Impeachment, the Iran Crisis and US Foreign Policy in the Middle East

What impact will the soon to commence impeachment inquiry, conducted by the US House of Representatives, have on the foreign policy of the United States?  Specifically, how will it affect the ongoing crisis with Iran and US relations with Saudi Arabia and American allies in the Persian Gulf?  What do recent developments in the Trump presidency tell about the manner in which populist leaders conduct foreign policy?

There is little disagreement that US foreign policy under the Trump administration has been dysfunctional.  Positions on key US foreign policy issues, e.g., US attitudes towards the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un, have changed from month to month, sometimes week to week.  Except for the trade war with China, a pet peeve of Donald Trump, there is nothing approaching the most skeletal form of a “Trump Doctrine.”

Many key ambassadorial positions still have not been filled since Donald Trump took office and key policies which might address some of Trump’s concerns, such as what he refers to as a “migrant crisis” at the US-Mexican border, namely economic and law enforcement aid to address unemployment and the power of drug gangs in Central America, have been cut or eliminated.

Nowhere has the chaotic nature of US foreign policy been more on display than in the Middle East.  The haste with which Trump declared that the Da^cish (Islamic State) “completely defeated” failed to show any understanding of the fact that the terrorists had faded into sympathetic communities in Northeastern Syria and North Central Iraq. His subsequent decision to withdraw 2000 US advisors from northern Syria who have played a key role in helping the Syrian Democratic Forces defeat the Da^cish constituted another indication of his complete lack of understanding of the continuing threat played by terrorist in Syria and Iraq.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, which was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, has only divided US allies who signed onto the accord and put the US at odds with Russia and China which support it.  While many nations in the MENA region resent Iranian sending troops to support the genocidal regime of Bashar a-Asad, as well as interfering in Iraqi and Lebanese domestic politics, an international sanctions regime would have been much more effective in pushing Iran to pull back from such interference if it had left the JCPOA in place.  Withdrawing from the JCPOA, which the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had scrupulously adhered to, served to make it all the more difficult for Iran to reduce its regional meddling because it would appear to be weak and caving in to US pressure.

A targeted but low key sanctions policy, deployed through a multi-lateral framework, but without all the bluster by Trump over the JCPOA (which he seems to have more against because it was enacted by Barak Obama than based on any well thought-through logic).  In the context of the US-Iranian crisis engendered by Trump and his key foreign policy advisors, the US appears weaker not stronger in it struggle with Iran. 

The US failed to respond when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) seized a British tanker or when the Iranians shot down a US drone. After threatening to attack Iran in retaliation, Trump abruptly cancelled the attack to chagrin of the US military.  In the process, it sent an inadvertently but powerful message to the US; Saudi and Gulf allies.  There is no US “security umbrella” which will guarantee the protection of the Saudi or Gulf monarchies from an Iranian attack.

The impeachment inquiry, raising from the transcript, which have emerged from Trump’s telephone call on July 25, 2019 with the recently elected Ukrainian presented Zelensky, detailing Trump’s effort to use the Ukrainian leader to gather political dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, have thrown the White House into a frenzy.  Trump’s daily behavior has never been structured.  However, from the time the news an anonymous whistle-blower’s report was given to Congress by the Inspector-General of the Directory of National Intelligence until now, trump’s outbursts and behavior have become even more erratic than usual.

The war in Yemen recently saw the withdrawal of UAE troops from the conflict as its interests have come to diverge with Saudi Arabia, especially in newly contested areas in south Yemen.  The UAE withdrawal, and the inability of the Saudis to defeat the Houthis through an air war, had some analysts envisioning a possible opening for finally being the warring parties to the negotiating table.  With the Trump White House under siege and Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence also implicated in the Ukraine debacle, there is no possibility that the US will be playing any significant role in the Yemen War anytime soon.

The September 17, 2019 Israeli elections also threw a monkey wrench in Trump’s plan to enhance his reelection chances in 2020. Having angered many neo-conservatives by his refusal to call out Vladimir Putin for interfering in US elections (and even telling Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, that he didn’t find such interference problematic since the US does it in foreign elections as well), and his playing up to North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, Trump hoped that his strong ties to Benjamin Netanyahu would provide him the bona fides to offset his behavior towards two states which the US foreign policy community overwhelmingly consider to be US enemies.

With another crisis now brewing in Egypt, with demonstrations against the regime of General Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, due to the lack of jobs for youth, the best the US could do was to issue a statement asking the Egyptian governments to allow peaceful demonstrations to take place.  Egypt, together with Israel and Saudi Arabia, comprise the US’ three most important allies in the Middle East. All three states are facing problems of different orders of magnitude.  But don’t expect the Trump administration to offer any guidance on how to deal with these problems.

As I have argued elsewhere, populist leaders like Trump are self-centered and transactional in their behavior, which means that they never adopt a long-view of domestic or foreign policies.  This lacuna represents their Achilles heel. As Steve Bannon noted, describing Boris Johnson and Trump, “They’re both showmen, they’re both performers. The trouble is, that gets you elected, but it doesn’t help you govern.”

What we can expect in this fall is a further retreat of the US from the foreign policy arena and an ever greater opening for two authoritarian powers, China and Russia in particular, to fill the vacuum.