Does The U.S. Have A Middle East Strategy Going Forward?
Submitted by Gregory R. Copley via OilPrice.com,
Senior-level sources in numerous Middle Eastern governments have privately expressed bewilderment at recent and current U.S. government strategies and policies toward the region.
But a closer examination of U.S. policies, now almost entirely dictated by the Obama White House, shows no cohesive national goals or policies exist, but rather an ad hoc set of actions and reactions, which are largely dictated either by ideological positions, ignorance, whim, or perceived expedience.
This is unique in U.S. history.
In short, the consistent pattern of policies developed over the past century has now been broken up, apart from some of the physical consistencies of legacy military deployments and basing, and by some trade and weapons program commitments. Even there, military deployments have contracted substantially in the past few years, and new U.S. defense systems sales to the region have been lost to suppliers from France, Russia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Germany, Pakistan, and others
In the 18 months until January 2016, the U.S. missed possibly $12- to $15-billion in sales of defense and energy systems in the Middle East, and a range of major new defense acquisitions from non-U.S. suppliers are under consideration by Middle Eastern states. At the same time, some of the U.S.’ major traditional allies in the region — Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in particular — have felt compelled, for their own survival, to turn their back on Washington because of a perception of a divergence in values and goals.
Most U.S. policy officials — especially in Defense — insist that U.S. commitments and strategies in the region have not changed, but the actions and policies dictated directly by the Barack Obama White House, and mirrored at Secretary of State level, have proven antithetical to most states in the greater Middle East, with the exception of Turkey and Qatar. Some regional states, such as Oman, are concerned; others, such as Ethiopia and Djibouti, are now left feeling strategically abandoned.
The sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces from their deployment at the Ethiopian air base at Arba Minch — from where Reaper UAV sorties were conducted against al-Shabaab in Somalia — was done in September 2015 without forewarning to the Ethiopian Government in Addis Ababa, and kept secret until an Ethiopian website disclosed it in early January 2016. The U.S. had signed a series of multi-year supply agreements with Ethiopian companies to support the base in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal, a firm indication that the decision to vacate Arba Minch was sudden and hastily planned.
The Arba Minch withdrawal coincided with growing U.S. hostility toward the Government of Djibouti — which is strategically integral to Ethiopia’s fortunes — and the very pointed siding of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Djibouti. This resulted in Saudi and UAE strong military commitments to Eritrea (to compensate for the loss of their Djibouti basing in the war in Yemen), another blow to Ethiopian security. But it also coincided with the visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Addis Ababa to talk at the African Union, where he was accorded a very mixed reception based on his insistence on African states accepting his — Obama’s — stance on gay marriage, among other things.
Significantly, although President Obama’s team was warned against such provocations in advance of his Addis and Nairobi visits, most Obama Administration officials do not understand what they have done to offend some of the nations in the region. Even Kerry’s support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the rift with Djibouti did not win their support for Washington, as both states feared that the U.S. now supported Iran rather than the lower Persian Gulf states. The Iranian Government, however, has been under no such illusions, even among those who supported the G5+1 treaty with Iran to end some of Iranian nuclear weapons programs in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. They, too, see U.S. support for the Saudi coalition against them in Yemen.
The net result has been a bonanza for the PRC, and the deal by Djibouti to welcome a PRC naval base in the country was confirmed and cemented when Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh met in South Africa with China’s President Xi Jinping in early December 2015. This was a strategically successful gathering of African leaders with China’s leader within weeks of the Indian summit in New Delhi with African leaders.
The U.S. has done nothing of consequence to rebuild its position, which means that the strategic framework in the Middle East and Africa will, within a decade, be profoundly different from the beginning of the 21st Century.
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US strategy seems to be to bomb more weddings, schools, and hospitals. Your tax dollars, and our idiot military hard at work.
Spreading fear through violence. The definition of terrorism.
Us foreign policy is, output side, really a jumble of policies.
There are several main ingredients in the cake, but they distill down to the banks, global corporate matrices controlled by a relative very few, and the State-Of-"Israel" Lobby and 5th column. Could not care less about the race of religion of the denizens of the particular foreign state, it is simply a foreign state which has exceeded all bounds due recognition by any 'ally.'
Talk all you want about the first two.
But free speech does not include hate speech, as defined by 'the state.'
The state is defined by its owners and operators - an assertion which approaches and perhaps exceeds the axiomatic.
In essence, us foreign policy is completely out of the hands of people who could be described in any remote way as concerned with the liberty and well being of the American people.
