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| Policy speeches vs policy |
| 2017-12-17 |
| [Jpost] President Donald Trump is scheduled to release a new US national security strategy on Monday. This past Tuesday Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster gave a speech laying out some of its components in a speech in Washington. McMaster’s speech was notable because in it he laid out a host of policies that McMaster himself has reportedly opposed since he was appointed to his position in February. McMaster for instance has been open in his opposition to linking terrorism with Islam. He has also reportedly insisted on limiting US actions in Syria and Iraq to defeating Islamic State. McMaster reportedly fired his deputy for Middle East policy Derek Harvey last summer due to Harvey’s advocacy of combating Iran’s consolidation of control over Syria through its proxies President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah. In his speech on Tuesday, McMaster embraced the policies he has reportedly opposed. He discussed at length the threat of what he referred to as "radical Islamist ideology." That ideology, which the US had previously interpreted "myopically," constitutes "a grave threat to all civilized people," he said. McMaster regretted US myopia noting, "We didn’t pay enough attention to how it’s being advanced through charities, madrassas and other social organizations." McMaster fingered Turkey and Qatar, two ostensible US allies, as the main sponsors and sources of funding for Islamist ideology that targets Western interests. He noted that in the past Saudi Arabia had served as a major sponsor of radical Islam. But Riyadh has been replaced by Qatar and by Turkey, he said. ...The problem with McMaster’s speech and the policy paper it set the stage for is that it is hard to know if they reflect an actual change in policy. Certainly his position and general drift haven’t been reflected in US actions in several key countries this week. The day after McMaster’s speech the US Embassy in Beirut announced delivery of another $120 million in military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces. As Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has repeatedly stated, the LAF is a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps controlled directly by Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy army. The Hezbollah-controlled LAF is the fifth-largest recipient of US military assistance worldwide. According to Ambassador Elizabeth Richard, the LAF has received in excess of $1.5 billion in military aid over the past decade. ...It isn’t surprising, and to a degree it is reasonable, that the US is of two minds about its Middle East policy. For decades the US has both opposed and appeased its Middle Eastern enemies, and supported and turned on its allies. Under Obama, the two-faced policy was driven by Obama’s ideological conviction that the US must align its Middle East policy with Iran and away from its traditional allies led by Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Under other presidents ‐ including Trump ‐ the US’s double-dealing has been more a testament to the US’s inability to tell its friends from its foes. Over the years, the US has been unable to tell its allies from its enemies because they were fluid. As McMaster rightly recalled, for years the Saudis behaved like the Qataris. And they also served as the anchor of the US alliance system with the Sunni Arab world. Even today, as Crown Prince Muhammad and Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Egypt make unprecedented steps to fight both jihadist forces and the ideology of jihad, the US cannot know whether either leader will be alive tomorrow or if they will have a sudden change of heart and leave the US high and dry. ...The significant positions McMaster set out on Tuesday will in all likelihood be reflected in the document Trump will release on Monday. But as the arms transfer to Lebanon, Tillerson’s remarks in Paris, and the administration’s incoherent position on Qatar make clear, even the best national security strategies are not worth the paper they are written on unless they are translated into real policies implemented on the ground. Me, the more time goes by, the more I become convinced that the Don read not just Rand, but Heinlein as well. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |