диссертация (1169605), страница 14
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He continued his critical observationof the American strategy concentrating of the Middle East trying to present a morerealistic view of the American policy in the Middle East describing its evolutionfrom the dawn of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran to the present daydirection106. He defines it as “a combination of the “See-what-you-want-to-seeand-ignore-the-rest” approach. This pattern is clearly seen in American actions inIraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and even the Balkans, Bacevich argues. In explaining therelevance of this problem to the War on Syria, however, we can disagree withBacevich when the author writes that the Obama Administration tried to stay awayfrom the conflict as long as possible and was only pushed to act because of“humanitarian pressure” presumably in line with the neoliberal “Responsibility toProtect” dogma that pervaded his government at the time.
Interestingly, Bacevichmanages to connect the 1980s Afghan War to the one in Syria saying that the tacticof supplying military aid to Syria’s ‘moderate rebels’ is too reminiscent of thepolicy towards Afghanistan (which Bacevich discusses at length) when Afghaninsurgents were receiving 470 million dollars in military aid from the US annuallyto fight Soviet troops.
The subsequent rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is a bitterreminder of the fact that even a proxy war bears dangerous consequences. Thispowerful example demonstrates a continuity of American strategy across theBacevich A. Washington Rules. America’s Path to Permanent War. N.Y.: A Metropolitan Book, 2010, pp. 19-49;109-145.105Drezner D.W. The Ideas Industry. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2017. 360 p.106Bacevich A. America’s War Against Itself for the Greater Middle East N.Y.: Random House, 2017. 453 p.10457decades in the “Greater Middle East” and further drives home the idea that US haspracticed similar policies throughout this space.The neoconservatives are and remain the main driving force behind all ofthis, and their neorealist perspective on international relations was hardwired intothe US establishment after the Bush’s election brought them to the pinnacle ofpower and enabled them to force the permanent decision-making bureaucracy tooperate according to their precepts.
That isn’t to say that US only practicesneorealism and interprets international events accordingly, however, since there arealso strong undercurrents of neoliberalism that are present in policies. Take forexample the expansion of NATO and the EU, the latter of which pretty muchserves as Washington’s proxy governing institution for Europe. Although the USand EU share most of the same values, this isn’t a prerequisite to fruitfulcooperation between institutions, since the Pentagon and Saudi-led GulfCooperation Council (GCC) have very close and trusted relations with one anotherdespite having almost nothing in common on the socio-cultural front. The reasonthat they work so well together is because of the shared neorealistic objective thatthey have in balancing against and aggressively destabilizing other states such asIran and Syria which don’t conform to their foreign policy (power) dictates.The example of the US and Saudi Arabia’s institutional cooperation in spiteof their divergent socio-cultural values proves that the neoliberal foundation ofinternational relations – institutions – could be repurposed to pursue militantneorealist goals such as the Hegemonic Stability Theory of indefinitely prolongingthe “unipolar moment”, with the Saudis and others voluntarily supporting the USbecause their leaders feel that they have a profitable stake in sustaining this system.This excitedly opens up the research topic of “neorealist institutions”, whichshould in principle be an oxymoron if one abides by ‘orthodox’ internationalrelations theory, but which are empirically present in NATO, the GCC, and othersuch similar institutions that cooperate in pursuit of shared power objectives vis-àvis such powers as Russia, China, and Iran.
While the Bush Doctrine arguablyfavored neorealist strategies, the Obama Doctrine attempted to fuse the58institutional legacy that it inherited from its predecessor with neoliberal ideals suchas multilateralism and an emphasis on promoting the universality of the West’scivilizational values, which aligns with Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis that heelaborated on in his 1996 work “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking ofWorld Order”107.2.2 American Policy Towards SyriaLost amidst the never-ending series of Cold War crises and overshadowedby much more geopolitically important incidences during this period, the SyrianCrisis of 1957 greatly influenced the trajectory of the US forthcoming policiestowards Syria.
It occurred right between the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and 1958Lebanon Crisis, and therefore received less attention than both of them byhistorians. There were exaggerated suspicions in the US that Syria was on theverge of a secret communist takeover, one which could only be prevented througha military intervention or coup. Given that this occurred right after the KoreanWar, the United States was already frightened by the so-called “communistmenace” and speculated that the “fall of Syria” might trigger a “domino effect” 108throughout the Mideast109.Consequently, this was predicted to make the Afro-Eurasian tri-continentaljuncture point of West Asia the USSR’s newest staging ground for spreading itsideology all throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, and hence was conceived of as animminent national security threat for American interests.
