Prometheus 6

Nevertheless, Freedman's conclusion is odd given that the earlier chapters of his book make a compelling case that the United States' missteps in the Middle East have stemmed from ideological obstinacy, a failure to understand history, and often plain obtuseness. If such blunders lie at the root of the United States' policy failures in the region, why does Freedman argue for throwing in the towel rather than repairing the policy process by recruiting experts, pragmatists, and those who have learned the lessons of the past -- and entrusting them with fixing the Middle East?

You remember the Pottery Barn rule, "You break it, you own it"? 

After you pay for it, do you keep the pieces?

Shortsighted Statecraft
Washington's Muddled Middle East Policy
By Daniel C. Kurtzer

From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East . Lawrence Freedman . PublicAffairs , 2008, 569 pp. 29.95

There is a feature of my seminars on U.S. Middle East policy at Princeton that I call "déjà vu all over again" -- with apologies to Yogi Berra. I ask students to assess the bungled efforts and missed opportunities of generations of U.S. diplomats and seek in them lessons for the future. They examine the hubris that drove the U.S. government to engineer the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddeq's democratically elected government in Iran. This traumatic episode was conveniently forgotten by 1979, when National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski encouraged Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to use force against the opposition, ignoring the warnings of U.S. diplomats on the ground in Iran that the shah's reign was doomed. Similarly, the United States forgot the lesson of the limited and United Nations-approved 1991 war in response to Iraq's aggression in Kuwait when it launched an ideologically inspired invasion of Iraq in 2003. Likewise, in 2006, Washington seemed to have forgotten the fiasco that followed Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Rather than learn from the past, Washington backed Israel's ill-advised attempt to deliver a knockout blow against another Lebanese foe, this time Hezbollah. My students and I conclude -- only half-jokingly -- that U.S. policymakers ought to take the class before taking office.

They should also read Lawrence Freedman's provocative new book, A Choice of Enemies, a sweeping overview of the United States' responses to foreign policy crises in the Middle East over the past 30 years. The book poses a crucial question: Has the United States' Middle East policy consistently failed since World War II, or have the region's problems become so entrenched that they are impervious to change? Freedman, a professor at King's College London, is best known for his writings on war and is an admitted novice when it comes to the Middle East. Nevertheless, he has assembled an impressive array of sources and presents them well in A Choice of Enemies.

Taking the dramatic events of 1979 and the early 1980s -- the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Camp David peace accords, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and the rise of Hezbollah -- as his starting point, Freedman argues that a sea change occurred in the politics of the region, from secular Arab nationalism to Islamist-based politics. The United States, Freedman contends, failed to adjust: its policies were haphazard and self-contradictory, its officials spent more time arguing with one another than trying to understand what was happening in the region, and it chose enemies based on a shortsighted appreciation of what its own interests were.

Freedman is not optimistic when it comes to resolving the region's vexing foreign policy dilemmas. Toward the end of his book, he argues that the Middle East's problems cannot be solved and "must be managed or endured" instead. But coming after hundreds of pages about pain and suffering in the region and so many poor -- but easily avoidable -- U.S. policy choices, this conclusion is somehow comforting. Freedman seems to be assuring policymakers that these problems are not of their own making, thus absolving them of the responsibility to fix them. His temptation to give up is understandable to those who have studied or worked on the Middle East at any time during the past six decades. Nevertheless, Freedman's conclusion is odd given that the earlier chapters of his book make a compelling case that the United States' missteps in the Middle East have stemmed from ideological obstinacy, a failure to understand history, and often plain obtuseness. If such blunders lie at the root of the United States' policy failures in the region, why does Freedman argue for throwing in the towel rather than repairing the policy process by recruiting experts, pragmatists, and those who have learned the lessons of the past -- and entrusting them with fixing the Middle East?