U.S. National Security Strategy and the MENA Region
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America's allies, and other states, can scarcely be blamed for being confused by the changes taking place in U.S. strategy. U.S. national security strategy has announced in three different unclassified documents at three different times, and in very different levels of detail:
- A National Security Strategy issued by the White House—with the authority of the President—on December 17, 2017, and focusing on U.S. domestic and civil programs as well as national security.
- A National Defense Security Strategy issued by the Department of Defense—with the authority of the Secretary of Defense—on January 18, 2018, and focusing on defense and national security.
- The U.S. defense budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019. This consists of a wide range of over 1,000 pages of data in a wide range of different documents summarized in a Budget Overview document issued by the Comptroller's Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense but based on the budget and programs approved by the White House and approved by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This summary is specifically described as presenting the budget in strategic terms.
All three documents call for serious increases in U.S. military efforts, new approaches to tactics and strategy, new weapons and technologies, and higher levels of readiness. All three focus on the need to deal with what is perceived as rising strategic challenges from Russia, increased strategic and regional competition from China, and the threat posed by non-state actors and "rogue" states like Iran and North Korea.
All three, however, make it clear that "American first" is not a retreat to some form of isolation, but an effort to restore the U.S. military position on a global level to the point where in can contain, deter, and/or defeat these threats. All three call for a strengthening—not a retreat—in the U.S. role in the MENA region and South Asia, Europe, and Asia.
All three documents also stress the need to improve the U.S. role in all its existing strategic partnerships, and force new ones if possible. The National Security Strategy highlights the need to avoid seeking to impose American values on other states, but stresses the fact the U.S. will continue to advocate those values and encourage other states to adopt them.
Words and Rhetoric are Interesting, but Money and Implementation Matter
In practice, there is a natural progression in these three documents from broad concepts at the White House level to real world implementation plans and specifics in the FY2019 budget request. The White House National Security Strategy provides conceptual goals that are explained more in terms of rhetoric than reality.
The National Defense Security Strategy provides little actual detail, in part because the Department of Defense has developed a series of individual strategies forgiven regions and key missions that are largely classified. It essentially fine tunes some portions of the concepts in the White House document.
The summary that the OSD Comptroller provides of key areas of U.S. strategy and force development like force levels and improvements, power projection, and strategic partnerships does not provide much regional detail, but sets very concrete goals each area. The Comptroller also provides supporting documents that make the specific requests for expenditures and for the approval of major programs that will define the actual reality of U.S. strategy–requests where the strategy by region is explained in far more detail during the course of the year in testimony to Congress by senior policymakers and by senior commanders like the commander of the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) who plays a lead role in shaping U.S. strategy in the MENA region.
Each report is also different enough so it can be very difficult to track how the text differs from document to document, particularly readers that are more familiar with concepts than programs and budgets.
For those who have not served in government, and far too many that have, it is natural to focus more on the rhetoric coming out of the White House rather than the budget specifics coming out of the Comptroller's office. In practice, however, rhetoric is only meaningful to the point it leads to action, and action takes the form of actually funding and successfully implementing given programs.
Reading through the budget submission often tells far more about reality than reading the strategy—particularly in the United States. The U.S. Congress does far more to alter budgets and programs—and the real-world implementation of a strategy—than most of the world's legislatures. Moreover, it only approves actual spending on outlays for one fiscal year—a year that only runs from October to October in the next calendar year. Historically, efforts change significantly from administration to administration. Rises and falls in spending and given efforts are the rule and not the exception.
Most major force development and procurement programs that really change strategy take at least three to five years to implement in peacetime. Major procurement programs take 10-15 years to fund, fully implement, bring to full readiness, and implement. More change radically over time than not.
The working principle that one must always "follow the money" applies to strategy as much as every other aspect of U.S. government activity. It is also true that ever since the end of World War II, unless some major outside catalyst takes place like a radically change in the threat, U.S. strategy is far slower to change than U.S. rhetoric usually implies. There is tremendous momentum in the U.S. national security structure on a force by force, program by program, and command by command basis.
Far More Continuity than Change
The reassuring aspect of U.S. strategy in the MENA region is that the U.S. remains fully committed to its strategic partnerships, considers Iran and extremism as being as critical of threats as Russia and China, and continues to fund the forces of the U.S. Central Command in the MENA region at the same strength. The documents call for major improvements in weaponry and some aspects of revenue over time, apart from some cuts to reflect progress in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq.
All three documents also make it clear that "American first" actually means more emphasis on strategic partnerships, and a focus on Russia and China does not materially affect U.S. strategic partnership in the MENA region half as much as the actions of Iran, Russia, and Turkey; the ability to defeat violent extremism; the region's civil conflicts, and the instability, fracture lines, and problems of American's strategic partners.
