Text: Linda A Thompson
“The United States is always supposed to have some sort of silver bullet, but it’s not that easy.” To label Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East a failure is far too easy, according to Vesalius College professor Ethan Corbin, because that would be ignoring the fact that we are living in a changed world, with altered power dynamics.
Nobel Prize
That he won the Nobel Peace Prize just four months into his presidency – a hazy, almost surreal memory now – offers a reminder of the high hopes the international community had for President Obama. The youthful Chicago senator came into office promising sweeping change, and that reformist agenda extended to his vision of US relations and policies in the Middle East. He promised voters he would pull US troops out of Iraq, that he would launch diplomatic efforts with that country, that he would provide at least $2 billion for services to Iraqi refugees and would work towards a nuclear-free world.
Though he kept some of these promises, over the last eight years Obama has also had to bury his hopes of ever realising others.
“He thought he would be able to change how the world works, but it doesn’t work that way,” Corbin says. “I think the harsh realities of the Middle East brought him to the realisation that he had to be much more of a realist foreign policy president than an idealist foreign policy president.”
Retrenchment president
Obama, instead, will likely be remembered as the retrenchment president, the president who significantly shrunk the US military presence in the Middle East, Corbin says. He campaigned on pulling American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and that’s exactly what he did when he came into office. “He reduced the American footprint significantly enough to say that retrenchment has more or less happened, and I think that’s a lasting legacy,” Corbin says.
It will also be his lasting legacy that in 2011, a handful of US Special Forces succeeded in finding and assassinating al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. He also significantly reduced the strength of al-Qaida forces, even if critics contend that the significance of this achievement pales in contrast to the rise of so-called Islamic State or Isis.
Obama has had a very significant impact on al-Qaida and global radical jihadism
“He has had a very significant impact on al-Qaida and global radical jihadism,” Corbin says, noting that Obama’s sustained counter-terrorism campaign and his controversial use of drone strikes has heavily reduced the presence and impact of this militant group. “In the way it posed a threat globally, Al-Qaida is very much on its heels, and I don’t think it will ever be able to return to the way it was before.”
Obama did succeed in striking a landmark nuclear deal with Iran last April
End of stalemate
Even if he was unable to achieve his dream of a nuclear-free world, Obama did succeed in striking a landmark nuclear deal with Iran last April. The deal, controversially, departed from longstanding US non-nuclear proliferation policies by allowing Iran to develop nuclear fuel cycle capacity, which means it can very quickly move to weaponisation – something that has been an absolute no-no since the mid-1960s. The agreement has consequently attracted heavy criticism from different corners – from Republicans, from Israel and from the US’s allies in the Gulf region such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Corbin cites this agreement, flawed as it may be, as a positive development because it ended a decades-long stalemate between Iran and the international community. “Because what else are you going to do about it? Where were the Iranians going? Are we just going to ignore the problem?” Corbin asks. “At least Obama was able to organise and get a deal with the Iranians about halting their nuclear programme before they were able to weaponise it.”
New times
Obama’s eight years in office coincided with a major shift in geopolitical relations that upended traditional power dynamics. “He presided over the end of the post-cold war international security system, a time in which the United States and its allies were more or less in a world free of strategic competitors at the security level,” Corbin explains. “Now you have a global power competition going on with rising strategic competitors.”
Examples of this increasing power struggle can be found in Russia’s move to annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, as well as China’s territorial dispute with its neighbours over the South China Sea – both events that would have been hard to imagine in the 1990s or 2000s.
“They now also view themselves as potential peer competitors to the US at least at the force level; that should be taken into account. The reality is that Obama’s room for manoeuvring is not as big anymore,” Corbin says, adding that a retrenched America clearly has consequences globally. “We’re seeing that now a little bit with the rise of some of these powers, and the degree to which these powers are willing to test the United States because of retrenchment so to speak; the US is not willing to punch back as hard as it used to.”
Legacy
Obama’s legacy in the Middle East has been described by a number of leading experts and foreign policy commentators as a failure, as a stain on his record. They fault him for not intervening in Syria.
Corbin says that many commentators disregard the extreme complexity of the Syrian situation. “At no point short of full invasion, which the United States never had appetite for, would we have had a viable policy option in Syria. I think he made the right choice in not invading and trying to take Assad out,” he says. “The United States is always supposed to have some sort of silver bullet – ‘We solved the problem, you’re welcome’ – but it’s not that easy.”
Remaining political turmoil
At the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe, the Middle East is now one of the fastest growing regions in the world, demographically. Conflicts in the region have the potential to disrupt global oil trade and Europe’s energy supplies, while the consequences of political turmoil can quite literally arrive at Europe’s shores, like they did when millions of migrants started crossing the Mediterranean Sea to escape the Syrian civil war and Isis violence in Iraq.
Those are just a couple of the reasons we should care about what happens in the Middle East, Corbin says. “If we’re not able to find some level of political and social stability, and it continues to fall apart this way, this is just going to be the tip of the iceberg of this immigration problem that Europe has been so very worried about,” he says.
And the stakes will only become higher, he warns. People sometimes shrug off the current conflicts in the region with the argument that this a region that has perennially been locked in battle since the 1920s. “I think it’s different now,” he says, warning that we live in a different world.
“What happens when you have failed states and lots of idle, unemployed young men and people dealing with political oppression? That leads to radicalisation, that leads to extremism, that leads to terrorism, not to mention the high potential for civil unrest and conflict. And guess what? If that becomes a wellspring for terrorism, that’s just going to do … this,” he says, spreading his arms out in an eruption motion. “And we’re no longer in a world where that can be as contained or isolated like people like to think.”
Ethan Corbin has a master’s degree in law and diplomacy as well as contemporary Middle Eastern history. He obtained a PhD in international relations at Tufts University in Massachusetts in 2013. He's professor US Foreign Policy in the Middle East at Vesalius College.
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