Beware Obama, your allies are enraged - Michael Young - The Daily Star
An interesting article appeared on the website of the National Interest this week, written by Nawaf Obaid, a visiting fellow at the Belfer Center of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Obaid, a Saudi, has often been used as an unofficial conduit to publicize the mood in the kingdom, and his latest offering did not disappoint.
In the article Obaid argued that recent Saudi offers to participate in ground operations against Daesh (ISIS) in Syria were serious. However, things would not stop there: “[I]t’s clear that the Kingdom-led multinational coalition will not stop at [Daesh]. Rather, its ultimate objective in Syria is to take on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-created Shia militias, which are the source of as much, if not more, regional terror than [Daesh] and Al Qaeda,” Obaid continued.
Obaid recalled that Saudi officials had described the decision to intervene as “irreversible,” and that the Saudi-led coalition, which includes Egypt, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Jordan, among others, totaled some 150,000 troops. Recently, it participated in joint exercises in northern Saudi Arabia, codenamed Northern Thunder. “The tactical blueprint for the coalition’s move into Syria while also remaining in Yemen is based on the Schlieffen Plan, Imperial Germany’s pre-World War I strategy for conducting war on two fronts,” Obaid wrote.
It was possible to read Obaid’s article in several ways. He could well have been reflecting one specific perspective in the kingdom, not a consensus view. Yet it was other remarks that could have betrayed his true intention, namely to push the United States to fundamentally change its attitude toward the Syrian conflict.
Revealingly, Obaid wrote that a decision by the Saudis to move into Syria would call the Obama administration “out on its narrow Syrian objectives and [force it] to support the coalition or further degrade an already tenuous relationship with numerous core allies, foremost among them Saudi Arabia and Turkey.”
Expressing a pervasive sentiment in the region, Obaid bluntly observed that the “Obama Administration’s Syrian policy is shameful and strategically a disaster. The Russian agenda of preventing the fall of Assad is now, in effect, America’s policy, primarily, it seems, because Obama in his last few months in office lacks the political courage to get involved while also hoping that perhaps Russia will deal with [Daesh].”
His remarks should be placed alongside those of Turkey’s ambassador in Washington, Serdar Kilic, who described U.S. relations with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria as “a big strategic mistake.” Recently, Kilic spoke of Turkey’s “disappointment” with American policy, a diplomatic way of saying that Ankara is enraged with the Obama administration.
Obaid is not an official Saudi spokesman so he had the latitude to be harsh. But Kilic is, and both men are making it perfectly clear that Turkish or Saudi actions or threats in Syria are closely tied in to their perceptions of American abandonment.
The prospects for a major Turkish deployment in Syria seemed to recede somewhat on Tuesday. Turkish officials were quoted as saying that they wanted a ground operation in the country so as to end the war there, but then qualified this by adding that it had to include the participation of international allies.
Both in Ankara and Riyadh there is a realization that it would be much easier to enter Syria than to get out. Not only would intervention have a high likelihood of leading to a direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, but the agendas of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are very different. The Turks are focused on preventing the emergence of a Kurdish entity, while the Saudis are primarily concerned with containing Iran.
With the Saudis engaged in a costly war in Yemen and the Turkish government lacking popular support for greater participation in Syria, the launch of a ground war in the county would pose tremendous risks. Most important, there is no certitude the Obama administration would back their endeavors.
Obaid is right about one thing: The Russian agenda in Syria has become the American agenda, notwithstanding cosmetic expressions of differences from Washington. Yet Obaid’s article could also have been a version of what President Richard Nixon once called his “madman theory.” According to Nixon, if America’s adversaries thought that he would behave in an irrational, unpredictable way, this would push them to be more accommodating of American aims. The Saudis, too, seek to persuade America that they might do anything in Syria, so worried are they about American indifference to their interests.
Barack Obama stands at a crossroads in the shambles of his Middle East policy. Embodying the poverty of the American position last weekend was State Department spokesman John Kirby. Oblivious to the complicated stakes in Syria, he urged Turkey and Syria’s Kurds to concentrate on the “common threat” of Daesh. The Americans seem to believe that, like them, everyone should abandon all other national priorities and give their undivided attention to fighting one particular organization. It’s not a case of the Americans missing the forest for the trees; it’s a case of the administration wanting everyone to look at a single tree in a forest of clashing, near-existential agendas.
That Obama believed he could somehow blunder through with this reckless approach is astonishing. Surely the White House sages realized that sending Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy for the campaign against Daesh, to meet with Democratic Union Party officials in Ain al-Arab (Kobani in Kurdish) recently would anger the Turks. But like American reassurances to the Saudis over the opening to Iran, Obama has had the strange reflex of giving consideration to the preferences of his rivals while ignoring the anxiety of his friends.
The president should worry about one thing. The madman theory can sometimes become self-fulfilling. If America continues to ignore its allies’ fears, they may act in increasingly impulsive and dangerous ways out of desperation. A regional war would engulf everybody, obliging even the indolent Obama to pay attention.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.