When we consider the US and the Middle East it is ironic that the US doesn’t go back very far historically with the Middle East. This is partly because the US itself is a relatively new country. It is only 200 years old. The Middle East goes back thousands of years.
Other Western countries like the UK and France go back a long way in the Middle East. You could go back as far as the crusaders and Richard the Lionheart of England and to Napoleon. France and the UK have been in the Middle East for hundreds of years, they know the region very well, they have been colonial powers.
However the US is a relatively new player and a new comer. Only as far back as 1956 when there was the Suez Canal attack by France, Britain and Israel on Egypt the USA took a neutral position and even condemned the attack.
But then in the 1967 war the US took a very partial stand with Israel and supported Israel in that war. Then seven years later in the 1973 war launched by Egypt under the late President Sadat to recapture the Suez Canal and the Sinai Desert, Egypt scored a striking victory and was going to reclaim all Egyptian land. America decided to interfere and set up a lifeline of supplies of all types of weapons including military aircrafts and ammunitions to make sure that Israel did not suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of Egypt.
So at that time it was clear that the US was taking a very partial stand, very much pro-Israel at the expense of the Palestinians and the Arabs. At least that is how it is perceived in the Middle East.
Why is it now that the topic is America and the Middle East: confrontational engagement? America has told us that it is constructive engagement. But the more accurate description is confrontational engagement. Why is it that America is so confrontational today towards the Middle East and mainly the Arab countries in the Middle East.
We need to take into account some recent global developments. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union there were two major powers in this world: the eastern bloc and the western bloc and the Soviet Union was a major power. There was some sort of equilibrium in the world and there was some sort of order based on an equilibrium. There were two facing confronting powers: the Soviet Union and the United States. Many of the Middle Eastern countries had very close ties with the Soviet Union so in a sense they were allied to the Soviet Union and the USA would not even contemplate being so aggressive towards those countries. It would not even contemplate attacking them or completely invading them.
But after the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union in the last two decades we have seen the emergence of what the Americans describe as the New World Order. And this new world order is based on just one hegemon, one dominant force, one dominant power. It is based on one dominant empire and that is the American empire.
That is why if you go back to American policies and attitudes since 1990 until today you find that there is a completely new very aggressive attitude. America is now as at ease in terms of dominating, dictating, telling those countries what to do and even going as far as attacking, launching airstrikes, invading and completely taking over countries.
This is mainly to do with a world order based on just one dominant force, one empire which is America. So this partly explains why America today is so confrontational and aggressive in terms of its policies towards the Middle East.
What drives American policy in the Middle East? We can perhaps think of three major factors which are as follows: the first one is the fact that empires behave like the Americans are behaving today. Empires do not feel that they have to treat others equally. They feel that they have the right to dictate to the others what to do and what to believe. Empires always believe in their own hegemony of the rest of the world. That is why America is behaving like that. It is not interested in treating others equally, it is not interested in listening to what the others say or want. It is only interested in its own point of view, in its own interest, in its own culture, discourses and its own view of this world and how it should be. This is one factor that really drives its policies. It is the behaviour of an arrogant, very powerful empire.
The second factor is the security of Israel. This is definitely a major strategic factor that dictates American policy in the Middle East. There are so many different explanations as to why America is taking such a partial stand towards Israel. Why it is so biased towards Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. It may be related to the fundamentalist Christians. The state of Israel is part of their religious beliefs. The Christian fundamentalist lobby is very powerful in shaping American foreign policy to protect and guarantee the security of the state of Israel. It is also related to the very powerful Jewish lobby in America. It has a lot of money, it can dictate who can be elected to congress and the White House and it can dictate what policies the Americans should adopt towards the Middle East and towards Israel. So that is another factor. The Jewish lobby in America is very old. It goes back maybe 150 years. Over this time the Jewish community of the American Jews have established themselves as a very powerful force in the dynamics of the US. That maybe why America is so biased towards Israel.
