August 25, 2017
Exclusive: Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu is ratcheting up war tensions in Syria again, but President
Trump reportedly is not happy with the threats as he shifts again toward
resisting the neocons, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Despite the chaos and ugliness
of the past seven months, President Trump has finally begun to turn U.S.
foreign policy away from the neoconservative approach of endless war against an
ever-expanding roster of enemies.
This change has occurred
largely behind the scenes and has been obscured by Trump’s own bellicose
language, such as his vow to “win” in Afghanistan, and his occasional lashing
out with violence, such as his lethal Tomahawk missile strike on a Syrian
airfield.
Some Trump advisers also have
downplayed the current shift because it may fuel the Democrats’ obsession with
Russia-gate as a much-desired excuse to impeach Trump.
Every peaceful move that Trump
makes is called a sop to Russia and thus an excuse to reprise the dubious
allegations about Russia somehow helping to elect him.
Yet, despite these external
obstacles and Trump’s own erratic behavior, he has remained open to
unconventional alternatives to what President Obama once criticized
as the Washington “playbook,” i.e. favoring military solutions to international
problems.
In this sense, Trump’s shallow
understanding of the world has been a partial benefit in that he is not locked
into to the usual Washington groupthinks – and he personally despises the
prominent politicians and news executives who have sought to neuter him since
his election. But his ignorance also prevents him from seeing how global crises
often intersect and thus stops him from developing a cohesive or coherent
doctrine.
Though little noted, arguably
the most important foreign policy decision of Trump’s presidency was his
termination of the CIA’s covert support for Syrian rebels and his cooperation
with Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand partial ceasefire zones in
Syria.
By these actions, Trump has
contributed to a sharp drop-off in the Syrian bloodshed. It now appears that
the relatively secular Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is
regaining control and that some Syrian refugees are returning to their homes.
Syria is starting the difficult job of rebuilding shattered cities, such as
Aleppo.
But Trump’s aversion to any
new military adventures in Syria is being tested again by Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is threatening to attack Iranian and Hezbollah
forces inside Syria.
Last week, according to Israeli
press reports, a high-level delegation led by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen
carried Netanyahu’s threat to the U.S. government. The Israeli leader surely
has raised the same point directly in phone calls with Trump.
Tiring of Bibi
I was told that Trump, who
appears to be growing weary of Netanyahu’s frequent demands and threats, flatly
objected to an Israeli attack and brushed aside Israel’s alarm by noting that
Netanyahu’s policies in supporting the rebels in Syria contributed to Israel’s
current predicament by drawing in Iran and Hezbollah.
This week, Netanyahu personally
traveled to Sochi, Russia, to
confront Putin with the same blunt warning about Israel’s intention to
attack targets inside Syria if Iran does not remove its forces.
A source familiar with the
meeting told me that Putin responded with a sarcastic “good luck!” and that the
Russians thought the swaggering Netanyahu appeared “unhinged.”
Still, a major Israeli attack
on Iranian positions inside Syria would test Trump’s political toughness, since
he would come under enormous pressure from Congress and the mainstream news
media to intervene on Israel’s behalf. Indeed, realistically, Netanyahu must be
counting on his ability to drag Trump into the conflict since Israel could not
alone handle a potential Russian counterstrike.
But Netanyahu may be on
somewhat thin ice since Trump apparently blames Israel’s top American
supporters, the neocons, for much of his political troubles. They opposed him
in the Republican primaries, tilted toward Hillary Clinton in the general
election, and have pushed the Russia-gate affair to weaken him.
President Obama faced similar
political pressures to fall in line behind Israel’s regional interests.
That’s why Obama authorized the covert CIA program in Syria and other aid to
the rebels though he was never an enthusiastic supporter – and also grew sick
and tired of Netanyahu’s endless hectoring.
Obama acquiesced to the
demands of Official Washington’s neocons and his own administration’s hawks –
the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus,
his successor John Brennan, and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power.
The Syrian conflict was part
of a broader strategy favored by Washington’s neocons to overthrow or cripple
regimes that were deemed troublesome to Israel. Originally, the neocons had
envisioned removing the Assad dynasty soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
with Iran also on the “regime change” menu. But the disastrous Iraq War threw
off the neocons’ timetable.
‘Regime Change’ Chaos
The Democratic Party’s liberal
interventionists, who are closely allied with the Republican neocons, also
tossed in Libya with the overthrow and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
in 2011. Then, weapons from Gaddafi’s stockpiles were shipped to Syria where
they strengthened rebel fighters allied with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other
Islamist groups.
Faced with this troubling
reality – that the U.S.-backed “moderate rebels” were operating side by side
with Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and its allies – Washington’s
neocons/liberal-hawks responded with sophisticated propaganda and devised
clever talking points to justify what amounted to indirect assistance to
terrorists.
The “regime change” advocates
portrayed a black-and-white situation in Syria with Assad’s side wearing the
black hats and various anti-Assad “activists” wearing the white hats (or
literally White Helmets). The State Department and a complicit mainstream media
disseminated horror stories about Assad and – when the reality about Al Qaeda’s
role could no longer be hidden – that was spun in the rebels’ favor, too, by
labeling Assad “a magnet for terrorists” (or later in cahoots with the Islamic
State). For years, such arguments were much beloved in Official Washington.
But the human consequences of
the Syrian conflict and other U.S.-driven “regime change” wars were horrific,
spreading death and destruction across the already volatile Middle East and
driving desperate refugees into Europe, where their presence provoked political
instability.
By fall 2015, rebel advances
in Syria – aided by a supply of powerful U.S. anti-tank missiles – forced
Russia’s hand with Putin accepting Assad’s invitation to deploy Russian air
power in support of the Syrian army and Iranian and Hezbollah militias. The
course of the war soon turned to Assad’s advantage.
