This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on March 19, 2024. Listen to the podcast here.
Jon Alterman: Dana Stroul is the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Until December, she was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, the most senior civilian position in the Pentagon looking at the region. Before that, she worked in think tanks, on Capitol Hill, and in the Pentagon in the same office that she led.
Dana, welcome to Babel.
Dana Stroul: Thanks so much, Jon. Pleasure to be with you today.
Jon Alterman: As you were leading the Middle East shop in the Pentagon, where was the Middle East fitting into the broader U.S. strategy in the world?
Dana Stroul: I think we should go back to the beginning of the administration. The Biden administration's National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy talk about China as the major strategic competitor.
The next threat that the National Defense Strategy identified was Russia. For our partners in the Middle East, I think they heard that and said that the United States, and particularly this administration, was deprioritizing the Middle East. What senior leaders articulated in early 2021 and throughout 2022 is that the United States remained invested and committed to this part of the world, but it was going to do it in different ways. So, it was going to focus on diplomacy, not military solutions.
It was going to emphasize de-escalating and winding down conflicts, working with key partners and allies to address political processes and long-term sustainable solutions for those conflicts. It was going to emphasize investing in humanitarian responses for civilians in need in places like Yemen and Syria and elsewhere.
They also articulated that the path to stability and security in the Middle East was going to be through integration. There's been a lot of talk about this idea of integrated deterrence, which is a U.S. whole of government approach, to addressing problems and coordinating across all of our allies and partners.
This means combat-credible investments in militaries and military equipment, military exercising, exchanges of information, and training, but also coordinating economically and diplomatically in the information space. All of this together.
Jon Alterman: Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face." We had a plan, we were executing the plan, and then a lot of things changed. How did that feel in the Middle East shop where we had all these strategic ideas to not be as militarily involved, and then suddenly we were deeply militarily involved?
Dana Stroul: First of all, I’ll share one story. One of my bosses was asked in early 2022, “How many meetings does the National Security Council have per week on a Middle East-related issue?” The answer in 2022 is maybe one or two a month.
Obviously, October 7 changed all of that. Then we were having meetings at the National Security Council on a near-daily basis. Somebody like me, in charge of just the Middle East region in the Pentagon, was seeing Secretary Austin on a daily basis. Developments in the Middle East were absolutely top of the inbox for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of State.
So absolutely, the best-laid plans have changed. What is lost on a lot of critics of how the administration approached the Middle East in its first and second years is that we actually demonstrated that our strategy is agile and flexible enough to respond to emerging crises and circumstances.
Yes, American leaders and officials here in Washington were focusing on other issues, but they have absolutely been able to shift focus, exercise those diplomatic muscles, increase defense posture in the Middle East, surge military equipment to support Israel, and prevent all-out regional war. To date, that is what happened.
Jon Alterman: The United States invested a lot in trying to increase communication between partner militaries in the region, including with the Israelis who are now part of United States Central Command (CENTCOM). What kinds of things have you seen since October 7 that you thought reflected investments that the United States made? What kinds of investments have you made that had to be paused because of the real outrage in the Arab world over Israel's conduct in this war?
Dana Stroul: I wouldn't call myself an optimist, but here is actually where I think there is a silver lining. Let's go back to what I said about integrated deterrence. Part of that is allies and partners making certain investments that benefit everyone's security, as well as broader security.
Investing in the kinds of equipment that can do shared air defense. What is one of the most pressing immediate security challenges of the Middle East? It's Iranian development of lethal one-way attack drones. Everybody needs to be prepared for this. It turns out the best way to be prepared is not to focus only on your borders, but to create a network system for early warning, to share intelligence, and to expand your air picture.
Those are the kinds of things that the Department of Defense has been working on with our partners in the Middle East. Israel is in the Middle East as well. Certainly, by sharing its technology, its intelligence, the ways in which it detects threats to its population, and its willingness to share that with partners, everyone's security can be enhanced.
That work was going on before October 7. The other big initiative of the Department of Defense is not just in integrated air and missile defense, but in building coalitions to address security threats. Here is a good example: what our navy headquarters, United States Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), in the Middle East is doing.
They have something called Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). Dozens of nations, not just from the Middle East, but all over the world, come together: ships, sailors, intelligence experts, analysts, liaison officers.
Jon Alterman: There are 41 countries in the Combined Maritime Forces, as I understand it.
Dana Stroul: Absolutely. What they're doing is addressing all the different threats and challenges at sea: piracy, terrorism, illicit trafficking of people, illicit trafficking of weapons, Red Sea security, etc. The military and intelligence coordination between the United States and our partners, including Israel, remains very resilient today. There are no partners in the Middle East who say, "Even if I am exceptionally frustrated and disappointed in the level of humanitarian suffering in Gaza, it's no longer in my security interest to share intelligence and cooperate on air and missile defense across the region and with Israel." So, that architecture remains.
