Realism about Allies: What the U.S. Can Expect from Middle Eastern Partners, by Frederick W. Kagan

Allies and Enemies in the war on Terror

Hoover Institution Working Group on Military History

Mili

tary

His

toryA HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY ON ALLIES AND ENEMIES IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Realism about AlliesWHAT THE U.S. CAN EXPECT FROM MIDDLE EASTERN PARTNERS

FREDERICK W. KAGAN

America has come a long way since the days when George Washington warned

against entangling alliances. Americans have instead come to see alliances and

coalitions as essential to their willingness and ability to act on the international stage.

Truly unilateral operations—such as the campaign against the Taliban in 2001–2—

have been anomalies for decades. Foreign policy debates more often turn on whether

a given coalition is large and active enough.

The current debate about American strategy toward ISIS is no exception. Britain,

Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates,

and other states have all contributed combat aircraft, supplies, money, basing, or some

combination. Yet Americans are still debating whether these partners are bearing “their

share” of the burden, in the case of our western allies, and whether they are “really

committed” in the case of the Arab states and Turkey. Americans seem to want to know

that our teammates are as committed as we are, fully share our interests and objectives,

and are contributing at least all they can (and we are generally very hazy about how

much they actually can commit).

This search for equal commitment, perfect interest alignment, and maximum

contributions is, in fact, unrealistic. Perfect interest alignment is almost unattainable

in the real world. We come closest to achieving it with our partners in the English-

speaking world, who generally share our values to a very high degree and are most

likely to see a threat to one as a threat to all. It is not surprising, therefore, that the

(still-)United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have all moved quickly to join our

efforts against ISIS and demonstrated their willingness to put their pilots and even

soldiers in harm’s way. As usual, they have asked very little of the U.S. in return.

Americans must be very careful not to take for granted this crucially-important group

of loyal and like-minded states.

Other NATO allies have also stepped up to greater or lesser degrees, although they

tend to define their interests somewhat differently. NATO itself creates a strong and

natural pull to cooperation with the U.S., but continental European states often see

their interests and even values as more divergent from ours than our English-speaking

partners do. When we work through the diplomatic, bureaucratic, and international

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Frederick W. Kagan • Realism about Allies

legal challenges that preoccupy European states that still seek in this war-torn age

to live a post-war and even post-history life, however, we can generally obtain such

support as their extremely limited defense budgets permit.

Finding true interest-alignment with Arab states is inherently much harder, however.

Whereas Europeans generally feel a relative affinity toward the U.S. and American

values, peoples in post-colonial regions have tended to channel colonial resentment

into an anti-imperialist resistance to American predominance. U.S. (and European)

support for Israel fed that narrative and gave another cause for resentment for many

decades, although the intensity of that particular concern has been fading among

many Arab states and peoples for some time. Muslim populations look at the powerful

and very Christian and secular West with both longing and trepidation. Arab states,

generally quasi-democratic at best and with their own views of human rights and the

appropriate relationships between ruler and ruled, worry that the U.S. and the West will

impose its own ideas about these things upon them, as we sometimes have tried to do.

The chief source of tension between Arab states and the West, however, remains the

eternal tension between regional and extra-regional actors: they know that we can

walk away, and we know that they can’t. The episodic nature of America’s engagement

with the Middle East has, in fact, persuaded most people in the region that we will

periodically walk away, leaving them to face on their own challenges we had been

trying to face together. Regional states therefore do what such states have always

done: they hedge. They avoid committing all of their forces to joint efforts with the

U.S. and they retain contacts and even sometimes alliances with America’s opponents

in the region and the world.

Americans tend to find this behavior puzzling and even treacherous. ISIS is a threat

to all states in the region. Surely they all recognize that. Surely they should be

putting forth all of their effort against ISIS whether we support them or not. How

could they possibly tolerate their own people helping ISIS or groups that we find

almost equally hateful and threatening? This line of thinking often leads to a partly-

emotional response: Well, if they won’t fight (and when they even actually help) our

common enemies, then what can we do? Perhaps if we just walked away, they would

realize that they have no choice but to do what we want them to do. And our policy

sometimes then turns into an effort to cajole, bluff, and persuade local partners to

behave as we would wish, even at the cost of developing and implementing strategies

to accomplish what we need.


