U.S. Strategy For The Near East: Keep Armies Weak And Nations Poor

The new would-be rulers of Syria, fully backed by Washington and its regional allies, regard these two gentlemen as modern day Muslim heroes, which points to the utter absurdity of U.S. policy in that part of the world. 

Just as Saddam and Bin Laden were once allies turned useful enemies, the same fate will befall the head chopping conquerors of the Syrian desert. 

But Washington couldn’t care less what happens to Syria as long as Israel is happy with the final outcome. There isn’t a grand U.S. strategy for these nations beyond keeping them poor and their armies weak so Israel remains the dominant state, able to kill whomever, whenever, and wherever. 

As a result of that policy, there are many weak states that are ripe for the picking. And when Washington does decide to attack and invade a sanctioned and impoverished country like Iraq and Afghanistan what follows isn’t a Marshall plan, or any type of national reconstruction. There isn’t any ambition or desire for that type of thing. 

The U.S. couldn’t do it even if it wanted to because it is the junior partner in the Near East. Israel is the hegemon. It is the superpower. It is the brain. 

When President Truman threw his support behind the state of Israel, after an intense lobbying campaign by Zionists during the election, he couldn’t have imagined the amount of influence that small state would come to have over U.S. decision-making in the Muslim world. And that disproportionate influence has been detrimental for all involved.  

“The real danger in the Korean situation,” said Arnold Toynbee in the course of a recent lecture at Stanford University, “is not the apparent danger of a third World War. I feel that we shall be able to keep it within local limits and to do likewise with any other local affairs . . . elsewere. I am more afraid of the future relationship of the Western world with the Oriental and African peoples. They will have the last word in the issue between the West and Russia. We must win them to our way. . . ” The Near East, which comprises an area extending from Turkey to the Indian Ocean and from the Caspian Sea to the African Sahara, forms, perhaps, the most important part of the area with which Professor Toynbee has shown grave concern. Greece and Turkey, owing partly to the Russian threat to which they are directly exposed, but mainly to effective American help, are definitely committed to the West, and there seems to be no serious Communist danger from within. The Arabian Peninsula, on the other hand, which is probably the most backward region in the Near East and whose governments are the most authoritarian, is relatively immune to Communist propaganda. The core of the Near Eastern area, which lies between Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula and extends from North Africa to the Caspian Sea, is the most dangerous sector, because of internal as well as external factors.

The first question which arises is that of discovering what is wrong with this area and why it has not yet been committed to the Western way of life. Have not Great Britain and France been active for a long time in this area and could they not exercise a great deal of influence on its people? Has not the United States enjoyed great prestige in that part of the world through its missionary and educational activities, which have been active in this region for over a century? Why has the Russian or Communist propaganda become such a threat in this area as to prevent its peoples from making up their minds to side with the West? The answer, we are told by foreign observers as well as Near Eastern leaders themselves, is to be found in the lack of material progress achieved and in the general weakness of the area. “The very weakness of the Near East,” says Colonel Eddy, “the very lack of industrialization there, the very lack of any strong armed forces on which friends of the Near East might count: those are the conditions which have made it, and make it today, a vacuum—a vacuum which has terrific sucking power. And the wind is blowing from the North.” - Majid Khadduri, “The United States and Political Stability in the Near East” World Affairs, 1951.

“Whether on the issue of immigration or on that of Jewish statehood, Truman was aware of considerable resistance to these initiatives in the State Department and the military. He spoke somewhat deprecatingly of the “striped pants boys” who, according to him, did not care enough about the fate of Jewish displaced persons and who were mainly concerned with Arab reactions to American proposals. Indeed, the State Department professionals, watching as they did over the entire range of U.S. interests in the Middle East, viewed the farreaching commitments to the Zionists with apprehension. The same was true of Acheson, a man supremely loyal and devoted to Truman, who held his own opinion on the matter: “I did not share the President’s views on the Palestine solution to the pressing and desperate plight of great numbers of displaced Jews. . . . [T]o transform the country into a Jewish state capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.” Similarly, Acheson found Roosevelt’s and Truman’s assurances to consult the Arabs inconsistent with their sympathy toward Zionist aspirations.