There are examples like Operation Prosperity Guardian, which is a presence and monitoring mission in the Red Sea stood up by the United States with partners, and the separate coalition strikes to degrade Houthi capabilities and infrastructure and take weapons off the table so that the Houthis cannot threaten Red Sea maritime security. These are all examples where the United States convened and led the security architecture that is actually still working to this day.
Jon Alterman: As you know, there are only 10 or 11 countries that announced they're part of Prosperity Guardian. I spoke to the French and Egyptian embassies, and they said, "Well, we’re part of this Combined Maritime Force and we're part of Task Force 153. We don't really understand why there needs to be Prosperity Guardian, and we're not a part of it." What's the point of having this separate coalition, especially when it seemed that we couldn't get other countries that are affected to join our coalition? They said, "The work is already ongoing as part of another thing and by the way, we want to have nothing to do with any of your strikes."
Dana Stroul: This is an example where the United States brings a convening authority to the table, and also a good example of how I think the nomenclature has confused some people. Operation Prosperity Guardian is a temporary task force under this broader structure.
We tell partners, especially under the Combined Maritime Forces that are based out of Bahrain, "Come as you are, contribute what you can." Not everyone can contribute the same thing, different navies have different investments, capabilities, levels of priority, sizes, funding levels, etc.
First of all, just being a member of these organizations sends a signal of international commitment, which is important especially when signaling to adversaries.
I would say the other thing that's important to understand about how the United States does this work is that you are right Jon, not every government or every navy or every military wants to be publicly associated with every U.S.-led effort, and we're adaptable and flexible to that. There are a lot of countries that don't want their names on certain lists that are still contributing because most people recognize that Iran-backed Houthi aggression challenging one of the world's most critical and strategic waterways is in nobody's interest.
Jon Alterman: It still seems to me that countries that agree it's not in their interest also say, "It's not in our interest to align with the United States." When France was part of Prosperity Guardian, France said, "We're part of Prosperity Guardian, but we won't be under U.S. command." As you know, there's a separate European Union task force that just got stood up under Greek command, which operates in parallel with Prosperity Guardian. But there seems to be this reluctance to be too closely associated with the United States, though they certainly benefit from the United States.
Dana Stroul: That's a fair point, and clearly one of the animating challenges at this moment in time is that our allies and partners perceive the United States to have supported Israel in what they view to be an unacceptable level of civilian casualties in Gaza and have contributed and affected this terrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Because the Houthis and other Iran-backed groups wrap themselves in the mantle of defending the Palestinian cause, that has prompted some of our partners to seek to put public distance between themselves and their capitals and the United States. That's something the United States is going to have to work through.
On the other hand, the reality is that the Biden administration has been very focused on avenues to expand humanitarian aid delivery, secure the release of hostages, and get to a ceasefire.
This is again the silver lining for somebody who's rarely optimistic. Nobody in the Middle East or Europe is saying there's no role for the United States in addressing peace, security, and stability in the Middle East. if we want to talk about stabilizing Gaza, if we want to talk about increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza, just look at the work the U.S. military is doing now on setting up a maritime option or the airdrops. All the other countries and their airdrops into Gaza wouldn’t happen without the U.S. military.
If it comes to confronting other forms of Iranian aggression, no one is saying that we can do this without the United States. There is significant frustration and tension that we will need to work through with our partners, but no one questions the value added of U.S. military contributions, U.S. diplomats, and what we can bring to bear in terms of resourcing to address the very serious crises that are roiling the region today.
Jon Alterman: I want to get to Iran. But first I want to focus on this issue of partners. You've spent a lot of time trying to build partner relationships in the region. After you were at it for three years, what do you think partners just continue not to understand? What's the piece of the equation you really wish you could convince them of that they don't get yet?
Dana Stroul: One of the most common complaints I heard from our partners was that the United States can't be trusted or is unreliable because our policy changes too much based on who is in the White House, and I think that's fair. There certainly have been very significant swings, and there have been disagreements about many policy objectives and what different administrations identified as achievements of their administration.
But at its core, I think what some of our partners are saying is that, "We don't like democracy. Because every four to eight years, you guys are going to change, and I'm going to have to get used to a new team, new policies, and understand the new players." That is different from some of our partners who are not democracies.
Jon Alterman: And they don't especially like democracies, and they don't want democracies in the Middle East as I've certainly heard, and I'm sure you have heard.
Dana Stroul: Absolutely. I try to convey, and hope to continue to convey, in my conversations that there's actually a lot of consistency in administration policy, even though you have such significant swings in personalities, leadership styles, and priorities.
