balancing ourselves, rather than relying on our enemies’ self-interest to do the balancing for us. And Washington’s policy sphere is reluctant to return to letting the region balance itself. Balancing Iran is another mission that will never end.

Last but not least are Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Their current state—high levels of enrichment, multiple enrichment facilities, and a diverse array of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles—is inseparable from the Iraq War. Without Iraq to fear, Iran has more power to aim at the United States. Top U.S. worries like nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles are not good tools for Iran to counter a strong Iraqi state on its border. Conventional military power, backed by short-range ballistic missiles, would be far better suited for that task. Building these Iraq-focused capabilities would draw resources away from Iranian efforts to develop tools for fighting America and Israel. 

To be sure, some Iranian advances in short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Iraq would have also increased the Iranian threat to U.S. bases in the region. But those risks are not at the same scale as the Iranian nuclear and missile threat we face today. With Iran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade purity, fears are growing that Israel may strike Tehran’s nuclear sites, a move that could spark a major war.

Of course, we cannot know what the Middle East would look like today if the United States had not gone into Iraq. Yet it’s hard to envision a pathway that would have seen a similar rise in Iranian power. Invading Iraq brought many evils, but our long confrontation with Iran—one that may yet yield war—is one of the most enduring. 

John Allen Gay is executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society and coauthor of War With Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences.

Image: Shutterstock.

This week, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Sino-Russo relations. During their meeting, Xi stated that Russia’s development had “significantly improved” while Putin claimed that China “made a colossal leap forward.”

The visit came just days after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine. China is not a state party of the Rome Statute, a treaty recognizing the ICC. Thus, Xi’s visit suggests that China feels no need to hold the Russians accountable for their ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Many members of the international community are also skeptical of China’s neutrality in the war, given Xi’s close relationship with Putin.

But there are additional concerns about the Sino-Russo relationship. As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, reports have shown that the Russians are running low on ammunition, weapons, and military hardware. This was apparent during Russia’s recent missile strike on Ukraine, where the Russian military reportedly used older and outdated equipment. International sanctions have also limited Russia’s ability to operate in the global market. As a result, Russia has resorted to buying aid from Iran and North Korea. To date, Russia has purchased missiles and drones from the Iranians while North Korea has provided artillery shells and rockets to Russia.

Now, the international community believes that China “is considering sending lethal aid to Russia,” something that may have already occurred. According to a recent POLITICO report, China has sent assault rifles, drone shipments, and body armor to Russia. This would pose a direct threat to the world.

Why is this the case?

First, purchasing materiel from these countries will allow Russia to replenish its stockpiles, thereby allowing Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine. To date, the Russian Federation has shown no signs of ending the war. Instead, Russia has sought methods to continue its attempts to take over Ukraine. Prolonging the war would only result in greater hardships in Ukraine as well as across the globe. One quarter of Ukraine’s total population is displaced, thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, and numerous Ukrainian cities have been destroyed. Ukraine has already endured enough hardships. Thus, the international community should continue to pressure Russia to force an end to its war.

Second, a prolonged Russian war in Ukraine will increase global gas and food prices. The availability of crude oil has diminished, and there has become a “stark imbalance between supply and demand.” Moreover, Russia and Ukraine are major food producers for several countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Ukraine’s agricultural sector and environment have been severely damaged by the war, and this has made it more challenging to export food from Ukraine to different parts of the world. As a result, global food prices have increased, and the inability to export food easily to other regions has resulted in a global food crisis. Should Russia’s war continue, the lack of food exports could escalate to a global famine in these regions.

Finally, a prolonged Russian war could result in a global recession. According to the World Bank, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a rise in “prices of commodities … and [it] contribut[ed] further to global supply disruptions.” Numerous countries are still recovering from the socioeconomic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. If a recession were to occur, this would undermine recovery efforts in many parts of the world, leading to “higher levels of unemployment, contracted measures of income, and stagnation in economic growth.”

In other words, the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine span far outside the realms of Eastern Europe, and the impacts of the war could escalate. As a result, the international community should do everything it can to stop the war. The international community must continue to implement stiff penalties on Russia, limiting Moscow’s ability to interact with the world on an international scale and hindering its ability to finance its war.

The West has also warned China not to give Russia lethal aid, stating that economic sanctions could be imposed on China, the world’s largest exporter. If China supplies lethal aid to Russia, then the international community could limit trade with China, with negative impacts for the Chinese economy. This could make China think twice about becoming additionally involved in Russia’s war.

Overall, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been devastating. But the effects of a prolonged war will be far direr. It is time for the international community to put an end to its war.

Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He can be found on Twitter @MTemnycky.

Image: Fasttailwind / Shutterstock.com.

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia has brought to light the significance of the Black Sea region for maintaining a balance of power in Europe. However, failure to comprehend the political dynamics in the region's coastal states gives Moscow an opportunity to exert influence on the broader European project. This fact will be demonstrated in several weeks when Bulgarian citizens go to the polls to elect a new government on April 2.

The country’s president, Rumen Radev, broke with EU expectations on March 21 when he stated that Sofia would refuse to supply Kyiv with arms until after its upcoming elections, allowing citizens “to decide on behalf of Bulgaria whether they will be part of the efforts to restore peace or prolong the war”—the obvious implication being that Western arms shipments to Ukraine are standing in the way of negotiating a peace settlement to the conflict.

This is a reiteration of Radev’s statements that world leaders were needlessly prolonging the war, and that Bulgaria would also veto any proposed European sanctions on Russian nuclear fuel. Barely a week later, multiple Bulgarian politicians were sanctioned by the Global Magnitsky program, the British government, and the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, due to corruption charges related to their involvement with Russia.

These developments coincide with the economic impact of the new tranche of Russian sanctions imposed on February 5. Additional price caps on refined fuel products such as diesel and gas oil joined December’s initial $60 cap on seaborne shipments of Russian crude. The effect has been to chip away at Moscow’s record-high account surplus of $227.4 billion in 2022. This past January posted a surplus of only $8 billion, a 58.2 percent drop from January of the previous year. With revenues decreasing and domestic expenditures continuing to creep up as the war effort intensifies, Russia’s federal budget deficit has subsequently ballooned to 1.8 trillion rubles ($24.2 billion). That is already 60 percent of the total year plan for 2023, according to the Russian Ministry of Finance.

Moscow may need to begin selling off even greater amounts of foreign currency reserves, particularly the Chinese yuan. It will also continue to expand its trade with alternative export destinations. Some sources such as the International Energy Agency are doubtful of Moscow’s ability to find other countries to accept its crude, although others predict that Russia will regain its position as the world’s top oil exporter relatively quickly.

China and India have significantly increased their imports of Russian oil. On top of this, only a relatively small percentage of countries have followed the West’s lead in imposing sanctions. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Moscow has actually increased its support among countries of the world. The number who lean towards Russia has increased from twenty-nine to thirty-five over the past year, while those actively condemning it have decreased from 131 to 122. 63.8 percent of the global population now lives in a country that is classified as either neutral, “Russia-leaning,” or “supportive of Russia.”

Still, those countries in active condemnation of Moscow compose 60.1 percent of global GDP. Moscow’s prospects for increasing revenue flows may lie increasingly away from the West, but there is yet another energy trading partner that makes up a significant portion of its exports—and this one, right inside of the European Union.

In 2022, Bulgaria processed over 7 million tons of Russian crude at its Lukoil refinery in the Black Sea coastal city of Burgas. It has now edged out Turkey as the third largest importer of Moscow’s oil behind China and India. Unlike other export destinations in Europe, the Lukoil refinery was able to continue importing seaborne shipments of Russian crude—the only destination in the EU granted such a privilege—after Sofia secured an exemption from the European Commission in June 2022.

However, even this capability was further qualified by the February 5 sanctions. Now, refined petroleum products can no longer be exported to any other destination besides Ukraine. Lawmakers in Sofia, aware of this fact, subsequently issued a decree in January that the refinery can be put under the operational control of the Bulgarian government for up to one year in case of “threats to national security or to the supply of critical resources.” According to Reuters, such a precaution is “aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and ensuring fuel supplies for the Balkan country.”

The intention is to insulate Bulgaria from the potential predatory economic behavior of Russia and its utilization of energy exports as a geopolitical tool to exert pressure on the EU. In April of last year, gas supplies to Bulgaria were entirely halted due to Sofia’s refusal to pay in rubles. Bulgaria’s move is not unprecedented, as Germany also took over control of multiple Russian-owned oil refineries located on its territory as an energy security precaution. The exemption granted to Bulgaria by the EU Commission is meant to act as a ballast to counter the relatively pro-Moscow tilt of the southeastern European country, which shares important historical ties with Russia in addition to its being almost entirely reliant on its energy exports.