It’s unclear what Hillary
Clinton might have done if she had won the White House in November 2016. Along
with much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, she called repeatedly for
imposing a “no-fly zone” in Syria to stop operations by the Syrian air force
and Russia, a move that could have escalated the conflict into World War III.
But Trump – lacking Official
Washington’s “sophistication” – couldn’t understand how eliminating Assad, who
was leading the fight against the terrorist groups, would contribute to their
eventual defeat. Trump also looked at the failure of similar arguments in Iraq
and Libya, where “regime change” produced more chaos and generated more
terrorism.
Pandering to Saudis/Israelis
However, in the early days of
his presidency, the unsophisticated Trump lurched from one Middle East approach
to another, initially following his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s grandiose
thinking about recruiting Saudi Arabia to an “outside-in” strategy to settle
the Israel-Palestine conflict, i.e., enlisting the Saudis to pressure the
Palestinians into, more or less, letting Israel dictate a solution.
Kushner’s “outside-in” scheme
was symbolically acted out with Trump making his first overseas visit to Saudi
Arabia and then to Israel in May. But I’m told that Trump eventually cooled to
Kushner’s thinking and has come to see the Israeli-Saudi tandem as part of the
region’s troubles, especially what he views as Saudi Arabia’s longstanding
support for Al Qaeda and other terror groups.
Perhaps most significantly in
that regard, Trump in July quietly abandoned the CIA’s covert war in Syria. In
the U.S., some “regime change” advocates have complained about this “betrayal”
of the rebel cause and some Democrats have tried to link Trump’s decision to
their faltering Russia-gate “scandal,” i.e., by claiming that Trump was
rewarding Putin for alleged election help.
But the bottom line is that
Trump’s policy has contributed to the Syrian slaughter abating and the prospect
of a victory by Al Qaeda and/or its Islamic State spinoff fading.
So, there has been a gradual
education of Donald Trump, interrupted occasionally by his volatile temper and
his succumbing to political pressure, such as when he
rushed to judgment on April 4 and blamed the Syrian government for a
chemical incident in the remote Al Qaeda-controlled village of Khan Sheikhoun.
Despite strong doubts in the
U.S. intelligence community about Syria’s guilt – some evidence suggested one
more staged “atrocity” by the rebels and their supporters – Trump on April 6
ordered 59 Tomahawk missiles fired at a Syrian air base, reportedly killing several
soldiers and some civilians, including four children.
Trump boasted about his
decision, contrasting it with Obama’s alleged wimpiness. And, naturally,
Official Washington and the U.S. mainstream media not only accepted the claim
of Syrian government guilt but praised Trump for pulling the trigger. Later,
Hillary Clinton said if she were president, she would have been inclined to go
further militarily by intervening with her “no-fly zone.”
As reckless and brutal as
Trump’s missile strike was, it did provide him some cover for his July 7
meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany, which focused heavily on
Syria, and also for his decision to pull the plug on the CIA’s covert war.
Saudi-backed Terror
I’m told Trump also has
returned to his pre-election attitude about Saudi Arabia as a leading supporter
of terror groups and a key provocateur in the region’s disorders, particularly
because of its rivalry with Iran, a factor in both the Syrian and Yemeni wars.
Though Trump has recited
Washington’s bipartisan (and benighted) mantra about Iran being the principal
sponsor of terrorism, he appears to be moving toward a more honest view,
recognizing the falsity of the neocon-driven propaganda about Iran.
Trump’s new coolness toward
Saudi Arabia may have contributed to the recent warming of relations between
the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and the Shiites of Iran, a sectarian conflict dating
back 1,400 years. In a surprising move announced this week, the two countries
plan an
exchange of diplomatic visits.
Even in areas where Trump has
engaged in reckless rhetoric, such as his “fire and fury” warning to North
Korea, his behind-the-scenes policy appears more open to compromise and even
accommodation. In the past week or so, the tensions with North Korea have eased
amid backchannel outreach that may include the provision of food as an
incentive for Pyongyang to halt its missile development and even open political
talks with South Korea, according to a source close to these developments.
On Afghanistan, too, Trump may
be playing a double game, giving a hawkish speech on Monday seeming to endorse
an open-ended commitment to the near-16-year-old conflict, while quietly
signaling a willingness to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban.
One alternative might be to
accept a coalition government, involving the Taliban, with a U.S. withdrawal to
a military base near enough to launch counterterrorism strikes if Al Qaeda or
other international terror groups again locate in Afghanistan.
Many of Trump’s latest foreign
policy initiatives reflect former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s
hostility toward neoconservative interventionism. Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, the former Exxon-Mobil chief executive, also shares a more pragmatic
approach to foreign affairs than some of his more ideological predecessors.
Albeit still in their infancy,
these policies represent a new realism in U.S. foreign policy that, in many
ways, paralleled what President Obama favored but was often unwilling or unable
to see through to its logical conclusions, given his fear of Netanyahu and the
power of the neocons and their liberal-hawk allies.
Still, some of Obama’s most
important decisions – not to launch a major military strike against Syria in
August 2013 and to negotiate an agreement with Iran to constrain its nuclear program
in 2013-15 – followed a similar path away from war, thus drawing condemnation
from the Israeli-Saudi tandem and American neocons.
As a Republican who rose
politically by pandering to the GOP “base” and its hatred of Obama, Trump
rhetorically attacked Obama on both Syria and Iran, but may now be shifting
toward similar positions. Gradually, Trump has come to recognize that the
neocons and his other political enemies are trying to hobble and humiliate him
– and ultimately to remove him from office.
The question is whether
Trump’s instinct for survival finally will lead him to policies that blunt his
enemies’ strategies or will cause him to succumb to their demands.
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