Change is coming soon to American policy in the Middle East. The neoconservatives in Washington who defined American foreign policies in the past six years were down before the elections Tuesday, and they are now well on the way out. The common sense of ordinary Americans has reasserted itself over the reckless militaristic bravado of neocon-driven policies, which manifested themselves primarily in the Middle East. During my past five weeks of travel, study and work in the United States, it has been obvious from talks with Americans from many different walks of life that Americans are deeply disenchanted with the policies of President George W. Bush, which it finally repudiated in the election. Only the Iraqi dimension of the Middle East played a prominent role in the elections, and it will get the most attention now. The changing nature of the region and its many interlinked conflicts, though, means that any American policy shift in Iraq must necessarily involve grappling with other major issues in the region. I count at least a dozen major issues that require attention and that are related to one another, and to US policies: Palestine-Israel; internal Lebanese politics and the status of Hezbollah; Lebanese-Syrian relations and the conclusion of the investigation and trials related to the killing of the late Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri; Lebanese-Israeli issues and the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701; Iraq in all its dimensions; Iran’s nuclear industry; terrorism; weapons of mass destruction proliferation; democracy promotion and the rule of law; improvement of socio-economic conditions; meeting the political and economic aspirations of the region’s burgeoning youth population; and, engaging the growing Islamist movements throughout the region. In most of these issues, the self-interested view from within the US is not a happy one. Washington in recent years has steadily lost influence in the region and, more importantly, has lost friends and allies. A majority of people in the region strongly oppose American policies and are standing up and making themselves heard by defying Washington (and Israel) in various ways. Iran and Syria are the state leaders in a loose anti-American coalition of forces that can conveniently be called the defiance front. Their main allies are Hezbollah and Hamas, Islamic Brotherhood-type movements in many countries, and even some Arab nationalist and democratic movements that see Israeli-American hegemony or occupation as their main immediate concerns and long-term threats. Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and associated political forces throughout the Middle East touch on every single one of the issues I mentioned above, and can be helpful or obstructive on any and all of them. One of the consequences of US-Israeli policies over the past several decades has been to give birth to this new informal coalition of forces, parties, armed resistance movements and governments, significant because it transcends the four main divides that define the region and countries within it: Sunni-Shiite, Iranian-Arab, secular-religious, and Arab nationalist-Islamist. This should come as no surprise, because the laws of politics and physics alike teach us that aggression begets resistance. Israel’s harsh and prolonged occupation policies ultimately gave birth to the anti-occupation resistance movements Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Similarly, the American military move into Iraq, along with associated, neocon-driven threats and sanctions against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, have sparked widespread political resistance to and defiance against Washington. Any interested foreign country that attempts to address one of the key issues in the Middle East must necessarily deal with the others. For example, Hezbollah’s status as a resistance movement (or an “armed militia, in official American parlance), cannot be addressed coherently without considering the interests of Palestine, Syria, and Iran. It would be difficult to try and move quickly on Arab-Israeli negotiated peace agreements without resolving the internal Lebanese situation or Syrian-Lebanese relations. The Bush administration in the past two years has quietly and gradually sidelined the key neoconservative personalities who defined foreign policy after 9/11. The US now moves into a new post-election phase of foreign policy-making that is shaped by three significant factors. The slightly hysterical and often militant neocon-driven foreign policy in the Middle East will be more rationally formulated now by the team of Stephen Hadley at the National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice at the State Department and Robert Gates at the Defense Department. The US will look for new approaches to getting out of Iraq, without leaving that country and surrounding areas in chronic war, which will necessitate new approaches to Palestine-Israel, Syria, Iran and other key players. And, the Iraq Study Group, headed by the sober team of Lee Hamilton and James Baker, will soon recommend new policy approaches that Bush and his government will be able to adopt, without losing face. The urgency of a new Iraq policy and the linkages with the other big issues in the region mean that change in US foreign policy throughout the region is inevitable in the near future. The alternative would be to continue existing trends, the worst option for all concerned, inside the region and abroad.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
