Posted by William Hartung
at 7:27am, June 20, 2017.
[Introduction by Tom]
Trump's Love Affair With the
Saudis
Not that anyone in a position
of power seems to notice, but there’s a simple rule for American military
involvement in the Greater Middle East: once the U.S. gets in, no matter the
country, it never truly gets out again. Let’s start with Afghanistan. The
U.S. first entered the fray there in 1979 via a massive CIA-led proxy war against the Soviets that lasted until the
Red Army limped home in 1989. Washington then took more than a decade off until
some of the extremists it had once supported launched the 9/11 attacks, after
which the U.S. military took on the role abandoned by the Red Army and we all
know where that’s ended -- or rather not ended almost 16 years later. In the “longest war” in American history, the Pentagon, recently given a free hand by President Trump, is reportedly
planning a new mini-surge of nearly 4,000 U.S. military personnel into that country to
“break the stalemate” there. Ever more air strikes and money will be part of the package. All
told, we’re talking about a quarter-century of American war in Afghanistan that
shows no sign of letting up (or of success). It may not yet be a “hundred-years’
war,” but the years are certainly piling up.
Then, of course, there’s Iraq
where you could start counting the years as early as 1982, when President
Ronald Reagan’s administration began giving autocrat Saddam Hussein's military support in his war against Iran. You could also start
with the first Gulf War of 1990-1991 when, on the orders of President George
H.W. Bush, the U.S. military triumphantly drove Saddam’s army out of
Kuwait. Years of desultory air strikes, sanctions, and other war-like
acts ended in George W. Bush’s sweeping invasion and occupation of Iraq in the
spring of 2003, a disaster of the first order. It punched a hole in the
oil heartlands of the Middle East and started us down the path to, among other
things, ISIS and so to Iraq War 3.0 (or perhaps 4.0), which began as an air
campaign in August 2014 and has yet to end. In the process, Syria
was pulled into the mix and U.S. efforts there are still ratcheting up almost two years later. In the case of
Iraq, we’re minimally talking about almost three decades of intermittent
warfare, still ongoing.
And then, of course, there’s
Somalia. You remember the Blackhawk Down incident in 1993, don't you? That was
a lesson for the ages, right? Well, in 2017, the Trump administration is sending more advisers and trainers to that land (and the
U.S. military has recently suffered its first combat death there since 1993). U.S. military
activities, including drone strikes, are visibly revving up at the moment. And don’t forget Libya, where the
Obama administration (along with NATO) intervened in 2011 to overthrow autocrat
Muammar Gaddafi and where the U.S. military is still involved more than six years later.
Last but hardly least is
Yemen. The first U.S. special ops and CIA personnel moved into a “counter-terrorism camp” there in late 2001, part of a $400
million deal with the government of then-strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the
CIA conducted
its very first drone assassination in that country in November 2002. Almost 16
years later, as TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung reports, the U.S. is
supporting a grim Saudi air and ground war of terror there, while its own drone
strikes have risen to new highs.
It’s a remarkable record and
one to keep in mind as you consider Hartung’s account of President Trump’s
fervent decision to back the Saudis in a big league way not just in their
disastrous Yemeni war, but in their increasingly bitter campaign against
regional rival Iran. After so many decades of nearly unending conflict
leading only to more of the same and greater chaos, you might wonder whether an alarm bell will
ever go off in Washington when it comes to the U.S. military and war in the
Greater Middle East -- or is Iran next?
--Tom
Destabilizing the Middle East
(Yet More)
The Saudi Regime Is Playing
Donald Trump With Potentially Disastrous Consequences
At this point, it’s no great
surprise when Donald Trump walks away from past statements in service to some
impulse of the moment. Nowhere, however, has such a shift been more extreme or
its potential consequences more dangerous than in his sudden love affair with
the Saudi royal family. It could in the end destabilize the Middle East in ways
not seen in our lifetimes (which, given the growing chaos in the region, is no
small thing to say).
Trump’s newfound ardor for the
Saudi regime is a far cry from his past positions, including his campaign
season assertion that the Saudis were behind the 9/11 attacks and complaints, as recently as this April, that the United
States was losing a “tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom.
That was yet another example of the sort of bad deal that President Trump was
going to set right as part of his “America First” foreign policy.
