[Salon] The Pivot To America - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

The Pivot To America Summary: the new American National Security Strategy is built in significant part on three themes which are particularly pertinent to the Middle East even if putting ‘America First’ in practice will not always be consistent with them. We thank our regular contributor Alastair Newton for today’s newsletter. Alastair worked as a professional political analyst in the City of London from 2005 to 2015. Before that he spent 20 years as a career diplomat with the British Diplomatic Service. In 2015 he co-founded and is a director of Alavan Business Advisory Ltd. You can find Alastair’s latest AD podcast, Saudi Arabia and an uncertain oil market here. Thousands of words have been written about the US’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) since it was launched on 4/5 December. However, outside of the region itself, very little attention has been given to its implications for the Middle East. Even Al Jazeera, in a 5 December article by Ali Harb, only managed to mention the region in the fourth of its five ‘key takeaways’. To be fair, this is not surprising given what an FT editorial described on 8 December as the “radical rupture” inherent in the NSS’s abandonment of ‘the West’ as we have understood it for the past eight decades. Furthermore, as Shashank Joshi wrote in an 8 December newsletter for The Economist: “Some see it as little more than a symbolic statement that will quickly become irrelevant, like many strategy documents of the past.” Even though Mr Joshi then goes on to pour cold water on this thesis in the broad, it is surely worth keeping in mind in the case of the Middle East. As regular contributor to Arab Digest Jon Hoffman has written (as quoted in Laura Kelly’s 5 December article for The Hill): “The past four presidents — two of which were Donald Trump — ran on a platform of less US involvement in the Middle East, yet pursued policies rooted in continuity, not change. Washington remains entangled, trying to micromanage the region’s affairs. This approach will not realize the stated objectives of this NSS. Whether Trump has the political will to fundamentally change course in the Middle East remains to be seen.” Mr Hoffman’s assessment is consistent with that of much of the commentariat, i.e. that the NSS is riven with inconsistencies. While acknowledging that the ‘devil’ in the general principles of ‘America First’ will always be in the detail, personally I find this a little too sweeping. Big picture, there are three core themes in the document which are consistent with second term ‘Trump-ism’ and which are, in my view, particularly relevant to the Middle East, i.e.: (a) A reversion to 19th century-type great power politics and, related, US concentration on the Americas; (b) An acceptance of autocratic governance (albeit with the exception of Europe’s allegedly undemocratic leanings); and, (c) Mercantilism Let us consider these seriatim. An Egyptian Air Force F-16 executes nighttime aerial refueling operations with a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker in support of Exercise Bright Star25 [photo credit: USAF] First, the NSS confirms the Trump Administration’s acceptance — even facilitation — of the shift from the post-1945 global order to one which is based on spheres of influence, in which the US’s intended ‘pivot’ is no longer to Asia but to the western hemisphere. In its section on the Middle East, the NSS acknowledges that a significant facilitator of this pivot is the fact that the US is no longer dependent on the Gulf for energy. Instead: “Superpower competition has given way to great power jockeying, in which the United States retains the most enviable position, reinforced by President Trump’s successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel…. As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.” As I argued in the 21 March Newsletter, the implications for regional stability are far from clear given the number of competing state and non-state actors who will look to take advantage of any resultant vacuum. Thus, there is an apparent inconsistency in the subsequent assertion that the US has a… “…core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable, that the region not be an incubator or exporter of terror against American interests or the American homeland, and that Israel remain secure.” However, the document neither specifies who is considered to be an “outright enemy” nor offers any real clues about how these objectives are to be achieved. Possibly, the forthcoming National Defence Strategy, which will set out priorities for the armed forces, will throw more light on this. But, one way or the other, from the NSS’s overall thrust we can reasonably assume that Washington sees such responsibility as resting primarily on the shoulders of its partners in the region and not on the US itself. Second — and, surely, the most welcome sentiment set out in the NSS as far as a whole host of regional leaders is concerned: “Middle East partners are demonstrating their commitment to combatting radicalism, a trendline American policy should continue to encourage. But doing so will require dropping America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations — especially the Gulf monarchies — into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government.… The key to successful relations with the Middle East is accepting the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are while working together on areas of common interest.” Third, and consistent with the ongoing love-in between Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman (see, e.g., the 28 November Newsletter focussing on Saudi/US cooperation on strategic minerals): “…the region will increasingly become a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas — including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies. We can also work with Middle East partners to advance other economic interests, from securing supply chains to bolstering opportunities to develop friendly and open markets in other parts of the world…”. All this being said, it would be unwise to assume that US practice in the Middle East will stick rigidly to these policy parameters. After all, Mr Trump has made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that ‘America First’ means pretty much whatever he decides it means at any given moment. Nevertheless, the NSS has made it absolutely clear that the wind of foreign policy change is blowing strong in Washington and that the Middle East is far from immune to its impact.