VECTORS

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Clinton's Second Term Grand Design for Middle East

By Franz Schurmann

Date: 10-22-96

With conflict spreading throughout the Mideast, the Clinton Administration is preparing a radical new approach that could transform U.S. relations not only with Israel but with Iran and Iraq as well. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, author of The Logic of World Power and other books dealing with U.S. foreign policy, has traveled extensively in the Middle East and reads widely in the Arab and Persian-language news media.

You'd never guess it from this mother of all dead presidential campaigns, but not since Truman has any president so expanded the American Empire in the Middle East as Bill Clinton.

In 1947 Truman proclaimed his "Greece-Turkey Doctrine" placing the U.S. alongside Britain as imperial guardians of a Middle East then facing de-colonization. Today Clinton is making moves that could some day give the U.S. the same power over the region that it still exercises over Europe through NATO.

At the heart of the new strategy is a divide-and-rule tactic in which the U.S. seeks to position itself as the referee. As in boxing all eyes focus on the combatants but it's the referee who wields the ultimate power.

The new strategy is most sharply defined in the Mideast's two major arenas of conflict -- Israel versus Palestine and Iran versus Iraq.

In Shimon Peres' day, Clinton showered massive backing on Israel but offered big incentives to the Palestinians if they would go along with the Oslo Accords peace process. King Hussein of Jordan approved with enthusiasm, as did Mubarak of Egypt. Even Syria's Hafiz al-Asad was cautiously interested.

Today, with Netanyahu in power, the old approach has backfired. Israeli-Palestinian relations are worse than they have been in years. Hussein has written Netanyahu off as hopeless. Mubarak refused to answer Clinton's summons to attend a Mideast conflict resolution session in Washington.

During a joint press conference with King Hussein in Jericho, Arafat opened the door for the U.S. to assume the referee role: he proposed that American troops replace Israeli troops in Hebron to keep Israeli settlers and Hebron Arabs apart.

If the U.S. accepts the offer, it will mark a momentous transformation in U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian relations. Instead of being Washington's most favored client in the world, Israel will turn into just another boxer in the arena of global politics. Arafat, meanwhile, will be transformed from a virtual sell-out in the eyes of many Arabs to the other respected boxer in the ring. Both combatants will jockey for position with equal status under the unbiased eyes of the U.S. referee.

Even more dramatic are the moves afoot to transform U.S. relations with Iran and Iraq -- the two biggest combatants in the region.

Official U.S. policy towards the two is "dual containment" -- a policy that brands both as dangerous demons. The policy aimed to create a ring of peace surrounding Israel made up of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the Saudis' tacitly approval. The two demons -- Iran and Iraq, both vehemently anti-Israel -- were to be kept out of that circle.

If the policy had worked, a Middle Eastern common market would have arisen comprising the countries in the ring but with links to the Gulf, Europe and East Asia.

Now the ring is gone, replaced by Washington's greatest nightmare -- conflict spreading everywhere like some vast oil spill: in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Eastern Turkey, southern Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, Southern Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Algeria. Meanwhile, oil prices are relentlessly rising.

The only way for the U.S. to maintain its tottering imperial position in the region is to make a dramatic move -- similar to what Nixon did in regard to China -- that would redefine its relations with both Teheran and Baghdad.

Like Arafat's proposal to the U.S., a key opening for such a breakthrough comes from an unlikely source -- the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. That victory has significantly altered the perception of an "Iranian threat" in the West. The Talibans, who are Sunni Muslims, are regarded as more fanatically fundamentalist than their bitter enemies, the Iranian Shi'ites. If the Talibans' revolutionary ideology spreads to its neighbors, it could send shock waves right across Eurasia.

Iran -- and Iraq as well -- have other reasons for accommodating themselves to a radically new U.S. role in the region: the emergence of the radical PKK Kurdish insurgency as the key player in Iraqi Kurdistan.

For over a decade, Iran and Iraq have backed rival Kurdish forces while the U.S. has unsuccessfully sought to bring the two together. With neither group strong enough to control Iraqi Kurdistan, their continued bickering only paves the way for the PKK to expand. Branded as terrorists by both Turkey and the U.S., opposed by Iran and feared by Iraq, the PKK provides a perfect excuse for U.S.-engineered cooperation between all for parties.

In what now seems certain to be his second term, Clinton could be preparing a new Mideastern grand design of cooperation between all existing powers to crush fundamentalism and radical insurgency throughout the Mideast.