Others cite other right wing tendencies like the Republican Party and the neo cons. We have seen in the past ten years the rise of the neo conservatives who are also very much pro-Israel. At the end the result is that we have this major strategic factor which is guaranteeing the strength and the superiority of Israel. This drives and shapes American policy in the Middle East and America would never do anything to jeopardize that. So it doesn’t matter whether the Palestinians have rights or Arabs have rights, injustice and inhumane treatment of others and oppression. That becomes really secondary because the main issue for the Americans is to make sure that Israel is secure and protected.
The other major factor of American policy in the Middle East is oil and economic interests. We have to have some background about this. America as a population is only three percent of the world population and yet it constitutes 25 percent of the world economy and consumes 25 percent of the world’s consumption of energy. So there are major energy needs in America. America’s economy is governed by oil and energy and it is growing all the time. Energy supplies of oil and gas are scarce. They are not in abundance. They may run out one day.
When we come to the Middle East we discover some interesting facts. Two-thirds of the world’s reserves of oil and gas are in the Middle East. One American politician said the fact two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves are under the Middle East is a geological mistake that we should correct. These are his exact words. They think it is very important that the flow of this oil is secure for the United States to fuel its economy, its growth, its energy demands for the foreseeable future.
I am not just talking about decades ahead. I an not just talking about the Americans plan for the next five or ten years. We are talking about America’s plan for decades and decades ahead. They want to secure and guarantee the flow of oil and gas to treat their energy needs and their growth. That is the other major factor.
Saudi Arabia has the largest oil reserves in the world as a single country and the second largest oil reserves in the world are in Iraq. Does that tell us something? Of course it does. So when we hear all this nonsense about how we went to Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people to give them freedom and to give them human rights as intelligent people we can draw our own conclusions about the real purpose.
Iraq has been a very powerful and a very strategic country in the region, with a large, innovative, industrious population and a very powerful and that would go well with the state of Israel so it had to be destroyed as well. The fact that the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein went with that is a welcome outcome but overall the destruction and occupation of Iraq is not at all beneficial for the people of Iraq. So that is all related to the importance of oil and to the Middle East as a major supplier of oil and energy.
What is going to happen from now on? I think America is going to continue behave as the world’s single most powerful entity as an empire. Its policies are going to be driven by its hegemony, its will to dominate everybody. That is why we see the very aggressive stance towards Iran. So when we see America being so aggressive towards Iran and not giving Iran the right to develop technology for peaceful or military purposes. This is the right many countries have throughout the world. This is driven by considerations about the security of Israel.
America is also very aggressive towards Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is a major force in Lebanon and its members have been elected to parliament yet America regards it as a terrorist organization and refuses to recognize it. But the rest of the world does not see it like that. It is a major force in Lebanon. It is part and parcel of the political and social fabric of Lebanon. Yet America sees it as a terrorist organization as it threatens the security of Israel. Hezbollah is very keen on liberating Lebanon’s land. It also helps Palestinians in their plight. So America sees them as a major threat to the security of Israel and has taken a major stance against them.
So that is how we are going to see things developing from now. America will try and make Iraq a completely pro-America satellite state which is completely paralyzed region. It will never cause any threat to Israel. America will try to ensure that. They will also try to combat the threat of Hezbollah. They will try to prevent Iran from developing weapons as these could threaten Israel. So I think America will peruse these policies very aggressively.
The other sad and disappointing thing about American foreign policy towards the Middle East is that despite all the rhetoric about reform, democratization, human rights and improving the plight of the people and all that nonsense, America has taken a strategic decision to go with the current regimes in the Middle East. All these regimes without any exception are regimes which are totalitarian, they are dictatorial, some of them rule their people with sheer terror and oppression. There is no democracy, there are no human rights. No wonder the people of the Middle East are very angry and very violent. They direct their anger at the West and the USA because they know that a major force in the world which is keeping these regimes, propping them up and keeping the in place is the United States.