For example, every president has maintained a rather significant U.S. military presence in the Middle East. No president has shut down any of our very significant air bases in the Middle East. No president has stopped the preponderance of U.S. military and economic aid that goes to the Middle East. The top recipients globally are all in the Middle East, except in the last two years with Ukraine. Our best ambassadors, our most sophisticated military equipment, our resources, and the investment in people, personnel, our young men and women, are going to the Middle East, and there actually haven't been considerable changes in that investment.
So, while I think a lot of leaders focus on the rhetoric either coming from our Congress or the White House, the investments have actually remained relatively stable. Our partners are going to have to get used to the idea that we're going to change every four to eight years, and that democracies and elected members of the U.S. government and in the U.S. Congress are responsive to constituents and American voters. Americans have views on how our precious resources and where our service members should go, and that's different than a non-democratic system of government.
Jon Alterman: I'm sure there were things that continued to puzzle you after being in this job. What do you wish you understood about our partners? What are the mysteries that, with all the resources you had, you just have a hard time wrapping your head around?
Dana Stroul: There was a point in 2022 when I was worried that our partnerships in the Middle East were going to unravel, and it came down to what many in Washington saw as equivocating on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Here in Washington our Cabinet-level officials and people inside the administration and Congress were working to hold the line. If you don't stop this kind of aggression in Europe, it will certainly embolden adversaries in other theaters that might think the world isn't going to muster the political will and the resources to defend in another theater if an adversary seeks to use force to remake borders.
Clearly, I'm talking about China in the Asia Pacific and about Iran in the Middle East. From a Washington DC perspective, people thought in a very clear black-and-white way that surely our partners in the Middle East would decide to stand on the right side of history because the rules-based international order benefits our partners in the Middle East. They should want to uphold that order.
Secondly, when you look at the China example, there's ample evidence that a 5G system coming from Huawei or military purchases coming from Beijing are forms of leverage that Beijing may seek to cash in on later. For our partners who care so much about their sovereignty, why wouldn't you take certain actions to insulate your security, your sovereignty, or the U.S. partnership by taking actions to impose costs on Russia or to say to China, "these are certain areas where we're not going to work with you because it threatens our partnership with the United States"?
Our partners hear that and say, "This isn't a zero-sum game, I'm not going to pick." I actually think, from a Washington perspective, we say "We're not asking you to pick," but there are categories of activities where we are asking you to take a firm stance. In many cases, our partners aren't taking that stance, and they're pursuing what they believe to be their own interests in their own way. We just have a difference of views of what's in their security interest.
I'll tie it all in a bow now. Russia is not a European problem. Russia is now continuing to target and kill Ukrainians with weapons supplied by Iran. The Russians are also turning to North Korea for weapons. We know that the Chinese are contemplating also supplying the Russians. There's an emerging axis of Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and North Korean cooperation and coordination that challenges the very nature of a world order that most of us have benefited from.
Jon Alterman: There's a perception that Israel is using American weapons to destroy Gazan infrastructure to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians with, at best, indifference to civilian suffering. Then there are more contentious assessments of what the Israelis are doing with continued American support, and that when we talk about a rules-based order, there's a profound hypocrisy on the U.S. side for saying, "The rules-based order applies to the way Russia conducts the war, but it doesn't apply to the way Israel conducts a war."
I've certainly heard a lot of that. I'm sure you've heard even more. What I haven't heard is a persuasive rebuttal that the United States recognizes the tension and is actively moving to resolve it.
Dana Stroul: I think that's how many of our partners see it, and I think that's a very convenient narrative about what's happening for our partners. So, the point of U.S. partnership is that we don't abandon our partners. Russia’s unprovoked decision to declare war and invade Ukraine—that’s not what happened in Gaza and Israel. First, there was a vicious and unprecedented Hamas terror attack in Israel. Number two is that the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, there are significant concerns here in Washington, and, having sat in a lot of these meetings with the Biden administration, officials are absolutely concerned about the humanitarian situation and the level of civilian casualties.
But the way to address that is not to break a partnership or stop all military support to that partner. Frankly, most of our partners have experienced that same tension over Washington policy. We could talk about the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The United States never abandoned our partners who were seeking to restore the legitimate government in Yemen despite accusations that that's what happened. We also stood up a significant coalition in Iraq and Syria and exercised and articulated very serious concerns about the ways in which aspects of those campaigns were executed. But the United States doesn't just abandon a partner, and there is nuance in that approach.
Without question, there should be concern by our partners about civilian casualties and the humanitarian toll. But what they don't say publicly, and what they're willing to talk about privately, is that they want Hamas to be dismantled and that no military has confronted the nature of the operational challenges that the Israeli defense forces have in Gaza. I think privately, a lot of them recognize that in any of the campaigns that they undertook, they weren't dealing with a terrorist organization that had close to 20 years to dig a network of terror tunnels and completely embed itself in the civilian infrastructure and fabric of Gaza.
