August 2, 2007

This week's announcement of proposed arms packages that together would provide U.S. allies in the Middle East with more than $60 billion worth of weapons has raised concern that the U.S. is changing its approach to regional issues. The proposed arms deals for Saudi Arabia (along with five other Persian Gulf states), Egypt and Israel, U.S. officials say, are aimed primarily at deterring the growing regional threat posed by Iran, and are simply a continuation of a long-standing U.S. policy to assist allies in the critical region. While the move, which is subject to congressional approval, has drawn criticism from many circles, others see it as a return to realism for U.S. policy in the region. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tour the Middle East this week, efforts to establish a cohesive American policy that includes calming Iraq, isolating Iran and bringing Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace seems to be taking shape.

Military Aid

While the U.S. has long supplied arms to its allies in the Middle East, the timing and large dollar amounts associated with this week's proposed deals drew attention almost immediately. Saudi Arabia and it's Gulf neighbors, for example, are set to receive a proposed package of arms worth more than $20 billion, including, for the first time, satellite missiles capable of reaching Israel. To fend off Israeli concern and bolster the military edge it has long enjoyed in the region, the U.S. also offered to increase military aid to Israel by 25 percent -- to $30 billion over the next decade. Egypt, currently the second-largest recipient of overall U.S. aid after Israel, would receive arms deals worth $13 billion.

“The United States is determined to show its allies that we will be reliable in helping them meet their security needs,” said Secretary Rice. “We have a lot of common interests in this region: in the fight against terrorism and extremism; in protecting the gains of peace processes of the past and in extending those gains to peace processes in the future.” Rice added that U.S. military aid would “bolster the forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influence of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.”

On her way to visits in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, Rice also made clear that isolating the regime in Tehran, which the U.S. and many other countries accuse of seeking nuclear weapons and destabilizing Iraq, was a driving force behind the move to provide military aid to U.S. allies. “There isn't a doubt,” she said, “that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to…U.S. interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East we want to see.”

Iranian officials, not surprisingly, were quick to denounce the deal as divisive for the region. “What the Persian Gulf needs is stability and security,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini. “America has always considered one policy in this region, and that is creating fears and…trying to harm good relations between these countries.”

Reaction

For many observers, however, U.S. policy in the region is more opaque than the view espoused by the Iranian foreign ministry. Lebanon Daily Star columnist Rami Khouri, for one, said the U.S. move was an example the “erratic swings” American foreign policy often takes in the Middle East. “It changes with the season and the political climate: promote and then ignore Arab democratization; boycott and then speak with Syria and Iran; disregard then actively engage in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” he writes. “Simultaneously, Washington adheres to several sacred principles: Israeli military superiority over all the Arabs; sure access to oil; protection of friendly Arab regimes.”

While the public debate over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is always heated, commentators were mostly in agreement that the move signified the end of the so-called “democracy promotion” agenda for the region and a return to the long-standing “realist” policy in efforts to produce stability post-Iraq. “It is hard to escape the impression that we are witnessing a return of a ‘realist' U.S. foreign policy that Bush spent the last six years trying to discredit and displace,” says a Jerusalem Post editorial. “If Iran is the center of the axis of evil, then Saudi Arabia is the center of the axis of ‘realism' and the pre-9/11 worship of ‘stability' as the strategy for safeguarding Western interests.”

Shumuel Rosner, a blogger for the more liberal Israeli daily al Haaretz, agreed. “This is yet another manifestation of an administration that is setting its policies anew, he writes. “There will be no reforming of the Middle East -- let's focus on managing it in the old, realistic way: Using friends, however reluctant, against foe; manipulating regional powers against each other; using whatever regimes are at hand to ease the pressure on the United States.”

Strategic Payoff?

For many though, the return to a more effective policy for regional stability comes as no surprise. With the American public increasingly calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and multilateral effort to curb Iran's nuclear pursuits bearing little fruit, the U.S. has little choice but engage with its regional allies. “There is a lot of agitation from the Arab regimes who are getting the arms, who are convinced that Iran is going to win in Iraq and the Americans are going to lose,” said Rosemary Hollis of the London-based Chatham House think-tank, in a report from The Guardian. “The Americans can get away with getting out of Iraq providing they give guarantees of protection for the Arab states.”

In return, U.S. officials hope, Arab countries like Saudi Arabia will offer greater assistance in bringing about a political solution and curbing the inflow of jihadist fighters from their countries into Iraq, as well as play a significant role in bringing Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table.

Following meetings between U.S. and Arab leaders in Egypt this week, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said his country would look into opening an embassy in Baghdad as a sign of confidence in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which the Saudis have accused of being too close to Tehran. He also said Saudi Arabia would participate in U.S.-backed multilateral talks on restoring direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation so long as the issues discussed were “substantive.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel hopes “many Arab countries” would attend the conference, likely to take place in the fall. The two countries have not engaged in official diplomatic talks for more than a decade.

Despite such hopeful signs, many remain skeptical that arming Saudi Arabia is the best solution to the current woes of the region. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad has accused Riyadh of “pursuing destabilizing policies,” in Iraq, while a number of U.S. lawmakers have threatened to block any military aid to a country that continues to breed Islamic extremists like those responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Others, such as Washington Post military affairs blogger William Arkin, warn that the U.S. risks repeating past mistakes when it comes to dealing with the Saudis. “Saudi Arabia has demonstrated over decades that it has no interest in building up its own high-tech arms capabilities. American contractors will train, maintain and even operate the new Saudi equipment,” he writes. “American military personnel will follow. We will buy nothing in terms of security, and we will just put our own people in danger. But most important, we will once again renew the cycle of American penetration into the heart of Islam, one of Osama bin Laden's original and most compelling rallying points.”

As BBC foreign affairs analyst Paul Reynolds observers, “The aim is to try to put some long-term cohesion into the various strands of U.S. policy in the region. These have faced difficulties recently because of the war in Iraq, the refusal of Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and the failure to make any progress in the Palestinian/Israeli peace process,” he writes. “The idea is to reassure U.S. allies that the U.S. is with them. [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates stated that the U.S., having been in the Gulf for some 60 years, had ‘every intention of being here for a lot longer.'”