As the Middle East seemed to unravel last week, much of the blame-game debate centred on whether US President Barack Obama could and should have stationed a residual force of US troops in Iraq after 2011.
That is an important question. But it is part of a much bigger argument — one with daunting implications for Americans. Throughout Obama’s first term, his advisers were divided into two teams over how to combat Islamist terrorism: The Engagers, often backed by secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and the Minimalists, backed by Vice-President Joe Biden.
The Engagers won some early rounds, notably persuading Obama to invest heavily in helping Afghanistan develop and defend itself. But over time Obama sided with the Minimalists, and he shaped a second-term team that wouldn’t relitigate his decision.
And no wonder: The Minimalists had a lot of common sense on their side. The future is in East Asia, they said. In the coming decades, China is going to matter a lot; Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia hardly at all. It makes no sense for the US to get bogged down in millennium-old feuds between Sunnis and Shiites.
Even if the US wants to take sides or help Yemen, say, become a modern state, the argument continued, America do not really know how. America is no good at nation-building. Let them sort it out. To the extent that Islamist radicals might threaten the US, America could counter them from a distance — with drone strikes and by “partnering” with locals who would do the fighting for us.
Sensible, and politically congenial, too. Voters were pleased to hear that the threat that had come to their attention so traumatically in 2001 was defused. All the better if the US could stop sending soldiers and money to parts of the world that Americans did not much care about in the first place.
Obama shaped his policies accordingly, starting with a total withdrawal from Iraq. Some argue that he had no choice, because Iraq wouldn’t give legal immunity to US soldiers. I think if Obama had really wanted an agreement, and been willing to offer more than a few thousand soldiers, he could have negotiated one. What no one disputes is that Obama was content with the zero option and sanguine about Iraq’s prospects even without a US follow-on force.
Minimalism won again when Obama declined, after joining a bombing campaign to topple Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, to help the new government keep the peace. And again, when he rejected the advice of top aides to support the moderate rebels in Syria. And most recently, when he announced an identical policy for Afghanistan as for Iraq: All troops out within two years, except for a presence inside the US Embassy. I wish these policies had succeeded. Who would not prefer to spend money on “nation-building at home”, as Obama promised, or helping to build a golden Pacific future? Unfortunately, disengagement turns out not to work. A drones-first policy has stoked anti-American fervour from Pakistan to Yemen. Libya is on the brink of civil war. Syria has become “the most catastrophic humanitarian crisis any of us have seen in a generation”, as Obama’s UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, said. Now Iraq is disintegrating. Of course, as many commentators write, Iraq’s politicians are to blame. But if the US had maintained a presence, it might have steered Iraqi politics in a more constructive direction.
If Libya, Syria and Iraq were only human rights catastrophes — as each assuredly is — the Minimalists might hold firm. Terrible things happen in many places, they would say, and Americans cannot set them all right. However, the unravelling threatens the US too. A ruthless medieval dictatorship controlling territory from Syria into Iraq is luring and training Islamist extremists, including from America and Europe, who “could end up being a significant threat to our homeland”, Obama acknowledged last Thursday. So he has had to turn back to Iraq, facing nothing but unpalatable options.
If Minimalism does not work, what would? The answer will be different in each case. It will not generally be to send in the Marines. It will, though, rest on lessons that the country learned, for a time, after 2001: Stateless, ungoverned territories can be dangerous to the US. Ignoring dangers does not make them go away. If America wants countries to help it, including by combating terrorists, it has to help them, too, with training and aid that improves people’s lives.
It is true that helping states build their capacity to govern is difficult and time-consuming and does not always work. But over the years, the US has helped more countries, and in more ways, than many Americans realise — including, with Obama’s commitment, Afghanistan. Engagement is hard, but over time it can succeed. Which is more than the other team can say.
— Washington Post