#arrestmccain
Strategy good none. If you can't stop process - guide it.
Before USA government begin use FEMA forces towards angry citizens they want be sure that none of foreign state will be able to use US's weakening in his own purpose.
That's why - Ukraine, Lybia, Syria - destruction of energy market, weakening main geopolitical opponents.
Ask the QUDS...Iiranian Special Forces
Qoute: "Iraq: The Hoped for but Never Expected Gift.
time for a question in the field of cross-cultural analysis: why is today's iraq like a christmas present you long for but never expected to receive? give up? well, there is nothing bin laden could have hoped for moare than the american invasion of iraq. the u.s. invasion of iraq is osama bin laden's gift from america, one he long and ardently desired, but never realistically expected. think of it: iraq is the second holiest land in islam; a place where islam had been long surpressed by saddam; where the sunni minority long dominated and brutalized the shia majority; where order was kept only by the baathist barbarity that prevented a long overdue civil war; and where, in the wake of saddam's fall, the regional powers iran and saudi arabia would intervene, at least clandestinely, to stop the creation of, respectively, a sunni or shia successor state.. in short, iraq without without saddam would obviously become what political scientist call a "failed state," a place bedeviled by its neighbors and--- as in afghanistan--- a land where al qaeda or qaeda-like organizations would thrive. surely, thoughtbin laden, the americans would not want to creat this kind of situation. it would be, if you like deliberately shooting yourself in the foot.
while still hoping against hope, bin laden would then have thought that the united states must know that it is hated by many millions of muslims for enforcing sanctions that reportedly starved to death a million or more iragis. in this context, an invasion would sharply deepen anti-american sentiment in the muslim world, a hatred that would only worsen as muslims watched the u.s. military televised and inevitable thrashing of saddan's badly led and hopelessly decrepit armed forces. and then, dreamed bin laden wildly, things would get bad for the americans. they would stay too long in iraq, insist on installing a democracy that would subordinate the long -dominated sunnis, vigorously limit islam's role in goverment, and act in ways that spotlighted their interest in iraq's massive oil reserves. all muslims would see each day on television that the u.s. was occupying a muslim country, insisting that man-made laws replace God's revealed word, stealing iraqi oil, and paving the way for the creation of a 'Greater Israel". the clerics and scholars woulds call for a defensive jihad against the u.s., young muslim males would rush across the islamic world to fight u.s. troops, and there--- in islam's second holiest land--- would erupt a second afghanistan, a self-perpetuating holy war that would endure whether or not al qaeda survived. then bin laden awoke and knew it was only a dream. it was, even for one of Allah's most devout, too much to hope for.
cont.
Primary problem here is the inane presupposition that OBL had anything at all to do with the US invasion of Iraq (or Syria).
And the Taliban- in Afghanistan - likely thought an invasion unlikely after having agreed to release OBL to the US if given the evidence pointing to his culpability in the 9/11 attacks.
OBL, of course, was played by a few different guys after the real one's inconvenient demise. They even spoke widely different forms of Arabic which seemed peculiar... like if Prince Charles began speaking with a Cornish accent one day and was a stone heavier.
cont: but in march bin laden--- to his astonishment--- got his longed-for gift, compliments of america, when the u.s. invaded iraq. the fatwas taht greeted the invasion essentially validated all bin laden has said in arguing for a defensive jihad against the united states. even leaving aside the fatwas issued by pro-bin laden clerics, the virulence of the remaining fatwas is clear in those published by such notablle scholars as s. shaykh, youuf qaradawi, s. al-awdah, all of whom "are not voices in the wilderness, but [are] rather the core of the sunni muslim establishment,"according to professor daniel byman. once an enemy lands in muslim territory, "s. tantawi, head of al-azhar university, declared in march 2003, "jihad becomes the individual duty of every muslim man and woman. because our arab and muslim nation will be faced with a new crusade that targets land, honor, creed, and homeland, scholars ruled that jihad against u.s. forces has become the duty of every muslim man and woman. in the end, something much like christmas had come for bin laden, and the gift he received from washington will haunt, hurt, and hound americans for years to come.""
