[Originally Published in the Herald of Randolph]
What is there about the United States that makes it possible for us to get involved in foreign affairs when we have little, if any idea exactly what is going on or how our involvement, whatever that may be, will effect the outcome. The “Arab Spring” is the perfect example of this issue.
Since the end of the Second World War, we have supported any regime in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, providing we believed that the regime in question would support US interests. Over time, that has brought us into uncomfortable relationships with Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the old Soviet Central Asian Republics, now states.
We signed on with those countries simply because we felt it in our interest to do so. Oil was important, although far less so for us than for Europe and Asia. What we were really after, whether we articulated it clearly or not, was regional stability. The Cold War caused us to seek allies against the Soviet Union to deny them oil and international support. In support of that, we believed we needed those states to be politically stable.
The problem was that those geographic entities that called themselves states were inherently unstable largely because they had been created without any particular thought being given to ethnic, tribal, or religious realities by the imperial powers that created them. They were, as can be seen in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, made up of ethnic, religious and tribal groups that had little sense of nation, and loyalty primarily to their tribe or religion. Libya is the perfect example. As a country which is probably likely to turn into two or three separate states, Libya comprises something on the order of 140-150 separate tribes and tribal groupings.
That has always been true and we have always known it. How can we now employ a policy based on the likelihood that there is hope for unity in Libya? How can we assume that those disparate groupings will cast aside of thousands of years of animosity and suddenly enter into the 21st century world with a welcoming hand?
In Afghanistan, we predicate our success in creating a unified state on being able to assemble and train police and Army forces that will keep order once we leave. Absent a repressive government like the Taliban we overthrew, how can that be possible? If we want a police force that represents all the people, we have to have Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baloch, Aimak, etc, etc, on it and they have to serve throughout the nation, despite the fact that they are historically at odds with each other. There’s nothing new here.
Iraq is no different, just a bit farther down the road toward internal strife. Because of their past, the Sunnis, who have always run things, honestly believe they are entitled to do so in the future. Why, many of they still actually believe they are the majority group in Iraq!
The Shia, never having been allowed to run anything and having been horribly mistreated by the Sunnis, know they are the majority group and believe they should rule.
And the Kurds! The Kurds have been mistreated by just about everyone in the Region and are not about to let that happen again. They will look out for their own interests despite the interests and needs of any other group. And to further complicate everything, the Kurds who at thirty million people are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own, have something up to fifteen million living in Turkey where they are restive, repressed and a source of major concern for Turkish stability.
What started simultaneously with our invasion of Iraq and subsequent re-invasion of Afghanistan was a process of ferment in the Middle East. It is difficult to argue that the invasion was irrelevant to the Arab Spring. What we have done, quite simply, is start the process that is leading to the forcible removal of all the old tyrants who have been our stability-friendly allies for the past 75 years.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, with all the religious, tribal and ethnic divisions in the Middle East today and given its dismal record of accommodation, it seems unlikely that there will be comity in the short run or that we will see what we think of as a positive outcome there for a very long time.
