Muslim Angst Vs. American Anxiety
The struggle for Islamic oil has become a keystone of American foreign and military policy, even though that purpose has remained veiled rather than explicit. That the world will increasingly depend on Islamic oil and gas is a certainty in spite of current talk about finding alternate sources of energy. U.S. super-power status has been built on the basis of cheap energy. Despite its indispensability, petroleum as an issue is unpopular with the U.S. public because of its implications for global warming, pollution and becoming beholden to foreign, especially Middle Eastern suppliers. U.S. policies executed to ensure that the U.S. and its allies have assured access to oil and gas are dressed up for the public as being about vague ideals such as patriotism, democracy or deterring allegedly threatening regimes. The West’s leaders have discerned that we despise our bondage to black gold, so it cannot be mentioned as the main reason for (military) action.
America’s focus on the Muslim world as a policy issue is relatively recent. During the Cold War, the U.S. imported relatively little petroleum from the Middle East. Rather, the U.S. was primarily concerned that Gulf oil should flow freely to Japan and Western Europe who greatly depended on imported oil — 80 percent and 90 percent respectively — and that the Soviet Union should not be influential in the Middle East. To ensure this stability, the U.S. did not hesitate to engineer the overthrow of democratically elected governments — Syria in 1949, Iran in 1953 and Iraq in 1963. Beginning in the 1960s, U.S. policy in the Middle East was preoccupied by a search for a proxy power to fill the vacuum left by Britain, who served for nearly 200 years as the Great Power guarantor and protector of small, oil-rich principalities. Iran and the Shah were groomed for this role, building up Iran as policeman of the Gulf with the added benefit Iran would buy huge amounts of weaponry from the U.S., recycling its petro dollars to American business.
The collapse of the Shah sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1980 to explore an alliance with Saddam Hussein that lasted from 1984 to 1990 with Iraq as the container of radical Iran. In 1991 with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. fell into the difficult position of having to contain both Iran and Iraq. This policy of “dual containment” thrust the U.S. into the role of Great Power Guarantor in the Middle East. Author Cole marshals considerable evidence to demonstrate that the U.S. tendency to meddle in the Middle East, fomenting coups or manipulating elections cannot be successful in the long run. U.S. actions have turned Iraq from an irreligious police state into what will probably become a Muslim theocracy. While U.S. policy, until recently, has seen the Iraq War and the U.S. as promoters of democracy and stability, the Arab street, given the choice between an autocratic but autonomous government not bound to the Christian capitalist West, and a democratic state under the sway of foreign governments, would choose the former.
Mr. Cole sends a warning that Saudi Arabia is reaching a dangerous point where a restless, educated, but unemployed urban population is beginning to threaten the country’s stability. Monarchies in Libya, Iraq and Iran were overthrown by these same elements in their countries. With 11 percent of the world’s petroleum, the fate of the world depends to a significant extent on the fate of Saudi Arabia.
Turning to the most troublesome current foreign policy dilemma, Mr. Cole feels that U.S. policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan is mistaken. Most of the billions in foreign aid have benefited the military and the elites and not the ordinary people so that Afghanistan now has a “jihad economy” subsisting on money given to the militias and flowing from narco revenues. The big U.S./NATO military footprint and “collateral” civilian deaths may actually be creating the threat it ostensibly seeks to stamp out: the reconstitution of Al Qaeda and the revival of the 1980s holy war that proved deadly to the Soviet Union.
Engaging the Muslim World addresses a number of realities that seem unknown in the U.S. The so-called threat posed by Iran seems to evaporate when we learn that Iran’s military budget is $6 billion per year, the same as Norway or Sweden and less than Singapore or Greece. The dilemma of continued Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory is put in perspective: Continuing the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not viable since it would end up with Israel being compelled to offer the Palestinians Israeli citizenship and before long they would constitute a majority of Israel's population. The only way to retain a Jewish majority is for Israel to withdraw to its 1949 boundaries. Brokering a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians is the most important foreign policy priority for the Obama administration. This step would resolve 90 percent of American’s problems with the Muslim world.
My dad commented on the foreign aid boondoggle recently...linking to an article on the subject:
Vast sums of money are being lavished by Western aid agencies on their own officials in Afghanistan at a time when extreme poverty is driving young Afghans to fight for the Taliban. The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the west of the country is $4, but foreign consultants in Kabul, who are paid out of overseas aids budgets, can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year.
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