https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/op02-ibish-1.91273

As the confrontation between the Arab coalition and Qatar nears the one-month mark, with Doha insisting it intends to reject the 13 demands placed before it, it’s becoming increasingly clear that if there is to be any kind of reconciliation it will be brokered by Washington.

The parties seem to recognise this, as the flurry of diplomatic activity in the American capital last week demonstrated. But the Trump administration still appears divided, uncertain and haunted by a series of unresolved questions that will undoubtedly shape the longer-term, and possibly decisive, American response.

Perhaps the most significant meeting last week was a dinner at which US secretary of state Rex Tillerson was joined by the foreign minister of Kuwait and the secretary-general of the United Nations, presumably to discuss this crisis. In that meeting, one could start to see the outlines of an international mediation troika that combines the global legitimacy of the UN, the regional Gulf credibility of Kuwait and the heft and power of the United States.

The state department seems keen to resolve the confrontation, but the White House apparently has yet to give it a green light to utilise Washington’s full influence. Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, continues to describe the stand-off as a “family issue” that should be resolved by the parties themselves without American interference.

However, many others in Washington are becoming increasingly alarmed at the potential costs to the US over the long run.

Concern not only focuses on emerging difficulties in optimizing and coordinating between the US military installations spread around the Gulf region, as Bahrain’s recent expulsion of Qataris working with the anti-ISIL campaign began to demonstrate. There’s also a strong American perception that unity among its allies is essential to the priorities of defeating terrorism and confronting Iran.

Moreover, Qatar has launched a fairly effective public relations campaign in Washington, painting itself as the victim of “counterrevolutionary autocrats” who are trying to bully a small neighbour for having an independent foreign policy and a free press. This caricature of reality has made substantial inroads in American perceptions because it has been largely unopposed in policy-framing, if not policy-making, circles.

Therefore, once a unified policy coalesces in the administration, Washington is likely to push for an early resolution based on Gulf Arab reconciliation.

The challenge will be that the countries confronting Doha are clear that their demands are non-negotiable, while Qatar is extremely unlikely to submit to them as promulgated.

The Arab coalition doesn’t seem at all willing to negotiate directly, or compromise, with Qatar. But they might be willing to reach understandings with Washington, which could then have its own complimentary “bilateral” arrangements with Doha.

Ideas are already circulating involving the embedding of US treasury officials in Qatari ministries and financial institutions, supervision of monthly audits and restructuring the management of Al Jazeera and other media.

The Qataris don’t rule these out, and while such ideas evidently won’t satisfy the coalition, they could be a start.

Washington’s ultimate posture will be shaped by the answers to several key questions.

First, is the coalition amenable to a resolution based on policy changes by Doha or does it want to give Qatar a straightforward choice of capitulation or indefinite isolation? It will be much easier for Washington to work with the first than the second.

Second, the 13 demands have left many Americans wondering what the primary motivation for the campaign is, because they cover so many varied, disparate elements.

Is this campaign primarily driven by differences over the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremists, and mainly designed to get Qatar to stop promoting radical ideas and demagogues?

Or is it primarily conceptualised as a first step in what may ultimately prove a far broader campaign to confront and rollback Iranian influence, by getting the Arab and Gulf house in order and denying Tehran a covert ally and potential mouthpiece and conduit to Arab public opinion?

The consensus view in Washington is that it must primarily be one or the other. It could be both, of course. But not equally.

The US assumption is that there is an overarching strategic goal, in the singular. And, right now, few if any Americans, including the most well-informed, have a strong sense of which it is.

The inclusion, for example, of the demand to end the Turkish military presence in Qatar in the list further muddied the issues in Washington. This doesn’t seem directly connected to either Iran, or to terrorism.

The idea that Turkey and Qatar, along with Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood groups, constitute a subversive and dangerous Islamist alliance might be convincing in much of the Gulf. But such accusations are still a stretch in Washington regarding a long-standing NATO ally.

