There was a great whoosh of relief from a majority of Canadians when President Obama was re-elected and not just from us who had won our election bets. The thought of Mitt Romney and the right wing Tea Party at the wheelhouse of Foggy Bottom (State Department) was terrifying. Not since Nixon have the Republicans understood the foreign affairs the nation must deal with.
One can look back at Nixon/Kissinger with approbation or otherwise but no one can accuse them of indifference. I support this with the reminder that Gerald Ford, in his debate with Jimmy Carter, denied that Poland was under the Soviet heel.
One can, of course, bring up Ronald Reagan, but his service had nothing to do with any depth of understanding of world affairs but rather a childlike antipathy to Communism which led to stubbornness perfectly timed with Gorbachev’s USSR being on the brink of bankruptcy largely due to defence spending.
Perhaps Obama simply satisfies Mair’s Axiom II which says “you don't have to be a 10 in politics, you can be a 3 if everyone else is a 2.” Whether the president ranks higher than a 3, Romney was certainly a 2 at best.
Although Americans are not noted for making foreign affairs a strong issue, Romney‘s performance in Debate #3 would have made even the most devout isolationist shudder. The key moment came when Romney criticized Obama for allowing the US Navy to have fewer ships than in 1916 permitting Obama to reply “we have fewer horses and bayonets too” going on to point out that the navy had ships that carry airplanes and boats that sail underwater.
I dwell on this to point out how close the nation – and the world – came to having a dangerous ignoramus (on defence) in the White House. While admittedly a stretch, can you imagine a president listening to the likes of Sarah Palin whose foreign affairs experience was the ability to see Russia from her Alaska home and having once welcomed a Russian commercial delegation! I mention this because this twit could have been vice president and a heart beat away from the White House. Such is the frailty of the US system, such is the reason for so many sighs of relief on Obama’s re-election.
As it has for decades, the Middle East is a simmering pressure cooker and the causes are too many to list. In no other area are there so many arm chair experts listing the cause as being mostly the US. If only she had done this instead of that, reminding me of the rather earthy expression of an old golfing buddy who, when there as speculation about “what ifs”, would say “if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle”.
Churchill once said “you can only look ahead as far as you can look back” which applies to the Middle East. Syria is a good example. It was part of the Ottoman Empire’s mass of Arab areas controlled by a non Arab Turkey. France was given a League if Nations mandate over the Levant after World War I and tried to “Europeanize” the area with predictable results. As it now stands, Syria is in a civil war with the good guys trying to free themselves from the bad.
Unfortunately its more complicated than that, It's a proxy war between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia – a badminton game with Syria the shuttlecock. What is happening is what I predicted long ago – the alternatives to the awful, bloody minded governments in the Middle East are even worse. This further complicated by Russia, with strong ties to Syria, unwilling, to say the least, to get involved. Another challenge is the Muslim League, revived in Egypt.
This is priority #1 for President Obama – how would you handle it? Let’s look at Iran and its nuclear ambitions – how come America and Russia couldn’t have collaborated on these issues? Modern European history tells a lamentable involvement by the US, the UK and Russia. It all started in 1911 when Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, switched the navy from coal fired to oil. Politics was and is dominated by oil interests leading to European domination. As well put by Wikipedia,
“The 1953 Iranian coup d'état (known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coups the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran, and its head of government Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States. The coup saw the transition of Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi from a constitutional monarch to an authoritarian one who relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979”. Russia is remembered as the wartime occupying power that took a year to leave after it was over. Add to this the long bloody war with Iraq where the Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was bankrolled by the US.
President Obama must deal with this – how would you handle it? Although there are many other issues, let’s look at Israel. An American client from its inception it’s history starts with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which stated “His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.
Apart from all other considerations The UK had no authority to do this nor, when it later held Palestine under a League of Nations, the right to implement it. At the end of World War II and revelations about the Holocaust the State of Israel was bound to happen. To catalogue the Arab/Israeli wars easily outstrips my available space but suffice it to say that the entire Muslim community in the region (except Egypt) won’t tolerate Israel no matter how she behaves (often appalling) and sees its destruction as a religious and national goal. It should be noted that the neutrality of Egypt is no longer a sure thing.
Israel is nuclear armed and quite prepared to use force against any threat to the balance of power which at this moment is Iran. The issue is not a fair deal for Palestinians – no one really cares for them although a settlement would obviously cool tempers. In fact for Israel the Palestinians are a buffer. This is President Obama’s challenge – how would you handle it? And aren’t you glad it’s President Obama not President Mitt Romney?