After recent developments when we had elections in Palestine and Hamas took part in the elections with great success. We had elections in Egypt but they were only partially free and the Muslim Brotherhood scored 20 percent. If they were truly free I think they would have scored much more than that. So those who dictate policy in the American administration have decided that democracy is not going to be good for us in the Middle East. It is not going to serve our interests so the best thing is to carry on supporting those regimes. They may be corrupt and isolated but we will continue to support them because they are the best ones to guarantee our interests in the region, mainly the flow of energy resources, the guaranteeing of Israeli security and the hegemony of American values in the region.
Dr Saeed Shehabi: Last week there was a commemoration by some families of 40 years of what came to be known as the Me Lai massacre. On that day American troops entered a small village in Vietnam and they wiped out all its inhabitants: 510 men, women and children. It was really a very bad incident or crime. It is commemorated yearly and they commemorated it this year as well.
Two weeks ago there was a film on television, a docu drama about the attack of American troops on Haditha. It was after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the film showed how the American troops entered houses and killed innocent people. It was by a British producer and it was on Channel four. You would not believe that such a thing could happen.
It is 63 years since they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. After the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 America entered into world politics in a major way. The British empire was waning and the American empire became stronger. It is after 1945 that they became really engaged in the Middle East. Prior to that they had been in contact with the Saudis to secure their oil. Their engagement became much stronger after the Second World War.
The first time that their war ships came to the Gulf was after that.. In 1948 one big American frigate anchored in the port of Manama in Bahrain. The captain of that ship extended an invitation to about 50 or 60 nobles, people of significance in Bahrain. It was a reception party on board that frigate. None of them went. They all signed a letter saying they were not able to respond positively to his invitation and that was because America recognized the state of Israel.
Their engagement did not start on a good footing but in the beginning America did have a balanced attitude towards events in that region. As Guima, my colleague said earlier in 1956 they took a neutral stand and the attack on Egypt by Britain and France was a disaster – especially for Britain. It ended the career of Anthony Eden the prime minister. It was one of the most devastating foreign policy blunders by the British government and America told the forces to withdraw from the canal otherwise they would intervene. How would we access that? Would America have intervened on behalf of the Arabs standing against aggression by these powers.
It was the cold war years, we are talking about the 50s, we are talking about the Soviet Union at its peak of influence. What drove the US foreign policy at this time was this anti-communist anger and anti-communist stance. So at this time anyone who opposed anti-American policy would be called a communist. This trend was evident in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Egypt in many other countries. It was the communist monster that appeared to be the challenge to American hegemony in the Middle East.
Now another corner stone was the 1967 war which also influenced the American attitude to the region. After 1967 they tried to become more and more pro Israel. Just before the 1973 war Egypt had switched sides. Jamal Abdul Nasser passed away after attending the Khartoum Conference of the three ‘nos’ – no to submission, no to capitulation, no to negotiation with Israel. That was the last engagement of President Nasser in 1970. President Sadat came to office. One of the things I was thinking of today was that the coming of Sadat to power may have changed the history of the Middle East. How?
President Sadat started releasing the Muslim Brothers. They were completely crushed by President Nasser. In 1972 the first approach between Sadat and the Ikhwan happened and he released many of them. At that time Islamic awareness and political Islam had not yet become a force in the world. And the leaders of the Ikhwan heralded a new era in which Islamists would work actively.
Coupled with that we had the Shah in Iran who was celebrating 2500 years of the Persian dynasties. In Iran the situation was boiling. The Shah’s excesses were felt by everybody and the Americans were seen as the main supporters of the Shah. 1972 was the year when President Nixon visited China. This marked a very significant change in the foreign policy of the United States.