This aligns with theNeorealist ideas about the balance of power and security dilemma.Another pressing strategic consideration for the US at the time was supportfor its Israeli ally. Syria and Israel never signed a peace treaty to end the 1948 War,not at that time nor ever, so from the perspective of American decision makers and107Huntington S., Ajami F., Mahbubani K., Bartley R., Liu B., Kirkpatrick J., Weeks A., Piel G.
The Clash ofCivilizations? The Debate. New York, NY: Foreign Affairs, 1996. 68 p.108Eisenhower D. Eisenhower gives famous domino theory speech. The History Channel. 7 Apr. 1954. Web. 6February 2018. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-gives-famous-domino-theory-speech.109Pearson I. The Syrian Crisis of 1957, the Anglo-American 'Special Relationship and the 1958 Landings in Jordanand Lebanon. Middle Eastern Studies 43.1 (2007): 45-64. JSTOR. Web. 6 February.
2018.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263200601079625.59strategists, Damascus constituted a threat to Tel Aviv. Furthermore, this threat wasthought to become even greater if Syria obtained an even larger degree of supportfrom the USSR by formally “defecting” to the communist camp.
This basicconsideration – that Syria’s partnership with a major out-of-regional actor couldshift the balance of power against Israel – would eventually come back into focusafter the Cold War when the neoconservatives feared that Iran could displace astruggling Russia in this role, both in Syria and the Mideast in general, andtherefore needed to be stopped via preemptive measures which later turned into thetheater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions and subsequent war on Syria.The United States expanded its influence in this region after the end of theSecond World War.
Before that, practically till the middle of 1940s, the MiddleEast was the sphere of Great Britain’s exclusive influence. America used the samestrategies for governing the region as Britain did, relying on the “balance ofpower” principle. The American government manipulated with differences ofinterests and competitive character of relations between regional powers trying toget as many dividends as it could. This approach gave the US an opportunity tostay outside while contradictions between different regional actors were growing,and to interfere into the situation at the moment most beneficial for the US, playingtogether with the regional actor whose aims and policy were in the stream withAmerican interests.In 1957 Syrian Crisis the United States worked together with its TurkishNATO ally to put severe pressure on Syria, eerily foreshadowing what would laterhappen after the “Arab Spring”.
Turkish academics Onurİşçi and Barın Kayaoğlunoted how closely these two crises resembled one another. They stressed the pointthat Turkey believes that the Syrian government “threatens” both the U.S. andTurkish national interests. However there are also certain (even severe)contradictions in their interests and plans. They remind us of the Turkish-Syriancrisis of 1957 seeing many parallels between the events of 1957, their aftermath,60and the current state of U.S.-Turkish relations.
The authors suggest thatWashington and Ankara have a rocky road ahead in the region and in Syria 110.The 1957 Syrian Crisis was not ‘naturally occurring’, it’s appropriate torefer to David W. Lesch’s 1992 book. It was mentioned that for a long time,practically till the time of the new Syrian crisis, the American role in this affairwas treated as a “deep secret”, but finally it became clear that the United Stateswas drawn into a plan to destabilize the Syrian government, in league with Britain,Iraq, and Turkey, during 1955-56111.
It should be noted that we can see directrelevance between the events of 1957 and policy of “regime change” in the MiddleEast and in Syria in particular. Russia’s decisive diplomatic intervention put a stopto their plans. In many ways, this pattern is exactly what transpired from 2011onwards112.The next major event which shaped US policy towards Syria in the ColdWar period was the 1982 Muslim Brotherhood Crisis which occurred when theterrorist group – which is outlawed in Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE –seized control of the strategically positioned city of Hama in central-western Syria.This group has popularly been regarded as the largest and most widespread Islamic“revolutionary” (terrorist) group for decades. Many countries, especially those inthe West, saw it as a collection of “Muslim freedom fighters” which had beenendeavoring to overthrow colonialists and then “dictators” ever since the 1920s113.That narrative isn’t accurate, but is capitalized upon by the US in order to‘legitimize’ its close strategic relations with the organization.
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