Of course, if the countries confronting Qatar seek or welcome a separation, or if Doha is completely recalcitrant — or both – such American questions won’t matter, because any reconciliation effort is bound to fail. But the American drive to understand and resolve the crisis, in the US national interest, is only likely to strengthen if the stand-off drags on or, especially, intensifies.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/washingtons-complex-interest-in-the-qatar-crisis

Over the course of the past week, Washington’s position regarding the standoff between Qatar and the coalition of Arab countries confronting Doha became simultaneously more complicated and clearer. Given the central role the Americans are likely to play in shaping the outcome, they should have also developed a stronger sense of what they are, and are not, likely to accomplish.

Shortly after the crisis developed a few weeks ago, Donald Trump expressed strong support for the Arab coalition and seemed to take credit for the campaign to pressure Doha, which he called “a hard but necessary action”.

He accused Qatar of historically funding terrorism “at a very high level” due to its “extremist ideology”.

US secretary of state Rex Tillerson struck a more nuanced tone, calling on the Arab countries to urgently resolve their differences. While he asked the coalition to “ease the blockade against Qatar”, he also said that Doha “must do more … and more quickly” to end funding and support for terrorism and extremists.

The difference in style and emphasis between the president and the secretary of state was so great that many erroneously concluded that they had contradicted or at least undermined each other. But, in fact, they had essentially called for the same things, demanding that Qatar change its policies and conduct while expecting all other parties to simply return to the previous status quo.

On June 20, however, a state department spokesperson radically reconfigured the way Washington is positioning itself regarding the crisis.

Because “it’s been more than two weeks since the embargo started”, she said, “we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the public, nor to the Qataris, the details about the claims that they are making toward Qatar.”

Even more bluntly, she continued “we are left with one simple question: were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism, or were they about the long simmering grievances between and among the GCC countries?”

Not only did this unusually harsh rhetoric by Washington question the veracity and motives of several of its key allies, it shifted the onus from Qatar to the countries confronting it.

The statement, including its unexpected and jarringly bitter tone, and the contrast it presented with the earlier comments by Mr Trump and Mr Tillerson served as a stark reminder that Washington’s interests in the crisis are both intense and highly complex.

As the Trump and Tillerson statements suggested, many of the primary coalition accusations against Qatar resonate strongly with the key American policy of counter-terrorism, and specifically opposing terrorism financing and the harbouring of radicals.

Yet the crisis, by its very nature, also flies in the face of the American imperative of unity among its Arab and Muslim allies, especially in the Gulf region.

The need for unity was the overarching theme of Mr Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May. And, given that Washington has dispersed its military assets in the Gulf in several different countries, many of which are involved in the present confrontation, if it persists the crisis threatens to pose serious challenges to the American ability to fulfil its strategic objectives. The notion that the isolation of Qatar could go on “for years”, as some Gulf officials have suggested, is unacceptable to Washington.

Given the intensity of the American rebuke, it’s not surprising that the coalition moved quickly to issue its 13 demands for Qatar to resolve the impasse. Yet many of them are strikingly maximalist in both tone and substance, and, presumably, represent an opening gambit rather than a final offer.

Mr Tillerson welcomed news that the demands had been drafted and would be presented to Qatar, but added that he hoped that they would also be “reasonable and actionable”. It remains to be seen whether Washington believes that all 13 items meet that standard.

Moreover, since Doha is almost certain to reject the list as it reportedly now reads, and one item holds that it will only be valid for ten days, while the presentation of the demands fulfils Washington’s request that it be composed and issued, it is unlikely to bring the confrontation to a quick conclusion.

The United States is torn between the twin imperatives of counterterrorism and unity, both of which are important to American calculations and neither of which can be discarded. Washington’s policy will therefore probably seek to split the difference between them by pressing for a speedy resolution to the crisis, but not without securing some meaningful and enforceable concessions from Qatar on support for extremists and radical ideologies.

Whether either side to the intra-Arab confrontation will prove receptive to this likely American approach is another matter entirely.

http://www.agsiw.org/washingtons-competing-priorities-qatar-crisis/

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/to-end-the-crisis-qatar-knows-it-must-back-down

The diplomatic crisis, now entering its third week, between Qatar and a bloc of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will probably neither significantly escalate nor be resolved anytime soon. Both sides appear to be digging in for a protracted standoff.

