For Riyadh, unlike its smaller neighbors, opening to Israel would be a high-risk but potentially high-reward, venture.
In August 2020, both Israel and the United States achieved a significant diplomatic breakthrough with the announcement of the Abraham Accords, which initiated diplomatic normalization between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Later, Sudan and Morocco joined the agreement. Yet after a year, the biggest prize in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, remains tantalizingly poised between joining the accords or deciding it is not worth the many risks involved. There are numerous factors pulling Riyadh to embark on the process to normalize relations with Israel and at least as many pushing it back. For now, it appears that Saudi leaders are most comfortable keeping their options open without firmly deciding to move in either direction.
Each Arab country that has pursued a greater opening with Israel over the past year has had its own distinct agenda. The UAE sought, and is building, a broad-ranging partnership with Israel on countering regional hegemony by Iran and Turkey; developing commercial and scientific links (especially in the technology field); increasing defense cooperation, particularly on areas such as missile defense as well as cyber and electronic warfare; and obtaining sought-after weapon systems from Washington, particularly the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet, as well as mending ties with mainstream Democrats in the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Bahrain was mainly driven to make common cause with Israel due to the latter’s military heavy lifting against Iran’s regional network of violent extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Sudan sought aid and removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, both of which it achieved. And Morocco sought quiet recognition of its claims over Western Sahara, which it received from the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, and Biden is reportedly not planning to reverse this position.
Saudi Arabia’s aims for an opening with Israel would not be as extensive as the UAE’s multifaceted list of goals to form a deep partnership with Israel nor as narrow as Bahrain’s single-minded focus on Iran. Saudi Arabia would certainly be looking to strengthen the regional coalition opposing Iran’s quest for hegemony in the Middle East. It may even have an eye to staving off potential analogous Turkish ambitions, although it appears less alarmed about that than both the UAE and Israel.
But beyond regional strategic considerations, there is another potential issue that might induce Saudi Arabia, particularly under de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: repairing strained relations with Washington. During the Trump administration, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman – with the exception of the president personally – cratered, arguably reaching an all-time low. Democrats were angered by the bear hug between the Saudi leadership and the new administration during Trump’s first overseas trip. They were further alienated by increased casualties from the war in Yemen, which also came to disturb many Senate Republicans.
But the biggest blow to Saudi reputations, especially that of Mohammed bin Salman, came with the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Khashoggi was well known and well liked in Washington, even by those who disagreed with many of his views, and was a regular contributor to The Washington Post. In addition, the overall circumstances of his killing – the brutality and setting in an overseas diplomatic mission – all produced an unprecedented level of shock and outrage in the United States among both Democrats and Republicans. Following Khashoggi’s killing, compounded with the Yemen war and various notorious human rights violations inside Saudi Arabia, the future Saudi king became radioactive in the United States.
There’s been a great deal of important and effective repair work done on these relations since Biden assumed the presidency, but because of the Khashoggi murder, it’s still impossible to imagine Mohammed bin Salman, whether as crown prince or king, being welcomed in Washington under the current circumstances. This is an impossible conundrum for Saudi Arabia. Current domestic political conditions suggest that Mohammed bin Salman is almost certain to become king. But the Saudi king cannot be unwelcome in the capital of Riyadh’s essential ally, guarantor, and protector. Saudi Arabia is not ready to stand alone in defense of its national interests, and it does not have an alternative partner, or set of partners, who could substitute for the United States.
Eventually, securing relations with Israel could prove a trump card for Mohammed bin Salman to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of much of Washington, including most Republicans and many senior Democratic centrists. That, combined with other considerations, such as potential strategic benefits regarding Iran and Turkey, could prompt Saudi Arabia to take the step to open ties with Israel after Mohammed bin Salman’s succession.
However, the decision will not be an easy one, as it has been for the other countries that risked little and gained a great deal by opening diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia has a much larger, more diverse, and potentially volatile population and brittle political domestic equation than its smaller neighbors. It also has to protect a regional Arab leadership role that it has no choice but to perform given the vacuum left by traditional centers of power as well as a global Islamic leadership role that it has long fought to maintain. Normalizing relations with Israel could again make Saudi Arabia a focus of radical Sunni Islamist violence, increase domestic religious and nationalist opposition to Mohammed bin Salman’s rule, and be exploited by Iran and its allies to castigate Saudi Arabia. It is also especially awkward for Saudi Arabia to discard the principles of the Arab Peace Initiative, as its author and main sponsor, by normalizing relations with Israel despite a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian territories.
So, particularly after succession, Saudi Arabia is looking at a high-risk but high-potential gain scenario. Violence in Jerusalem over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in May proved extremely uncomfortable for the UAE and Bahrain; although Hamas’ intervention, which changed the dynamic to another campaign of aerial bombardment between Israel and Gaza, eased the pressure considerably. But the Jerusalem tensions were a timely reminder of the kind of difficulty Saudi Arabia might face if it opens up to relations with Israel.
Yet Saudi Arabia has been careful to keep the option open. It has signaled tacit support for the Emirati and Bahraini moves, the latter of which was almost certainly greenlighted from Riyadh. It has allowed unprecedented access to Saudi airspace for Israeli commercial planes. And there are reports about several high-level meetings, including one between Mohammed bin Salman and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister made it clear in August that his country has no intention of joining the Abraham Accords anytime soon, if ever, and reasserted Riyadh’s strong support for Palestinian rights and statehood. Diplomatic pronouncements, particularly in public, need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, most evidence suggests this is in line with Saudi Arabia’s current assessment about a diplomatic opening with Israel. It is keeping its options open but does not appear to be getting closer to yes.
Can extremism’s rise in the Republican Party be stopped? Dangerous extremes on race, religion, violence and sabotage have taken root, and they are spinning out of control.
The US Republican Party is drifting towards ever-greater levels of extremism and, at multiple registers, could pose a significant threat to the way the United States has conceptualised and governed itself historically, at least since the Second World War.
This rising extremism is particularly noteworthy given that former president Donald Trump is effectively nowhere to be seen. He occasionally issues bitter missives from his Florida redoubt. One, published on his website on September 17, yet again calls on officials in the state of Georgia to “decertify” the last election. While many Republican voters remain enthralled by him, the only issue Mr Trump appears interested in is re-litigating his defeat last November.
Yet any hope that Republicans might moderate themselves as he fades into the background has been upended. Even without Mr Trump, or with, at most, his shadow looming over the party, Republicans appear to be drifting much further into the radical terrains he mapped out.
Probably most shocking is the increasing embrace and promotion in mainstream Republican discourse of “the great replacement theory” – the openly racist idea that white populations and majorities in Europe and the new world are being systematically and maliciously “replaced” through migration with “non-white” people from Latin America, the Middle East and so on.
This idea is being pushed heavily by Fox News Hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram, and was amplified by Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick, and the once moderate Rep Elise Stefanik of New York, the third ranking Republican in the House of Representatives.
The overall theme of their arguments is not that non-white people are simply unwelcome, but that migration is a nefarious plot by Democrats to introduce “them” into “our” voting population and that therefore migration is simultaneously a racial and political conspiracy.
Anti-immigration and racist xenophobia is thereby repackaged as a defence of the alleged “right” of the existing ethnic majority to remain a majority, no matter what.
There are several insidious assumptions at work.
First, there is the disturbing notion that only certain Americans (white, Christian and non-urban) are “real Americans” with a legitimate claim to full representation.
Second, there is the assumption that non-white Americans will automatically vote for Democrats, which could only be true if Republicans were simply the party of white ethnic grievance.
Third, there is no acknowledgment that immigration is the norm in American history and a bedrock of US culture, or that regulating migration is a core prerogative of democratic governance. Casting all of it as an “invasion” disregards both US history and the right of the democratically-elected government to legitimately choose to allow immigration and naturalisation, in the national interest.
Another alarming symptom of growing Republican radicalism is the spread of violent rhetoric, and imagery in campaign advertisements that features Republican candidates shooting guns, blowing up objects and threatening mayhem.
Rep Marjorie Taylor Green just released an advert depicting her blowing up a car marked “socialism” with a single bullet. Rep Madison Cawthorn warned of “bloodshed” if there were more “rigged” and “stolen” elections, even though there have been none.
