The price of US disengagement in the Middle East

This week, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel is leading a US delegation to Riyadh to take part in a US-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ministerial meeting, no doubt to discuss the situation in Syria, nuclear negotiations with Iran and the Al Qaida and Al Houthi insurgencies in Yemen. Hagel’s visit comes at a time when US allies in the Middle East have grown rather doubtful of the Barack Obama administration’s commitment to their interests and security. Ahead of him is the daunting task of convincing the GCC states otherwise. Over the past two years, the GCC along with Egypt, another major US ally in the region, have felt the need to unilaterally press ahead with their regional geopolitical agenda and at times even seek closer ties with Russia.

Motivated by a war-weary public opinion and budgetary limitations, Obama’s failure to provide any significant support for the Syrian rebels or hold the Bashar Al Assad regime to account for the use of chemical weapons has frustrated his Arab Gulf allies. Holds placed by the Obama administration on foreign military financing to Egypt and on foreign military sales to Bahrain have poisoned bilateral relations. Moreover, Obama’s yawningly uneventful visit to Saudi Arabia in March — likely to have centred on talks surrounding limited covert US assistance to Syrian rebels (David Ignatius, Washington Post, March 28) — is yet another cogent indicator of how cold the relationship has grown to be. Already looming large in the psyche of Arab Gulf leaders had been the announcement by the US administration of its infamous “pivot to Asia” and of cuts in the defence budget, indicating that an American disengagement from the region was imminent. In their eyes, the apparent structural shift in US foreign strategic priorities overshadowed any reassurances to the contrary reiterated by US officials.

The notion of a weak, undependable US has, therefore, prompted pro-western states in the region, Egypt and Saudi Arabia above all, to weigh alternative arrangements and press ahead with their regional agenda often irrespective of US preferences. Russia in particular has emerged as a lucrative alternative partner, especially in light of its unshakeable commitment to its regional allies: the Al Assad regime and Iran. Tellingly, Egypt’s former Field Marshall and defence minister Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, soon to be president by almost all estimates, paid his first foreign visit as army chief back in February 2014 to Russia where he met President Vladimir Putin amid much fanfare. The visit received wide coverage in Egypt, while Egyptian television networks brimmed with retired army generals discussing the technicalities of integrating Russian arms into Egyptian arsenals.

Clear message

More recently, Bahrain’s Crown Prince Shaikh Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa led a delegation to Moscow where he met Putin. Several agreements on military cooperation and investment were signed according to press reports. Given the situation in Ukraine, the trip unsurprisingly roused objections from the US State Department. The visit could perhaps be interpreted as a preliminary testing of the waters for stronger GCC ties with Russia, despite differences on Syria and Iran. The state of the relationship with the US has also prompted Saudi Arabia to send clear messages to the Obama administration last year that it intends to “go it alone”. Since 2011, Saudi Arabia has embarked on an aggressive policy of unilaterally bolstering its own regional allies. Following the ouster of former Egyptian president Mohammad Mursi in July 2013, Saudi Arabia and the UAE almost immediately recognised the military government, pledging billions of dollars in financial aid — especially in order to neutralise American and European threats to scale back financial support. Last March, Saudi Arabia even outlawed and designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation.

Concurrently, Saudi Arabia has proven more assertive in mounting a credible threat to its principal adversary in the region — Iran. Unconvinced that the US will successfully curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Kingdom has made little secret of its ability to acquire a nuclear deterrent from Pakistan in case Iran develops a nuke, compounding the risk of nuclear proliferation in the region. Saudi Arabia has also more openly advertised its offensive missile capabilities, the Strategic Missile Force, fuelling rumours of at least one alleged acquisition in 2007 of additional, more advanced Chinese ballistic missiles.

At this point, there is probably very little that Hagel can say or do in Riyadh that will shift the GCC’s perception of the US’s lack of commitment to its interests. And perhaps the world’s superpower will very much like to see its Gulf allies and Egypt pick up more of the slack in terms of guaranteeing their own security. But on the flip side, the US will ultimately have to come to terms with the fact that disengagement also comes at a price of its own: In an effort to fill the vacuum, its allies may be led to pursue policies and partnerships at times inconsistent with its preferences and interests in the region.

Hasan Tariq Alhasan is a Bahrain-based economic and political analyst who writes regularly on Bahraini and Arab affairs.