Given this background, it came
as a surprise to pundits, politicians, and foreign policy experts
alike when the president chose Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the very
first stop on his very first overseas trip. This was clearly meant to
underscore the importance his administration was suddenly placing on the need
to bolster the long-standing U.S.-Saudi alliance.
Mindful of Trump’s vanity, the
Saudi government rolled out the red carpet for our narcissist-in-chief, lining the
streets for miles with alternating U.S. and Saudi flags, huge images of which
were projected onto the Ritz Carlton hotel where Trump was staying. (Before his
arrival, in a sign of the psychological astuteness of his Saudi hosts, the hotel
projected a five-story-high image of Trump himself onto its
façade, pairing it with a similarly huge and flattering photo of the country’s
ruler, King Salman.) His hosts also put up billboards with pictures of
Trump and Salman over the slogan “together we prevail.” What exactly the
two countries were to prevail against was left open to interpretation. It
is, however, unlikely that the Saudis were thinking about Trump’s
much-denounced enemy, ISIS -- given that Saudi planes, deep into a war in
neighboring Yemen, have
rarely joined Washington’s air war against that outfit. More likely,
what they had in mind was their country’s bitter regional rival Iran.
The agenda planned for Trump’s
stay included an anti-terrorism summit attended by 50 leaders
from Arab and Muslim nations, a concert by country singer Toby Keith, and an
exhibition game by the Harlem Globetrotters. Then there were the strange
touches like President Trump, King Salman, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi laying hands on a futuristically glowing orb -- images of
which then circled the planet -- in a ceremony inaugurating a new Global Center for Combatting
Extremist Ideology, and Trump’s awkward participation in an all-male sword dance.
Unsurprisingly enough, the
president was pleased with the spectacle staged in his honor, saying of the anti-terrorism summit in one of his many
signature flights of hyperbole, “There has never been anything like it before,
and perhaps there never will be again.”
Here, however, is a statement
that shouldn’t qualify as hyperbole: never have such preparations for a
presidential visit paid such quick dividends. On arriving home, Trump
jumped at the chance to embrace a fierce Saudi attempt to blockade and isolate
its tiny neighbor Qatar, the policies of whose emir have long irritated them. The Saudis claimed to be focused
on that country’s alleged role in financing terrorist groups in the region (a
category they themselves fit into remarkably well). More likely, however, the royal
family wanted to bring Qatar to heel after it failed to jump enthusiastically
onto the Saudi-led anti-Iranian bandwagon.
Trump, who clearly knew
nothing about the subject, accepted the Saudi move with alacrity and at face
value. In his normal fashion, he even tried to take credit for it, tweeting, “During my recent trip to the Middle East I
stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders
pointed to Qatar -- look!” And according to Trump, the historic impact of
his travels hardly stopped there. As he also tweeted: “So good to see Saudi Arabia visit with the King
and 50 countries paying off... Perhaps it will be the beginning of the end of
the horror of terrorism.”
Bruce Riedel of the Brookings
Institution hit the nail on the head when he commented that “the Saudis played Donald Trump like a
fiddle. He unwittingly encouraged their worst instincts toward their
neighbors.” The New York Times captured one likely impact of the Saudi move
against Qatar when it reported, “Analysts said Mr. Trump’s public support for
Saudi Arabia... sent a chill through other Gulf States, including Oman and
Kuwait, for fear that any country that defies the Saudis or the United Arab
Emirates could face ostracism as Qatar has.”
And Then Came Trump...
And what precisely are the
Saudis' instincts toward their neighbors? The leaders in Riyadh, led by
King Salman’s 31-year-old son, Saudi Defense Minister and deputy crown prince
Mohammed bin Salman, are taking the gloves off in an increasingly aggressive bid for
regional dominance aimed at isolating Iran. The defense minister and
potential future leader of the kingdom, whose policies have been described as reckless and impulsive, underscored the new, harsher line on Iran in an interview
with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV in which he said, “We will not wait until the
battle is in Saudi Arabia, but we will work so the battle is there in Iran.”
The opening salvo in Saudi
Arabia’s anti-Iran campaign came in March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition,
including smaller Gulf petro-states (Qatar among them) and Egypt, intervened
militarily in a chaotic situation in Yemen in an effort to reinstall Abdu Rabbu
Mansour Hadi as the president of that country. They clearly expected a quick
victory over their ill-armed enemies and yet, more than two years later, in a
war that has grown ever harsher, they have in fact achieved little. Hadi,
a pro-Saudi leader, had served as that country’s interim president under an
agreement that, in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2012, ousted
longstanding Yemeni autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh. In January 2015, Hadi
himself was deposed by an alliance of Houthi rebels and remnants of
forces loyal to former president Saleh.