Forty per cent of Republicans say political violence may be necessary, according to a February study by the Survey Centre on American Life. And a large majority believe, with no evidence, that Joe Biden was elected only because of massive election fraud. The party is increasingly steeped in, centred on and geared to reward the rhetoric, imagery and valorisation of political violence.
Eventually, as on January 6, some consumers of such angry discourse – often unaware they are not supposed to take any of it seriously, let alone literally – may act on it. If any spirited patriot really believed any of this, what should they do?
The third, and arguably over the long run, most dangerous form of growing Republican extremism is its Supreme Court majority.
Not only does the new five-vote majority of religious ultra-conservatives appear poised to eliminate more than half a century of constitutional protection for reproductive freedom, but they seem poised even to go far beyond abortion.
These judicial zealots may well also be preparing to strike down marriage equality, federal protection for rights associated with sexual orientation and a whole range of other safeguards based on a notion of constitutionally protected privacy they appear to dismiss.
Finally, even the most staid and mainstream remnant of the old Republican Party appears poised for an exceptionally radical action. The Republican Senate leadership under Mitch McConnell has declared it is prepared to allow the US government to default on its debt in the next few weeks.
This not only would create another government shutdown, it would precipitate a colossal national and global crisis. Indeed, Mr McConnell said it is imperative for the US never to default, and, during the Trump presidency, insisted Democrats must vote to prevent that, which they did.
Now, however, he is maintaining that only the party in power is responsible for avoiding the catastrophe that he himself is, he says, preparing to engineer.
He may be bluffing, but it is hardly impossible to imagine someone as cynical as Mr McConnell engineering a national and global US government default catastrophe simply in order to sabotage and sink the other party.
That’s got nothing to do with race, religion or violence. But if it isn’t an extreme, it’s hard to know what might be. Many Democrats hated Mr Trump with every fibre of their being, but they voted to avoid a debt default without much hesitance or controversy.
What we are looking at, then, is a Republican Party that in different ways and at different registers is falling prey to nihilism and the politics of pure destruction.
At the House and state levels, it’s mainly about race, immigration and defending the ethnic privileges of a waning white majority.
In the Supreme Court, an extremist religious agenda, wholly out of step with American public opinion and culture, is preparing to impose a broad new set of restrictions based on their own fundamentalist view of morality, not law or the constitution.
And in the Senate, it’s no longer merely about blocking Democratic initiatives and making sure Mr Biden fails, but rather, potentially engineering a disastrous US government default.
All told, this is plainly a level of racial, religious and partisan extremism that would have been completely inconceivable at any time for the past century, and is clearly another sign of a polity in profound crisis.
The Country Where the Banks Ran Out of MoneyLebanon depends on its financial industry. Now the new government has to figure out how to recapitalize its institutions or the country may cease to exist.
After 13 months of foundering under caretaker prime ministers, Lebanon finally has a government.
That is very good news for a country suffering from the effects of economic collapse, political intransigence, financial malfeasance and the interference of foreign powers. And all that on top of the still mysterious port explosion last year that devastated the capital Beirut.
When the announcement came on Sept. 10, it prompted an immediate and significant recovery in the value of the currency, the lira. With a government in place, Lebanon can now access hundreds of millions of dollars in donor pledges, $546 million support from the World Bank and an expected $860 million from the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights allocation.
But all of that will just be a stopgap. There is little in Najib Mikati’s return to power as prime minister or the very familiar makeup of his new cabinet to inspire confidence.
The country’s political leadership, especially the pro-Iranian Shiite militia group Hezbollah, only agreed to form the government because the option of even more procrastination finally ran out. It was the country’s central bank that at long last forced the politicians to rearrange the deck chairs.
On Aug. 11, its governor, Riad Salameh, announced the end of fuel subsidies, plunging the country into a desperate crisis. Without fuel, electricity, transportation, and many of the basic necessities of modern society ceased to exist. Salameh was effectively confronting President Michel Aoun, his Hezbollah allies, indeed all politicians, with a simple fact: the country was bankrupt at both the public and private registers.
Lebanon imports nearly everything and is heavily reliant on its financial sector. And that’s why it is in such desperate straits. For decades, the country’s banks operated what amounted to a giant pyramid or Ponzi scheme, whereby depositors would be paid exorbitant interest rates on simple deposits, and the banks kept the government going by endlessly lending money to the state.
But massive protests that began on Oct. 17, 2019 over official corruption and ineptitude helped foment an economic crisis. And as the economy wobbled, it turned out that the foreign exchange the banks claimed they were holding on behalf of depositors and could lend to the government did not really exist.
The bubble burst. Lebanon was in an existential crisis. It needs the IMF and the international community to recapitalize its banks or it will never recover.
With the lights out, refrigeration down, cars stalled, hospitals struggling to function, and nothing working in much of the country most of the time now, even these masters of inaction had to respond. Hezbollah, in particular, was feeling distinctly vulnerable. Regional powers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and even Syria, operating independently of Iran, could find it very easy to acquire leverage in a completely helpless country. That could pose a serious threat to Hezbollah and Iran’s grip on the political system.
Hezbollah reportedly put enormous pressure on Aoun and his ambitious son-in-law, Gibran Bassil, to accept the formation of a cabinet in which they don’t seem to have loyalists to wield an effective veto. Tehran and Hezbollah apparently concluded the impasse was becoming extremely dangerous to them and crafted a deal with President Emmanuel Macron of France to broker the new government.
The new government is now planning to distribute ration cards in U.S. dollars to 500,000 of the poorest families. Meanwhile, all remaining energy subsidies will be lifted, meaning gasoline and other fuel should start to become accessible again, albeit at higher prices.
Fundamentally, though, nothing has changed. For the IMF and the donor community to provide fresh funds, Lebanon will be required to make significant concessions on accountability and transparency, among other conditions. It should at the least create a safety net for the mass of Lebanese who have now sunk into dire poverty so they won’t be dependent on increasingly rare handouts.
But it’s precisely these kinds of concessions the political leaders don’t want to make, not only because that means a certain loss of power and privilege, but because it will require them to agree on uncomfortable basic facts. For example, how much money was pilfered — and by who — and how the refinancing burden should be shared. The traditional power centers, all amply represented in the new coalition, dread the kind of economic and political compromises the IMF and donor countries are going to demand in order to recapitalize the effectively defunct financial system.
There will be a respite because of arrival of the pending aid and loans. Whoever is in charge will have to use the time to finally reach a long-term understanding with the IMF, without which a longer-term solution is impossible. That period should also give the international community a huge opportunity to force Lebanese leaders into serious concessions on transparency, accountability and responsibility.
Lebanon may have won breathing room. But its leaders — and the world around it — should not forget that the country’s existential crisis is not over.
A fight over COVID vaccination mandates is exactly the one the US President wants and needs right now.
Fascism has arrived in the US, the political right is thundering. According to them, there is ”tyranny” and “oppression” in America, and an unconstitutional “overreach” that smacks of the “Nazi’s,” as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed, with a grammatically incorrect apostrophe for good measure.
This has been the general reaction of Republicans and conservatives to last week’s order by President Joe Biden that will require about 100 million workers in the US to take the Covid-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing.
Many right-wingers appeared delighted with their new defining grievance, knowing full well that a substantial minority of Americans are hostile to the vaccination because for them the pandemic was politicised from the outset.
Covid-19 struck during Donald Trump’s presidency, and fearing that it could derail his chances of re-election – which it did – he devoted all his energies to dismissing Covid’s virulence and lethality, saying it would all just go away, and promoting unscientific and dangerous cures such as unrelated medicines or even injecting patients with disinfectant.
The intense propaganda during the end of Mr Trump’s presidency ensured that millions of Americans are deeply hostile to these life-saving vaccines, and even to nurses and doctors who work to treat the sick. More than 639,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19. Yet opposition to vaccination, mask mandates, and other mitigation efforts is now the greatest unifying article of faith among Republicans. So some conservative commentators were positively gleeful about the supposed wave of outrage that Mr Biden “has unleashed”.
But, in fact, this is precisely the fight Mr Biden wants to have at this time. When he says the nation is “losing patience” with the unvaccinated, he speaks for a far bigger pool of voters than angry anti-medicine conservatives.
In the US, approximately 63 per cent of the population is fully protected, and 74 per cent partially, among adult residents. The vaccinated are well aware that the main reason the country is being wracked with some of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks and hospitals in many parts of the country are overwhelmed is the 30 per cent who refuse to accept the easily available and free of charge vaccination.
