Trump’s Saudi pivot is a golden opportunity in terror fight

Barak Seener Article

(CNN) — US President Trump’s recent speech in Riyadh exhorted Muslim nations to counter Iranian regional aspirations and “drive out the terrorists and extremists.”

A NATO-style Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition of 41 Sunni states, including all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), was initially announced by Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman in December 2015 — including Qatar.

A work in progress, the Trump administration’s aim is to coordinate coalition members to help it function more effectively.

Yet in the aftermath of Trump’s trip, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have severed ties with Qatar due to its alleged sponsorship of radical Islamist groups.
How this will effect the GCC — the powerful six state regional union of which all four nations are members — is not immediately clear.

What is certain, however, is that Tuesday’s suicide bombings at Iran’s parliament building and the Ayatollah Khomeini Mausoleum will be met by a sense of urgency within the Islamic coalition — and a need to coordinate in order to rapidly bolster its security and defenses.
Despite ISIS’s media wing, Amaq, claiming responsibility for the attack and threatening Iran and GCC States alike, Iran may also use the attack as an opportunity to raise tensions with GCC States.

Counter-terrorism strategy

The US seeks increased levels of cooperation with Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization, and President Trump’s itinerary in Saudi Arabia reflected this, as he attended the opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology.
This, however, is part of an ongoing Saudi-led effort to counter terrorism.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense initiated an attempt to counter Islamist terrorism and its ideological roots by establishing the Ideological Warfare Center (IWC) in December 2015.

Muslim nations form coalition to fight terror, call Islamic extremism ‘disease’. The IWC communicates with the Digital Extremism Observatory, established in 2005 under the supervision of Mohammed Bin Salman, with the aim of monitoring and ultimately combating digital extremism.

According to Salman Al Ansari, President of the Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), an organization aiming to strengthen Saudi-US relations, the IWC seeks to coordinate the effort of the Islamic coalition’s member states to counter terrorism.

The IWC’s initiatives include a range of counter terrorism strategies: the exchange of intelligence and databases of terrorist organizations among coalition members, media initiatives to communicate counter-radicalization messaging, and the coordination of military support according to each states’ capabilities to confront terrorism that threatens the member states.

The US, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Canada and Italy support the coordination of these member states, and would potentially benefit from these efforts, receiving increased intelligence and support in countering home-grown or imported terrorism and radicalization.

The IWC also seeks to coordinate with international government departments, including the US State Department and the African Union Mission for Somalia, and international agencies like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), NATO and Interpol.

Barak Seener Article

It aims to create regulatory guidelines for governmental agencies across the Islamic coalition on how to drain financial funding of terrorism — working with several respected worldwide anti-money laundering organizations — and work closely with counter-radicalization/terrorism organizations such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the Counter-Extremism Project.

In the sphere of cyber security, this Islamic coalition would work closely with NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center for Excellence (CCDCOE) as well as the Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) to heighten levels of cooperation and coordination to prevent cyber-security attacks and rapidly respond in the event of a cyber-attack.

Coordinating with the coalition would grant Western agencies increased intelligence on potential terrorist attacks.

Consistency

This, however, is all undermined by a European Parliament report accusing Saudi Arabia of spending $10 billion to promote Salafism via charities connected to Al Qaeda across the West. Salafism — also referred to as Wahhabism — believes in a literalistic reading of the Koran that rejects rationalist interpretations that can engage modernity. This leads to an embracing of fundamentalist ideologies that support terrorism, posing a security threat to both GCC and Western states.

Similarly, Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency and Federal Intelligence Service (BND) accused Saudi Arabia — along with Qatar and Kuwait — of funding mosques, religious educational institutions, radical preachers to disseminate Salafism via the Saudi Muslim World League.
But rather than acknowledge the existence of Salafism or Wahhabism, the Director of the IWC, Dr Mohammed Al Eissa, asserts that the IWC considers “Islam to be embracing, loving and all inclusive.”

“The type of Islam that the center seeks to counter is a doctrine that goes beyond logic leading to extremism, hatred and exclusion,” he says.