end quote: pges 212-14 Chapter vii -- 'when the enemy sets the stage: how america's stubborn obtusness aids its foes'
c.2004 by michael scheuer 'anonymous' "Imperial Hubris" (why the west is losing the war on terror)
While admitting that the Obama Administration's policies have been erratic and situational rather than guided by a viable long-term strategy, what's new about that? The only alternatives that the U.S. has pursued have been bullying bellicosity and/or hell-or-high-water support of Israel, right or, as usual, very very wrong. Seen in the light of neocon aims and the ambitions of arms merchants, no doubt Obama seems weak and vacillating. But for those of us not convinced by neocon goals or the desire of "defense" industries to assure MAD for the entire planet, it looks more like Obama has avoided absolute catastrophes and attempted to reduce our commitment to unwinnable wars for the enrichment of others. Given the headwinds, he seems to me to have done reasonably well. I could WISH for a truly "humble" foreign policy starting with the complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops from foreign outposts, but that's a pipe-dream.
What about the pre-planned destruction of Syria and Libya etc. and the hundreds of thousands of fatalities and millions of refugees? Reduce our commitment to unwinnable wars? Are you conscious of what you just wrote here? A touch of dementia maybe? Hope not.
Does The U.S. Have A Middle East Strategy Going Forward? Of course FUCKING NOT !!
the strategy is to pull the fuck out of the middle east!
Obama became President due to being the best available professional hypocrite. As a political puppet, Obama's strings have become so entangled that his handlers are no longer able to manipulate coherent policies.
One can reasonably argue that the last President who was not totally a puppet was Kennedy, which was why he was assassinated. Therefore, attempting to figure out American policy barely depends upon who the political puppets are, and much less so on the opinions of the masses of muppets. Rather, there is Deep State Shadow Government, which is extremely difficult to comprehend, since its only public appearances are through the behaviors of its political puppets, whose only actual qualifications are the degree to which they professional hypocrites.
In my view, the government of the USA is suffering from the BASIC PROBLEM that being able to back up lies with violence never stops those lies from still being fundamentally false. Of course, that BASIC PROBLEM is magnified by the underlying issues regarding what was being lied about and why. However, that BASIC PROBLEM now covers everything that the American government does, as systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, automatically becoming more psychotic, due to the paradoxical ways that being able to back up lies with violence eventually only makes the significance of those lies still being false get bigger and BIGGER.
At the present time, it is politically impossible to stop the vicious spirals of POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS, favouring those political puppets who are the best available professional hypocrites, automatically becoming more and more psychotic, in the sense of removed further and further from the underlying realities regarding everything that they were lying about, but nevertheless, still able to get away with doing, since those lies were still being backed by violence. The relationships between social "realities" and "real realities" become more and more hyper-complicated due to the history of the biggest bullies being able to promote their bullshit, which to some significant degree is able to make that bullshit become the social "reality," but still not the "real reality."
In my view, it is politically impossible for ANY politician to now tell more radical truths in any socially successful ways, due to the level to which the masses of muppets have been brainwashed to believe in bullshit, to matching proportional degrees to which their political puppets were selected for their abilities to be the best available professional hypocrites spouting that kind of bullshit. Since human beings and civilization actually exist as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, as more or less organized lies operating robberies, there is substantial overlap between the sociopolitical "realities" and the "real realities." I.e., as soon as we perceive and define human beings as separate from their environment and each other, then they necessarily behave as gangs of robbers.
The biggest gangs of robbers are governments, which end up being dominated by the best organized gangs of robbers, which currently are the international bankers, as the pyramidion people in those social pyramid systems, which are operating through the monetary and taxation systems, as the greatest forms of frauds achieving symbolic robberies, which in turn control access and use of natural resources. Of course, that is socially successful to the degree that is done by the best available professional hypocrites regarding what they are actually doing. Meanwhile, nowhere else is that more the case than in how the American government's policies manifest through its Middle East Strategy.
ALL the policies of the government of the USA have become runaway criminal insanities, due to those always becoming more and more based upon the triumphant applications of the methods of organized crime through the political processes. President Obama was never anything more than an excellent professional liar and immaculate hypocrite, whose political successes were based upon those skills being the only important skills. After all, any other skills, such as actually understanding issues, and "leading" on the basis of that deeper understanding, does NOT work. These days, that works so extremely poorly that there is barely any chance that any "leadership" might emerge and become sufficiently significant for the Deep State Shadow Government to become motivated to assassinate that kind of genuine "leader."