This refusal places everybody at risk by allowing the virus to thrive, mutate and increasingly infect children under the age of 12 and others who cannot yet be vaccinated. It is also hampering what had been a powerful economic recovery.
And the reasons the unvaccinated minority give for their refusal only anger the vaccinated majority further, typically including “Don’t tell me what to do, I don’t feel at risk and I don’t care about anybody else”, or some conspiratorial and frankly irrational fears about the nature and effects of the vaccine.
Mr Biden, speaking on behalf of the vaccinated majority, is telling a key portion of the unvaccinated minority that the government will now use its authority to create safe workplaces by insisting on either vaccines or testing. Much of the country is wondering what took him so long.
In addition, this is an argument Mr Biden needs to have as the US political system cranks back into gear after Labour Day signals the end of the summer lull. Americans are not arguing about Afghanistan, or the economy and inflation, or any other issue on which he could be significantly vulnerable.
Instead Mr Biden is positioning himself as the champion of a rational majority telling a deluded and/or selfishly infantile minority that “we have had enough”. He thereby also puts all the blame for the pandemic surge and economic downturn on unvaccinated holdouts who are largely his political opponents.
And anyway it is almost impossible to get 80-90 per cent of a society to do something just because it is the only reasonable thing to do. Even the most unavoidable and popular wars have required conscription.
So, the political right may think they have been suddenly thrown a badly needed lifeline, but in fact Mr Biden believes, with good reason, they have fallen into a trap he set for them. And there is no doubt he is on solid legal footing.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 gives workers a right to a safe and healthy workplace, which certainly includes interacting with a vaccinated workforce.
The problem will be how the Labour Department intends to enforce the regulations especially with a mere 900 inspectors. But businesses generally comply with such rules voluntarily and, strikingly, many large businesses and business groups have welcomed the new mandate.
In reality, Americans are used to vaccine mandates, which date back to the war of independence when, in 1777, George Washington insisted that all his troops submit to inoculation against smallpox – the first mass inoculation of a military in human history.
Ever since, Americans have been required to have multiple vaccinations to attend school, and often to travel abroad, among many other circumstances. The difference in this case is that Mr Trump and his allies politicised the Covid-19 pandemic from the beginning. Among his adherents, opposition to vaccines and mitigation have become symbols of tribal political identity.
So, when Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina vows to fight him “to the gates of hell,” and Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi deems the mandate a “terrifying” and an act of “tyrants,” these Republicans are playing directly into Mr Biden’s hands.
Predictably, much of the most hyperbolic and enraged pushback has appeared on the Fox News Channel, which has a long history of questioning the vaccines. Mr Biden took much glee in noting that Fox itself has been following strict mitigation policies for all employees, including the mandatory reporting of vaccine status and for unvaccinated employees to be tested, wear masks indoors and maintain social distance – the very policies their programmes condemn as un-American, tyrannical and outrageous.
Mr Biden could have sold his policy somewhat differently, presenting it as a weekly testing mandate with an available vaccination opt-out. But he wants to have the starkest possible fight over Covid-19 vaccines as likely to prove politically powerful. Eventually, it will greatly strengthen the fight against the pandemic and it will be almost impossible to deny him the credit for the likely substantial social and economic benefits.
Those improvements will obviously take some time to manifest. But presumably they will be evident well before next year’s midterm congressional elections, in which he still hopes to avoid repeating the pattern of setbacks for a new president’s party and keep pressing his remarkably ambitious agenda.
The 9/11 attacks reshaped Gulf Arab perceptions of terrorism and Islamism, of each other, and of strategic relations with Tehran and Washington.
The September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States had an enormous impact on Gulf Arab countries, their political and strategic calculations, and their relationships with the United States. The attacks, and the United States’ response, helped set in motion developments that continue to reverberate. Despite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, at the 20-year anniversary of the attacks, the strategic and political landscape within the Gulf, and with the United States, is still essentially a post-9/11 environment.
Many other noteworthy developments have helped shape the Gulf Arab political landscape since then: the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, the growth of nationalist populism, the rise and fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran, and the apparent decline in clout and appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath profoundly influenced most, if not all, of these developments.
9/11 Changes Gulf Attitudes Toward Islamism and Terrorism
The 9/11 attacks began a process, which was intensified and solidified after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and their aftermath, whereby several Gulf Arab countries – notably the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – came to categorically oppose both Salafist-jihadist groups, like al-Qaeda, and Islamist political movements, like the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the UAE had been ambivalent about Islamism and had been among the few states to extend diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Doubts in Abu Dhabi grew throughout the 1990s, however, and in 1994 the UAE Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Jamiat al-Islah, was disbanded. But there was still some official sympathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood in some of the smaller Emirates, particularly Ras Al Khaimah.
Yet 9/11 came as a massive shock to the UAE leadership, especially since two of the hijackers were Emiratis. The dangers of terrorism were confirmed, and the idea took root that the Muslim Brotherhood provided the narrative and conceptual framework for al-Qaeda and other more violent groups and was therefore the ultimate source of that threat. Emirati leaders moved to systematically purge jihadi and Islamist groups from their society, fired Islamist teachers, and revamped textbooks. Most importantly, the UAE began to develop and propagate an anti-Islamist narrative and an alternative model based on tolerance, coexistence, and social openness but not democracy or political pluralism.
Qatar, by contrast, stuck with its strong sympathy for Islamist groups and support for other populist movements, including leftist Arab nationalists, which had broad public appeal but alarmed Arab governments. Qatar’s support for Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups and other Islamists put it at direct loggerheads with the UAE, setting off an ideological and ideational struggle to define the parameters of normative mainstream Arab political culture, particularly regarding political Islam. In contrast to the UAE’s labeling of the Muslim Brotherhood as the core of the problem, Qatar promulgated a contradictory narrative holding that political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are the best corrective to the problem of jihadist terrorism (a view that had considerable purchase in the administration of former President Barack Obama and parts of the U.S. government until well into the upheavals associated with the Arab Spring). The rationale was that, unless there is a political outlet for Islamists, such as political parties or societies associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, some frustrated activists will eventually take up arms and join groups like al-Qaeda.
The argument came to a head after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, in which long-standing autocrats, such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, were overthrown. The Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist groups initially thrived in the post-dictatorship environment in Egypt and Tunisia. But, eventually, they lost power through the political process in Tunisia and by a popular coup in Egypt. In Libya, there is a relative stalemate. And the armed uprising in Syria was defeated following a combined Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah military intervention to save the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the fall of 2015. Despite the apparent confidence of Qatar and many members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist political groups generally did not prevail in the post-uprising Arab republics, except arguably western Libya (in addition to Hamas rule in Gaza, which predates the Arab Spring).
Saudi Arabia, by contrast to its two smaller neighbors, initially shrugged off the 9/11 attacks as essentially not a Saudi problem, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, was an anti-government Saudi extremist. Saudi leaders seemingly thought that, even though there was a heavy Saudi component to the 9/11 attacks, since it was based in Afghanistan, organized largely in Hamburg, and carried out in the United States, it effectively was not Riyadh’s responsibility. However, a combination of U.S. pressure and outrage and, especially, al-Qaeda attacks inside Saudi Arabia in 2003, dramatically changed Saudi attitudes.
The Saudi view grew closer to the UAE’s perspective on Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, although Riyadh is reluctant to oppose all mixing of religion and politics as categorically as the UAE because of the key role religion has historically played in Saudi state legitimation narratives. However, particularly after the Arab Spring uprisings, Saudi Arabia joined the UAE in identifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a major regional threat and helping to support the 2013 coup in Egypt and other efforts in the region to counteract the Muslim Brotherhood. The two countries, as well as Egypt, formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2014. And the dispute over Islamism was the main issue driving the rift with Qatar in 2013-14 and subsequent boycott from June 2017 to January 2021.
In short, 9/11 lies at the heart of an ideological dispute that reshaped Gulf Arab relations and their competing visions for security and stability. Since the fall of 2020, the region has been experiencing a period of widespread consolidation, retrenchment, and diplomatic maneuvering emphasizing diplomacy and commerce rather than conflict. Yet the underlying disputes are largely unresolved. Even the rapprochement with Qatar in the Gulf Cooperation Council is fragile because the underlying dispute over the political legitimacy of Islamism, and particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, remains highly contested. In relatively far off Afghanistan, the victory of the Taliban, a group following the Deobandi school of Islamism, which is virtually unknown in the Arab world, nonetheless reinforces the dispute over Islamism and terrorism, especially given the close ties to the Taliban maintained by Turkey and, especially, Qatar.