Moreover, the only way to see the full level of continuity in the core structure of U.S. strategy is to actually read the key documents involved. Each such document has been introduced with far more political and/or partisan comments and debates than the actual content of the document merits, have often led to unrelated clashes over U.S. policy and has led to debates inside and outside the United States that are based far more on a given proponent's view of what U.S. strategy should or should not be than the actual content of the documents.
For many outside the United States, it can be difficult to find the original text, although an Internet search by title will quickly bring up to web site for the White House or Department of Defense version. Even with the original, it can be difficult for even an experienced reader to guess how the wording in each of the three affects a given American strategic partners—to the extent it does at all.
In practice, the only way is to fully understand the level of continuity in U.S. strategic partnerships is to actually read through all three. Three sets of excerpts are attached, however\ in the appendices.to this commentary, these three Appendices are entitled:
- President Trump's New National Security Strategy, [Appendix 1]
- U.S. Strategy and the MENA Region: Excerpts from the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, [Appendix 2]
- U.S. Strategy and the MENA Region: Excerpts from the U.S. Department of Defense FY2019 Budget Overview, Revised February 13, 2018, [Appendix 3]
America's Real Strategic Challenges in the MENA Region: Relying on Half a Strategy
The reassuring aspect of U.S. strategy is that it remains fully committed to U.S. strategic partnerships, focuses on Iran and extremism as being as critical to U.S. strategic interests as Russia and China, and continues to fund the forces of the U.S. Central Command in the MENA region at the same core strength. In fact, new U.S. programs will make major improvements in weaponry and some aspects of readiness over time, and the only currently programmed cuts in FY2019 reflect real world progress in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq.
The end result is that the past momentum of U.S. actions will preserve continuity in U.S. strategy in a wide range of areas. At least in the near term, there is "strategic momentum" in the U.S.:
- Deployment of USCENTCOM and U.S. forces in region -- whose strength, modernization, and readiness will benefit from their share of $65 billion in added FY2018 funding; and $80 billion added to the FY2019 request.
- Focus on Iran.
- Focus on Counterterrorism.
- Focus on stability of regional oil exports.
- Limits to aid and national building.
- Role in Iraq and Syria.
- Aid to Egypt and Israel.
- Ties to current Arab security partners.
- Limits on “nation building.”
- Effort to limit the role of U.S. forces to air plus train and assist efforts on ground.
At the same time, none of the three documents address the most serious problems in U.S. strategy — most of which are shaped as much by strategic partners as its own action. None of three address the specific changes taking place in U.S. forces by major command and region, or have provided any specifics as to how they will affect America's strategic partnerships.
The U.S. can justly be accused of only having half a strategy for dealing with the region. Its programs and actions focus almost exclusively on security and the role of military and counterterrorism forces, and not on stability and the civil problems and conflicts that have torn much of the MENA region apart since 2011.
These failures are at least as serious, however, on the part of America's strategic partners in the MENA region. If one looks across the Middle East and North Africa, all of the forces that have led to regional instability have grown worse with time and not better. The so-called "Arab Spring" has done nothing to bring stability to the Arab world.
Far too many Arab states have suffered from major political upheavals or conflicts as a result of internal ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflicts; violent extremist movements; poor economic development; corruption and crony capitalism; and the combined impact of social change, hyper urbanization, climate and water issues, a surge in population, and the number of young men and women entering the labor force. The 2016 edition of the Arab Development report estimates that average youth unemployment is 30%.
Coupled with major cuts in petroleum export revenues, these upheavals and conflicts have interacted with civil challenges to stability that are as critical as the military and internal security issues. Regional conflict states have not only had to consider external security challenges, but they’ve had to contend with the drastic impact of war or key internal security challenges. This is the case to varying degrees in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, the Sudan, and Somalia.
It is also important to point out that many of these civil stability problems long preceded 2011. The current emphasis on dealing with wartime damage ignores the real nature and scale of the strategic challenges involved. So far, only Saudi Arabia has advanced even the outline of the kind of plan needed to make such changes, and it remains more conceptual than real. Only three Arab states—Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE—have enough petroleum or other wealth to largely ignore such challenges.
In the rest of the Arab world, the Algeria civil war, corruption in Tunisia, crony capitalism in Egypt, sporadic civil war in Lebanon, failed development and repression in Syria, failed leaders in Iraq and the Iran-Iraq War, sectarian divisions in Bahrain, and political crises, violence and chronic economic mismanagement in Yemen, the Sudan, and Somalia are cases in point. Reporting by the World Bank and IMF make it clear that than many key problems go back decades in a region where the population has increased by more than five times since 1950, and a "youth bulge" will create major job creation and stability problems for at least the next decade.