Jon Alterman: As a final area of discussion, it seems to me that through much of your career in this space, how the United States thinks about victory has probably changed. In 2003, we thought we were going to have a clean victory in Iraq, and we thought we were going to have a clean victory in Afghanistan. We’ve had not only a whole series of different postures in Iraq but we've been involved in Syria. Now we're looking at a close ally, Israel, which says we have to have victory because victory is necessary for our survival.
As you think about how the United States has changed the way it thinks about victory, do you think we've come to any sort of conclusions, and are any of those relevant to the Gaza environment?
Dana Stroul: I do, and the clearest articulation that comes to mind is Secretary Austin at the Reagan National Security Forum last year in December. What he talked about is Israel's focus on tactical victory while losing the strategic war. What he meant by that is, we have had to reconceptualize what victory looks like. It is not clear, it's muddy, and it's messy. Frankly, in areas where we've had significant boots on the ground fighting terrorist forces, like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, how the story ends is actually still being told now in places like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. But what we in the United States have learned is that there is no victory that's “military only”. If you do not attend to the needs of the population and immediately begin planning for when the active part of a campaign ends—what happens in that space immediately after the fighting ends, before you can do major reconstruction, before you clear out the rubble? If you're not thinking and planning for that, then victory is absolutely at risk.
A lot of the conversation with Israel now is on what is militarily necessary or sufficient so that Hamas cannot return to having a governing stranglehold on Gaza. But if you do not prioritize the needs of the civilians in Gaza, then Israel’s security will never be assured either. I think those are some tough lessons that we, in the U.S. military learned. An idea we hear from a lot of Israelis is that we're not going to deal with the day after right now. “We just want to focus on degrading Hamas” is actually not the way to achieving anything that will deliver security for Israel.
Jon Alterman: Well, what I hear more from Israelis is we've been in conflict with Palestinians for a century, and the Americans have an idea that there's a way to undermine Palestinian hostility. The Israeli view is, for the most part, "We're going to have to manage enduring Palestinian hostility and make sure that they never have the ability to challenge Israel." How do we deal with a partner that just doesn't accept the idea that you can win Palestinian public opinion over, which it seems to me is vital to the construct you've described for what a successful outcome looks like?
Dana Stroul: Well, I think you heard President Biden articulate that pretty clearly in the State of the Union. Even if it's something that an Israeli audience doesn't want to hear right now, in the near-term trauma of the post-October 7 world, the reality is, if we're not addressing those long-term factors that contribute to perpetual instability in the West Bank or Gaza, then Israel and Israelis won't have the security that they want to live their lives in Israel. There needs to be changes in policies by the government in Jerusalem that serve the security of the Israeli people. Part of that is addressing the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Number two: beginning to plan for what “the day after” in Gaza looks like because you can't just leave it the way it is and hope for the best.
On the West Bank side, there will need to be attention paid to addressing the economy, addressing the lack of hope of young Palestinians in the West Bank, and their economy that is at a standstill. In no way is this a recipe for enduring stability. This is clearly a conversation that is going to become sharper over the course of this year.
Jon Alterman: What I've heard from the Israeli side is Americans assume that some problems have solutions, and some problems just don't have solutions. You have to manage them as best you can. As somebody who has had a number of conversations with Israeli government officials before and after October 7, is there a way to persuade Israelis that there are solutions to this? Is there a way to persuade them that solutions will require taking risks now for a long-term benefit, even though the Israeli view is that the risks they took after Oslo neither improved Israelis’ lives nor Palestinians’ lives?
Dana Stroul: We need to acknowledge the trauma of October 7. The idea that there would be an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state absent reform, anti-corruption, demilitarization, and all of these issues—is not going to make Israelis feel safe. First of all, I think we need to think through how we communicate, and not dictate, to Israel what our report card is for their security. Secondly, I would observe from my conversations with Israelis that yes, that's what you hear right now, but just like in our government, there's a diversity of views and there's a recognition that perpetual instability, economic strain, lack of opportunity, and no confidence in the government in Ramallah doesn't actually serve Israeli security interests.
I think what we need to think about over time is communicating what is good for Israel's security, and that the status quo or returning to the status quo ante is not going to be good for Israel's security. By no means am I going to tell you that I think this is easy, or quick, or straightforward, but this has to be a conversation about Israeli security. Any intelligence or military analyst or expert who assesses conditions that are ripe for further violence would look at the situation in the West Bank or Gaza and say, "This is not the making for long-term stability."
Jon Alterman: Dana Stroul, thank you very much for joining us on Babel.
Dana Stroul: My pleasure.
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