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The main trouble with this line of reasoning is that it tends to bury a clear-eyed

understanding of America’s interests and security requirements in the region under a

weight of injured resentment at the perfidy of our so-called allies. It presupposes that

our engagement in the region primarily subserves the interests of partners who just

won’t really commit even to defending their own interests. It ends up unwittingly

ignoring the fact that America’s actions in the Middle East, as anywhere in the world,

are meant primarily to ensure the security and well-being of Americans, and that

“perfidious” or “weak” partners create obstacles to U.S. policy rather than reasons to

abandon our interests.

Recognizing the grander and natural divergences of interest and perception between

the U.S. and its regional would-be allies lets us focus better on the particulars of each

potential partner. We can then make realistic estimates of the likelihood that any

individual state will work well with us and pursue interests that are as congruent with

ours as possible. We can also identify those states that just don’t see the world as we

do and will never make strong partners. We can then stop wasting time in courting

them and spending emotional energy in being frustrated when they are not helpful.

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom is easily the most frustrating of all U.S. allies in the Middle East. It

dominates the global oil market, making enormous profits from the West and holding

the stability of the global economy in its hand. A pseudo-theocracy, its royal family

relies on support from extremist Wahhabi clerics to justify its right to rule the holy

sites of Mecca and Medina. Saudi kings have recognized the threat posed to them

by al Qaeda, itself an offshoot of Wahhabi theology, but have not stopped their own

relatives from giving large donations to the terrorist group. The Kingdom maintains a

moderately-sized military equipped with expensive American weapons systems manned

by U.S.-trained pilots and officers. But it almost never contributes military power to

regional fights, preferring instead to buy the services of Americans and others with

cash. Saudi Arabia generally manages to stay just close enough to U.S. policy to remain

a perpetual aggravation without becoming an acute source of anger.

We should not expect to see a dramatic change in Saudi behavior any time soon.

The ties between the House of Sa’ud and the Wahhabis go back to the foundation

of the dynasty centuries ago and are unlikely to be broken in the near future. The

monarchy has been teetering on the brink of a succession crisis for many years now,

with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz trying to outlive yet another incredibly-aged

would-be successor. When not worried about the succession itself, Saudi rulers fear


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the rise of Iran, which poses a double threat. Persian nationalism draws forth fears

of Iranian regional hegemony and traditional Saudi mistrust of Shi’a.

Saudis tend to see the region through this Arab-Persian, Sunni-Shi’a prism, which

Americans find alien. The Kingdom sees itself beset on all sides by Iranian-backed

adventurism—the Shi’a government in Iraq, now supported by Iranian-controlled

militias whose activities are coordinated directly by the commander of Iran’s

Qods Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani; the al Houthi movement in Yemen,

which is also tied to Iran and holds territory on the Saudi border; the Assad regime in

Syria, whose forces are now thoroughly commingled with Iranians and their regional

proxies; the Shi’a protest movement/insurgency in Bahrain, which the Saudis believe

(with only partial accuracy) to be an Iranian incursion on to the Peninsula itself; and

Saudi Arabia’s own Shi’a population, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province,

which the Saudis believe the Iranians are constantly trying to infiltrate and stir up.

The Saudis have made it very clear that they view U.S. policy in the region with deep

suspicion on current, realpolitik grounds. They fear the possibility of an Iranian

nuclear arsenal almost as much as the Israelis do, worrying that nuclear weapons would

enable Tehran to expand its regional efforts to collapse the Saudi regime and establish

Persian-Shi’a hegemony. They regard the U.S. effort to obtain a nuclear deal with Iran

as dangerous, foolish, and a betrayal. They have also observed American support for the

Shi’a sectarian rule of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki—whom King Abdullah

personally despised and refused to meet—and have interpreted U.S. passivity in Syria

as de facto support for Tehran’s puppet, Assad. Saudi behavior now is thus heavily

conditioned by the worry that the U.S. is throwing in its lot with the Persians and the

Shi’a and preparing to abandon its alliances with the Sunni Arab states. That concern,

combined with long-standing family and political dysfunction, succession distractions,

and other social problems, is likely to keep the Kingdom ambivalent at best about

supporting American efforts in the region for some time. The Saudis, nevertheless, have

nowhere else to turn. When the U.S. seeks to act energetically in the region against

Iranian interests and, to a lesser extent, against al Qaeda, the Saudis will probably

continue to be reluctant but meaningful partners.