9/11’s Impact on U.S.-Gulf Arab Relations
In general, the 9/11 attacks strengthened the United States’ relations with all of its Gulf Arab partners but not without considerable complications. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, concerns about a Saudi role emerged, and some of them persist, contributing to an ongoing anti-Saudi current in U.S. political discourse. However, claims about Saudi leadership ties to the 9/11 attacks or al-Qaeda became recognized as implausible as more Americans learned about the group’s determination to overthrow the Saudi government. While skepticism remains in certain U.S. quarters, no evidence has definitively established a connection. Indeed, even the Saudi government has called for the release of relevant classified documents, such as an annex to the 9/11 Commission Report, which President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is reportedly planning to publicize later this year.
There is justified criticism, though, of Saudi Arabia’s role for decades in promoting an intolerant version of Islam that contributed to the religious justification for jihadist extremism, including by al-Qaeda. That 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and that the leader of al-Qaeda himself was a Saudi dissident suggests a strong cultural connection, albeit oppositional to the government. Saudi Arabia’s status as a “virtual visa waiver country,” allowing for U.S. visa issuances by mail and obviating the need for personal appearances or supporting documents also helps explain why al-Qaeda preferred to use Saudis for these attacks on U.S. soil. Once Riyadh began taking a more proactive role in confronting and suppressing al-Qaeda following the 2003 terrorist attacks inside Saudi Arabia, differences between the U.S. and Saudi governments over these issues effectively subsided – although peripheral tensions over issues such as the efforts to sue the Saudi government or officials over the 9/11 attacks persist.
But Saudi Arabia demonstrated that it is indeed an indispensable partner in counterterrorism with numerous arrests, counterterrorism activities, financing crackdowns, foiled attacks, and crucial intelligence sharing. Yet, memories of 9/11 continue to haunt the U.S.-Saudi relationship even at a liminal register. They have been compounded in recent years by Riyadh’s closeness to the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, the humanitarian impact of the Yemen war, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamaal Khashoggi, and other human rights concerns.
The biggest direct effect of 9/11 on U.S.-Gulf relations was the first U.S. use of the Al Udeid air base in Qatar, which came to serve as the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command, and, therefore, the hub of much of the non-naval U.S. military activity in the Gulf region. The base was built by Qatar in the 1990s, evidently in hopes of drawing the U.S. military into a permanent presence in the country as an essential pillar of Qatari defense strategy. However, it was in direct response to 9/11 that the United States first used the base in September 2001 as it prepared for the campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Subsequently, Qatar has become the main host for U.S. air operations and basing, logistics, and command and control in the broad region covered by CENTCOM.
The U.S.-Qatar basing relationship has been essential to the U.S. military presence in the Gulf, the broader Middle East, and even the Indian Ocean. It has also been central to securing the U.S.-Qatari partnership, which has been invaluable to Qatar’s own security posture and its ability to withstand criticism for some of its alliances, regional activities, and the editorial content of its high-profile media outlets, such as Al Jazeera. In particular, the U.S. military presence in Qatar was imperative to Doha persuading Washington to remain neutral during the boycott of Qatar and pulling back from Trump’s initial move to side with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. This basing relationship has also created an atmosphere of trust and reliability that has helped Qatar play a mediating role between the United States and the Taliban, which, as the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan, appears to have paid off handsomely for the Qataris – although any deep relationship with the Taliban carries risks given that the organization could once again provide a hub for international terrorism.
The U.S.-UAE relationship has also gained strength since 9/11, as the UAE has also served as a crucial military partner, involved in every post-9/11 U.S. military engagement except the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During this time, the former secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, purportedly nicknamed the UAE “Little Sparta,” and the country became renowned for the unusual effectiveness of its air force and special forces, in contrast to many of the armed forces of other Arab states. The U.S. naval presence in Bahrain long predates 9/11, but that crucial relationship, too, was strengthened by the attacks and the subsequent military engagements. And the United States’ strong relationship with Kuwait, particularly following the 1991 liberation, persists.
The U.S. Response to 9/11 and the Rise of Iran
The most significant U.S. responses to the 9/11 attacks had the inadvertent effect of greatly strengthening Iran and its allies in the region. This process began with the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October-November 2001. The Taliban had been among Iran’s bitterest enemies because of intense sectarian hatred and a constant source of irritation and outrage for Tehran. The exponential strengthening of Iran was probably the single biggest consequence of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi army that was disbanded and state that became badly fragmented by the U.S. occupation had served as Iran’s most potent adversary.
In addition to the brutal and stalemated Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the Iraqi state and military under Saddam Hussein was a bulwark against Iranian designs in much of the Arab world and especially the northern Middle East. With Iraq disarmed, fragmented, and largely in the hands of pro-Iranian Shia militia groups, Iran’s influence began to stretch through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon where its oldest proxy militia group, Hezbollah, was becoming increasingly powerful and active in many other countries. The rise of Iranian hegemony in the region was cemented by the successful joint intervention with Russia and Hezbollah to save the Assad dictatorship in Damascus in the fall of 2015.
Obviously, Washington never intended the 9/11 responses to primarily serve to strengthen Iran’s regional hand. Yet over the past decade, both Washington and its Gulf Arab partners have had to deal with the rise of Iran as a budding regional hegemon. This has led to greater cooperation and mutual dependence and, at times, as in the case of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement, unease and doubts about Washington’s reliability as a guarantor of regional stability and the status quo. This was underscored by Trump’s lack of any forceful response to the September 2019 missile and drone attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities, reportedly carried out by Iran, on the grounds that the United States itself was not directly targeted.
Yet Iran’s most sweeping regional ambitions continue to be opposed by a loose regional coalition led by the United States that includes Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as, in crucial basing roles, Qatar and Bahrain, and, of course, Israel. Tensions between the pro- and anti-Iranian camps perhaps constitute the most dangerous regional strategic fault line. Low-intensity conflict persists between Iran (and its allies) and the U.S.-allied coalition, particularly the January 2020 U.S. drone strike in Iraq that killed senior Iranian commander Qassim Suleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Such tensions would certainly be the most plausible source of any potential new war in the Middle East.
The 9/11 attacks and their ripple effects, therefore, continue to shape the most consequential aspects of war and peace in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Twenty years on, that earthquake’s tremors are still being felt.
The two conspiracy theories have captured an alarming extent of mainstream thinking on the right and left.
In the US we are living through a heyday of conspiratorial nonsense, most dramatically the deranged QAnon cult that surveys suggest is, at least in part, believed in by many Republicans, including some members of Congress.
Beyond these fringes, though they are hardly as fringe as they once were, both left and right have developed widely accepted paranoid theories that profoundly misrepresent how politics and policymaking actually work, and badly damage the national conversation.
Most of the right appears convinced that there exists a nefarious cabal of administrators, bureaucrats and others in government plotting against conservatives, especially former president Donald Trump, and enforcing an insidious far-left agenda. They call this the “deep state,” conjuring up images of a permanent administrative establishment manipulating and bypassing political leaders, as military and intelligence officials allegedly historically did in countries like Turkey, where the term “deep state” was coined, and Pakistan.
The fantasy is used to explain policy failures and blunders by political leaders such as Mr Trump and his allies, or as an explanation for why experts and officials contradicted their more bizarre pronouncements.
Criminal prosecutions of many of Mr Trump’s associates, including former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman and White House strategist Steve Bannon, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and many others are chalked up to machinations of the deep state.
So is Mr Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, which many Republicans believe was stolen through fraud by the deep state, even though the election was remarkably clean and well-run despite the pandemic.
The deep state is also blamed for the pandemic itself, for the economic collapse it produced, and for supposedly lying to Americans about everything from mask-wearing to vaccines.
This extreme and widespread paranoia is largely responsible for the fact that even though Covid-19 vaccines have been easily available to adult Americans for over six months, about a third of the population, largely in Republican-leaning states, remain unvaccinated and bitterly reject masking and other crucial mitigation practices.
Instead of pride in one of the few countries where vaccines are readily available, and gratitude to the administrators who organised it in remarkably short order, much of the right rages against the Centres for Disease Control and Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. He is routinely depicted as a nefarious leader of the deep state, and has been disparaged by Republican leaders like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is, not coincidentally, now presiding over one of the worst outbreaks of coronavirus in the world.
