Dear CCI Followers,
I’ve been late to pay attention to Andrew Bacevich, former West Pointer, Colonel in the U.S. Military until he left early to get a Ph.D in U.S. Military History at Princeton. He has become outspoken on issues of War and Peace and is now the President of the new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank dedicated to break into the issues of war and peace from 2019 forward.
Ambassador Jack Matlock suggested that I follow Quincy Institute posts, for which I’m deeply grateful. It is the only think tank I know of that is dealing with the issues I care most about … at a time when our nation is headed toward more war making after committing nearly a Trillion U.S. dollars toward a new budget for 2021.
A few days ago, a friend sent me a long, small point-sized, single-spaced, non-paragraphed, run-on paper entitled … “The Policy of Domination”, written by Quincy President, Andrew Bacevich.
It is unbelievably powerful! I stayed up until midnight that night turning it into a paragraphed, decently-sized and spaced-out message that I could send to you. I did not change any words, I just spaced them and made Bacevich more readable. Then I realized I’d need to get Bacevich’s permission to tamper with his piece! A CCI follower had earlier given me his email address.
So after midnight I gathered up the nerve to email Bacevich his newly paragraphed paper, admitting what I had done and asked for his permission to send a copy to our CCI network. Knowing it was a long shot, I went to sleep doubting I’d ever hear from him. I awakened, checked my emails … and there it was! He emailed back “Ms. Tennison, Permission Granted.”!!! Joy, Joy, Joy!!!
So here is his paragraphed piece to which I hope you will pay close attention. It is the only paper of its kind and I believe prophetic of what Bacevich will accomplish if enough of us help educate Americans and promote his vision and intentions! Scan and let me know what you think!!!
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
The Policy of Domination
Executive Summary
The Quincy Institute
Andrew Bacevich, President
(Underlining & Bolding by ST)
Conventional wisdom holds that the presence of United States forces in the Middle East makes America and the region more secure.
To the contrary, the U.S. military’s large footprint in the region, combined with voluminous U.S. arms sales and support for repressive regimes, drives instability and exacerbates grievances and conditions that threaten the United States.
This presence has made Americans less safe and undermined U.S. standing abroad; it also leaves America less prepared to address more dangerous nonmilitary challenges such as pandemics and climate change, as the Covid–19 crisis makes clear.
Given the manifest failure of the current strategy, growing calls for a demilitarized approach to the region should come as no surprise. However, translating concepts of military restraint into practical policy requires sustained effort.
This paper is intended to move the debate forward by operationalizing a holistic approach to the region based on a narrow definition of vital U.S. interests, in accordance with a foreign policy centered on military restraint and responsible statecraft.
U.S. policy toward the Middle East should be guided by two core interests: Protect the United States from attack; and facilitate the free flow of global commerce. While these objectives require the U.S. to prevent hostile states from establishing hegemony in the region, they are best served by enhancing peace and security within a framework of international law.
Neither warrants a major U.S. military presence in the Middle East, let alone regional military dominance. A basic reorientation of U.S. policy is long overdue. Rather than allowing bilateral friends and adversaries define regional policy, the U.S. should center policy decisions across the region on their direct implications for U.S. interests, rigorously defined. Bilateral relations should be adjusted to this regionwide policy, not the other way around.
A new approach based on responsible statecraft would not disengage from the Middle East, but would instead prioritize diplomatic and economic involvement over military domination, military interventions, and arms sales. This paper explains what such a shift would entail in practice and makes the following recommendations:
• Time to Come Home: To preserve Americans’ physical and economic well-being more effectively, the U.S. should significantly draw down its military presence in the region over a period of five to ten years. Preventing hostile hegemony in the Middle East does not mean the United States must play the role of hegemon itself, nor does it require the current level of U.S. arms sales in the region. Instead, Washington should recognize multipolarity as a reality, appreciate that it precludes regional domination by any other state, and exploit it to protect U.S. interests.
• A Deliberative Drawdown: The United States should immediately begin discussions with regional powers currently hosting U.S. troops to allow them to prepare for the U.S. drawdown. This decision may not be popular among some U.S. partners, but it is the course that best serves U.S. interests and regional stability. QUINCY PAPERS are produced by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a nonpartisan think tank that promotes ideas to move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace. © 2020 by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. All rights reserved.