Now the release of the Ikhwan could be considered as one of the most significant events which shaped the region. The 1970s was the era in which Islamism flourished. In Iran it was a gradual development. In the UK I was attending the brothers meeting, listening to what they were saying and their ordeals inside the jails. This gave the youth a strong feeling of patriotism.
It was then that the real nucleus of political Islam that we witnesses today flourished. The nucleus was there. It could be just my own interpretation but what we see today is the direct result of what took place then.
America in the 70s was engaged in a very bloody war in Vietnam as political Islam was flourishing. They withdrew in 1975. That really saddened the Americans as they were seen to be defeated by the Vietcong and the Vietnamese.
After the war of 1973 America was engaged in Vietnam but it was dragged to the realm of the Middle East and it started having relations after the expulsion of the Soviet experts from Egypt America started having a strong cause in Egypt calling for peace. You had the might of America being put behind President Sadat.
So what we see is a new global situation with America being engaged at various points, fighting communism and trying to open up to the east somehow but fearing the expansion of the Soviets into the warm waters of the Gulf. At the time they did not want to leave any chance for the Soviets to establish a foothold in that region.
Then as we know in 1979 we have the Islamic Revolution in Iran which sealed the whole equation. It completed the equation of confrontation. We have the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. This had a very serious effect on the American psyche and American morale.
At the same time the Soviets made it worse for the Americans. Having lost the Shah the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. So many events were taking place all of which were directing in one direction: the direction of confrontation between America and what it sees as threats whether they coming the Soviets in Afghanistan of from the Islamists in the Middle East, especially after the Iranian Revolution.
In the 1980s we had the Iraq-Iran war. At the beginning they did not take much interest as they were trying to evaluate what they should do after what they had seen. They were forced to leave Vietnam in 1975 and then their ally the Shah was removed and Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviets.
The prices of oil were rising from 1974 onwards and the effect of the Islamic revolution also pushed those prices upwards. It was a crisis. Saddam was known to be on the leftist side gradually America made headway in its relations with him. During the 80s they had befriended Saddam to the extent that they were exchanging information on military targets and the military situation in Iran.
Then there was the Iran contra affair with McFarland supplying Iran with some missiles in return for some money to finance another war. The Americans entered into a confrontation first to start with the communist threat and later with the new Islamism. It was perceived as the new threat – the Islamic threat.
Before I end I would like to refer to the neo cons. I was reading an article last week in the Times on the fifth anniversary of the war. It discussed if the neo conservatives were defeated and they are no longer in the American administration would things change. And the writer does not think so. The neo cons may have pushed the war forward but their defeat in the White House will not result in a shift in American policy because it is not new. American engagement with the war on terror was not the making of the neo cons. We have to understand that if Mr Bush is out of office it is unlikely that we will see a major shift in American foreign policy.
The support for Israel. This is something I do not understand. What does Israel mean to the West? I do not know if anyone can answer that question. I put it to a speaker in Abrar but she could not answer. I don’t know whether anyone can answer that question. What does Israel mean to the West now. In the past we could say that it was safeguarding the interests of America in the Middle East. But in the last two wars we saw that the Americans did not need the Israelis to safeguard their interests.
In 1991 the war against Iraq they specifically told the Israelis not to get involved as this would ruin the support they were getting from the Arabs. In the last war, 2003, the Israelis did not play a direct part in the war. They had intelligence people on the ground but they did not take part. So what interests does Israel protect. I can’t answer this and I do not understand what Israel means to the West today.
Now a final remark about what I call balancing the act. Iran has large oil reserves and Iraq has the second or third largest reserves in the world. Is it a matter of Iraq versus Iran? Having lost Iran is America trying to gain Iraq to replace it? Is it a matter of Israel versus the Arabs? Is it democracy versus Islam? Are these all factors contributing to the making of the American policy in the Middle East? I think this confrontational engagement has to be investigated more fully and I personally admit that I still am at a loss when trying to understand what drives the Americans to do what they are doing in the Middle East. Thank you very much.