Qatar, in particular, has a clear interest in dragging out the crisis, as it now stands, for as long as possible.

A protracted confrontation surely heightens the risks of a dangerous miscalculation or misunderstanding. It means the costs to the Arab world will probably be maximised rather than minimised, especially since predatory opportunists such as Iran might find ways of exploiting the discord.

As the contretemps developed last month, Qatar increasingly counted on hopes Washington would pressure all sides to not merely de-escalate, but also return to the prior status quo. The United States has an obvious interest in containing and quickly resolving any major clash between key allies.

But while the Trump administration has indeed pushed the parties to resolve their dispute, it has not remained neutral. Both Donald Trump, the US president, and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, clearly said Washington wants Arab countries to ease their isolation of Doha, but insist that some long-standing Qatari policies and conduct must change.

This is not only consistent between Mr Trump and Mr Tillerson, despite their radically different tones. It is also reflective of American objections to some Qatari policies and practices that date back well over a decade and were shared by the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Most US concerns about Qatar aren’t sudden shifts, but instead reflect long-standing and bipartisan positions.

Given that Washington even Washington is demanding Qatar submit to an evolving list of policy changes, Doha knows it must eventually concede. Despite its defiant affectation, Doha lacks any viable long-term options other than the eventual accommodation of its outraged neighbours and a friendlier, but still stern, Washington.

Doha’s priority, beyond ensuring the stability of the regime and maintaining national morale, is thus to somehow minimise the price required to keep Washington sufficiently onside, and for an eventful rapprochement with its erstwhile Arab allies.

Washington is likely to emerge as the “weak link” against which Doha must press to lower such costs, because US demands will be both decisive and easier to shift than Arab ones. This dispute is important, but neither familial nor existential, for Washington.

The US nonetheless has a clear stake in the outcome since it shares many core concerns about Qatar’s conduct. And the quarrel among its allies may prove not merely uncomfortable, but increasingly problematic for Washington’s agenda. Relocating the massive US military presence in Qatar would be time-consuming, costly and potentially disruptive of American military plans. It is therefore highly implausible.

The existing arrangements give Washington considerable leverage over Doha. But they also provide Qatar – especially when it’s trying to appear as cooperative as possible – many ways of reminding Washington of the benefits of the current configuration and manifest risks of any alternative, which would probably involve trying to change either the current military configuration or the Qatari regime.

Qatar will therefore try to use a protracted crisis to maximise American discomfort and impatience, thereby pushing Washington towards merely urging a return by all parties to the status quo. Hence US demands for meaningful Qatari policy change could be minimised, or even practically eliminated.

As the imbroglio drags on, the Arab bloc will be tempted to try to resolve it by applying more pressure. Yet the pressure on Qatar is already widely labelled disproportionate. Some measures, such as outlawing expressions of sympathy for Qatar, are being used to denigrate the campaign as spiteful or excessive.

Arab states confronting Qatar did not do so without understanding the serious risks involved – including potential political openings for Iran and other malefactors, and the possibility of miscalculations, unintended consequences and unforeseen pitfalls. Such campaigns inevitably defy anyone’s rational plans or control.

This is not a measure of Arab impulsiveness or caprice, but rather the determination with which these countries are once again pressuring Doha after the unfulfilled promises of 2014.

Nevertheless, the Arab camp has allowed the crisis to metastasise far enough. Further escalation won’t benefit them.

Qatar cannot sustain any significant additional pressure. It’s putting on a brave face, and as long as Turkey and Iran – and much more importantly Kuwait and Jordan – remain open to Qatar at many registers and numerous levels, for a time Doha can endure. But not indefinitely.

While Qatar must eventually concede, in the near term neither side is likely to either back down or escalate.