Moscow has previously picked at this scab. The demand for payment in rubles and the subsequent halt in gas supplies mentioned above were meant to place pressure on the government of pro-European Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov. The Kremlin’s strategic move was successful, contributing to the dissolution of the Petkov government and its reformist coalition in August of 2022. Snap elections the following October resulted in multiple Eurosceptic parties gaining seats in the Bulgarian parliament. This included Russia-friendly parties of not only the right, such as the “Revival” party and “Bulgaria Rise,” but also leftwing Eurosceptic parties such as the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

New general elections are set to be held on April 2. In early February, a poll by the Sofia-based Exacta Research Group predicted that the center-right party “GERB” is likely to come out on top. GERB is relatively pro-EU, but if the polls are accurate it will need to secure alliances with the Eurosceptic parties in order to form a governing coalition. Radev (the president) is already criticized by the international press for his pro-Moscow sympathies, and has previously called those in the Bulgarian parliament pushing for arms shipments to Ukraine “war-mongers.” He is vocally opposed to further arms shipments to Ukraine. A future halt in energy supplies to Bulgaria would almost certainly have the effect of strengthening the position of Eurosceptic parties.

Ultimately, Bulgaria is a microcosm of broader European views regarding the conflict and its impact. It is impossible to know how much longer the Russo-Ukraine War will last, or what its final outcome will be. But the longer it is prolonged, and the greater the escalation, the more likely it is that previously brushed-over fissures in the European project may begin to deepen.

Dominick Sansone is a PhD student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. Previously a Fulbright recipient to Bulgaria, his writing on politics in the Black Sea region has been published by the National Interest, the Euromaidan Press, The American Conservative, and RealClear Defense, among other publications. He also previously wrote as a contributing columnist focusing on Russia-China relations at The Epoch Times.

Image: Shutterstock.

The most striking change in development of nation states in the last year has come from the shift Germany has made back towards an energy strategy that pulls itself away from Russia, seeking to balance traditional energy needs with future environmentally friendly projects. While Germany and much of Europe is still heavily dependant on Russian oil and gas, along with energy supplies from Russian allies in the War in Ukraine, the continued conflict along with the expected increase in violence may finally push Western Europe into full displacement mode.

I was greeted this week with an email from a law firm that is discussing moving manufacturing plants from China to Mexico, and all of the company implications in making such a move. There is talk of how China’s future prospects may not be as bright as a few short years ago, and that Mexico may be a more productive and secure location for international companies. Many companies are displacing their production in order to service the United States and the Americas, along with easier shipping routes to European and other markets coming through Mexico to ship abroad. With years of high tech manufacturing and an education system focused on STEM that concentrated on producing engineers that many say may give more production value than even China, Mexico will benefit greatly in the next decade. Considering the security challenges coming from China to the United States and their Pacific allies, North American trade may reduce those concerns and be managed easier within the region.

Mexico had always been challenged by the trend in the early 2000s for large companies to move manufacturing to China. The 1994 NAFTA agreement placed much of America’s manufacturing in Mexico, and while it still remained since then, many new contracts bypassed Mexico for lower cost production in China since the mid 2000s. Mexico’s challenge was to bring back the opportunity it had in the 90s, focusing on education and producing a young and capable population that would be able to capitalise on any future endeavours. With the re-establishment of NAFTA under the USMCA, the United States and Mexico re-designed their relationship for this future.

The displacement of China, Russia and their allies is being met with new security arrangements as well. The association of Australia, the UK and United States in the Pacific was formed (AUKUS), along with closer ties with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in order to counter any of China’s expansion policies in the region. Displacing Russia’s exports has brought Russia and China closer together, at the same time, US pressure on China economically and the draining away of international companies from China’s manufacturing base may shift production towards Mexico and other likely locations for displacement.

It might be the case that in as soon as five years from now, countries will have to choose to displace their economies with Western countries, or narrow themselves to countries associated with Russia and perhaps, China, depending on the future security situation in the Pacific. India may be able to become the beneficiary of this tread as with a growing population, good educational standards and fair relations with both the West and Russia. India’s location in the world can take energy supplies from Russia without much pushback from the West due to India’s own understandable security needs, while displacing some manufacturing from China in the process. India may likely become a main broker of security needs for many in the region, along with Central Asia and even the Middle East.

Brazil may be able to benefit in ways Mexico will if they gear themselves towards local manufacturing and export. While generations of Brazilian leaders have pushed to industrialise the country and pull away from being a solely agro-exporter, Brazil’s youth took to focus on high tech and IT and now produce some of the most advanced products in the world, mind you in small numbers compared to its population. If Brazil can avoid allowing foreign nations to manipulate its growth prospects, while bypassing divisive politics and securing productive allies in the process, Brazil may be able to become the southern hub for exports to growing economies in Latin America as well as Africa and Europe. Policy is crucial to Brazil’s future, but they have recently taken some steps that might discount them in the near term.