The Saudis -- now joined by
Trump and his foreign policy team -- have characterized the conflict as a war
to blunt Iranian influence and the Houthi rebels have been cast as the vassals
of Tehran. In reality, they have longstanding political and economic
grievances that predate the current conflict and they would undoubtedly be
fighting at this moment with or without support from Iran. As Middle
Eastern expert Thomas Juneau recently noted in the Washington Post, “Tehran’s support for the
Houthis is limited, and its influence in Yemen is marginal. It is simply
inaccurate to claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies.”
The Saudi-Emirati intervention
in Yemen has had disastrous results. Thousands of civilians have been killed in an indiscriminate bombing campaign that has
targeted hospitals, marketplaces, civilian neighborhoods, and even a funeral,
in actions that Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) has said “look like war crimes.” The Saudi bombing
campaign has, in addition, been enabled by Washington, which has supplied the kingdom with
bombs, including cluster munitions, and aircraft, while providing aerial
refueling services to Saudi planes to ensure longer missions and the ability to
hit more targets. It has also shared intelligence on targeting in Yemen.
The destruction of that
country’s port facilities and the imposition of a naval blockade have had an even more
devastating effect, radically reducing the ability of aid groups to get food,
medicine, and other essential supplies into a country now suffering from a major outbreak of cholera and on the brink of a massive famine. This situation will only
be made worse if the coalition tries to retake the port of Hodeidah, the entry point for most of
the humanitarian aid still getting into Yemen. Not only has the U.S.-backed
Saudi war sparked a humanitarian crisis, but it has inadvertently strengthened al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has
increased its influence in Yemen while the Saudi- and Houthi-led coalitions are
busy fighting each other.
Trump’s all-in support for the
Saudis in its war doesn’t, in fact, come out of the blue. Despite some internal
divisions over the wisdom of doing so, the Obama administration also supported
the Saudi war effort in a major way. This was part of an attempt to reassure the royals that the United States was still on
their side and would not tilt towards Iran in the wake of an agreement to cap
and reverse that country’s nuclear program.
It was only after concerted pressure from Congress and a coalition of peace, human
rights, and humanitarian aid groups that the Obama administration finally took
a concrete, if limited, step to express opposition to the Saudi targeting of
civilians in Yemen. In a December 2016 decision, it suspended a sale of laser-guided bombs and
other precision-guided munitions to their military. The move outraged the
Saudis, but proved at best a halfway measure as the refueling of Saudi aircraft
continued, and none of rest of the record $115 billion in U.S. weaponry offered to that country
during the Obama years was affected.
And then came Trump. His
administration has doubled down on the Saudi war in Yemen by lifting the
suspension of the bomb deal, despite the objections of a Senate coalition led by Chris Murphy
(D-CT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Al Franken (D-MN) that recently mustered an unprecedented 47 votes against Trump’s offer of
precision-guided bombs to Riyadh. Defense Secretary James Mattis has advocated yet more vigorous support for the Saudi-led
intervention, including additional planning assistance and yet more
intelligence sharing -- but not, for the moment, the introduction of U.S.
troops. Although the Trump foreign policy team has refused to endorse a
proposal by the United Arab Emirates, one of the Saudi coalition members, to
attack the port at Hodeidah, it’s not clear if that will hold.
A Parade for an American
President?
In addition to Trump’s kind
words on Twitter, the clearest sign of his administration’s uncritical support
for the Saudi regime has been the offer of an astounding $110 billion worth of arms to the
kingdom, a sum almost equal to the record levels reached during all eight years of the Obama
administration. (This may, of course, have been part of the point, showing that
President Trump could make a bigger, better deal than that slacker Obama, while
supporting what he described as "jobs, jobs, jobs" in the United
States.)
Like all things Trumpian,
however, that $110 billion figure proved to be an exaggeration. Tens of billions of dollars' worth of
arms included in the package had already been promised under Obama, and tens of
billions more represent promises that, experts suspect, are unlikely to be
kept. But that still leaves a huge package, one that, according to the
Pentagon, will include more than 100,000 bombs of the sort that can be
used in the Yemen war, should the Saudis choose to do so. All that being
said, the most important aspect of the deal may be political -- Trump’s way of
telling “my friend King Salman,” as he now calls him, that the
United States is firmly in his camp. And this is, in fact, the most
troubling development of all.