Indeed, dragging this out, especially to Washington’s growing chagrin, is Qatar’s best bet to minimise the depth of its eventual climbdown.

http://m.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-crisis-is-only-just-beginning-for-qatar

When Donald Trump tweeted unmistakably strong support for the Arab
coalition confronting Qatar, the final window of hope slammed shut on
Doha. Qatar’s only practical way out of the crisis was hope that
Washington would mediate the crisis in a spirit of strict neutrality
and press all sides to return to the status quo ante. That’s clearly
not happening

Some voices in Washington did suggest such an approach, arguing that
the United States should avoid any involvement in a “spat” between
allies and that US military interests in Qatar overrule all other
considerations. This perspective – which is informed mainly by narrow
or ill-informed understandings and fails to appreciate the effect of
Qatar’s conduct on regional affairs – has not prevailed. A more
cautious and circumspect approach rather than blustering,
self-congratulatory presidential tweets would certainly have been
preferable. But the US clearly understands it has a major stake in the
outcome.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson struck a more subtle tone. He
demanded that Qatar “must do more and … more quickly” to end support
and financing of terrorism, while calling on Arab states to “ease the
blockade against Qatar”.

Note that this apparently even-handed approach actually asks Qatar to
change its behaviour while urging the others to move back to towards
business as usual. Therefore, whether phrased bluntly or more subtly,
the American position is clearly siding firmly with the Arab bloc and
against Qatar.

Even more ominously for Doha, the Trump administration has asked Saudi
Arabia for a list of specific demands on Qatar to restore former
relations.

This confirms that Washington wants to resolve the dispute but
realises that this cannot involve a repetition of the 2014 rupture
wherein Qatar promised to change its behaviour but, after a period of
relative caution, backslid and resumed its support of political and
religious radicals and double-dealing on Iran.

Qatar is defiant and putting on a brave face. But the reality is that
it is surrounded by outraged neighbours, partners and nominal allies.
The travel, trade and communications embargoes that have been imposed,
especially by Saudi Arabia, which effectively controls Qatar’s only
land border, will be increasingly crippling. Moreover, sanctions are
widening and intensifying, and more Arab countries are joining the
camp that is downgrading relations with Qatar until it mends its ways.

Turkey is giving Qatar considerable diplomatic and rhetorical support,
and speeding up some limited and hardly game-changing military
cooperation. But the reality is that Ankara is not able to provide
Qatar with the breadth and depth of support the tiny country needs,
especially over the long run.

Nor can Turkey project enough power at such distances to become the
new Qatari patron and guarantor of its prerogatives over the vehement
objections and opposition of its immediate Arab neighbours.

Much as both Ankara and Doha might want this, the idea of Qatar
becoming a client of Turkey is neither realistic nor viable.

Iran, too, is offering a wide range of support to Qatar. Tehran is
clearly relishing the discord in the Arab camp and fanning the flames
as energetically as possible. Unlike Turkey’s offers, though, Qatar is
largely rebuffing Iran, at least in public. But more quietly Doha
certainly seems to be moving ever closer to Tehran, both confirming
some of the main charges against it and deepening the rift with Arab
countries and Washington.

Iran’s support is theoretically more realistic than Turkey’s, given
its geographical proximity to Qatar, but politically it is far more
non-viable. Indeed, any overt or substantive steps by Doha to
decisively align with Tehran would be a catastrophic error. It could
lead to suspension or expulsion from the Gulf Cooperation Council,
American moves to shift its military presence in Qatar to a
neighbouring country, and might even destabilise the Qatari regime
itself.

Doha knows all this full well and therefore must keep Iran at arm’s
length in public even if it moves closer to it in quieter ways during
the crisis. And it’s almost certain that Qatar will have to reverse
any moves towards Tehran – and then shift further away from it than it
has been in the past decade or more – if it wants to find a way out of
the crisis it has created for itself.

Not only does Qatar lack any viable options, especially now that
Washington has plainly sided against it, the crisis for Doha is just
beginning. If this drags on for months, the country’s economy will be
severely damaged, its regional role all but eliminated, and many of
its plans – possibly including hosting the World Cup – either
disrupted or rendered impossible.

