Tag: Qatar

Peace picks, November 18-22

DC’s top events of the week:

1. Oil Security and the US Military Commitment to the Persian Gulf

Monday, November 18 | 9:00am – 2:30pm

George Washington University Elliott School, 1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons Room 602

REGISTER TO ATTEND

9:00-9:20: Introduction
Charles Glaser, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

9:30-11:00: Threats to U.S. Oil Security in the Gulf: Past, Present and Future 
Salim Yaqub, University of California-Santa Barbara
Thomas Lippman, Middle East Institute
Joshua Rovner, Southern Methodist University
Chair: Rosemary Kelanic, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

11:15-12:15: The Economic Stakes: Oil Shocks and Military Costs
Eugene Gholz, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas-Austin
Kenneth Vincent, George Washington University
Chair: Charles Glaser, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

12:45-2:15: Possibilities for U.S. Grand Strategy in the Persian Gulf
Daniel Byman, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Caitlin Talmadge, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU
Rosemary Kelanic, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU
Chair: Charles Glaser, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU

The U.S. strategic objective of protecting Persian Gulf oil has generated little controversy since the Gulf became a focus of U.S. military deployments over three decades ago. This may seem unsurprising given the widely-appreciated importance of oil to the global economy. Nevertheless, quite dramatic changes have occurred in the regional balance of power, the nature of security threats, and the global oil market since the U.S. made its commitment-raising the possibility that the U.S. role should be revisited. This conference examines two critical questions for U.S. grand strategy in the Gulf. First, should the United States continue to rely on military capabilities to preserve the flow of Persian Gulf oil? Second, if the U.S. security commitment remains strategically sound, what military posture should U.S. forces adopt? The conference panels examine the key rationales driving current U.S. policies, the costs and benefits of alternative approaches, and options for revising the U.S. military stance in the region.

Lunch will be served.

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Unhappy allies need to carry more burdens

Everyone’s favorite subject this weekend is America’s allies, who are unhappy for many reasons:

  1. France and Germany don’t like their phones bugged, and Brazil is also in a lather;
  2. Saudi Arabia wants the Americans to push harder against Syria’s Bashar al Asad and Iran’s nuclear program;
  3. Israel concurs on Iran and would rather President Obama didn’t insist it talk to the Palestinians;
  4. the Egyptian military didn’t like the cutoff of some major military equipment;
  5. President Karzai has not yet agreed to U.S. jurisdiction for troops who commit criminal acts in Afghanistan post-2014.

Everyone found the US government shutdown disconcerting.  No one is looking forward to the January budgetary showdown, except maybe Russian President Putin.  He likes anything that brings America down a peg.

There are solutions for each of these issues.  We’ll no doubt reach some sort of modus vivendi with the Europeans, who won’t want to shut down either their own eavesdropping or America’s.  More likely they’ll want us to share, while swearing off Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande’s cell phones.  The Brazilians will be harder to satisfy, but they aren’t exactly what I would call an ally either.  The Saudis may go off on their own to arm whomever they like in Syria, thus deepening the sectarian conflict there.  That could, ironically, increase the prospects for some sort of political settlement at the much discussed but never convened Geneva 2 conference.  It is hard to find anyone at this point who seriously opposes the effort to negotiate a settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue.  The alternatives (war or containment) are worse.  Even Netanyahu has toned down his objections, while unleashing Sheldon Adelson to advocate nuclear war.  The Egyptian military doesn’t actually need more Abrams tanks; it has lots in storage.  Karzai has convened a loya jirga to approve the continuing American presence in Afghanistan and to share the rap for agreeing to American jurisdiction. Read more

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Breaking up is hard to do

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace yesterday afternoon focused on the changing regional and international atmosphere for the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.* Frederic Wehrey, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment and moderator of the event, opened the discussion asking what the current disagreements with the GCC, particularly Saudi Arabia, mean for the future of US-Gulf relationships?

Abdullah al-Shayji, Professor at Kuwait University, sees the widening trust deficit between the US and the GCC as alarming. This is not the first time that the GCC and US have had disagreements, but Shayji sees something amiss in the relationship. The US hesitation about involvement in Syria, and its overture with Iran, make the GCC question whether it can rely on the US.

The GCC also sees Washington as dysfunctional and fatigued based on sequestration and the government shutdown. The relationship is at a tipping point but not at a critical state yet. The GCC sees itself as shut out from US foreign policy regarding the region and wants a more nuanced and holistic approach.  Diverging trust can ultimately be detrimental to the US-GCC relationship. The US should be more receptive and open-minded toward its junior GCC partner.

Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar Mehran Kamrava focused his comments on Qatar and its changing foreign policy. Before 2010, Qatar wanted to come out of the Saudi shadow. This was mainly a policy of survival, but Doha also made attempts to project power and influence in the region. Qatar had four “ingredients” for its pre-2010 foreign policy: Read more

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Syria has dropped off the screen

The White House justifications for backing out of a bilateral summit with President Putin lack one important one:  Syria.  The list is a long, citing (in addition to the asylum for Edward Snowden):

our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society.

