Is it goodbye, America?

The Arab world might want to watch what happens now that WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to posting leaked sensitive documents online, has released secret American military field reports from the war in Afghanistan. What has resonated most is information that Pakistan, the United States’ purported ally in the war, has been coordinating with the Taliban frequently against the Americans.

Why should this matter to the Arabs? Because the single most destabilizing development in the Middle East during the past year and a half has been the American drawdown in Iraq – one that is even more psychological than political and military. And to witness a replication of this in Afghanistan due to declining support for the war, which the information provided by WikiLeaks can only exacerbate, would have a significant impact on the broader region.

That’s not to suggest that Washington should maintain its forces indefinitely in Iraq, and the withdrawal that must be completed by the end of this month will still leave behind up to 50,000 military personnel. But the United States under President Barack Obama has revised its ambitions in the region, downwards. The administration has many objectives, but also no clear strategy binding these together. Its minimalism in Iraq has created a vacuum, one the Arab states and Iran are competing to fill. The end result will define the Gulf region, and beyond, for years to come, yet the unavoidable conclusion is that the Americans are not proactively shaping this process.

Which leads us to Afghanistan. There, too, an ill-thought-out American retreat will have grave regional consequences. The Obama administration is losing confidence in its Afghan venture, which is hardly surprising, and the moral of the story as provided by WikiLeaks shows why: The Americans simply cannot win the conflict if Pakistan is working against them, in its own bid to bring much of Afghanistan once again under Islamabad’s thumb.

This week, David Ignatius of the Washington Post examined the WikiLeaks affair, writing that it “has been damaging partly because it came at a time when the Washington mood about Afghanistan was darkening … White House officials talk these days about seeking an ‘acceptable endstate’ in Afghanistan, rather than victory.”

And what does this endstate entail? “[A] patchwork process that brings greater security through a stronger Afghan national army and police, plus the tribally based ‘local police.’ The crucial driver will be a political process of reconciliation, brokered partly by Pakistan.”

For those who followed the twists and turns of American thinking on Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, this will sound familiar. At the time, the Bush administration also found itself adrift in the face of a stubborn insurgency, and imagined that the solution lay in building up the Iraqi army and police force. Like Obama’s team today, it considered that American salvation in Iraq might require ceding more room to the country’s neighbors to pacify the situation, an approach notably expressed in the Iraq Study Group report.

To his credit, President George W. Bush was never convinced by this rationale, perhaps because he realized that the neighbors were the ones most responsible for Iraq’s travails. It was always unlikely that they would reach an agreement that could be to the benefit of the Iraqis. This truth now applies just as well to the Afghans. Pakistan, like overbearing geographical neighbors anywhere, holds the keys to some problems in Afghanistan; but because of the enmity it elicits among neighborhood rivals, not to say among powerful Afghan ethnic groups, Islamabad cannot possibly impose order on its own.

Washington seems blithely unaware of what is going on. For many officials in the American capital, talk of a United States in retreat is absurd. The Obama administration is involved in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, you will hear them say; it remains a player in Iraq, and is working harder than ever to contain Iran. That may be true, but is also misleading. Talks between the Palestinians and Israelis are going nowhere, and the administration will avoid redoubling its efforts if failure becomes inevitable. In Iraq, the Americans have been largely invisible during the government-formation process.

As for Iran, it’s true that Washington has tightened sanctions on the regime, in conjunction with its European allies. However, the primary motive, and quite understandably, has been to avoid being drawn into a military conflict with Tehran. In other words, the administration is doing its best to more fully avoid the region’s tribulations, once again interpreting its political mandate in a modest way.

Some, of course, may welcome this. However, that’s not the point. The broader Middle East has been accustomed to the reality of American power for six decades, creating some sort of political balance, albeit at times a debilitating one. When Washington doesn’t fulfill its role a free-for-all ensues. We should brace ourselves for more modesty from Washington, and the headaches that will accompany it.