Qatar may drag this out to share the pain, but it knows it is going to
have to capitulate eventually. And just as it is openly working with
Turkey and quietly with Iran to maximise its options and minimise the
damage it sustains during the confrontation, it is simultaneously now
taking steps to reach out and seek a resolution.

Qatar also knows that it cannot end the crisis without agreeing to a
series of measures the Arab bloc is demanding, especially insofar as
they are also insisted on by Washington. Doha is therefore visibly
moving towards negotiating the terms of its coming inevitable climb
down, and limiting the price it must pay. Doha cannot endure current
circumstances, let alone an additional significant escalation. Qatar
has no choice.

http://www.agsiw.org/unfulfilled-2014-riyadh-agreement-defines-current-gcc-rift/

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/qatar-crisis-a-regional-schism-thats-been-years-in-the-making

The world seems startled by the seemingly sudden rift between key Arab states and Qatar. Yet the crisis has been in the making for more than a decade.

It is certainly drastic, but there’s nothing remotely mysterious in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and others cutting diplomatic relations and suspending many other ties with Doha.

Outrage over Qatar’s conduct has been brewing for many years in a bitter battle of Arab ideas.

Qatar casts Al Jazeera, and its extensive assembly of other media assets, as a breath of fresh air. In the early days, there was some truth to that. Al Jazeera was, at first, new and different.

But it was also always, and mainly, a mouthpiece for political radicalism, primarily of the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood varieties, but also for old-fashioned pan-Arab nationalism. Every populist, “revolutionary” anti-status quo and downright irresponsible viewpoint was welcome and frequently championed.

The Al Jazeera airwaves were therefore typically putrid.

In addition to marketing them, Qatar funded, hosted and otherwise supported extremist groups — especially those, such as Hamas, that kept one foot in the Arab and another in the Iranian camp. Doha’s ambition is to project its regional influence by promoting radical organisations that strategically deploy chaos, instability and even violence to overthrow existing governments and seize power.

Qatar has thereby effectively meddled in the internal affairs of many other Arab states, including nominal allies.

Indeed, the same countries at the core of the current dispute – Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain – broke diplomatic relations with Qatar in 2014 and induced Doha to sign a pledge to mend their ways, which has largely remained unfulfilled.

So, there’s nothing new or sudden about these tensions.

In addition, Doha now stands accused of supporting a range of other regional miscreants, including through what the Financial Times says was a $1 billion ransom payment for Qatari royal family members kidnapped in Iraq and rebels captured in Syria. About $700 million reportedly went to Iran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, and the remainder, apparently, to Al Qaeda affiliates.

Qatar is being put on notice, in the strongest terms, that all such conduct must finally stop.

Much commentary implies that the confrontation is essentially opportunistic, cynical, capricious or planned. But the extreme measures taken against Qatar by this grouping of key Arab states illustrates how seriously they take the need to rein in Doha once and for all.

These measures are hardly cost- or risk-free. They carry a hefty financial burden for all sides. The consequences cannot be controlled or fully predicted. The present unity, and even the long-term future, of the Gulf Cooperation Council is at stake. But unity worthy of the name is exactly what is being demanded.

Qatar’s massive media arsenal will try to convince people throughout the region, including Islamists, Arab nationalists, some liberals and others around the world, to side with Doha. Many will.

The rift also presents potential opportunities to Iran and its proxies, and other malefactors, who could perhaps find a way of taking advantage of these tensions between Gulf countries.

In short, this is by no means capricious or undertaken lightly. Rather, it is plainly a matter of the utmost seriousness. Otherwise so much would not be placed at hazard to try to bring Qatar, at long last, back into the responsible Arab camp.

Unlike in 2014, though, it won’t be enough now for Doha to sign a document and go back to business as usual.

This time it is being told to close numerous media outlets, retool others, and end the political and religious incitement; expel or muzzle demagogues such as Youssef Al Qaradawi and Azmi Bishara; and stop undermining efforts to contain and roll back Iran’s hegemony and destabilising policies.