The U.S. can be held at fault for invading Iraq without properly planning to deal with its civil challenges, and possibly for failing to act more decisively in Syria when Assad was most vulnerable. It also has pulled away from serious efforts at "national building" after it learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan that it could not transform strategic partners from the outside. As a result, it can be accused of over-reacting by cutting its economic and governance aid and nation building efforts to a minimum, and focusing almost exclusively on the military and internal security dimension of its strategy.
The fact remains, however, that the whole history of development and stability in the post-colonial era has made it clear that outside states cannot help states that are not unified enough, and do not have the leadership, to help themselves. The sheer scale of the problem in the MENA region— particularly in conflict states like Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen where the need to development and rebuild the entire economy—is massive.
Partners in Strategic Challenges
And, here we come to the broader issues in U.S. strategy in the MENA region. Many are areas where a successful U.S. strategy is dependent on a strategic partner or partners, and reducing the fault lines that Iran and outside power exploit within the Arab world:
- Iran’s interrelated security challenges: Its nuclear weapons efforts, precision guided and other ballistic and cruises missiles, asymmetric naval-missile-air forces in the Gulf, and expansion of regional security influence in Lebanon-Iraq-Iran and Yemen.
- Creating effective levels of deterrence, containment, and defense. This requires collective major efforts to reduce the fault lines and rifts Iran can exploit within the Arab world, far more effective cooperation in defense, and finding some alternative to an open-ended arms race -- none of which can occur without more inter-Arab and U.S-Arab strategic cooperation.
- Arab Divisions and Petty Feuding : The U.S. cannot create an effective security structure in the Gulf as long as Qatar is so divided from key security partners like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain; as long as Oman and Saudi Arabia remain at odds; and long as each GCC state makes so little progress towards integrated force planning, interoperability, and common facilities and institutions.
- Finding some integrated and interoperable approach to missile defense, and maritime security: The Gulf, Red Sea, and Gulf of Oman are particularly high priorities.
- Cooperation in power projection with outside allies: Declining power projection resources in France, Italy, United Kingdom. Uncertain role of Turkey.
- Iran’s interrelated security challenges: Its nuclear weapons efforts, precision guided and other ballistic and cruises missiles, asymmetric naval-missile-air forces in the Gulf, and expansion of regional security influence in Lebanon-Iraq-Iran and Yemen.
- Creating effective levels of deterrence, containment, and defense requires collective major efforts to reduce the fault lines and rifts Iran can exploit within the Arab world, far more effective cooperation in defense, and finding some alternative to an open-ended arms race -- none of which can occur without more inter-Arab and U.S-Arab strategic cooperation.
- Arab Divisions and Petty Feuding : The U.S. cannot create an effective security structure in the Gulf as long as Qatar is so divided from key security partners like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain; as long as Oman and Saudi Arabia remain at odds; and long as each GCC state makes so little progress towards integrated force planning, interoperability, and common facilities and institutions.
- Finding some integrated and interoperable approach to missile defense, and maritime security: The Gulf, Red Sea, and Gulf of Oman are particularly high priorities.
- Cooperation in power projection with outside allies: Declining power projection resources in France, Italy, United Kingdom. Uncertain role of Turkey.
- Stability in Yemen: Similar unity is needed in finding some outcome to the war in Yemen that will produce some level of lasting stability in Yemen and tie it to the Arab world. This not only requires new levels of security cooperation, it requires cooperation in offering Yemen some form of serious hope for development and stability.
- Encourage Egypt to put the same focus on civil development and unity it now places on internal security. This is a critical step in restoring Egypt's broader role and influence in the MENA region.
- Choose an approach to “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians: Progress towards a real Israeli-Palestinian peace may impossible, but finding ways to cooperate in aiding the Palestinian economy is not.
- Stability in Libya: Libya is another case where cooperation is needed in finding incentives to move towards unity and development, and deal with a key security problem.
- Support of Jordan and Morocco : Both represent moderate Arab states that need added aid and support in achieving development and stability, and their security efforts.
- Deal with the outliers: Nations like Algeria, the Sudan, and Somalia all represent radically different cases where better cooperation between partners may be able to help.
None of these challenges have good or easy answers. None involve easy movement towards cooperation and a common approach. All, however, represent pressing security issues for both the United States and its regional partners, and cases where expanding that cooperation to include European states like France and the United Kingdom, and Israel might make a further difference.
This scarcely means the U.S. should be exempt from criticism. The U.S. has made many mistakes. It can do more in many areas, and it does need to listen far more carefully to its partners. But, the U.S. has no magic wands or ability to deal with most key strategic challenges on its own.
No miracles are going to come from over the horizon into the MENA region. Not from the U.S., a largely mythical international community, or any other source. They must come at least as much from within the MENA as from the United States, and U.S. strategy can only be as successful as its strategic partners help make it.