There is, of course, no American deep state.
There is a US government, with officials and administrators. But there is no cabal, no plot and no parallel authority. That is a fantasy, but also a useful, albeit absurd, explanation that exculpates right-wing heroes like Mr Trump and places all blame on a shadowy group of liberal plotters supposedly controlled by the likes of Dr Fauci.
This position reflects a generalised animosity towards expertise that permeates the populist right, especially in western countries, where conservatives now consider knowledge and experience to be a black mark against any official, scientist or analyst.
This same antipathy towards expertise and knowledge is expressed, in an only somewhat different form, in the liberal version of grand conspiracy theorising: the mirage of the “blob”.
A number of former officials from the Barack Obama administration, most notably former speechwriter Ben Rhodes, deride the foreign policy establishment as a monolithic and homogenously hawkish cult that invariably pushes in lockstep for military action.
That is supposed to explain how the US ended up in protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with troops in Syria, and other military commitments around the world, on top of a history of other military actions.
The fantasy of the blob is primarily employed by isolationists as a rhetorical tool to bolster their case by pretending they are bravely confronting a uniformly militaristic and interventionist opposition that is institutionalised and exceptionally difficult to overcome.
But, as in the case of the deep state, the blob plainly does not exist.
In fact, the “foreign policy establishment” and the analytical policy-framing community is decidedly heterogeneous, particularly compared with the second half of the 20th century, when there was a broad consensus about the Cold War.
In recent decades, by contrast, influential and respected policy analysts, and former and even current officials, in and during all recent administrations held a wide range of attitudes on when and how to use military power, what the global force posture should look like, and especially what the major US strategic goals are and how they should be achieved.
Unanimity is the one thing you almost never see.
But it is much easier for those who find themselves repeatedly on the losing side of arguments, largely because they are making bad cases for bad policies, to chalk everything up to a nefarious cabal on the other side.
Just as much of the right fantasizes that a non-existent liberal deep state manipulates domestic policy, many on the left now believe that an equally chimerical right-wing, or at least hawkish, blob dictates most foreign policy.
In both cases it is absolute nonsense but also extremely convenient and deeply reassuring.
The prevalence of such paranoid phantasms infiltrating both Republican and Democratic mainstreams is extremely troubling.
Clearly there is no deep state and no blob. But in both cases the willingness to seek refuge, reassurance and emotional comfort in patent hallucinations – both rooted in antipathy towards expertise and experience – demonstrates a deeply disturbing collapse of confidence in competence.
That is, of course, not completely baseless.
The CDC made mistakes during the coronavirus pandemic, but it has been dealing with an unknown disease. The US government has made terrible foreign policy mistakes in recent decades, but many experts and officials warned against them, and virtually none were uniformly supported by any means.
Cynicism and misgiving are understandable affects, and scepticism is a healthy political impulse. But this degree of alienation from a fine cadre of public servants and other experts genuinely dedicated to serving the country is deeply damaging.
More significantly, the US political process cannot be relied on to make rational policy decisions until these demons of deep-seated doubt are finally exorcised.
The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, although it is in the heart of central Asia, has immense implications for the Middle East. Apart from a few exceptions — most notably the Islamist-supporting governments in Turkey and Qatar and Islamist groups themselves, ranging from violent extremists like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to less violent organizations such as Muslim Brotherhood parties — most in the Middle East will find the development deeply disturbing on several counts.
First, for most pro-US states, including Gulf Arab countries, Israel and pro-US forces in Iraq, the spectacle of the United States going through with its agreed withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaotic and in many ways bungled effort to withdraw potential victims of the Taliban, is deeply alarming. It reinforces the notion that the US is no longer a reliable partner, if it ever was, and that Washington is more willing than other global powers to simply abandon its former friends. Whether that judgment is in any sense fair is beside the point. It is widespread. It dovetails with a generalized sense that the United States is looking for an exit from the Middle East in general and the Gulf region in particular, where most large and fixed US military assets are concentrated, and seeking to either pull back from international engagement altogether or at least focus firmly on competition with China and to a lesser extent Russia. All of that leaves pro-American countries, most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE, more anxious than ever about Washington’s reliability as senior security a partner and a guarantor.
Second, at a time when radical Islamism appears to be in an existential crisis and a free-fall in its influence and power, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan is widely viewed as a very dangerous countertrend. It will certainly embolden the radical Islamist groups in general, above all its long-term ally Al Qaeda and its recent bitter rival the Islamic State (which operates in Afghanistan under the title ISIS-K). But it will also inspire confidence in Salafist groups, Muslim Brotherhood parties and virtually all Sunni Islamists.
Coming to terms with the new regime
For Shiite Islamists such as the government of Iran and proxy militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, the Taliban victory is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it confirms the general power and efficacy of radical Islamism as a revolutionary ethos and agenda. But on the other hand, the Taliban and similar organizations have a long history of anti-Shiite rhetoric and violence, and they were profoundly at odds with Iran during the first period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan in the 1990s. So for Shiite Islamists, the victorious Taliban are both an inspiration and a confirmation and, potentially and historically, a mortal threat.
The big winners in the Middle East, at least for now, are Turkey and Qatar, which support a range of Islamist groups around the region and work together closely in promoting a fledgling Sunni Islamist regional bloc. Turkey was bound to immediately look for potential lucrative contracts for its familiar pattern of diplomacy through commerce. And, indeed, it did not take long for Turkey, with Qatari backing, to seek a contract for running the Kabul international Airport once the US had fully withdrawn. This is likely to be the first of many such management and reconstruction contracts Ankara secures from the Taliban.
Qatar is an even bigger winner, having bet on the Taliban all along, and allowing, with Washington support, the organization’s international headquarters to be based in a de facto embassy in Doha. In addition, Qatar is now one of the prime means of communication with the new government of Afghanistan and secured a great deal of credit for its role in helping to evacuate refugees from the country, turning its close relationship with the extremist organization into a PR coup. If the Taliban moderates its conduct, and governs with some degree of restraint compared with its extreme brutality in the 1990s, Qatar will reap even greater benefits. If, however, at the other extreme, the Taliban allows Afghanistan to once again serve as a hub for international terrorism, Doha could find itself exposed to considerable criticism for its closeness to the Taliban.
The countries in the most awkward position are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Particularly in the period following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia and, especially, the UAE have developed an increasingly antagonistic relationship with not just Al Qaeda but with Islamists in general. The UAE already took a dim view of all Islamists after 9/11, and Saudi Arabia eventually came to a similar perspective following the Arab spring uprisings of 2011. However, because Saudi Arabia has a history of state legitimation narratives based on its own Islamic character, culture, history and geography, it cannot completely support the UAE model of a total separation of religion and politics, even as Saudi Arabia shifts, under crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, to a national narrative that emphasizes patriotic identity and broad history rather than a focus on Islamic heritage and piety.
Both countries feel threatened by the Taliban, especially insofar as it has a very close relationship with Al Qaeda, and can serve as much as an inspiration for Islamic State fighters as an enemy to them. One of Al Qaeda’s principal founding goals is the overthrow of the Saudi state, and all states, in the Arab world. So, Saudi Arabia is obviously deeply concerned about the potential for Al Qaeda to find in the new Taliban-run Afghanistan a revived headquarters and base of operations. The UAE finds everything about the Taliban alarming, even though it was among the few states to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. In both cases they are taking a wait and see attitude. If the Taliban declines to serve as a hub for international terrorism and adopts a more constructive and less ideologically rigid and bombastic approach than it did 20 years ago, it is likely that these countries will seek constructive relations with the Taliban to encourage that to continue and help prevent Afghanistan from becoming a far-off danger again. So, relations with these important Arab and Muslim countries will largely be shaped by the Taliban itself, and what attitude towards the outside world it takes in the coming months.
Fundamental questions
Finally, the big question for the Arab world and other Muslim societies is the impact the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan will have on political Islam and Islamism in general. On the whole, and especially in the post-Arab spring environment, Sunni Islamism has been in a massive crisis. Organizations that have stuck with the revolutionary, conspiratorial and transnational model of the old, traditional Muslim Brotherhood movement have generally found themselves rejected by the public, persecuted by governments and driven to the margins. If they, and their sponsors in Ankara and Doha, expected such groups to be swept to power in post-dictatorship Arab republics by a giant green wave following the Arab spring, they have been bitterly disappointed.
