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BOOK
REVIEW
Reconfiguring the Middle East
Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future by
Stephen Kinzer
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
While the Barack Obama administration has achieved a "reset"
to calm hitherto stormy relations with Russia, it is still
adrift in the unforgiving terrain of the Middle East. Over
the last two years, the United States has tried donning the
roles of a neutral peace broker and a conciliator in this
region, but the stalemates and dangerous face-offs have not
died down. Chances of new wars that would embroil the US
remain high in the Middle East, despite Obama's attempts to
reach out to foes and restructure equations with allies.
Inferring from award-winning foreign correspondent Stephen
Kinzer's new book, it appears that the main reason why the
US continues to mope around without breakthroughs is its
inability to "reset" toxic partnerships with Saudi Arabia
and Israel. The author maintains that unless Washington
inches closer to Turkey and Iran, while distancing itself
from Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Middle East is doomed to
repeat old patterns of war, terrorism, autocracy and
despair.
Kinzer begins with a historical overview of popular
struggles for democracy in Iran and Turkey, both of which
were inspired and aided by the US. American sympathies for
Iran's constitutional democracy movement go back to figures
like Howard Baskerville and Morgan Shuster, a schoolteacher
and a lawyer who lived in Iran and assisted anti-monarchical
and anti-colonial movements at critical junctures before
World War I. Iranians of that era saw the US as a benevolent
anti-colonial foreign power that was unlike exploitative
European imperialists such as Britain and
Russia.
 Around
this time, radical Turks inspired by ideas of liberty and
parliamentarianism challenged Ottoman absolutism. Mustafa
Kemal's war against "backwardness" and concerted push for
modernity by infusing principles like self-determination and
citizenship had parallels to the career of George Washington
in the US. In 1923, Kemal established the first ever
republic in a Muslim country and transformed Turkish society
along Western Enlightenment lines. He carved out a secular
state, a novelty in the Middle East which was imitated by
Reza Shah in Iran, albeit not with the same degree of
success.
In the nascent Cold War years, the US was welcomed in both
Turkey and Iran as a necessary democratic counter to Soviet
expansionary designs. But the
Central
Intelligence
Agency-orchestrated coup d'etat against
Iranian
prime
minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 sullied
the American image irreparably. Kinzer captures the angry
outlook of Iranians since that catastrophic blow as follows:
"We had a democracy once, but you (Americans) took it away
from us!" (pg 99)
Anti-American sentiment also rose in
Turkey in the 1960s in response to the
massive Cold War-induced US military presence in the
country. A low-level civil war and repeated military coups
in Turkey from the 1970s onward were serious setbacks to
democracy that the US abetted in the name of containing
communism. Washington enjoyed manipulating the pro-Western
client regimes in Turkey and Iran (up to 1979), but it had
scarce goodwill at the societal level in both these
countries during the Cold War. Many Iranians who
participated in the 1979 Revolution to overthrow the
"pro-American Shah" ironically hoped for a return to the
democracy the US had robbed from them in 1953.
In Ayatollah-ruled Iran, a strong democratic consciousness
survives despite the stunting of civic life by an oppressive
Islamist theocracy. Kinzer cites the spontaneous uprising
after the disputed 2009 presidential elections as evidence
that "Iranians, like Turks, grasp the essence of democracy
and want the freedom that their Turkish neighbors enjoy."
(pg 141)
The century-long experience of fighting for (and
intermittently losing) democracy sets Turkey and Iran apart
from their neighbors in the Middle East. Kinzer believes
that the memory and yearning for democracy is most advanced
in these two countries, making them "good soul mates for
Americans." (pg 11) Shared political values and culture
allow them to be more promising allies of the US than Riyadh
and Tel Aviv. The "old triangle" (US-Saudi
Arabia-Israel) has not yielded stability
in the Middle East and has kept unleashing waves of violence
and repression.
