America's 'Back to Basics' Policy – Year One

It sounds good on the surface. Our predecessors overreached but we won't, even though we are the same people who overreached before. They were "maximalists," but we are much more realistic. That is a summary of the "Back to Basics" foreign policy of the Biden administration in the Middle East, as enunciated recently by Brett McGurk, the Biden White House's Coordinator for the Middle East.[1] It is an interesting critique of past U.S. actions, and even more interesting as a type of spin that seeks to present the new administration's aims as more reasonable than those of the past. A cynic would say that Biden is actually a photonegative image of President Trump's policy, with the current administration substituting a maximalist approach in favor of Iran in place of Trump's maximalist approach against it.

The perception of what McGurk spelled out is also of interest. Today, in much of the world, the perception is that the U.S. is weakening, that it is adrift, with weak leadership and an internal crippling existential crisis on multiple levels that may be fatal. My own view is that America is indeed in deep crisis, on many levels, although the expectations of our demise by our adversaries are somewhat premature. China's much publicized rise is not without major challenges and not quite inevitable.[2]

Aside from Beijing and Moscow, perhaps nowhere is American decline as much a topic of conversation as in the Middle East. This sense of decrepitude has been fed by the actions and inactions of the Biden administration during its first year: removing the Yemeni Houthis from the terrorism list, a maximum deference policy towards Iran, the open debacle at the fall of Kabul, being blindsided by the coup in Sudan, difficult discussions breaking into public with the Israelis, Saudis, and Emiratis. I can't think of one friendly government in the region that is sincerely heartened by the actions of the new administration. They are all wary of Washington. Regimes in Damascus, Tehran, Ramallah, and Sanaa may be relieved to some degree at Back to Basics, although hardly grateful to America.[3]

America's internal turmoil over the past two years, from mass rioting, overheated rhetoric, and overturned statues to a botched pandemic response, has also fed into the global narrative of American decline. I remember one senior Middle East official expressing to me his shock at seeing images of the statue of President Andrew Jackson, in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, with a rope around its neck, defaced by graffiti, as mobs tried to bring it down in June 2020. And, for once, it wasn't Al-Jazeera or RT channeling toxic themes about America – or not only them – but Americans themselves.  

Regional governments as varied as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (which seems to have replaced a $23 billion American arms deal with a $19 billion French one)[4] increasingly look to other countries for energy and security deals.[5] China, Russia, Turkey and France all benefited for being clear alternatives to dealing with the tremulous Americans.

America still has some arrows in its quiver: A still powerful and ubiquitous military (albeit tarnished after Afghanistan). Weapons deals (with multiple strings attached) and resupply of existing past arms sales certainly. U.S. sanctions are still something to be avoided, if at all possible, given still-potent American hegemony over the world financial system (just ask the Syrians and Iranians). Then there are the occasional massive non-military projects like the deal signed in 2020 for the American construction company Bechtel to work on Saudi Arabia's Neom city project (companies from other countries, including China, have their own pieces of this massive development).[6] Thousands still want to study in the U.S. (the majority of international university students in the U.S. are from China and India but the numbers also include 30,000 students from Arab Gulf states).[7]

The Biden administration's policy towards an ambitious Iran seems extraordinarily dangerous, but I do think some of the other actions the U.S. has taken or not taken can be seen within the context of a course correction in the face of obvious imperial overreach by the U.S. – a course correction which the last three American administrations, with many a misstep and variations here and there, have rightly seen as overdue. But there are some problems.

First of all, describing the current policy as – unlike those in the past – not focused on regime change is not quite accurate. A policy that will further empower Iran with cash and impunity in exchange for an illusory nuclear promise is indeed in favor of regime change. It will strengthen the regime change Iran has already wrought in the region and empower Tehran to pursue further efforts at regime change elsewhere in the region. Rewarding Iran is rewarding Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, the Iraqi death squads beholden to Iran, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. This is betting on more instability, not less, whether or not Iran gets a bomb. "Listening to allies" on the one hand, and then following an extraordinarily volatile path with the main destabilizing force in the Middle East on the other, is a lopsided, transparent approach unlikely to convince anyone in the region.

In this sense, Back to Basics is not new at all, and the results I describe above are not unintended consequences but quite intentional, as Mike Doran and Tony Badran described early this year in their incisive "realignment" piece.[8] What is being sold as "modest" and "steadier," a return to realism and the status quo after years of vaulting ambition, is anything but.

Those who see much of U.S. policy over the past few decades, in the region and elsewhere, as expensive, exhausting, and counterproductive are not wrong. A course correction was needed, and Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden were not wrong in sensing that. On Iran, it is my view that Trump was right and the appeasers were wrong – something that will become even clearer in the months ahead.[9] But in many ways, all three presidents were not bold enough in their course corrections.[10]

A much broader, more ruthless, reexamination of the basic premises of American foreign policy still awaits, one that incorporates a tough look at our own internal economic, social and ideological challenges. America's greatest recent foreign policy disasters, from two expensive military debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan to the "dazzling stupidity" of empowering China were self-inflicted.[11] One step away from the madness is to stop listening to those who were so deeply invested in bringing us to where we are today.

*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.