Many Islamist parties have sought to rid themselves of their old revolutionary, conspiratorial and transnational aspects, becoming as much as possible “Muslim Democrats,” in the model of the Western European Christian Democratic parties, promising to abide by the Constitution, seek power only through legal means and operate openly and strictly within their own countries and for their own national interests. But, as the autogolpe in Tunisia demonstrates, even a fairly thoroughgoing program of that nature does not insulate a group like Ennahda from being marginalized with a high degree of public support. Similarly, more violent and radical Sunni Islamist groups which came to lead the revolution in Syria dramatically failed in the bid to overthrow President Bashar Assad, and indeed their centrality to the armed opposition was probably a major cause for its failure. Arguably Hamas in Gaza and the GNA government in western Libya are the only two examples at present of politically successful Sunni Islamists.
It seems unlikely that the victory of the Taliban, which is rooted very deeply in Afghanistan’s particular history, ethnic and tribal structure, and regional environment, will have much of an impact on the fate of Sunni Islamists in the Arab world. And, while Shiite Islamists such as the government of Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, PMF militias in Iraq and The Houthis in Yemen have been extremely successful by contrast to their Sunni counterparts and rivals, the Taliban is also unlikely to affect their fortunes. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan will now primarily be a problem facing immediate neighbors: Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran and India. Unless the Taliban decide to embrace international terrorism again, or mismanage the country so badly that ISIS-K or other potential international terrorist groups carve out their own space to operate in a failed Afghanistan, the Arab world and most of the rest of the Islamic world for that matter, will probably be able to tolerate Afghanistan suffering under an extreme fundamentalist government. There is, after all, not very much they can do about it on their own.
Maximalist proposals calling for near-total withdrawal or expanding the U.S. military footprint are unrealistic. The task is to find effective ways of doing as much, or more, with less.
NOTE: Political leaders, policy analysts, the media, and the public are engaged in a vigorous conversation regarding the future of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, which is concentrated in the Gulf Arab states. In the series Refining the U.S. Force Posture in the Gulf, AGSIW intends to help frame the larger debate and explore options for restructuring the United States’ policy goals and military presence in the region. Through written analysis and conversations with scholars, experts, and practitioners, the series will explore new conceptual frameworks and search for constructive ideas for a more realistic, effective, and pragmatic approach to reshaping the U.S. force posture in the region.
AGSIW joins this complex, multifaceted discussion with the clear goal of strengthening U.S. national security and serving the interests of both the United States and its regional partners. A continued strong U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military presence in the Gulf and Middle East as well as a renewed focus on the United States’ relationships with its key partners are central to promoting stability in the region and securing the U.S. national interest.
It is high time to move past the assumption that the only real or effective U.S. response to any significant challenge is the use of military force. It is time to find ways to apply political will and diplomacy effectively, in concert with the United States’ allies and supported by strong military capability and options. The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates both the futility of trying to prescribe the future of other societies, even with extended periods of military deployment, but also the delusion that an absence of U.S. forces will bring stability or prosperity. Plainly, a middle way beckons from lessons that need, at last, to be truly learned.
I invite you to join AGSIW and others in this crucial conversation in coming months, starting with this analysis by AGSIW Senior Resident Scholar Hussein Ibish.
Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman President, AGSIW
An overdue debate is underway regarding the scope and utility of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region. It is being amplified by the controversial U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which all sides cite as a vindication of their existing perspectives. On one side of the debate, some are pushing for the continuation or expansion of the current posture. The other extreme demands the elimination of all or nearly all fixed U.S. military facilities in the region. Both constituencies are loud and passionate, but a strong new consensus falling between these two positions is nonetheless emerging. It is time for the United States to rethink the distribution of its assets to make them more effective and, where appropriate, smaller, leaner, and more flexible, while at the same time recognizing that long-term deployments of U.S. forces in the Gulf region remain essential to the interests of the United States, and those of its regional and global partners, and for regional stability and security.
This debate arises from a growing sense of war weariness and desire to focus on domestic projects among many Americans. On the Republican right, this is the “America first” agenda, while for Democrats, it is the “build back better” initiative. There is also a growing focus on great power competition with Russia and China – which begs the question of how the U.S. presence in the Gulf contributes to, and is interlocked with, those complex policy aims.
Despite consistent calls for a de-prioritization of the Middle East – that, even within the government, date back to the second term of President George W. Bush and have been echoed by all subsequent administrations – the likely negative consequences of any dramatic shift have prevented it from happening. The strategic and economic importance of the Gulf region and its crucial energy supplies, especially to the economies of South and East Asia, is obvious. And there are many other reasons for the United States not to pull back too quickly or drastically. Still, most among the U.S. public, political leaders, and policy analysts have concluded that the military footprint largely inherited from the 1991 Desert Storm operation in Kuwait and 2003 invasion of Iraq has become ill-suited to evolving U.S. interests in the region.
Long-established security architecture in the Gulf, such as the U.S. naval presence in Manama, dating back to just after World War II, is also under pressure, even though it has repeatedly demonstrated its importance in helping ensure the free flow of oil and commerce in vital maritime passages such as the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. 5th Fleet also serves as the headquarters and hub of the Combined Maritime Forces, a 34-member coalition dedicated to combating piracy and smuggling and promoting maritime security in most important international shipping lanes, including the Indian Ocean and adjacent waterways.
The impulse to scale back the force posture in the Gulf dovetails with a transition away from post-9/11 entanglements in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq as well as the small but effective presence in Syria. Those three deployments are all very different, but the end of U.S. involvement in the Afghan war, restructuring of U.S. forces in Iraq to exclude combat missions, and persistence of the limited presence on the Syria-Iraq border to continue the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and to block Iranian control of the Iraqi-Syrian border crossings all illustrate the need for a potential adjustment of assets.
The Debate
The debate is bookended by opposing hard-line hawkish and isolationist positions. The resurgence of isolationism has arisen among right-wing nationalists and libertarians as well as liberal progressives. Such leanings have always been present but were effectively forced to the margins after World War II, through the Cold War and into the subsequent decades of the United States acting as the sole global power. Given the absence of a Cold War-style consensus about a defining existential threat, the return of isolationism was, perhaps, inevitable. International relations have become increasingly multipolar with the return of Russia to the world stage and, especially, the growth of China into an emerging global power competing with the United States. In addition to these great power rivals, regional powers, including in the Middle East, are increasingly asserting their strategic autonomy and attempting to diversify their partnerships and options.
Most striking is a convergence of conservative Republican and liberal Democratic versions of the isolationist resurgence. Both advocate that the United States should remove its military presence largely or even entirely from the Middle East (as well as the rest of the world, for example, Korea). These arguments are usually based on downplaying threats from adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran, and a thoroughgoing rejection of U.S. international leadership as wasteful, provocative, and counterproductive.
On the other extreme, some hawkish blocs, many of which emerged out of the neoconservative perspective, not only defend the current military posture but frequently demand an intensified U.S. military presence in the Middle East. This is typically tied to calls for increased military cooperation with and support for Israel and robust defenses of Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. Others take a more traditionally hawkish stance that simply opposes virtually all force posture drawdowns around the world.
These two extreme positions, though aggressively promoted by well-funded and highly visible institutions, remain maximalist outliers. There is, instead, a growing consensus that, while the United States should not entirely withdraw its military presence from the Gulf and broader Middle East, it should also not reflexively maintain the current posture, let alone inflate it. A broad-based expansion of the U.S. military role might be welcomed by some U.S. allies, including Israel and some Arab states, but many U.S. analysts believe that the current posture, formed in a different era, is not well suited to achieving present-day U.S. national interests in the region.
Defining U.S. Interests
One of the most important tasks in conceptualizing a new framework for the U.S. military role in the Gulf and broader Middle East is to identify, and hopefully forge a consensus around, a clearly defined understanding of core U.S. national security interests.
Most analysts agree that the United States has a vital interest in maintaining maritime security in the waters of the Gulf and global access to trade and energy resources through the Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandeb strait, and Strait of Hormuz, and beyond that, the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The U.S. military posture around the globe is an interwoven, interconnected web of assets that support and reinforce each other in complex and often mutually indispensable ways. It would be difficult for the United States to continue to play a major global role without taking the lead in securing access to what remains the energy lifeblood of the global economy. Ceding this role to the competing interests of regional powers or the hegemony of a rival international power would effectively signal the return of an isolationist foreign policy.
