Great op-ed by Pankaj Mishra in the New York Times today says that it’s time for the US to get out of the Middle East, the same way it got out of Vietnam. You’ve shot your wad here. Maybe you can come back later as a friend. The piece includes repeated references to Israel as our client state over there:
Franklin D. Roosevelt was only slightly more conciliatory when, in 1940, he proposed mollifying dispossessed Palestinian Arabs with a “little baksheesh.” …
It is not just extremist Salafis who think Americans always have malevolent intentions: the Egyptian anti-Islamist demonstrators who pelted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s motorcade in Alexandria with rotten eggs in July were convinced that America was making shady deals with the Muslim Brotherhood. And few people in the Muslim world have missed the Israeli prime minister’s blatant manipulation of American politics for the sake of a pre-emptive assault on Iran….
Although it’s politically unpalatable to mention it during an election campaign, the case for a strategic American retreat from the Middle East and Afghanistan has rarely been more compelling. It’s especially strong as growing energy independence reduces America’s burden for policing the region, and its supposed ally, Israel, shows alarming signs of turning into a loose cannon…
America’s retrenchment is inevitable. The only question is whether it will be as protracted and violent as Europe’s mid-20th century retreat from a newly assertive Asia and Africa.
A lot to chew on there. Bruce Wolman anticipated this, writing here that the I/P conflict will be resolved when the Arab countries kick us out of the Middle East… Fawaz Gerges wrote in The Nation that Israel was just a crusader kingdom, doomed to a short life… Jeff Halper has said recently that Israel could be turning out not like South Africa but Algeria… Finally, I wonder whether NYT op-ed editor Sasha Polakow-Suransky, whose book The Unspoken Alliance repeatedly describes Israel as a “pariah nation,” words that are unspoken at the Times, is smuggling that intelligence into the Times with such fine op-eds as this one. A vital journalistic contribution.
“Although it’s politically unpalatable to mention it during an election campaign, the case for a strategic American retreat from the Middle East and Afghanistan has rarely been more compelling.”
I don’t know if there anything to this, but lately a lot of the insider politco talk has been about the US turning it’s attention to Asia and China. Not militarily, but as where US interest are now and will be most important. If Washington does make Asia of great concern, mostly economically, and as in the inroads and alliances China is making with other countries thru economic cooperation and mutually benefiting ventures the US is not doing and therefore losing out on —-it could be the justification for supplanting of and lessening of our involvement in the ME.
The US could replace the ‘Green Peril of the ME’ with the “Asian Economic Menace” as their new cause.
The times, they are changing.
Color me skeptical.
China isn’t going to be a superpower, their most pressing issues is domestic.
The same true, by the way, for America.
But America has all the connections, infrastructure in play. They have the gulf states, the saudis and so on. They have a finger in Libya, and Egypt is still dependent on American largesse. Not just the 1.5 billion they get annually but also from the IMF, which America essentially controls together with the Europeans.
Sure, the Chinese want a seat at the table but they are a long, long way from the kind of influence America has.
As we saw in Libya, it doesn’t take much for America to topple governments. The same is true in Syria, which is only held up because Iran is frantically trying to keep Assad in power, together with the help of Iraq.
Can America invade? No. But it has shown it has become much more efficient during the Obama era of low-scale, high-impact power plays. Just fund a few rebels, send a few trainers and so on.
After a decade in the middle east, America has the manpower(translators, human intelligence contacts etc) to stay relevant in the region for a long time.
You have to remember that Pankaj Mishra is a self-described anti-Imperialist.
He has a horse in this race.
He deludes himself that Asia is somehow in unison against the West.
Does he expect countries like Iran(which he counts as part of Asia) to be on equal cultural terms with China? Does he expect Japan and China to get along? Pakistan and India?
India is incredibly weak, and whose growth rate has significantly slowed.
China’s working-age population peaked this year and will decline every year from now(due to very low birth rates). China will get old before it gets rich(on a per-capita basis).
America will be weaker, but it’s challengers are not up to par. Asia is heavily divided by bitter in-fightning and Pankaj has been a ferocious critic of all things Western. He is projecting his own fantasies in this Op-Ed.
The only part where he is right is on Israel as well as the excesses. We won’t see major American invasions(more like Libyan/Syrian operations). And Israel will continue to be cut loose.
There’s already a ‘pivot to Asia’, but America still largely influences the region. From North Africa, to Saudi, to Iranian isolation, to Syria.
Iraq is an interesting case. The Obama administration has largely bungled that one.
Still, the Western oil companies has done far better as of now than the Chinese and the Kurds are under the thumb of Western intelligence officers, frustrating Baghdad.
All in all, America will continue to play an outsized role the way Europe never could(because they were all divided among themselves and competed against each other and no nation was even close as powerful as America is today).
It won’t be just as monolithic as it used to be, but it will continue to be enormously powerful, essentially propping up Egypt(just like before), spreading it’s influence from Sunni to Shia states alike.
China can’t even get two small islands under it’s control against Japan, despite the fact that it’s only off their own coast, so what do you expect from them?
Again, Mishra is projecting his own anti-Western fantasies here.
He’s right on the margins: Yes, the influence won’t be as thorough but it will still be massive for decades, Israel will be more isolated etc, but he is pulling pure conjecture out his own hat, as usual. It’s called wishful thinking, y’know.
There won’t be any pan-Asian movement. It’s already a bitter joke.
And Chinese influence is still marginal even at their own borders.
India is basically a client state of America.
“Growing energy independence”
Does that refer to shale oil and tar sands ? Very much a long shot IMO.
The Palestinians were dispossessed in 1940?