Canada has seemed to placed themselves in a position to counter the Great Displacement, to their own detriment. Despite both Germany and Japan coming personally to Canada to ask for their assistance with their energy needs, Canada refused to offer any meaningful help to their direct Allies. Without North American oil and gas, Russia benefits greatly as it maintains Europe’s dependance on their Russian energy, thus prolonging the war in Ukraine. Non-displacement of oil and gas also and gives Iran more capabilities to send weapons to Russia and fund the attacks on their own people along with other innocents in the region. When many Canadians of Persian descent were murdered by Iran when they shot two missiles at an airliner close to Teheran, Canada’s leader met with Iran’s Foreign Minister just over a month later and allowed the regime to use the event as a propaganda win. Since then, almost nothing has been done to seek justice for the victims and their families by the same Government.

The AUKUS arrangement left out Canada, one of the largest Pacific powers, it seems for reasons that might become clear over the next few months. Canada’s Government has targeted Canada’s intelligence service and diligent journalists when it as found out that the current Government may have benefitted from China interfering in Canada’s elections. The release of the information had no effect in countering now known interference in Canadian democracy, but released the hounds on honourable intelligence officers and journalists for protecting their community. As it stands, there is no response to eleven districts being manipulated by China’s Consulate in Canada. One district in Toronto is knowingly seated with two Ministers who won with China’s support. The Prime Minister has done nothing about it, thus no democratic rights are given to the people in the area directly, or answers to the rest of their nation.

As great powers shift away from the norm since the 1990s, the countries that are taking the initiative to align themselves for a new possible era will likely be the most successful, especially if money and employment are shifted away from China towards their people. Countries like India will be able to manage the shift as their power and location makes their future choices an obvious one, benefitting their population even if done through diverse ties to opposing markets. Countries that avoid choosing the benefits of displacement, or put the needs of the opponents of their allies before the needs of their neighbours and their own people, will be discounted from a bright future. If you live in a district that has no trustworthy representation in your country, you might be in the latter category. The choice is often aligned with how democratic your nation has been recently. If you can choose who represents you without significant manipulation, you are likely on the right path.

In an ongoing diplomatic dance involving Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Biden administration appears to have lost awareness of where U.S. interests do and do not lie. The administration has made clear that it would love to see those two countries expand their ties, preferably to include full diplomatic relations, and evidently is partly shaping its policy toward Saudi Arabia with that objective in mind. But Israel and Saudi Arabia already cooperate extensively, including on sensitive security matters. Whatever practical benefits might derive from such cooperation are already to be had. The significance of any upgrading to normal diplomatic relations would mostly be symbolic—leading to the question of exactly what such upgrading would symbolize.

The sole reason that most Arab countries have not established full diplomatic relations with Israel already is the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory and its denial of self-determination and political rights to the Palestinians. It remains the official position of the Arab League that normal relations between Arab states and Israel will follow a just resolution of that conflict. Although some states have departed from that consensus, Saudi Arabia has not. This issue evidently is one aspect of Saudi policy on which the aging King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has continued to assert his authority and not defer entirely to his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Thus, what an establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, absent fundamental change in Israeli policy, would symbolize is the ability of Israel to enjoy normal relations with neighboring states despite continuing its occupation and never resolving the Palestinian conflict. The sole beneficiary of such symbolism is the right-wing government of Israel. It is a “have-cake-and-eat-it” (or have-diplomatic-relations-and-the-West-Bank) gift that successive Israeli governments have long craved.

Nobody else would benefit. Obviously, the Palestinians would not. Other Arab countries would not, not counting any side payments they receive for bestowing such a gift. The cause of peace and stability in the Middle East would not either.

And certainly, the United States would not benefit. By reducing further any Israeli incentive to resolve the festering conflict with the Palestinians, such a development would be contrary to U.S. interests by prolonging a region-wide source of tension and resentment in which the United States habitually gets associated with Israeli misdeeds.

Any establishment of Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations would follow the so-called “Abraham Accords,” in which Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE upgraded their relations with Israel. Heavily promoted by the Trump administration as “peace agreements,” this upgrading was nothing of the sort. Like Saudi Arabia, these Arab countries were not at war with Israel and already maintained extensive security and other cooperation with it.

Events since that upgrading provide reminders that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with all the pains and instabilities associated with it, is not going away no matter how many diplomatic agreements are reached with Arab states. Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged. Last year was the deadliest for Israelis since 2015 and the deadliest for Palestinians—146 of whom Israeli forces killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—since the United Nations started keeping records of such violence in 2005.