A second point of near unanimity is the vital interest in combating and deterring terrorism aimed at the United States and U.S. interests overseas. Counterterrorism is among the most important and effective pillars of U.S. leadership and influence, especially in the Middle East, and is imperative in reinforcing Washington’s network of alliances, above all NATO. Much of the focus of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks has been centered on counterterrorism efforts, whether effective or misguided. Despite many flaws, the policy has been substantially effective: There has been no repetition of the 9/11 attacks, and the fight against violent extremist groups has largely been taken to wherever they originate rather than in the United States.
However, many post-9/11 policies, notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ended up bolstering radicals in Iraq and Syria, eventually leading to the formation of ISIL, and empowering Iran. Pro-Iranian extremist groups continue to target U.S. forces and interests in Iraq and elsewhere. And the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIL, even to domestic U.S. targets, persists – particularly given the Taliban takeover of most of Afghanistan, the deadly suicide attack by an ISIL affiliate on the Kabul airport, and the release of large numbers of al-Qaeda operatives that had been in Afghan prisons.
Another issue frequently cited as a vital U.S. interest in the Middle East is the security of Israel, but that has become increasingly linked to the security of other U.S. regional partners. Israel and several key Gulf Arab countries agree that Iran and its militia network pose the greatest threat to their national security and regional stability. This shared threat perception and strategic convergence led the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to begin normalizing relations with Israel in 2020, which brought three key U.S. partners closer together. Saudi Arabia remains undecided but is clearly keeping its options open. The security of Israel and Gulf Arab states now overlap in ways that will likely provide important new opportunities for U.S. allies to cooperate both with Washington and each other in ways that also enhance U.S. regional strategic and policy goals.
Other key concerns include counteracting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; helping to avert new devastating regional wars; limiting human displacement and containing refugee crises; promoting U.S. values where possible; and addressing climate change and human security issues. The United States needs to forge a consensus about what requirements are essential to secure these interests, and what is needed to maintain support for a range of global imperatives.
Many analysts argue that the United States should transition from the post-Cold War effort of securing and defending a Pax Americana in the Middle East to a more traditional regional balancing role. This could make sense from both a U.S. and regional perspective, but there is no broadly shared understanding of what such a balancing role would entail. Some argue that the United States should seek, in effect, to foster a regional balance of power between Iran or Turkey and their Arab rivals. Yet balancing cannot mean accepting all existing actors’ policies as equally legitimate, particularly Iran’s promotion of sectarian armed militias in neighboring Arab countries, which has strongly contributed to the disintegration of these states and is the major impediment to national reintegration and regional order and stability.
Options for Force Posture Restructuring
To effectively adjust and restructure force posture, it may be necessary to adjust expectations at home and among U.S. partners. Many Americans assume that any action that is not kinetic, or at least essentially military in nature, cannot be considered effective. And many among U.S. partners in the Middle East and the Gulf assume that real commitment is only sincerely expressed and enacted through military assets and actions. Such attitudes need to evolve, given how effective nonmilitary tools can be when backed by a credible option of force.
The present configuration of major U.S. military assets in the region, which are largely concentrated in Gulf Arab states, needs careful evaluation: Which assets remain useful, which are cost-effective, which might be expanded, and which could be transitioned into a lighter, more flexible, and more responsive framework? An important corollary involves consideration of what the political and strategic landscape might look like following any possible adjustments. An empty space, with the United States over a horizon but still able to achieve significant objectives, is one thing; a new normal in which Russia or other U.S. global or regional competitors are effectively invited to fill such a vacuum, whether or not they actually can, would be a far greater concern.
A great deal of important, albeit at times speculative, work has already been done on the subject by a range of military and security experts, many of them with direct experience in the Middle East. The complex issue of burden sharing is directly related to restructuring, which could include the relocation of forward headquarters, possibly back to the United States. This depends in part on successfully strengthening the capabilities of U.S. regional partners, itself a complex and controversial task, including more integrated and robust missile defense systems and enhanced local maritime security capabilities, including minesweeping.
That requires a deeper discussion of arms sales to partners as the United States readjusts. Yet, even at its most successful, burden sharing based on strengthening local partners inevitably involves a lessening of direct influence. U.S. dismay over the consequences of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen serves as a good example of the potential downside of burden sharing. The United States and its partners will also have to find effective ways of combating the major threat posed by the emergence of cheap and dangerous drones, especially when combined with precision, or even hyperprecision, guidance systems. In the Middle East, Iran and Turkey have pioneered the application of drones and precision guidance and demonstrated the extent to which those new technologies have radically altered the strategic equation. The actual and potential use of such weapons by violent extremists and nonstate militias adds a further alarming element to the problem.
Numerous experts have already floated options for rightsizing the U.S. force posture but in a largely piecemeal manner. Some have pointed to increased emphasis on diplomacy as a necessary component to rightsizing. However, diplomatic capabilities, while still substantial, have been underfunded for decades, raising questions about what more diplomats could take on, especially since a strong military backstop is often helpful to make diplomacy effective. There are also key economic, commercial, and human security dimensions to facilitate the transition to doing more with less, all of which need to be utilized to their fullest.
As a global power, the United States remains unique, and massive benefits accrue to the American people from this global leadership role. International relations is not a zero-sum game, but global and regional players certainly keep score, and rivals will seek to fill areas the United States withdraws from or positions of influence it cedes.
The U.S. presence in the Gulf, therefore, remains crucial to both Washington and its partners. But to make it more effective and sustainable requires a new approach to regional security. A finer balance is needed between diplomatic – or even commercial or private sector – initiatives and traditional hard power, while retaining a robust military option to provide leverage and, where necessary, a last resort.
Carefully distinguishing among the various types of U.S. military presence – naval versus based aircraft versus boots on the ground and extensive training missions and small, temporary special operations force deployments or military assistance missions based in embassies – will help in creating the persuasive rationale needed to warrant an effective, sustainable force. What is required is a posture designed to serve flexible coalitions with partners to meet challenges without expecting or demanding that all partners contribute to every mission.
The United States needs a much clearer understanding of precisely what challenges require the long-term presence of forces, and the possible use of force, and under what conditions. Without that, policy will continue to drift without clear direction. This is why a new consensus on national security goals in the Gulf and broader Middle East is so important. The ultimate aim must be to foster a new regional security paradigm that includes all major players and is oriented to seeking win-win solutions rather than zero-sum confrontations. Whether this is achievable can only be determined by a thoroughgoing effort to promote and pursue it.
A wide-ranging conversation is required about how and why to restructure the U.S. force posture in the Gulf, what vital national security interests and missions these assets must serve, and what other tools advance these aims. The U.S. role in the Middle East has evolved since the establishment of major bases such as the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain and forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command at Al Udeid air base in Qatar. Given technological and strategic developments in recent years, and lessons learned from the post-9/11 era, the United States should now certainly be able to do more – or at least enough – with less.
It is his handling of the Afghanistan exit that has been panned – not really Biden’s decision to leave.
Across the US, flags are at half-mast, honouring the fourteen US military personnel who were killed in an ISIS suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport, along with many more Afghans. But, despite what his critics hope, these flags are not at half-mast for the president’s administration, which is not, in fact, in a crisis over Afghanistan.
The anguish of the attack sums up the entire experience that US President Joe Biden is determined to end with his unhesitating decision to remove US forces from Afghanistan, and bring to a close the longest war in the country’s history.
Americans are a proud and martial people. They do not like to be informed that one of their overseas adventures has, unsurprisingly, failed. It is, after all, a country that has revelled in deluding itself that it “never lost a war,” at least until Vietnam, though that was never true.
ISIS’s mass murder at the airport and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan should be viewed through three partially overlapping frameworks.
At the human register, it is a catastrophe. Strategically, it is a potentially risky gamble that will have to prove itself in due course. Politically, it seems like a good bet for Mr Biden.
The tragedy is hard to overstate. Thousands of Afghans who aided US, Nato and other now-disfavoured forces will inevitably be left behind in the chaos and may well be harmed or even killed.
From this perspective, it would have been much better to have begun with a mass human exodus mission before any major military drawdown. Mr Biden insists that the Afghan government at the time begged him not to do that for fear of sparking a panic. Apparently, they were well aware how brittle their regime was, but Washington probably made a whopping mistake by acceding.
