On Second Thought

Last week, I wrote a strong rebuke of Trump’s policy in the Middle East.  A sudden withdrawal of troops in Syria led to the abrupt resignation of General Mattis and drew harsh criticism from both the left and the right.  Moreover, the decision lent credence to the narrative that he is an impulsive, out-of-control president that is unfit for the office.   Mattis was tremendously popular and many conservatives were lined up against Trump on this one.

But slow down a minute.  Is his decision to vacate Syria and Afghanistan a monumental strategic blunder?  I’m not sure it’s as clear cut as it appears.

First of all, in Syria, we are putting troops in the crosshairs of Russian and Turkish forces.  There is risk that U.S. troops would come into contact with either Russian or Turkish forces.  Once Obama invited the Russians in, it was going to be damn near impossible to get them to leave.   As in Afghanistan, there is also a risk of mission creep and that our troops would be there indefinitely.  While I am sensitive to the plight of the Kurds, and do not take that aspect of it lightly, the purpose of our troop deployment was never to protect the Kurds.

It is timely that I just finished John Mersheimer’s book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.  Mersheimer’s central thesis is that “American policymakers would be wise to abandon liberal hegemony and pursue a more restrained foreign policy based on realism and a proper understanding of how nationalism constrains great powers.”  Further, he asserts, “Under Presidents Bush and Barack Obama, Washington has played a key role in sowing death and destruction across the Middle East, and there is little evidence the mayhem will end anytime soon.”  The Iran-Iraq War should have been a lesson for us.  Those two countries were two busy beating the heck out of each other to be too bothersome to anyone else.   Especially now that we are not dependent on the Middle East for energy, minimizing our involvement might be the best option.   We have spent trillions and thousands of lives for little benefit.  Twenty eight years later, we must conclude that our successful intervention to eject Iraq from Kuwait was an exception rather than the rule and George H.W. Bush was correct to leave as soon as that was accomplished (despite the moral tug of leaving the Kurds at the mercy of Hussein).

Assad is not going to go.  Obama set that as a policy goal, but if there is one thing we should have learned from our experience in the second war in Iraq and the Libya intervention, that what follows may be much worse.  Assad, like his father, and like Hussein, is ruthless and bloodthirsty enough to deal with the Islamists and terrorists.  With the Arab world’s posture toward Israel somewhat fractionated, Assad might be the least bad option.  Other than Israel, there are no good guys or dependable allies in the Middle East.

Trump campaigned on ending these wars, as did Obama.  Not only did Obama not end Middle Eastern wars, he promptly repeated Bush’s mistake in Iraq in Libya (albeit at a lower cost).  Obama’s America was at war during the entire stretch of his two term presidency and Americans are weary of it, especially when the goals are not clear and there is no end in sight.

Finally, as to Mattis, as much as I admire and respect him, generals do not make policy.   And Mattis himself has had mistakes in judgment.  As I noted in my prior post, he supported Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.  Theranos is liquidating and Holmes may go to prison.  He warned that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would inflame the Arab world, and that has been a big nothingburger.  We would do well to remember another popular and revered general--- George S. Patton.  At the end of WWII, Patton wanted to keep our forces in Europe,  take on the Russians and drive them out of Eastern Europe, rationalizing that we would have to fight them sooner or later and that he believed that our goal was to make ALL of Europe free.  That goal had some appeal and we ended up with a 45 year period of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.  But a military confrontation with the Russians would likely have cost millions of lives and we were  war weary.  Not following Patton on policy may have been the least bad option.

We should likewise keep in mind that we do not have good options available to us in the Middle East or Afghanistan.  Trump’s position may not be entirely irrational at all.