It is pretty well impossible to imagine any more radical truths about anything being able to penetrate through the layers upon layers of political puppets being voted for by enough of the masses of muppets. ALL of them have more and more ended up believing in so much bullshit regarding everything, due to their own personal career successes having become almost totally based on their skills as professional hypocrites, adapting to live inside systems built on ENFORCING FRAUDS. Those sorts of skills are in almost total contradiction with the skills of actually understanding issues in any more profound ways, and then, being able to "lead" on the basis of promoting that more penetrating understanding.
I REPEAT that the BASIC PROBLEM is that Obama was never anything more than a puppet, while his strings have become so entangled, due to that BASIC PROBLEM'S inherent nature, that his handlers no longer can manipulate his administration in any coherent ways. Moreover, since there is practically NO chance that enough Americans would ever want to understand that BASIC PROBLEM enough, there is no reasonable doubt that the next President will become an even worse manifestation of that BASIC PROBLEM.
In theory, the only thing that could work would be more radical truths, however, those are too politically impossible. Instead, the runaway systems based on backing up lies with violence are, in every possible way, covering every possible issue, manifesting their BASIC PROBLEMS that the underlying lies never stop being fundamentally false, and hence, that society as a whole must necessarily become more psychotic, and so, head towards series of psychotic breakdowns. Social "realities" continue to diverge wider and WIDER from "real realities," while more radical truths about how and why that is the case are too hyper-complicated for those who want to continue to believe in their favourite bullshit.
The ONLY connection between human laws and natural laws is the ability to back up lies with violence. However, the people who are the best at doing that have become the best available professional hypocrites, whose main skill set is to continue to deliberately ignore what they are actually doing, while promoting their bullshit regarding what they are doing. It is not a coincidence that those kinds of bullshit-based sociopolitical systems started out in the Middle East thousand of years ago, and developed to become the American systems, which then returned back to the Middle East, manifesting the most deceitful, and therefore, ultimately demented, strategies.
American government has become so totally based upon bullshit, backed by bullies, despite those bullies never being able to stop their bullshit from still being nothing but bullshit, that everything that government does is headed towards series of psychotic breakdowns, which will become as profound as the degree to which people not only believe in that kind of bullshit, but also want to continue to believe in that kind of bullshit.
The policies of the American government in the Middle Eastern areas have good reasons for how and why those particular policies became based on the biggest bullshit, and hence, have become the most psychotic. However, everything else suffers from the same BASIC PROBLEM, which automatically gets worse, faster, due to it being politically impossible for any politicians to become successful and survive by understanding that BASIC PROBLEM, and therefore, provide any genuine leadership.
While "The U.S. Middle East Strategy" appears to be more deceitful than any other U.S. government strategy regarding any other foreign or domestic affairs, after one takes enough time to examine all of those other issues, it become painfully obvious that the same BASIC PROBLEM is ubiquitous and pervasive, especially because the fundamental reasons for how and that BASIC PROBLEM exists are deliberately ignored and misunderstood, as much as possible, by every politician that is successful by continuing to be a professional hypocrite, because doing so is the only way to fool enough of the masses of muppets, enough of the time ...
kudos.
So what is this guy trying to say? Don't pull out of the shit hole AKA Mid East?
yeah. he's just a whiny neocon bitch.
The strategy is simply to maximize the private profits of those in charge of the strategy, there's nothing deeper than that going on.
Rape pillage, plunder, maim, and kill.
Why do you ask?
Me thinks the strategy is for US to achieve oil self-efficiency, and instigate a war in the middle east so countries need oil (europe china) will have no choice but to waste resources to maintain stability in that region.
Barry's strategy is simple. Keep kicking the can till January 2017. After that it's Hillary's problem.
Wall Street's strategy is simple. Protect Saudi from any threats to its dominance of the Middle East, in return for keeping oil cheap, US inflation low and Russia poor. Once the oil runs out, declare victory in the war on terror and GTFO, leaving the Sauds to their fate and Russia and Israel to deal with the chaos on their doorsteps both in the Arab world and a terminally Islamified western Europe.
All that one needs to know is that the Sunni Muslim President of the United States of America, Barrack Hussein Obama, is completely dedicated to working against the interests of the American People.
Obamas policy seems to be let the Muslims infultrate the government until they run the whole show.
US Middle East Policy-- It is dictated by what gets Obama named the next UN Secretary General and that requires no veto from one of the 5 permanent members...Is this why he has kissed Irans ass in that infamous "AGREEMENT"....so Russia and Iran can do their oil dealing and pipelines? Was this a purchase of Russia not using the veto?
Who knows--would make a good movie though.
I want NO STRATEGY. Get out of the Mid East and Afghanistan.