You judge a doctrine by its opposite. Diametrically opposed to Obama is Dick Cheney, who in effect is a warlord and a member of the war party called the Republican Party. The chosen title of a book recently published by Dick Cheney, who ruled America for eight years as vice president to the hapless George W Bush Jr, is Exceptional. The authors, Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, argue that Obama has weakened America. Therefore, they arrogantly argue, Obama is, in their words: “A villain, ineffectual, America-hating, destroyer of the military, soft on terrorism, an appeaser, and damaged America's standing in the world community.” I began by quoting Cheney. Now I must put this presentation in context: the deal with Iran on its nuclear portfolio, reached in July. This is a signal concretisation of the Obama doctrine on Middle East conflicts. That doctrine is working. And I expect it to continue working under a presidency by the Democrats, be it Hillary Clinton or someone else. Evidence of the success of this doctrine, which consists of many parts, is manifest. In a Republican-dominated Congress, the Iran agreement, with seven signatories (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, plus Iran), has survived. It was not even put to a vote in either house of Congress. Obama won, without the agreement reaching his desk for a certain veto. The warmongers, including Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu, lost in spite of $25 million funding attack ads and a visit by 36 US congressmen to Israel. This was a victory not only for the Obama doctrine on Middle East conflicts. It was a resounding win for American sovereignty over overwhelming Israeli intrusion in internal American politics. Now Israel wants to compensate for its defeat in Washington, DC. The compensation demanded is so high that no US administration could agree to it. Israel wants a mutual defence pact with America. Meaning that an attack — real or fabricated — on Israel would be regarded as an attack on America. Washington is staying in a strategic relationship with Israel, but not to the point of converting that relationship into a mutual defence pact. This would be the tail, Israel, wagging the dog, America. It has been the failed goal of Israel, the American right and the American neoconservatives. But it is a lost hope. America is not returning to war anywhere in the Middle East. Returning to the Iran deal, now a fait accompli. It can be said with certitude that the deal is a part of “a new grand strategy for America in the Middle East.” Here I am quoting Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A strategy is the concretisation of a doctrine, the specifics of which I now explain. Since World War II, America has had no solo military victories. When the Cold War ended in 1990, America repeatedly turned to outside powers and the UN for any large-scale military or enforcement action. The superpower has, by necessity, turned into a super-coalition builder. Thus, the report card on America, in spite of its unparalleled military power, reads as follows: the Gulf War of 1991 registered one success, the wars in Korea and Afghanistan were a draw, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq were losing wars, with huge defeats for the American economy, especially the middle class. Why? Even with a budget surpassing all military budgets of the European Union, the American military is poorly suited to the non-conventional conflicts now raging in the Middle East, with borders being either porous or non-existent, like in Syria/Iraq. The globalisation of these asymmetric conflicts has, ironically, been facilitated by American technology. America's so-called war on terror lacked a focus, as I personally discovered in Iraq. Even the Cheney War on Iraq, which toppled Saddam, was a boon to the empowerment of Iran. It also resulted in the rise of devastating sectarianism. This is not to mention the huge rise of China that has become a global rule-maker, not a rule-taker. Add to this the violent military response of Putin's Russia to the Western effort to bring NATO's boundary to the heartland of Russian nationalism — the Ukraine and Crimea. Today, young Russians believe that, and I quote, “America is trying to encircle us. We have finally risen out of chaos, and you, Americans, don't like it.” Russia's Czarist strategy to reach the warm waters of the Mediterranean is, at long last, succeeding: a foothold in Syria, at a Russian naval base at Latakia and Tartous. Propping up Syria's Bashar Al-Assad is a dual Russian strategy: appearing to assist a government against rebels turned terrorists, while breaking out of Western-imposed isolation as a king-maker in the Arab Spring. These moves are factored into the Obama calculus of staying engaged in the Middle East without an American military footprint, and at the same time keeping wary eyes on Russian military moves in the same geographic space. Obama, aside from US air strikes on the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, and now also in Syria, is responding through diplomacy. Putin is going about it in a dual fashion: diplomacy and a Russian military footprint. Again, looking at the Obama doctrine of limited engagement in Middle East conflicts from the prism of its global environment, that environment includes primarily both China and Russia. In August China celebrated its military might in Tiananmen Square. Awesome hardware being reviewed by President Xi gave the world a message that says: Don't mess with China. In a similar fashion, the consequences of the Obama doctrine on Middle East conflicts can be seen through the strongmen surrounding Putin today. These Kremlin hardliners are called Siloviki, or “men of force.” They are a coterie of generals and KGB veterans. For the past two and a half years, they have dominated. Their loyalty is to Putin personally, who continues to lament the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Siloviki have been calling the shots in the undeclared war in the Ukraine. Crimea is their prize and ethnic Russians in the east and the south of the Ukraine are their active and open Fifth Column. They are sworn to stopping NATO enveloping the Ukraine. Here we need to realise that the Obama doctrine on Middle East conflicts was born in the Libyan Arab Spring and reached its maturity in the Syrian Arab Spring. The doctrine gets its historic oxygen from the Reagan days of the 1980s. That is when Hezbollah operatives, through suicide bombing, attacked US marine barracks in Beirut, killing nearly 300. This was an American tragedy that compelled the Republicans at that time to say about the ongoing conflict of Arab versus Arab: “If these jackasses want to kill one another, who are we to keep them apart?” So the first chapter of the Obama doctrine of disengagement from war in general, especially in the world of Islam, went by the deceptive name of “leading from behind.” That was in March 2011. Arab leaders, previously coddled by Washington, were falling down in the spring of 2011. Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi were gone within three months. Saleh in Yemen was losing the south. And Syria, as a unitary state, began to disappear. This is while Maliki in Iraq was refusing to sign a status of forces agreement with the Americans. Biden tried, Maliki balked, and from the sidelines Iran cheered Maliki on. Iraq has cost America nearly $3 trillion. This is taxpayers' money, and there is nothing to show for it. Except for the great American recession of 2008, and the collapse of great financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Job creation and resuscitation of the middle class turned into the Obama battle cry of “Yes, we can!” For these reasons, among others, the American public is saying, “Down with further involvement in proxy wars in the Middle East and on terror franchises and jihadism. Up with America, whose great potential of innovation and its huge military are the real props of the new American dream.” The Obama doctrine seeks coalitions abroad. Going it alone is not a part of its make-up. Leaders like John Kerry have seen war in Vietnam. They are the pillars of diplomacy and soft power as a means of protecting American interests. NATO is therefore now refurbished as a component of the new ideology. That ideology is expressed in the refrain: “We cannot fix all the world's problems. We are not the world's gendarmes.” It has become a “yes” for supporting local forces for local ends, a “no” for doing it for them. That doctrine sees in IS no equivalency to Al-Qaeda. IS is busy holding and ruling territory. Its parent body, Al-Qaeda, remains a force that only strikes and vanishes. Those who say regular US ground forces will be back on Arab soil should recognise that that day is over. Even the Republicans, the party of war, wants to build the US military to the point of countervailing strength, so that it may not need to be used. The Obama doctrine has another important side effect on the Middle East: the amazing build-up of local Kurdish forces; simultaneously, the bringing up of Turkey into the IS fight through the use of its airbases for America's launching of air attacks; and the Saudi realisation that military strength starts from within, together with an alliance of the willing in the Arab world, manifested in the creation, at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, of a united Arab force. This is the immediate background to what a close aide to Obama said a few weeks ago. That was Ben Rhodes, undoubtedly reflecting the mind set of his boss, who stated: “We are not going to chase every rabbit in every hole in the Middle East.” The writer is professor of law at New York University. This article is based on a lecture at Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center at the American University in Cairo.