The US must monitor Saudi Arabia’s consistency in promoting a moderate form of Islam and pressure Qatar to cease its sponsorship of radical Islamist groups.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards blame Saudis for Tehran attacks. This will enable Qatar to re-establish ties with other GCC States to promote counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization initiatives internationally. To prevent future attacks it is essential to have the support of all the Gulf States working towards counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization.

This can only happen effectively if they are united in their commitment and promote non-literalistic readings of the Koran internationally, with the US, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy coordinating their activities.

The Trump administration’s reorientation towards Saudi Arabia is a golden opportunity to leverage Mohammed Bin Salman’s domestic reform agenda, and promote Saudi-led counter-radicalization initiatives internationally that could prevent attacks as seen in London and Manchester.

Article published on cnn.com

Reality check on strategic interests behind humanitarian concerns in Yemen

Barak Seener Article

(Defense News) – The US and Saudi Arabia have opposing strategic priorities in Yemen. The US has prioritized countering al-Qaida, while Saudi Arabia considers al-Qaida an equal threat to its security as Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Behind US humanitarian concerns for civilian casualties in Yemen lies another motivation: a growing inclination at least during the latter part of the Obama administration, undeclared but increasingly clear, to pivot away from Saudi Arabia in favor of its rival, Iran, which backs the Houthis. For this reason, the US has not reacted to Iran’s recent announcement that it plans to build naval bases in Syria and Yemen, which could considerably increase Iran’s support for the Houthis.

Iran, along with Hezbollah, provide money, training and ballistic missile technologies to the Houthis posing a threat to Saudi Arabia from the south, as the Houthis have overrun Saudi border guard headquarters and occupied 50 square miles of depopulated Saudi border towns. In April 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that Iran was providing military assistance to Houthi rebels. Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asiri, a military adviser to Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told me that, to date, Saudi Arabia has intercepted 36 ballistic missiles fired indiscriminately by the Houthis. As the collapse of Yemen’s government enabled al-Qaida, Houthis and other local militias to organize, Saudi Arabia’s exit from Yemen would be met by the increased presence of al-Quds fighters of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, al-Qaida, Houthis and Hezbollah, all threatening regional security.

Broader Ramifications of the Conflict

Sunni-Shiite tensions in Yemen have global security and economic ramifications; tensions are affecting sailing routes of oil tankers leaving the Arabian Gulf. The Pentagon confirmed Houthi rebels in Yemen were responsible for launching cruise missiles at the US Navy destroyer Mason multiple times in October 2016. In the same month, the Houthis used advanced anti-ship missiles provided by Iran to target US, UK, and Emirati ships delivering medical aid to Aden and evacuating wounded civilians for treatment.

The increasing Iranian presence in Yemen and differing strategic priorities of the US and Saudi Arabia can adversely affect the United States’ capabilities to exert influence in the Gulf. Iran or Russia would be in a position to control the Bab el-Mandeb strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. This will most certainly occur if Iran builds a naval base along the strait, undermining the access and activities of US warships such as mine sweeping and coastal patrols. An Iranian naval base would prevent Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen and likely lead to direct confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This could also prevent the trade route of two-thirds of global oil from the Arabian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal or Sumed Pipeline. Iran demonstrated its naval aspirations in 2009 when it conducted exercises near the Gulf of Aden and in 2011 when Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood granted Iranian ships access to the Suez Canal.

New Administration Reset

The Trump administration’s rejection of the Iran deal will likely be accompanied by a greater willingness to confront Iran’s building of naval bases beyond its borders and support for Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. Preemptively targeting transit points for weapons prior to reaching Houthi fighters will likely reduce civilian casualties as Saudi Arabia will be less reliant upon faulty Yemeni intelligence. Neighboring Gulf states with Yemen are likely to be pressurized to provide intelligence on overland smuggling routes to interdict weapons along porous borders with Yemen.

Article published on defensenews.com

Fallout of Halting Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia

(Defense News) – UK asserted that cluster bombs used in Saudi Arabia against Houthi rebels in Yemen were restricted to purely military targets, and that no civilians were targeted. Nonetheless, the outgoing Obama administration is halting a planned weapons sale of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) to Saudi Arabia due to its concerns over civilian casualties while paradoxically continuing to refuel Saudi-led coalition planes.