Unless it wants to try to defect fully to the Iranian camp, which is unthinkable, Doha’s hopes now seem pinned on American mediation. That seems unlikely: yesterday Mr Trump tweeted that “all reference was pointing to Qatar” for funding extremism.

Mr Trump’s priorities — combating terrorism and confronting Iran — are precisely the two issues that are driving actors in both the Middle East and Washington to pressure Doha to see reason.

American mediation is almost inevitable and can serve the interests of both sides. Washington wants to end the confrontation and is uniquely positioned to leverage both sides. But Doha cannot expect Washington to ignore the clear-cut history and context.

In 2014 Qatar gave way on paper, but its conduct remained largely unaltered. This time Doha must amend its behaviour — and that of its media empire and mouthpieces — or face unsustainable isolation. Arab countries apparently are no longer willing to go through this every few years.

Qatar resists the idea tooth and nail, but its conduct will now surely have to change.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/how-the-six-day-war-changed-religion/528981/

One of the principal but often underappreciated effects of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was its role in setting the stage for the rise of political Islam in the Arab world—including the terrorist extremism that now plagues the region and the globe.

The war was a devastating blow to the credibility of Arab nationalism (particularly as defined by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser), which presented itself as secular and progressive. The speed and scope of the Arab debacle in 1967 knocked the legs out from under the profoundly exaggerated claims of Arab nationalism to be leading the region into a new and brighter future.

By the late 1960s, the social and economic failure of these systems, and their repressive nature, were already readily apparent. Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, which all gained independence in the 1940s with relatively robust civil societies and promising economies, were being profoundly mismanaged and intellectually suffocated by these narrow regimes. Underneath dreams of resurgence and glory lay clear patterns of atrophy and decay. But the militarism of Arab nationalism, particularly in Egypt, with its strident anti-Western and anti-Israeli rhetoric, conjured a beguiling mirage that obscured grim realities for large majorities who were cajoled into a collective denial.

The 1967 war called this bluff completely. Most Arabs had been beyond confident in victory, yet the defeat was virtually instantaneous and total. In the aftermath, the political credibility of this version of Arab nationalism was mortally wounded, and its long-term viability was as effectively destroyed as the Egyptian Air Force had been by Israel’s surprise early morning attack on June 5.

As the Lebanese scholar Fawaz Gerges has pointed out, the rise of Islamism as a political force was neither an immediate nor an inevitable consequence of the crisis of Arab nationalism resulting from the 1967 war. Many other factors fed into the rise of an ultraconservative, reactionary, and revolutionary (in the Leninist sense) Islamist movement, its radicalization in the 1970s and 1980s, and its proliferation—including in the form of violent transnational terrorist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS—since the late 1990s.

Things could have turned out differently. Secular Arab nationalism could have been revived, especially in a strikingly different form. Islamism could have developed differently, or thrived to the point of becoming the ideology of ruling factions in much of the Arab world (now only really the case in Gaza).

So, the connection between the 1967 fiasco and the rise of ultraconservative Islam and political Islamism is both direct, insofar as nothing did more to discredit its primary ideological antagonists (secularism and nationalism), and indirect, insofar as innumerable other factors and contingencies shaped our present realities. But it’s worth noting that these two supposedly polar opposites continue to share an underlying framework of political attitudes that remain hegemonic among Islamists and Arab nationalists alike.

During the 1950s and ’60s, Arab nationalism presented itself as entirely at odds with the socially reactionary, and politically and intellectually retrograde, Islamist movement defined at the time by the Muslim Brotherhood. Though it now seems ironic, during this period it was the Islamists who were perceived as retrograde, reactionary, pro-Western, anti-nationalist and essentially traitorous, while the mostly secular nationalist governments were the revolutionaries confronting power in the name of Arab identity, values, and dignity. In much Arab rhetoric today, these ideas have flipped: State nationalism is now frequently cast as pro-Western and retrograde, while Islamism is often cast as revolutionary and patriotic.