Qatar

The tiny state of Qatar has long been the most irritating of all the Gulf States. It hosts

the most important U.S. airbase in the region at Doha, but it also hosts (and funds)

al Jazeera, the media conglomerate that has spent many years spewing anti-U.S. hatred


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throughout the Arab world. Worse still, Qatar actively supports al Qaeda-affiliated

groups and individuals. It also periodically sides with Iran against the U.S. Qatar has

a lot of money that could, in theory, help support opposition groups in Syria and

elsewhere. In reality, though, the U.S. would do better to see Qatar as an adversary

to be contained rather than a potential partner to be wooed, despite the presence of

our airbase there. Just getting the Qataris to stop doing bad things in the Middle East

would be a major step forward.

Qatari motivations stem from personal relationships among Gulfi royal families, but

even more from the fact that Qatar is a tiny, powerless country with too much cash for

its own good. It shares a critical gas field with Iran, making decent relations with Tehran

an economic necessity. It feels a natural, if foolish, resentment of Saudi domination of

the Peninsula and a desire to poke the Kingdom in the eye whenever possible. It relies

on the American presence to deter adventurism by its much more powerful neighbors,

but resents the Western dependency thereby created. And it both sympathizes with and

fears Islamist extremism, which it prefers to buy off rather than confront.

Given this conglomeration of mutually-antagonistic interests, policies, and emotions,

the U.S. should focus on getting only two things out of Qatar. The airbase in Doha

is important, and we should try not to jeopardize it—although we cannot allow it to

hold our entire policy hostage if the worst comes to the worst. And we should try much

harder to get the Qataris to reduce their support for al Qaeda and like-minded groups.

We should be prepared to sanction individual Qataris, block their travel, and work with

our European partners to exclude them from their favorite universities and vacation

homes. We should focus threat finance efforts on identifying the worst offenders and

blocking or seizing their finances. We should not ask or expect anything else from

Qatar, and we should not accept any help with funding oppositionists in Syria in place

of efforts to stop the much larger funding going to our enemies. Qatar is not an enemy,

but it is unlikely ever to be a real ally.

Turkey

Turkey, on the other hand, actually is an ally, at least legally, although it is sometimes

hard to remember that fact. Ankara’s refusal to allow the U.S. to use its territory during

the 2003 invasion of Iraq seriously complicated that effort. President Recep Tayyip

Erdogan has oscillated between coddling Assad, threatening and confronting him, and

falling into limp passivity. Turkey has courted improved relations with Iran, primarily

for economic reasons, and moved generally away from the U.S. and the West.


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Yet Turkey’s realpolitik interests remain pretty closely aligned with ours. Al Qaeda and

especially ISIS is a serious threat to Turkey. The collapse of Syria has been a major source

of problems, which the more recent collapse of Iraq are exacerbating. Turkish cozying up

to Tehran does not mean that Ankara is any more enthusiastic about an Iranian nuclear

arsenal than we are. And for all the anti-Western rhetoric that Erdogan and his allies

spew, Turkey still looks primarily to Europe as a stepping-stone to an improved economy

and higher position in the world.

Erdogan himself is a major part of the problem in Turkey’s relationship with the West.

Autocratic by temperament, he represents and leads an anti-secular backlash against the

modern Turkey created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The backlash itself should not be surprising. Atatürk secularized Turkey rapidly, boldly,

and uncompromisingly. He helped build a secular Turkish military that maintained

the country’s secularization in part through periodic coups.

It is extremely unfortunate that the rise of Erdogan’s brand of Ottoman-Islamism should

have occurred at this moment in history, however, and that he himself should have

proven an adroit manipulator of the Turkish political scene. He has established himself

as a dominant figure now with his recent election to the presidency. More importantly,

he appears to have neutered the Turkish military through a determined quasi-judicial

purge. The Turkish military would normally have been a powerful force driving toward

a muscular response to the rise of violent Islamist groups and Iranian proxies on

Turkey’s southern border, but Erdogan has deprived it of its power.