This is a reversal of the US Congress’s decision in November 2015, to sell smart bombs to Saudi Arabia to limit civilian casualties. Other sales included laser guided munitions such as Guided Bomb Unit (GBU 10) Paveway II, UAVs, JADAM and as well as air to ground precision guided missiles used on the American built Saudi F15 fleet.

For Saudi Arabia, avoiding collateral damage is central to effectively countering the Houthis. Brigadier General Ahmad Asiri, a spokesperson for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense expressed that Saudi Arabia’s strategy in Yemen is imitating the US-led coalition’s strategy in Mosul and Riqqa of avoiding civilian casualties by relying upon local intelligence while relying upon air power rather than ground troops. This however creates a problem as Yemen’s National Army intelligence that Saudi Arabia relies upon is poor. To avoid civilian casualties Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in need of a greater intelligence network on the ground. This requires Saudi Arabia to reverse its doctrine that relies heavily upon airpower and commit to greater ground troops.

Human Shields

It is not only Saudi Arabia’s usage of air power that has contributed to civilian casualties. Houthi rebels along with units loyal to Saleh have launched rockets and shells from residential areas and constituting human rights violations. On November 10 2016, General Al-Asiri asserted that Houthi militias held up 34 humanitarian aid ships carrying urgent medical assistance for over six months. The UN Security Council’s established Panel of Experts on Yemen reported to the UN Security Council that in the Taiz province, the Houthis had violated international humanitarian law by concealing fighters and equipment in or close to civilians in Al Mukha in the Taiz Governorate “with the deliberate aim of avoiding attack”. Houthi-Saleh forces in Aden and Taiz were documented attacking “medical facilities, schools and other civilian infrastructure, and using snipers positioned atop buildings to target people seeking safety, medical care or food.”

A Human Rights Watch report in January 2016, similarly accused Houthi forces of placing its armed fighters in a school for the blind in Sanaa, saying this placed vulnerable children “at grave risk”. Echoing this, Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri revealed that on Nov 9, 2016, Saudi Arabia killed 30 Al Qaeda operatives in the Eastern side of Al Mukalla where numerous Al Qaeda operatives had embedded themselves in the densely populated areas.

For this reason in 2014, when Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah condemned the war in Gaza, he but did not criticize Israel’s military operations against Hamas’s usage of human shields. Israel has accused Iran’s proxy Hamas from storing and firing rockets from schools, hospitals and mosques in order to raise the prospects of collateral damage. Iran’s Al Quds force along with Hezbollah are training Houthi militias to conduct the same tactics in densely populated areas.

Military Assistance

In early 2016, the U.S. military significantly reduced the number of US military personnel coordinating with the Saudi-led coalition’s air campaign resulting in increased likelihood of the usage of cluster bombings which would increase civilian casualties. Such measures also provides Iran the initiative to increase its support to the Houthis with impunity.

Both the US and UK can assist Saudi Arabia to dramatically lower civilian casualties in Yemen by increasing its intelligence cooperation with Saudi Arabia combined with offering precision guided munitions and pilot training. Reversing Houthi advances and Iranian involvement in Yemen can only be achieved with increased UK and US involvement leading to a greater humanitarian outcome.

Read Full Article: Defense News

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Arafat’s Legacy

(Huffington Post) – The Parliamentary vote to strike ISIS in the aftermath of the Paris attacks demonstrates that the globalised world of the 21st century does not afford us the luxury to relive an isolationist past. The US was shielded by two oceans and the UK was a distant island with foreign intervention being an arbitrary matter of moral conscience. Today’s increasingly networked reality and the erosion of borders in the Middle East causes global politics to be local and the security threats have increased at an exponential rate. Yet the question has been frequently asked about intervening in Syria was, ‘what has it got to do with us?’ Syria has led to one of the greatest refugee crisis of our time with terrorists able to conduct attacks within our shores. We have reached a stage in history where our security and strategic interests are aligned with humanitarian concerns. It is impossible and immoral to enjoy liberal democracy while abroad people are slaughtered by repressive regimes like the Assad regime or by sub-state terrorist groups like ISIS as it will come to haunt us as it did in Paris.

