This editorial is written from a book to give you an analysis of the geopolitics. The book being – Andrew Bacevich’s America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
America can always be counted upon to do the right thing, to paraphrase Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, once they have exhausted all other possibilities.
In the Middle East, then, the United States has shown extraordinary creativity – for four decades now, it has bungled its way through the region with devastating cost to the locals yet with little to show by way of securing its own interests. Andrew Bacevich’s America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History presents a scathing critique of Washington’s policies in the Arab world that have escalated in intensity over the years only to worsen the situation.
America’s War traces the beginning of Washington’s downward spiral in the (Greater) Middle East to the oil shock in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A scarcity of petroleum, to the most automobile-obsessed culture in the world, was nothing less than an assault on its core value of conspicuous consumption. Much like the British Empire was built in a fit of absent-mindedness to protect the Crown’s Indian possessions, it was the United States’ quest for energy security that drove it deeper into a West Asian quagmire.
This was not a simple case of an imperial presidency but the idea that the United States should be more involved in the Middle East – with boots on the ground, if need be – received widespread support from the media, think tanks, as well as legislators. As the author makes clear, this was a war of choice – there was no clear and present danger to the sovereignty or integrity of the US or its allies.
Horrifyingly, as Bacevich shows, American views on the Middle East were unbelievably naive and obtuse. In all the Beltway policy advocacy, Islam hardly found a mention; nor did other schisms that have divided the Middle East for centuries – Shia-Sunni, Arab-Persian, Arab-Turk, Muslim-kafir. The US was comfortably ensconced in its secular, post-Enlightenment bubble wherein such identities carried no meaning. This is intriguing because the mid-1970s was also the time when American academia was undergoing the Cultural Turn, an intellectual reappraisal of narratives, universality of values, agency, and points of view.
However, it was former US president Jimmy Carter’s decision to materially support anti-Soviet factions in Afghanistan that opened the floodgates of American weaponry in Central and West Asia. Aid that initially consisted of medical supplies, communication equipment, and small arms ballooned under his successor, Ronald Reagan, to include training, explosives, and the famous Stinger missiles.
Bacevich takes us from Afghanistan to Iran, Lebanon, Libya, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Somalia, the Balkans, and finally to the regional war on terror. In every theatre, the US was oblivious to local socio-cultural dynamics and believed that if brute force was not yielding the desired results, they were simply not using enough. US engagements with vastly outmatched foes, whether it was in the Gulf of Sirte or sands of Al Dibdibah, resembled a turkey shoot; most US casualties arose from asymmetric methods of warfare its foes employed.
US goals were further hampered by their gradualist approach to “decisive” action. Most involvement began with Washington dithering about playing a role, to be replaced by a search for regional partners in the Pollyannaish optimism that such allies would have the same motivations as those of Foggy Bottom. In the third stage, the US would reluctantly deploy troops and advisers but never enough to get the job done, if that is even clear. Finally, Washington would be in an immense hurry to get its boys back; this haste, noticed by its enemies, would be exploited with the result that the region is more hostile and unstable than it was before US intervention. Bluntly put, American aid has done more damage than American bombs.
The chapter on the Iran-Iraq War was particularly illuminating. For example, when an Iraqi Mirage fighter jet attacked the USS Stark, Washington promptly blamed Tehran! When the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, then president George H W Bush defiantly declared that he would never apologise for the incident. The US did, however, later pay $61 million to the families of the 274 passengers who had died on board – still without admitting to any wrongdoing.
Bacevich’s observations are nothing new to anyone who grew up in the Middle East, perhaps to most who did not grow up in America. Bacevich is refreshingly candid that the US was willing to support freedom, democracy, and prosperity as long as it got the lion’s share of it. However, the chronological flow of America’s War from debacle to unmitigated catastrophe has a powerful effect on the reader. The thread connecting what might appear to be loosely related yet disparate events – the results of one incomplete intervention fed into the next ill-advised adventure that catalysed a blowback elsewhere – weaves a depressing report card of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Worse, as Bacevich and countless others have observed, American justice would be unevenly and opportunistically applied: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have consistently escaped the consequences of their actions.
The common theme in the making of US foreign policy, not just in the Middle East, is that Americans are sure of their righteous narrative and they are convinced that technological and military superiority will resolve sociopolitical problems. The US sees itself as progressively marching with History, a narrative all others (should) want to imitate. It is this same thinking that fuelled Washington’s policies towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War – and got it to a place where its nuclear arsenal neared an insane 30,000 warheads. The only difference between the Cold War and the Middle East is that US assertiveness came late to the desert. This fundamental failure to understand the world, to occasionally think beyond Anglo-American or Western modernity only foretells more pain and suffering in the future.
Despite an acerbic evaluation of US policy in the Middle East, Bacevich does not offer anything by way of solutions to America’s wayward policies. The implicit suggestion is that Americans should introspect on what matters to them as individuals and as a society. This offering, though, can apply to anyone in any situation and is not of much help. In a manner, the author comes close to what he criticised Carter for doing, that is, tell Americans off for their lifestyle. A more pessimistic conclusion the book hints at is that it is also possible that the Middle East cannot be “solved.” Chaos may indeed be the order of the day and it, too, has beneficiaries.
The bigger question Bacevich’s work raises is of narrative: it is not just the US but anyone that can be too caught up in their own world view. This is partly inevitable but greater self-consciousness may give us some warning. As American diplomat and political scientist Henry Kissinger once lamented, government does not leave much time for reflection and all you have when in office is the intellectual capital you went in with. This places a great responsibility on academia, the media, and other opinion shapers to genuinely grapple with the complex issues of the day and resist the temptation of a witty sound bite.
The book is a great insight.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.