Trump’s Mideast Strategy

Walter Russell Mead    Wall Street Journal Jan. 14, 2019 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-mideast-strategy-11547509876?mod=rss_opinion_main

Like Obama, he wants the U.S. to step back. Unlike Obama, he wants to contain Iran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks in Doha, Qatar, Jan. 13.

As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concludes his swing through the Middle East, the Trump administration’s regional strategy is coming into view. Like President Obama, President Trump wants to reduce American commitments while promoting stability. But their strategies differ. Mr. Obama thought the best hope for a reduced U.S. footprint was conciliating Iran. Mr. Trump, by contrast, seeks to build a coalition of U.S. regional allies—even if those allies fall well short of perfection—that can provide a stable security architecture and offset Iranian strength as the U.S. steps back.

In seeking a reduced Middle East presence and retreating from expansive human-rights goals, both Team Obama and Team Trump have reacted to significant changes in American politics. Public support for U.S. military action and democracy promotion in the Middle East has all but collapsed, for two reasons. First, decades of engagement in the region have brought neither stability nor democracy. Second, as America’s dependence on Middle East energy recedes, many voters see less reason to prioritize the region. Pundits can argue that these reactions are shortsighted, but politicians must take them into account.

The Trump administration hopes that with limited American support, Israel, Turkey and the Sunni Arab countries can together contain Iran. If so, Mr. Trump can claim credit for improved Israeli-Arab ties and a more stable region even as he cuts back on American troop and aid levels. This is a sounder strategy in the abstract than the Obama team’s gamble on Iranian restraint. U.S. relations with the Sunni Arab powers, Israel and Turkey are sometimes difficult, but a policy based on continued cooperation with them is more feasible than subordinating their interests to chase after an improved relationship with the deeply hostile regime in Tehran.

Yet the Trump plan also has significant drawbacks. The first is that, as the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran points out, it unites the president’s domestic critics. Many of Mr. Trump’s staunchest critics in the conservative foreign-policy establishment continue to support the George W. Bush strategy of muscular engagement and democracy promotion. They are appalled by both Mr. Trump’s desire to retreat from the region and his willingness to work with autocrats like Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Team Obama, meanwhile, may be out of power but remains influential among opinion makers and pundits. And it knows a Saudi alliance is America’s only alternative to the Iran outreach of the Obama era. The Obama lobby has therefore joined the neoconservatives in the hopes of using public horror at the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, revulsion at the humanitarian cost of war in Yemen and unease about the deplorable state of human rights in Mr. Sisi’s Egypt to disrupt the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy.

A second difficulty with the Trump approach is that relying on such disparate U.S. allies as the Gulf sheikhdoms, Israel and Turkey forces Washington into the Middle East cat-herding business. Over the weekend, Mr. Pompeo found himself embroiled in the Saudi-Qatar rivalry. Meanwhile, national security adviser John Bolton was trying—and failing—to reassure the Kurds while calming the Turks over the conditions of U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria.

Getting Turkey and Israel to work together is also a hard sell; last month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an “anti-Semitic dictator” whose army “massacres women and children” in Kurdish villages. Fortunately for Mr. Trump, the Sunni Arab powers and the Israelis are working together more effectively than ever before because the threat from Iran is so great; unfortunately, the Saudis and Israelis hate and fear Mr. Erdogan almost as much as they do Tehran’s ayatollahs.

Even if Washington succeeds in controlling its herd of allies, it must still orchestrate an effective strategy for rolling back Iran’s influence. That is hard; in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Iranian influence is deeply entrenched. Without sustained American engagement, Mr. Trump’s hoped-for grand alliance will fall short.

Yet sustained American engagement is exactly what Mr. Trump hopes the grand alliance will help him avoid. Meanwhile, it is a safe bet that Russia, Iran and to some extent China will be looking for ways to make it as difficult as possible for Mr. Trump to achieve his objectives in the Middle East. At home, so will the neoconservatives and the Obama lobby.

Mr. Trump’s approach to the Middle East, for all its difficulties, may well be America’s least bad option. To pull it off, however, will require extraordinary diplomatic skill, self-control and not a little luck. As Mr. Pompeo harnesses his caravan of cats for their trek across the desert, he should brace for some interesting times.