Kinzer proposes a new American grand strategy involving a
fundamental shift away from coddling Saudi Arabia and
Israel, states that have not served US long-term interests.
During the Cold War, a tight alliance between Washington and
Riyadh was sealed by oil, arms procurement and covert
funding of anti-American movements around the world. This
occurred in spite of what Kinzer characterizes as "the vast
cultural and psychological chasm that separates Americans
from Wahhabi Arabs". (pg 146) A society dominated by
religious zealots who detest modernity, Saudi Arabia is the
antithesis of the American way of life.
The US-Israel special relationship is, of course,
underpinned by shared values, ideals and Biblical
traditions, but Israel's importance to Washington during the
Cold War stemmed from its Saudi-like role as a secret
conduit for training and arming regimes and rebel groups
that the US could not openly associate with. As "dirty war"
contractors for the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia destabilized
societies on a global scale. But with no superpower rivalry
around anymore, argues Kinzer, the US has a chance to
re-imagine its retrogressive relations with these two Middle
Eastern powers.
The author contends that the optimal solution for
democratizing Saudi Arabia would be for Washington to untie
its intensely intimate camaraderie with the al-Saud family.
This course will permit Saudi society to "mature in its own
way, make its own mistakes, and find its own path". (pg 182)
To resolve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
Kinzer recommends that the US impose a peace plan of its own
by drawing upon past UN resolutions. Such a bold move can
only occur if
Washington can overcome the
"Israel-right-or-wrong mantra" in the American body politic.
How the Obama administration or its successors can
practically override the Israel lobby is perhaps too
sensitive a topic for Kinzer to grapple, but such a path
does hold clues to a more peaceful future in the Middle
East.
In the past decade, Turkey has emerged as a hyperactive
international peacemaker. Ankara's blending of Islam with
democracy has lent it a newfound legitimacy in the Muslim
world, which had previously dismissed it as an American
lackey. Turkey's conscious reinvention after "decoupling"
itself from the US has yielded substantial soft power
benefits. Kinzer urges Washington to welcome this
development instead of feeling irritated at the loss of an
erstwhile stooge.
Although the Obama administration prematurely rejected the
Turkish-brokered initiative to resolve the Iranian nuclear
program crisis, it is in the US' best interests to be guided
by Turkey on major outstanding problems in the region.
Kinzer cautions against the typical American habit of not
"listening to other powers", which could undo a potential
recalibrated partnership with Turkey. Viewing Turkey as a
vassal state and expecting it to be a "yes man" is now
outdated, especially as it has widened its global reach as a
problem solver after the European Union threw up
insurmountable barriers to admitting it as a member.
Whether Washington likes it or not, Iran too has grown like
Turkey into a major regional power in the last decade. An
accommodation with the regime in Tehran
serves American strategic interests, but such a deal must
not come at the cost of crushing Iran's besieged civil
society and pro-democracy movement. A lasting normalization
of US-Iran ties may have to wait until moderate democratic
forces find their feet in Iranian politics.
To generalize that the US has got it all wrong in the Middle
East is easy and almost cliched. Correcting the imbalances
in Washington's relations in the region requires a sea
change in the domestic balance of power within the US as
well as a mitigation of neo-imperial motivations in its
foreign policy.
Kinzer's thesis of "reset", however out-of-the-box, is
premised upon an uncritical and benign understanding of the
nature and purpose of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War
world. But his message that the US should carefully live up
to expectations of nourishing democracy and freedom in the
Middle East, without overly interfering in the region, is a
decent and hopeful one.
Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future by Stephen
Kinzer. Times Books, New York, 2010. ISBN: 978-0805091274.
Price: US$26, 288 pages.
Sreeram Chaulia is Vice Dean of the Jindal School
of International Affairs in Sonipat, India, and the author
of the forthcoming book, International Organizations and
Civilian Protection: Power, Ideas and Humanitarian Aid in
Conflict Zones (IB Tauris).
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.) |
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