But Israeli hardliners, perhaps encouraged by the cake-and-eat-it nature of the “Abraham Accords,” still seem to think that the conflict can somehow be sidelined or forgotten. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose responsibilities also include administration of the West Bank, said the other day that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.” (One might ask Smotrich—who also recently commented that Israel should “wipe out” the West Bank town of Huwara—who, if there is no such thing as Palestinian people, is living in the town to be wiped out.)

The earlier upgrading of relationships between Israel with the UAE and Bahrain not only has sustained and exacerbated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also sustained tensions and sharpened lines of conflict in the Persian Gulf. Israel sees such relations with Gulf Arab countries as an anti-Iran military alliance. That framework, and accompanying Israeli saber-rattling, serve the Israeli government’s objective of perpetuating hostility toward, and tension with, Iran. Permanent tension with Iran in turn serves the Israeli purposes of blaming Iran for everything untoward in the Middle East, weakening a potential rival for regional influence, impeding any rapprochement between the United States and Iran, and diverting international attention from Israel’s own behavior.

All this is contrary to U.S. interests. The United States has an interest in lessening, not perpetuating or increasing, tensions in the Persian Gulf region. Heightened tensions in that area risk disruption of global energy markets, risk dragging the United States into armed conflict, and impede diplomacy needed to curb or control potentially destructive behavior by regional states, including Iran.

The Trump administration’s strong push for Arab states to upgrade relations with Israel entailed damaging side payments. With the UAE, this included a sale of F-35 combat aircraft—a move that encourages an accelerated arms race in the Persian Gulf. With Morocco, the side payment was the abandonment of U.S. neutrality on the Western Sahara dispute, a move that intensified tensions between Morocco and Algeria and complicated international efforts to resolve the dispute.

Now with Saudi Arabia, such a script threatens to be replayed. U.S. officials are reportedly in negotiation with Riyadh about upgrading relations with Israel, with the Saudis making demands that constitute their price for agreeing to such a move. Meeting those reported demands would be contrary to U.S. interests and the interests of regional stability and security.

The Saudis want fewer restrictions on their use of U.S.-made weapons, which would be a license for the kind of destabilizing Saudi behavior that has been demonstrated most vividly by the highly destructive Saudi air war in Yemen. They want added security guarantees from the United States, which would threaten to draw the United States into complicity with such behavior, as has already been to a large extent the case with the war in Yemen. And the Saudis want help in building a nuclear program, which would heighten concerns about nuclear proliferation in the region in a way that—unlike Iran’s program on the other side of the Gulf—would have direct U.S. involvement.

Even if what Saudi Arabia was offering in return was in U.S. interests, what is shaping up would probably be a bad bargain. The fact that what the Saudis would do is only something that a different foreign regime wants, not something that would advance US interests, means there is no reason even to consider the bargain.

In general, the more that the states of the Middle East talk with each other through normal diplomatic channels, the more likely the region will be peaceful and stable. But it does not enhance stability to disguise as “peace” agreements what really are conflict-perpetuating anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian arrangements. For the United States to promote such divisiveness perpetuates the self-crippling Manichaeism that inhibits the United States from being a true peace-maker.

That aspect of U.S. policy—which has characterized several U.S. administrations—has precluded the United States from playing the kind of constructive peacemaking role that China recently did in mediating the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Given the poisonous nature in recent years of the Saudi-Iranian relationship, which has constituted the main line of conflict in the Persian Gulf and has involved armed conflict both in proxy form as in Yemen and more directly, what the Chinese accomplished was a genuine tension-reducing move toward peace. The Biden administration, to its credit, welcomed the agreement, albeit cautiously.

So why is the administration pursuing an unconstructive bargain that would involve buying off the Saudis so they will cater to Israeli wishes? Partly it may be acting out of a once-valid but now obsolete perception that any expansion of relations between Israel and other Middle Eastern states really would constitute a move toward peace. Partly it may be an effort to match what the Trump administration claimed to have accomplished with the “Abraham Accords.” Mostly it probably reflects the American political habit of equating support for Israeli government objectives with being “pro-Israel,” and equating that with a necessary ingredient for electoral success.

Even at the level of crude politics, what is going on with Israel and Saudi Arabia ought to give the White House, including the president’s political advisers, pause. Not only do both those countries show a proclivity for poking a finger in the U.S. eye despite all the favors the United States has bestowed on them. They also have done the same thing to Joe Biden personally, with snubs and efforts to embarrass him.

Such behavior reflects the unapologetic interference in American politics by both Israel and Saudi Arabia in a pro-Republican and especially pro-Trump direction. The administration’s current attempt to buy an upgrading of relations between those two countries is not only bad policy; it also is strange politics.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was a National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.