It’s bad enough that the Obama
administration allowed itself to be dragged into an ill-conceived, counterproductive,
and regionally destabilizing war in Yemen. Trump’s uncritical support of Saudi
foreign policy could have even more dangerous consequences. The Saudis are more
intent than Trump’s own advisers (distinctly a crew of Iranophobes)
on ratcheting up tensions with Iran. It’s no small thing, for instance,
that Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has asserted that Iran is “the single most enduring threat to
stability and peace in the Middle East,” and who advocated U.S. military attacks on that country during his
tenure as head of the U.S. Central Command, looks sober-minded compared to the
Saudi royals.
If there is even a glimmer of
hope in the situation, it might lie in the efforts of both Mattis and Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson to walk back the president’s full-throated support for a
Saudi confrontation with Qatar. Tillerson, for instance, has attempted to pursue an effort to mediate the Saudi-Qatari
dispute and has called for a “calm and thoughtful dialogue.” Similarly, on the
same day as Trump tweeted in support of the Saudis, the Pentagon issued a statement praising Qatar’s “enduring commitment to regional
security.” This is hardly surprising given the roughly 10,000 troops the
U.S. has at al-Udeid air base in Doha, its capital, and the key role that base
plays in Washington’s war on terror in the region. It is the largest American base in the Middle East and the forward
headquarters of U.S. Central Command, as well as a primary staging area for the
U.S. war on ISIS. The administration's confusion regarding how to deal with
Qatar was further underscored when Mattis and Qatari Defense Minister Khalid
Al-Attiyah signed a $12 billion deal for up to 36 Boeing F-15 combat
aircraft, barely a week after President Trump had implied that Qatar was the
world capital of terrorist financing.
In a further possible counter
to Trump’s aggressive stance, Secretary of Defense Mattis has suggested that
perhaps it’s time to pursue a diplomatic settlement of the war in Yemen.
In April, he told reporters that, “in regards to the Saudi and Emirati
campaign in Yemen, our goal, ladies and gentleman, is for that crisis down
there, that ongoing fight, [to] be put in front of a U.N.-brokered negotiating
team and try to resolve this politically as soon as possible.” Mattis went on
to decry the number of civilians being killed, stating that the war there “has
simply got to be brought to an end.”
It remains to be seen whether
Tillerson’s and Mattis’s conciliatory words are hints of a possible foot on the
brake in the Trump administration when it comes to building momentum for what
could, in the end, be a U.S. military strike against Iran, egged on by Donald
Trump’s good friends in Saudi Arabia. As Ali Vaez of the International
Crisis Group has noted, if the U.S. ends up going to war against Iran, it
would “make the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts look like a walk in the park.”
In fact, in a period when the
turmoil has only risen in much of the rest of the Greater Middle East, the
Saudi Arabian peninsula remained relatively stable, at least until the
Saudi-led coalition drastically escalated the civil war in Yemen. The
new, more aggressive course being pursued against the royal family in Qatar and
in relation to Iran could, however, make matters much worse, and fast.
Given the situation in the region today, including the spread of terror
movements and failing states, the thought that Saudi Arabia itself might be
destabilized (and Iran with it) should be daunting indeed, though not perhaps
for Donald Trump.
So far, through a combination
of internal repression and generous social benefits to its citizens -- a form of
political bribery designed to buy loyalty -- the Saudi royal family has managed
to avoid the fate of other regional autocrats driven from power. But with
low oil prices and a costly war in Yemen, the regime is being forced to reduce the social spending that has helped cement its hold
on power. It’s possible that further military adventures, coupled with a
backlash against its repressive policies, could break what analysts Sarah
Chayes and Alex de Waal have described as the current regime’s “brittle hold on power.”
In other words, what a time for the Trump administration to offer its all-in
support for the plans of an aggressive yet fragile regime whose reckless
policies could even spark a regional war.
Maybe it’s time for opponents
of a stepped-up U.S. military role in the Middle East to throw Donald Trump a
big, glitzy parade aimed at boosting his ego and dampening his enthusiasm for
the Saudi royal family. It might not change his policies, but at least it
would get his attention.
William D. Hartung