He has not been able to establish himself as strongly in its place, however. His heavy-

handedness caused internal unrest that forced him to turn inward, while empowering

an opposition that seemed able to agree on only two things: dislike of Erdogan and

a desire not to become embroiled in Syria. The refugee crisis that engulfed southern

Turkey could have been a spur to action but became instead a weapon in Turkey’s

domestic political fight. The opposition managed to deflect Erdogan from taking a

strong line on Syria without being able to prevent his coronation.

Erdogan has crowned himself, nevertheless, and Turkey’s unrest has fallen relatively

quiet, at least for now. His recent action to gain formal assent for a more forward policy

in Syria may represent a turning of the tide and the resurgence of Turkish activity in

the Levant. Such a turn would be welcome insofar as it leads Erdogan to allow the U.S.

to operate freely from Turkish territory. But the ham-fistedness with which Erdogan

kindled unrest in his own country can also alienate Arabs and Kurds who view his

neo-Ottoman imperialism with mistrust. The U.S. can and should expect more help


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from Turkey, but should not make the mistake of imagining that Erdogan is likely to

be an effective surrogate leading efforts against ISIS, still less against Iran.

One could examine the other regional states in equal or greater detail without changing

the overall picture very much. Jordan is desperately poor, internally riven, weak, and

fearful. The Emirates are wealthy, relatively strong, relatively unified and stable, but far

away and focused on Iran and other more immediate concerns. Kuwait is mired in its

own internal tensions, fearful of Iraqi unrest and Iranian adventurism, and unlikely to

engage materially outside its borders. Egypt is large, potentially powerful, but distant,

challenged with its own al Qaeda problems, and on a knife’s edge between precarious

stability and chaos. Different American policies might cause these states to be somewhat

more or somewhat less helpful, but the delta will be relatively small.

The notion, never stated but always implied, that there is some large, latent power in

the Arab-Turkish world that could be mobilized to take the lead in solving the problems

in Iraq and the Levant is a fantasy. The region is fragile, unstable, riven with internal

tensions and conflicts, and torn among many competing crises. That statement of the

obvious is somehow not penetrating the U.S. policy discussion about what to expect

from regional partners. The Middle East is a net consumer of stability and will be for a

long time to come. The only real choices facing the U.S. and the West are whether to

try to supply some stability or risk widespread regional collapse. Chasing the mirage of

cajoling regional states into solving the region’s problems will get us nowhere.

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Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict

The Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict examines how knowledge of past military operations can influence contemporary public policy decisions concerning current conflicts. The careful study of military history offers a way of analyzing modern war and peace that is often underappreciated in this age of technological determinism. Yet the result leads to a more in-depth and dispassionate understanding of contemporary wars, one that explains how particular military successes and failures of the past can be often germane, sometimes misunderstood, or occasionally irrelevant in the context of the present.

The core membership of this working group includes David Berkey, Peter Berkowitz, Max Boot, Josiah Bunting III, Angelo M. Codevilla, Thomas Donnelly, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr., Colonel Joseph Felter, Victor Davis Hanson (chair), Josef Joffe, Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Edward N. Luttwak, Peter Mansoor, General Jim Mattis, Walter Russell Mead, Mark Moyar, Williamson Murray, Ralph Peters, Andrew Roberts, Admiral Gary Roughead, Kori Schake, Kiron K. Skinner, Barry Strauss, Bruce Thornton, Bing West, Miles Maochun Yu, and Amy Zegart.

For more information about this Hoover Institution Working Group visit us online at www.hoover.org/research-topic/military.

About the Author

FREDERICK W. KAGANFrederick W. Kagan, author of the

2007 report Choosing Victory: A

Plan for Success in Iraq, is one of

the intellectual architects of the

successful “surge” strategy in Iraq.

He is the Christopher DeMuth

Chair and Director, Critical Threats

Project at the American Enterprise

Institute and a former professor of

military history at the US Military

Academy at West Point. His books

range from Lessons for a Long War

(AEI Press, 2010), coauthored with

Thomas Donnelly, to The End of

the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe,

1801–1805 (Da Capo, 2006).


Realism about Allies: What the U.S. Can Expect from Middle Eastern Partners, by Frederick W. Kagan

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