Strategically, Mr Biden is on more solid ground. No one knows what the future holds, but the idea that a few thousand US troops, backed by air power, could have prevented the Taliban from capturing Afghan cities into the foreseeable future seems very implausible. If the US had stayed engaged, it surely would have been drawn ever-deeper into an intensifying war.
Politically, Mr Biden is on his firmest footing. Criticisms are mainly based on the Biden administration’s handling of the exit but, crucially, not the decision to leave.
Despite angry denunciations by former US President Donald Trump and his allies, Mr Biden is, in fact, implementing Mr Trump’s own agreement with the Taliban. Mr Biden actually extended Mr Trump’s deadline a little bit.
It is highly unlikely that a second Trump administration would have handled the situation any better, to put it kindly. And it is almost impossible to imagine him welcoming thousands of Afghan refugees to the US.
One of the few things Mr Trump and Mr Biden agree about is that most Americans want to leave Afghanistan and that they are not terribly particular about the details.
Even though the oldest US soldier killed at the airport was just 31, and at least two were younger than the Afghanistan mission itself, the terrible poignancy will only go so far politically.
And how will this all influence next year’s congressional midterm elections, or Mr Biden’s reelection chances in 2024, if he runs again?
Probably not much, if at all. It could even help him.
The cold, hard, political fact is that while Americans in general are deeply moved at the human level, and have very mixed feelings about the exit from Afghanistan, none of this is a major consideration in shaping midterm and general election votes.
Mr Biden will be heavily criticised, but he will also claim to have been the first leader in 20 years to have had the guts to rip off the bandage and finally end a pointless and quixotic campaign to reshape Afghan society.
That will resonate with many war-weary Americans.
And unlike in the earliest days of the exit crisis, he can now point to the extraction of at least 120,000 refugees, the overwhelming majority not US citizens, under very difficult conditions.
Indeed, the biggest political threats to Mr Biden and his allies have nothing to do with foreign policy or Afghanistan.
He is in a good deal of trouble, but mainly because of economic concerns tied to inflation and the heavy impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus pandemic, which is hitting Republican-ruled states, with very low vaccination rates and no real mitigation mandates, particularly hard. Yet, as president, Mr Biden may be punished for the irresponsible actions of many Republican governors.
The US political calendar is effectively on hold during August and will resume after the first week of September and US Labour Day.
At that point, there will be a massive effort to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, a separate and vast Democrats-only infrastructure package, and some form of voting access protection.
Just one of these would count as a significant success, especially given the incredibly tight margins in Congress and the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill Mr Biden signed in March.
Americans are looking at the Afghanistan tragedy primarily through the prism of emotions, not politics. Those emotions are, however, incredibly powerful.
They include, for many Americans, despair at the inability of the country to accomplish the impossible, but widely endorsed, project it undertook in 2002 to reshape Afghan society.
There is also considerable anger about the futility of the deaths and suffering of Americans and their Afghan allies over the past 20 years, and the present failure to rescue many of those heroic allies.
Such reflections induce powerful feelings of individual and collective guilt. But they compete with less widespread but extant contemptuous impressions of Afghans as unsalvageable or ungrateful wretches.
There is also tremendous sadness at recent losses, especially from the airport bombing, and for those facing possible death at the hands of the Taliban.
But, above all, most Americans – especially those who were not personally connected to the war – will primarily be experiencing relief that the “endless” war is finally over.
Critics charge that either the Taliban or, if they lose control of the situation, some even more extreme successor like ISIS, will once again make Afghanistan a hub of global terrorism, and therefore draw the US right back into the fray.
But most Americans don’t anticipate that right now.
So, Mr Biden is unlikely to be politically hurt, and may even be bolstered, by his decision to rip off the bandage and finally end the longest war in US history.
Islamabad has long fostered the fighters but Doha has recently sheltered prominent members of the group. Will its deeper pockets make a difference? by Bobby Ghosh and Hussein Ibish
As the Taliban settle into their second stint as Afghanistan’s rulers, any hope of avoiding a reprise of their first period of rule may rest on a competition for influence in Kabul between Pakistan and Qatar. The outcome will determine what role the wider world, and especially the West, can play in the country after the withdrawal of American forces.
Most Afghans — as well as foreign governments, aid agencies, donors and investors — will be rooting for Doha over Islamabad. Memories of how the previous Taliban administration performed under Pakistani tutelage allow for no optimism about how things will play out this time. The Qataris are a relatively unknown quantity in South Asia, but they could hardly do worse.
Who wins will be determined in large part by another contest, within the Taliban. Although the group is headed by a supreme leader, Habitullah Akhundzada, it is not a monolith. Qatar is aligned with the political faction led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, while Pakistan is backing the military wing, marshalled by the likes of Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of former supreme leader, Mullah Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the dreaded Haqqani Network, designated a terrorist group by the U.S.
On the surface, things are looking good for the Qataris. Baradar, who has lived in Doha for the past three years, hasarrived in Kabul and is expected to head the new government. The Biden administration seems to have determined that it can do business with him: Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns held secret talks with Baradar on Monday.
This will alarm the Pakistanis, who are thought to be in bad odor with Baradar. They first gave him shelter after the U.S.-led defeat of the Taliban, then arrested him in 2010. He was reportedly tortured in captivity. The Qataris, on the other hand, have been treating him as Afghanistan’s leader-in-waiting, and have built strong ties to others in his faction.
But even if Baradar heads the government, the real power in the Taliban lies in Akhundzada’s “shura,” or council, where Yaqoob and Haqqani wield considerable sway. From 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban last ruled, decisions made in Kabul were routinely overruled by the high council in Kandahar, the group’s spiritual base and home of its supreme leader.
If Pakistan’s proteges emerge as the dominant clique, Islamabad will likely be their principal go-between with the world. We’ve seen that movie before, and it ends badly. The last time around, rather than encourage the Taliban to develop a modern, inclusive state, Pakistan indulged their obscurantist ideology, defended their reactionary worldview and excused their atavistic domestic agenda.
Western governments, and especially the U.S., paid handsomely for Pakistan’s services as the designated Taliban-whisperer, but this only enriched and empowered the military and intelligence establishment in Islamabad, and did nothing to alleviate the plight of the Afghan people or abate the terrorist threat emanating from their country.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan provided the safe havens for them to regroup, rearm and return to the fray. Over the past 20 years, governments in Islamabad have made little effort to ameliorate the attitude of their guests. Now that they’re back in power, it is hard to imagine Pakistan will temper their tendencies.
Can Qatar do better? Over the past decade, the tiny emirate has emerged as an effective interlocutor between the West and the Taliban. By brokering peace negotiations in Doha, the Qataris paved the way for the American withdrawal and the insurgents’ return to power.
Their bid for influence in Kabul will depend on Baradar being grateful for services rendered — and wanting still more. If the Taliban want international recognition for their government, the Qatari auspices will be more effective than that of Pakistan, which is itself regarded with suspicion by the West.
And if they want money — aid or investment — Doha has much deeper pockets than Islamabad. This will be especially important in the first months of the new administration, when Western governments and donors will hold back funding while they take the measure of the new dispensation. Even if they remain suspicious of the Taliban, those inclined to keep assisting the Afghan population will feel more comfortable using Qatar as a conduit than relying on Pakistan.
But don’t rule out the Taliban’s old patrons just yet. For one thing, the Pakistanis have a major advantage in proximity. The two countries share a 1,650-mile land border, whereas Qatar and Afghanistan are separated by the landmass of Iran and the Persian Gulf. Pakistanis and Afghans also share ethnic and cultural ties that the Qataris can’t hope to match.
More important, the Pakistani state has a history with new rulers in Kabul that goes back to the Taliban’s birth, midwifed by Islamabad’s intelligence services, in the early 1990s. Some of those ties were frayed when the government of General Pervez Musharraf enabled the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, but the group could not have survived without continued, covert Pakistani backing. Baradar may have suffered at the hands of his jailors, but many in the military wing, leaders and fighters alike, will feel they owe their recent hosts a debt of gratitude.
And finally, Pakistan also has much more at stake. For Doha, a friendly government in Kabul would be a very good outcome; for Islamabad, it is an existential imperative because Pakistani military doctrine has long held that Afghanistan provides the country with “strategic depth” in its rivalry with India. So, count on Pakistan to fight much harder than Qatar for influence in Afghanistan. This contest could yet get very dirty.