US Policies Adrift in a Levant in Turmoil/ABD'nin Levant Hengamesinde Sureklenen Politikalari.

• Author: Gormus, Evrim
• Position: Report

Introduction

The term Levant, which derives from the Italian Levante, meaning the rising of the sun in the east, is used to refer to the eastern part of the Mediterranean that includes Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Syria. After Britain's colonial empire shattered, the United States filled the void, especially following the end of the Second World War, promising to use its leadership to forestall conflicts and wars in an unsettled and troubled geographical space. From then on, the US intervened indirectly and directly in the politics of the region. During the Cold War, Washington tried to broker regional reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbors and tried to end domestic tensions in the countries of the Levant through its mediation efforts. In the post-Cold War period, the region failed to find peace and stability despite the initial springing of hope that arose as a result of the Oslo agreements. The prevalence of instability in the region can be explained by the presence of unresolved regional conflicts, the pervasiveness of sectarian and ethnic animosities, and the resilience of authoritarian regimes. Both the absence of a coherent American policy towards the region and America's botched military intervention in Iraq contributed handsomely to the instability and the pervasive violence that has engulfed the region and its millions of inhabitants.

Lawrence Freedman concludes his magisterial work, A Choice of Enemies, by suggesting that;

the events of the last decade have taken their toll, and the United States does not enjoy the prestige and influence in the Middle East that it did as recently as the early 1990s ... For Americans, the challenge is to revive their diplomatic skills, learning how to work with the local political grain without losing a sense of purpose and principle, pushing parties to cooperation, supporting social and economic along with political reform, and encouraging a positive engagement with the rest of the world. (1) It is hard to conclude from the existing conditions of the region that the US has successfully risen to the challenge.

This paper argues that the vicissitudes of the region and of American politics made Washington's policy towards the Levant look biased, at times incompetent and most importantly inconsistent. Some of the abrupt changes in approach to the region as a whole from one administration to another underscore this inconsistency; the one exception being a pro-Israel tilt that almost invariably informs America's choices. The paper will largely focus on the US policies towards the Levant during the last two American administrations. The first part will explore the early American interest in the Levant and suggest that the (almost) unconditional US support to Israel has proved the most enduring pillar of US engagement in the region. The second part will focus on the complex challenge that the Syrian conflict and its regional repercussions have posed to American leadership and argue that it has changed the power dynamics of the region by introducing Russia once again as a global actor that influences the region's politics. The Syrian Civil War cum "regional hegemonic struggle" has also enabled Iran to widen its sphere of influence in Syria and beyond, a power which was already expanding thanks to the failures of the US in Iraq. The third section will analyse the post-Islamic State (IS) period in the region and argue that the intensification of competition between the US and its Saudi and Israeli allies on the one hand and Iran on the other has led Washington to seek a new strategy for a Levant in turmoil. The paper will conclude that the balancing, containment and if possible the reversal of Iranian dominance in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon by means of an informal alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia will become the basic pillar of US policy towards the Levant in the post-IS period under the Trump administration.

Levant: Through the Lens of Israel

The Levant became geopolitically significant for the US following the Second World War due to the region's links to the Persian Gulf. These links would make Washington's policy towards the Levant consequential on accessing oil resources. Indeed, the Levant's geographical proximity to the oil producing countries of the Gulf would partly explain the furious debate that occurred within the Truman administration over the issue of supporting the creation of the state of Israel. Most foreign policy and security professionals were against recognizing the soon-to-be declared Jewish state for fear of jeopardizing American interests in the Arab world, particularly with the oil producing countries of the Gulf. Indeed, one of the most historically significant figures at the State Department, George Kennan, feared that support for partition would endanger US interests:

Palestine occupies a geographic position of great significance to the US. It is important for the control of the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. It is an outlet for the oil of the Middle East, which in turn is important to US security. Finally, it is the center of a number of major political cross-currents; and events in Palestine cannot help being reflected in a number of directions. (2) By the end of the first Arab-Israeli war however, almost the entire foreign policy and security bureaucracy had come to the conclusion that it was important to have Israel by the side of the US. On the basis of the reports written by Philip Jessup, who was the US Special Delegate to the UN at the time, Gendzier concludes, "it was desirable to ensure Israel's Westward orientation, which meant lessening Washington's pressure on Tel Aviv to comply with UNGA resolutions to avert its reliance on the USSR." (3) This "deference" to Israel, as Gendzier calls it, would remain a staple of American policy towards the Levant with the exception of a few cases when Israeli actions ran counter to American interests as was the case in the Suez War.

Ultimately no US president managed to move the conflict to its internationally anticipated and widely accepted conclusion. Walt argues that:

As Nathan Thrall shows clearly in his recent book The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, past progress toward peace required extensive and persistent American pressure on both sides -not just one- and such pressure has been consistently lacking after 1992, when United States took on the role of 'Israel's lawyer'. Small wonder that former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami identifies Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush as the only presidents who made 'meaningful breakthroughs on the way to an Arab-Israeli peace', and argues they succeeded because they were 'ready to confront Israel head on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America'. (4) Presidents Carter and George H. W. Bush really pushed Israel hard to make concessions as they strongly opposed Israeli settlement policies. (5)

Yet, from the Eisenhower administration through the Obama era, there were always some efforts to push the process forward. Nevertheless, in recent years, Elgindy argues that:

when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, no US president has promised more and accomplished less than Obama. He entered office with a strong start; appointing a special envoy for Middle East peace on his second day in office, calling for an end to Israeli settlement construction, and working to bring the parties back to the negotiating table. But it went downhill from there. (6) There were indeed many instances when Obama's rhetoric and stated goals were not matched by his or his administration's deeds. After an initial burst of enthusiasm, Obama had given up on determinedly pursuing a settlement of the long-standing conflict. In fact, in his second term he did next to nothing to support the efforts of his Secretary of State, John Kerry, in any substantive way. He ultimately even gave up trying. As he addressed a youthful audience during his visit to Israel in 2013, Obama conceded that there was not much he could do to persuade the Israelis to move ahead with the peace process and that they would have to live with the consequences of their choices. (7) Although as a parting shot in December 2016, the Obama administration decided to abstain on a UNSC vote condemning construction of settlements in occupied territories. (8) President Obama, whose administration raised the level of military aid to Israel to new heights, (9) had no leverage over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, Netanyahu, always spiteful of Obama, actively tried to undermine him and worked to push the Iran nuclear deal off track. (10) As such, Obama ended his term as the first US president who did not bring about any progress or breakthroughs in the admittedly dormant, if not comatose, peace process that had begun in the early 1970s.

Ever the unpredictable political actor, President Trump, in turn, changed a long-standing American position concerning Jerusalem. When he announced in a short speech delivered at the White House that the US Embassy in Israel would henceforth be in Jerusalem, he justified the move by referring to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. (11) Every President since then, including Trump, has exercised the law's waiver to avoid further complicating negotiations for an elusive comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Trump has said that, "today, we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more, or less, than recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done." (12)

There was enough speculation in the international media that Trump's announcement onJ erusalem was actually linked to the Middle East peace plan prepared by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the young Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman. A charitable or optimistic reading of...