Obama’s Middle East: Goodbye Orthodoxy, Farewell Orthopraxy

President Barack Obama has turned over the table of orthodox foreign policy theory and practice in the Middle East. The United States may now have choices before it that are better grounded in fact, but has roiled the region in the process. It is the short-term consequences of the American shift that have attracted the most attention, but it is the long-term that will produce the most important outcomes. Four of America’s traditional allies—Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—are now estranged partners. To make it more complicated, each has its separate reasons for distrusting America. Obama has also pulled back from, at times, intense pressure to involve the United States in two additional wars in Syria, and Iran prior to the nuclear deal. Instead, his new team to help shape the future of the Middle East includes Russia and Iran. This might have been the stuff of a novel if it weren’t a non-fiction work.

The president made it clear in The Atlantic interview this April that he is content with the new direction for himself and the United States. As much as the foreign policy establishment may be wary of saying so, he may have been right about Syria: that it was a slippery slope into a quagmire that did not directly threaten U.S. national security. He may have been right to see if he could move Iran from nuclear weapon assembly to nuclear weapon agreement. He may be right that Russia could help shape a final agreement on Syria one day that would include the destruction of the Islamic State, which is more dangerous to him than the Assad regime. He may be right to use American power to try to help the region make room for an Iran that might gradually moderate its behavior. As he did regarding Cuba, he sees slight rationale in continuing to resist new developments that test conventional wisdom. Some also argue that the president is following a script already written by Eisenhower and Nixon, both of whom also came to power in the midst of American wars and made tough decisions to limit objectives and methods to foster settlements.

What is missing, however, are two important realities. First, there is an assumption that others will step forward to fill U.S. shoes in the region. Second is the conclusion, not articulated, that peace and stability are made more likely because of this new American approach. Neither appears to be obviously true at the moment.

Admittedly, there are attempts in the region to step up to compensate for the U.S. withdrawal from leadership in the Middle East and to secure peace and greater stability. Saudi Arabia has launched a frenetic round of high-level visits to put together a regional Sunni coalition to weaken Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. With the festering conflict in Yemen as its prime example—a sort of ‘Bleeding Kansas’ caught between competing regional giants—the Saudis want an aggressive response to Iran on a much wider scale.

There are several problems with the Saudi initiative. First, it is designed to undermine any prospects the United States may foster for a cold peace between the Saudis and the Iranians. Second, each party that is joining the Saudi effort is doing so to advance its own particular interests more than a common interest shared by all. The Turks want to restrain the Kurdish war effort, and the Egyptians need Saudi capital and greater domestic stability. To the extent the Saudi effort succeeds, tensions with Iran will rise. The president may feel that it is his prerogative to tell the Saudis to find common space with Iran, but whether he is right or wrong, his rhetoric alone will make no difference.

The potential partners are also themselves split over key issues. The Muslim Brotherhood will continue to be a divisive factor among these states, which include champions of the Brotherhood like Turkey and arch enemies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egypt also has sympathy for Assad, preferring to see him remain than risk a proliferation of non-state terrorism. Saudi Wahhabism, however, has ideological links with the Sunni extremism that led to al-Qaeda and ISIS; the difference is that Wahhabism and the kingdom support one another.

Even if the Saudi-led gambit succeeded long-term, it would only bring the peace of authoritarianism that would not encourage any solution reflecting American values. Given the U.S. stakes in preventing wider regional conflict, it seems rather clear that leaving the task of stabilizing the Middle East to regional states cannot be imagined as rising to the level of a plan.

The U.S. retrenchment also may increase the risk of yet another major calamity. The United States and Turkey are currently trying to carefully calibrate an agreement that will allow the Americans to continue to rely on its Kurdish allies and the Turks to use its own sponsored forces to close the Turkish border space still used by ISIS daily. Whatever the deal, Turkey has not changed its unalterable opposition to Washington’s Kurdish allies having a say in Syria’s future. Should the day arrive when the Islamic State has been eliminated, the U.S. military will stop its war and prepare to depart. The Kurds will be left to their fate with Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. They already have opened channels to the Russians to hedge their bets on the Americans.

Though freshly articulated in early April, Obama has been on this track of disengagement for over two years, but the prolonging of the Syrian war has obscured some of the more disturbing realities that are arising from the conflict. The other players are putting forward their own plans, and we are seeing where they might lead. Shifting responsibility long-term to regional states could certainly bring a sense of relief to any American president. However, Obama has merely taken his hands off the steering wheel at road speed. At first, it seems to work just fine.