SECTION I: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Preventing hostile hegemony in the Middle East does not mean the United States must play the role of hegemon itself regardless of stability milestones. The United States should convincingly signal that rightsizing its military presence will proceed regardless of any potential stability milestones. If the drawdown is made contingent upon regional stability first being achieved, the United States will risk giving countries that enjoy U.S. protection an incentive to destabilize the Middle East to prevent American troops from ever going home.
• Support a New Security Architecture: The United States should instead encourage the development of a new regional security architecture for the Persian Gulf based on the models of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, while maintaining an offshore military presence that allows for intervention if necessary to protect the United States. Consequently, the U.S. must cease its maintenance of an artificial power balance predicated on a permanent U.S. military presence, military assistance, and massive arms sales but don’t lead it. For such a security architecture to be successful and durable, it needs regional buy-in and ownership. Regional states should lead and drive this process themselves. They cannot own the process if the U.S. controls it.
• Talk to Everyone: The United States has isolated itself from important players in the Middle East. It has become a belligerent in many conflicts and lacks relations with key states and actors, effectively ceding diplomatic maneuverability to Russia and others. U.S. policy toward the Middle East must entail active engagement with all players in the region—friends and foes alike. The United States should abandon the objective of regime change due to its immorality, counterproductivity, and destabilizing effect.
• Normalize Relations with Iran: The prevailing policy of isolating Iran lacks a strategic rationale and has failed on all fronts. It fuels tensions in the Middle East and leaves the United States and Iran unnecessarily close to military confrontation. To maximize U.S. diplomatic maneuverability, the United States should seek to normalize relations with Iran and find constructive ways to manage differences, beginning with a return to full compliance, on both sides, with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
• Do Not Make Iraq into a Battlefield with Iran: Iraq should not be turned into one more front in an obsessive campaign to isolate and weaken Iran. While the U.S. should continue to provide security assistance to Iraq, Washington should draw down its military presence, as the Iraqi government has requested.
• Participate in Diplomatic Efforts to End the Wars in Syria and Yemen: America should be part of the solution in Syria and Yemen by taking part in efforts to find political settlements to these two civil wars. In Syria, the U.S. should withdraw all troops, given that the original reason for their dispatch—to defeat ISIS—is now obsolete. The U.S. should declare a moratorium on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE until they cut off all support to parties to the Yemen conflict.
• No More Cartes Blanches for Partners: Unconditional U.S. support for regional security partners has tended to disincentivize them from diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve tensions with neighbors. For instance, overt U.S. backing of the Saudi regime has often encouraged greater belligerence than when the Saudis have been less sure that the U.S. would intervene on their behalf. Unquestioned U.S. support for Israel has facilitated its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and reduced incentives to pursue a peaceful resolution of the conflict. A significant reduction of U.S. troops in the Middle East will help instill greater restraint and reduce the tendency toward destabilizing behavior among partner governments.
• On Human Rights, Lead by Example: U.S. policy should reflect strong commitments to human and political rights in the Middle East while recognizing that intervention cannot be the principal means of achieving respect for those rights. U.S. policy must apply standards consistently to all parties in the region and must be based on the U.S. itself demonstrating respect for human rights at home and abroad, for multilateral cooperation, and for international law.
About QI – Quincy Institute
America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” — John Quincy Adams
The foreign policy of the United States has become detached from any defensible conception of U.S. interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind. Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in itself.
Moreover, much of the foreign policy community in Washington has succumbed to intellectual lethargy and dysfunction. It suppresses or avoids serious debate and fails to hold policymakers and commentators accountable for disastrous policies. It has forfeited the confidence of the American public. The result is a foreign policy that undermines American interests and tramples on American values while sacrificing the stores of influence that the United States had earned.
The Quincy Institute is an action-oriented think tank that will lay the foundation for a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint. The current moment presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring together like-minded progressives and conservatives and set U.S. foreign policy on a sensible and humane footing. Our country’s current circumstances demand it.
Our Mission
The Quincy Institute promotes ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace.
Our Vision
A world where peace is the norm and war the exception.“
Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” ~ Bucky Fuller