Some might hope that this presages progress in convening the proposed Geneva 2 meeting on Syria, but there is no sign of that.  The more than 100,000 people killed in Syria in the past 2.5 years, the 1.5-2 million who are refugees, the 4 million who are displaced inside Syria and the 7 million in humanitarian need have dropped off the radar of an administration that promised to anticipate and prevent mass atrocities.

A colleague deeply immersed in Syria asked the other day whether watching the Bosnian implosion was this bad.  I answered that it was worse, because the crisis was on the front pages daily.  And it went on for 3.5 years before President Clinton carried out the threat he had made during his first campaign for the presidency to bomb Serb forces.  That is why it is not on the list of reasons for canceling the Obama/Putin meeting.

Why was it on the front pages every day?  The proximate causes were two:  the Bosnians had forceful and effective spokespeople, mainly their ambassador to the UN in New York and their wartime prime minister.  Ambassador Mo Sacirbey was on CNN daily strumming the heartstrings of ordinary Americans.  Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic would whip himself into a lather bemoaning the latest atrocity.  Students organized against the war on college campuses, Congress held hearings, Foreign Service officers resigned and newspapers ran daily accounts of a war in which little of strategic significance was happening.

While Senator McCain and a few others have raised their voices about Syria, mobilization today against the atrocities in Syria extends little beyond the Syrian American community, which is doing its best to funnel in humanitarian assistance but has found no resonance in the broader US population.  There is no recognizable and consistent Syrian voice speaking out daily on US television.

Part of the reason is political instability in the Syrian opposition, which has gone through three or four “presidents” in a couple of years, none of whom became a welcome figure in the American media.  Divided international sponsorship–the Qataris backing the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis backing less Islamist forces–underlies this instability.

The Bosnians faced similar divisions among their international sponsors:  their money and weapons came from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.  But the government in Sarajevo had from the first a stable leadership:  the laconic Alija Izetbegovic was the more or less uncontested first among equals, accepted even by his rivals as the legitimate president of the beleaguered Bosnian state.  There was stolid consistency at the top, which helped to paper over the differences among the international donors and reduce the perceived significance in Washington of the jihadi fighters who joined the Bosnian cause.

In Syria, the Saudis, perhaps emboldened by the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are now trying to play a leadership role by offering  to buy off the Russians.  They have managed to install one of their favorites as president of the Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.  What they have not managed to do is counter the growing significance of the extremist fighters, who have frightened Washington away from embracing the revolutionary cause.

The Syrians are not lacking in rhetorical power:  sister and brother Rafif and Murhaf Jouejati here in DC do a great job trying to bring the latest atrocity to our attention.  But they are doing it essentially as civil society activists rather than as official representatives of the Syrian opposition.  And they are heard mostly in a narrow circle of Syria-watchers and expatriate Syrians, none of whom carry much weight in the broader American body politic.  Syria really has dropped off Washington’s screen.

 

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Tabler and Lynch go ten rounds

The Obama administration’s decision to arm the Syrian rebels is controversial in Washington.  While some support the decision, others consider it “probably [Obama’s] worst foreign policy decision since taking office.”  Last week, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy hosted a debate on Arming the Syrian Rebels: Sliding Toward Iraq or Inching Toward StabilityAndrew Tabler, a senior fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute, argued for arming the rebels.  On the other side stood Marc Lynch, associate professor at George Washington University and editor of Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel.  Robert Satloff, executive director and Howard P. Berkowitz Chair in U.S. Middle East Policy at the Washington Institute, moderated the discussion. Read more

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We all have problems

I tweeted this morning about my weekend in Doha:

Hard to imagine a more telling indictment of US energy policy the past 40 years!

Why did I say that?  Because it’s true:  the extraordinary construction, wealth and obesity that characterize the tiny emirate of Qatar are the result of the almost 40 years since Richard Nixon’s declaration of intent to make the United States energy independent.  Qatar is per capita the highest GDP country in the world today.  It has a tiny population of citizens (I’m told the official number is secret, but fewer than 250,000 citizens seems to be the consensus) out of a total population of 1.9 million.  The country’s wealth is due almost entirely to its exports of oil and natural gas.

A weekend there is a strange experience, especially if you are attending a conference on US/Islamic World relations.  Very few Qataris were present, not least because the Emir is once again suggesting that he will retire soon, making the big thobes jockey for advantage and worried about musical chairs.  So I spent three days couped up (not exactly imprisoned) in a very fine hotel kept at frigid temperatures and learned a lot of interesting things, few of them about Qatar.  But even a short drive through town is enough to understand that there is an enormous amount of money, and sometimes even good taste, behind the extensive building projects.  I’m also told there is a fine Islamic art museum.  Maybe I’ll get there next time. Read more

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