Obama’s plan: he knows how to get there … but where?

In a speech to American veterans on Monday, Barack Obama tried to sound reassuring about the war in Afghanistan. It didn’t work.

The president declared: “As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight. And we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick. This will not be easy.” That he sounded uncomfortably defensive was a reminder of how the US tends to get caught up in quandaries from which it is never quite sure how to escape. This, in turn, speaks to a deeper problem of the Obama administration. Despite its good intentions, the overriding strategy in the Middle East is difficult to determine. What, to paraphrase the American newspaper columnist Thomas Friedman, is the strong idea that we can associate with the US president? No one knows.

At best a state’s foreign policy strategy is usually a blueprint loosely adhered to. Bureaucratic interaction and rivalries, public opinion, the inability to fund ventures, and bad surprises all intervene to undermine the best-laid schemes. That Mr Obama’s approach to the Middle East has often sounded more like an unsystematic to-do list than an integrated plan of action is not surprising: US administrations frequently issue a document called a national security strategy, which invariably reads like a chaotic compendium of desirable objectives, the realisation of which is usually left to the vicissitudes of the moment and American vigour.

Take the most famous recent national security strategy, the one released by the Bush administration in 2002 in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks. While it was widely seen as a neo-conservative manifesto, a justification for American unilateralism and pre-emptive action, in fact the document was steeped in contradiction. Alongside passages favoured by the neocons were others reaffirming the tried tenets of US liberal internationalism. Nothing odd there. Like all government papers, it was a product of competing government agendas, a mishmash of sometimes irreconcilable ambitions.

Mr Obama would dislike the comparison, but he has been even more nebulous about American strategy in the Middle East than Mr Bush. At the heart of his difficulties is a recurrent disconnect between means and ends. The president has strong-mindedly reworked the means of American actions, but without any sign that these will allow him to reach his ends.

Take the American relationship with Iran and Syria. When he took office, Mr Obama announced that he would open a dialogue with both countries. This was potentially interesting as it created implicit competition between Tehran and Damascus, close allies, to be the first to manage a diplomatic breakthrough with the US. Washington’s idea was to engage Iran on its nuclear programme, even if such engagement could be extended to a host of other regional issues; and to engage Syria as a way to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process, but also to seek Syrian cooperation in Iraq.

But there was also a risk that Iran and Syria would use this breathing space to advance their paramount goals: for Iran, building a nuclear military capacity that could help to earn it dominance in the Gulf region; and for Syria, a return to its commanding role in Lebanon, after its military withdrawal in 2005. We’re not there yet – but Iran is pressing ahead with its nuclear programme amid signs of serious obstacles in Tehran to American-Iranian normalisation; and Syria has made substantial inroads back into Lebanon, although a 2004 United Nations resolution co-sponsored by the US was passed to prevent this.

The US may still react down the road, but for the foreseeable future the Obama administration is a prisoner of its desire to keep the door open to Iran, buying valuable time for the regime there. As for Syria, while Washington has refused to lift most US sanctions on Bashar Assad’s regime, its ability and dedication to thwart Syrian conduct in Lebanon has greatly diminished in the past two years, which has also benefited Iran and Hizbollah.

Iran and Syria have developed far more consistent strategies in the Middle East than the US. Whether Tehran is shaping events in Iraq, in Lebanon, on the Palestinian front, in Afghanistan or in the Gulf, its principle aim is to avoid containment and build up multiple walls of deterrence to protect itself, its nuclear programme and its efforts to acquire a dominant regional role. Syria’s aspirations are more modest: to regain the upper hand in Lebanon, which provided Syria with regional relevance until 2005, but also to defend its stake in Palestinian politics by supporting Hamas, so it has something to bargain with in peace talks with Israel. None of these measures can square with Washington’s interests.

American behaviour in Iraq is equally difficult to explain. George W Bush was criticised for a war that effectively swept away the Arab counterweight to Iran. Certainly, the Iranians gained from American blunders after Saddam Hussein’s removal. But won’t a US withdrawal from Iraq, scheduled for 2011, actually strengthen Iran’s influence in Iraq and the Gulf? The question may be moot since Mr Obama will not reverse his decision to remove his troops. But if inhibiting Iran is a US priority, then you have to wonder if the president’s current Iraq policy will achieve this.

The US, because of its size and commitments, has less of an opportunity to be cohesive than other states. Ultimately, Iran and Syria, like Israel or the Palestinians, have the luxury of pursuing what are, at the global level, limited aims. But this cannot dispel the sense that under Mr Obama the US has repeatedly worked at cross-purposes in the Middle East, never making clear what its ultimate vision for the region is, what the US is working towards. Mr Bush insisted it was greater democracy. He may have been insincere, but at least his was a definable end. Mr Obama is still lost in a labyrinth of means, the ends still impalpable.