Serious reservations about support for the Zionist program were also voiced by the military. In response to the president’s request for an opinion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended against any action that would cause disturbances in Palestine beyond Britain’s military capability to control and definitely opposed the use of U.S. forces. Such a use of troops, they believed, would not only hurt British and American interests in the Middle East (including adverse effects on control of oil) but also pave the way for the Soviet Union “to replace the United States and Britain in influence and power in much of the Middle East.”

Perhaps most vocal on this issue was the secretary of defense, James Forrestal. He spoke to the president repeatedly about the peril of arousing Arab hostility, which might result in denial of access to petroleum resources in their area, and about “the impact of this question on the security of the United States.”

In spite of these critical voices within the administration, Truman gradually was won over to the idea that a Jewish state should be established. Thus when the UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended partition of the mandated territory into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as an international enclave, the president instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. Accordingly, the U.S. delegate in the un General Assembly voted for partition on November 29, 1947. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv, and the next step for the U.S. government was to decide the time and kind of recognition to be extended to it. The president did not hesitate: within eleven minutes of Israel’s proclamation of statehood the president gave de facto recognition to the newly created Jewish state. It was followed by the de jure recognition on January 31, 1949.

In shaping his policy toward Palestine Truman experienced continuous pressures, especially from the Jewish community, virtually from the very moment he took office as president. These pressures were not limited to solicitation of his political and diplomatic support. “Top Jewish leaders in the United States were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of the Jewish aspirations in Palestine.”

. . .In shaping his policy toward Palestine Truman experienced continuous pressures, especially from the Jewish community, virtually from the very moment he took office as president. These pressures were not limited to solicitation of his political and diplomatic support. “Top Jewish leaders in the United States were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of the Jewish aspirations in Palestine.”

When the Palestine question reached the forum of the United Nations, Zionist efforts to ensure partition gained in intensity. They also bifurcated: some were directed toward securing a favorable vote of lesser Latin American countries and some were aiming straight at the U.S. president. According to Truman,

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me.”

The president’s daughter, Margaret, also testifies to the relentlessness and intensity of the Zionist campaign that “irritated” the president. Zionist leaders, she recalls, urged her father to “browbeat” South American and other countries into supporting partition. She acknowledges that “It was one of the worst messes of my father’s career. … To tell the truth about what had happened would have made him and the entire American government look ridiculous. Not even in his memoirs did he feel free to tell the whole story, although he hinted at it. Now I think it is time for it to be told.” Thus she reveals that on August 23, 1947, some three months before the UN partition vote, the president expressed his disapproval of Zionist pressures in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt: “The action of some of our United States Zionists will prejudice everyone against what they are trying to get done. I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top, they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.”

But the president’s resentment at the pressures intensified when they were accompanied by threats. Margaret Truman recalls an episode when, in October 1948, a New York Democratic Party delegation called on her father to urge him to offer Israel de jure recognition, lift the arms embargo, and endorse the widest possible boundaries for the Jewish state. Failure to do this, they warned, would result in certain loss of New York State. On this occasion Truman did not conceal his irritation. “Dad looked them in the eye and said: ‘You have come to me as a pressure group. If you believe for one second that I will bargain my convictions for the votes you imply would be mine, you are pathetically mistaken. Good morning.’ ” - “An excerpt from, “Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East” By Wilbur Crane Eveland, 1980, Forbidden Bookshelf, ‘Chapter Three – Thirty Years of Indifference’.

“At the same time, focusing on the current crisis has now led to consistent failures in the U.S. strategy when dealing with Iraq and the Middle East for the last two decades – and has already turned two apparent “victories” into real world defeats. From the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present, the United States has never had a workable grand strategy for Iraq or any consistent plans and actions that have gone beyond current events.” - Anthony H. Cordesman, “America’s Failed Strategy in the Middle East: Losing Iraq and the Gulf” CSIS, January 2, 2020.