For example, it’s instructive that Qatar is comfortable promoting both Muslim Brotherhood Islamism and what remains of left-wing Arab nationalism simultaneously. This isn’t as incoherent as it might seem. Underlying both discourses are the same sets of enemies, the same sense of grievances, the same empty promises, and many of the same essential touchstones of what was and remains a stultifying, unrealistic, and intellectually crippling Arab political orthodoxy.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/americas-foreign-policy-and-the-introvert-impulse

The Trump administration’s reconceptualisation of American foreign policy marks the radical abandonment of a consensus that has held firm since 1945. In the process, the international profile of the United States is being fundamentally redefined, and the world’s strategic landscape reshaped.

In a definitive commentary for the Wall Street Journal, national security adviser HR McMaster and director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn sketched the outlines of a “Trump Doctrine” in American foreign policy. In the process, they completely recast Washington’s global role.

These two key presidential aides were apparently trying to explain what Donald Trump’s “America First” ideology means for US foreign policy. The results are alarming.

They start with a Hobbesian vision of international relations as an anarchic war of all against all – a most unrealistic version of “realism”. They endorse “a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, non-governmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” And, to dispel any doubts, “rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.”

They have “a clear message to our friends and partners: where our interests align, we are open to working together”. Everything is contingent and transactional. No real “friends” or “partners”. No community. Just patrons and clients, rivals and competitors.

They are obviously right this represents “a strategic shift for the United States”. Less convincing is their claim it “signals the restoration of American leadership and our government’s traditional role overseas”.

In fact, this values-free paradigm abandons American claims of leadership, vision or standing for anything beyond narrow and short-term gains. It’s also a clear repudiation of Washington’s actual “traditional role overseas”.

As the dust settled following the Second World War, the outmoded isolationism that had left the country so ill-prepared for that conflict and its aftermath lost any real influence.

Instead, a debate ensued between two approaches to the Cold War that, until now, demarcated the essential parameters of the American foreign policy conversation.

One view, defined by the diplomat George Kennan, sought to contain the Soviet Union and wait for its despotic system to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The competing view, defined by philosopher and former Trotskyite James Burnham, urged a far more aggressive approach, seeking the deliberate development of a coercive global American empire and a campaign to defeat and destroy the USSR.

The containment view almost entirely won, although Ronald Reagan articulated some essentially Burnhamite rhetoric. The key, though, is that for all their differences both Kennanites and Burnhamites agreed the United States absolutely needed to globally trumpet its economic and cultural dynamism, democratic character, liberal values and what it could positively offer the world in contrast to Soviet economic malaise, social atrophy and political repression.

Both sides saw American culture, character and values as a huge asset and competitive advantage internationally, and understood that the US both could and should draw people, especially those living under the oppressive rule of enemies and rivals, towards it by appealing to ideals and offering something better and, where possible, inspiring. To say this was very effective in the Cold War would be an understatement.

Now, the Trump advisers write, “America will treat others as they treat us.” This reads as “others must do unto us as they would have us do unto them” – the very inversion of generosity. It is self-centeredness in place of magnanimity, and literally illiberal. It’s also as inspiring as a phone bill.

Yet this shift, however self-defeating, reflects a strong American popular impulse. As the scholar Walter Russell Mead perceptively notes, extroverted American elites wanted to continue the country’s international role following the end of the Cold War. Voters consistently preferred “untried outsiders who want increased focus on issues at home” and therefore elected “Clinton over Bush in 1992, Bush over Gore in 2000, Obama over McCain in 2008, and Trump over Clinton in 2016”.

The McMaster/Cohn vision is a distilled and applied version of this introverted impulse.

The American establishment, in short, has not successfully sold the benefits of American internationalism and idealism to a sceptical and parochial public. Hence Mr Trump seeks political advantage by pandering to his base’s anti-international instincts at the expense of the national interest, the most recent and egregious instance of which was the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Washington’s rapidly shrinking international reputation, especially in Europe, suggests the likely – and grim – results. The old consensus united left and right for 70 years precisely to avoid such dire consequences.

The Trump administration apparently sees itself as effectively collecting on numerous international unpaid bills. But it is Washington that could ultimately face a great global reckoning in a little American room.