Targeting ISIS: A Security and Humanitarian Imperative

Fears of potential reprisals against Western targets if the US or Britain intervened in the Syrian crisis ignored the risk of terrorism due to the failure to intervene. Any environment hosting a vacuum of governance coupled with a totalitarian ideology that reinforces extreme poverty, serves to be a springboard for international terrorism, enabling the proliferation of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Radicals are attracted to that environment not only from impoverished and lawless areas, but from developed states. In areas like Libya, Mali, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria they are indoctrinated with radical philosophies and receive the know-how to conduct terrorist activities when they return home to their Western states. Even if Islamists don’t travel abroad they are radicalized by the internet and social media posing a security risk. In Britain the number of attempted terror plots and suspects on the watch list has soared to the thousands since the advent of ISIS. Despite the security risks of Syrian refugees being low, it is impossible to effectively screen them.

Read Full Article: Huff Post

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

The Obama Middle East Speech and Israel’s Reaction

Strategic Intelligentia

(RUSI) – For Israeli policymakers, President Obama’s major Middle East speech on 19 May 2011 has been met with alarm. An American president has for the first time broken with the traditional US approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The end result may harden attitudes on both sides of the conflict.

The Obama administration has dramatically shifted from the United State’s traditional approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian talks since 1993 when President Clinton presided over the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords. For the first time, President Obama shifted US policy by being the first president to call for Israel to return to the 1967 borders.

His predecessors, President Bush and President Clinton purposely refused to refer to the 1967 borders. President Obama’s pronouncement is certainly a departure from the position outlined by President Bush’s 2004 letter to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -endorsed by a bipartisan majority, including ironically Hilary Clinton. The letter had referred to the fact that both parties would have to agree to any swaps of territory. The letter further declared, ‘in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.’ Similarly, the Clinton Parameters which was withdrawn by President Clinton before he left office, while referring to land ‘swaps and other territorial arrangements’, failed to mention the 1967 borders.

This traditional approach towards the conflict was in line with UN Resolution 242 of November 1967 that did not make its calls for Israel’s return to a ‘secure and recognised’ border as synonymous with the 1967 borders. This was due to its aim that the borders would result from negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Britain’s foreign secretary at the time, George Brown underscored this saying: ‘The proposal said ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied,’ and not from ‘the’ territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.’ This principle in fact had already been reiterated by the main author of Resolution 242, the British ambassador to the UN in 1967, Lord Caradon, who decades earlier admitted on PBS: ‘We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line….We all knew – the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier.’ The cease-fire Lord Caradon was referring to was in 1948, when the five Arab armies were prevented from invading the newly created state of Israel and which legally formed an armistice line, not a recognised international border.

Read Full Article: RUSI

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

American-European Relations

Strategic Intelligentia

(InFocus) – During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama positioned himself as a strong proponent of diplomatic engagement. He pledged to work with Europe to solve international disputes and heed the advice of others when it came time to crafting America’s foreign policy. In practice, President Obama hoped that his approach would stand in stark contrast to George W. Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” — the philosophy where, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

It is no surprise, then, that in the aftermath of President Obama’s electoral victory, the sense of optimism in Western Europe was palpable. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitude Project conducted in May and June 2009, Germany’s favorable opinion of the U.S. more than doubled from the attitudes held in 2008 – from 31 to 64 percent. During the same period, Britain, Spain, and France also saw an increase of 16, 25, and 33 percent respectively. The belief that Obama would “do the right thing in world affairs” – which according to most Europeans means placing faith in multilateral institutions – was shown to be nearly universal in Western countries. In France and Germany, no fewer than nine-in-ten expressed confidence in the new American president, exceeding the ratings achieved by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel in their own countries.

Indeed, the importance Europe places in multilateralism is manifest when compared to the polling data from the first year of the Bush administration. A Pew Research Center poll from August 2001 measured the confidence levels of European nations toward the Bush administration and found that much of the opposition resulted from Europe’s frustration with Bush’s unilateralist approach to world affairs. It was therefore no surprise that more than 80 percent of Europeans disapproved of Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and more than 60 percent disapproved of the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Defense Missile Development Program. Yet the question remains: Do European perceptions towards the U.S. matter?

Obama promised hope and change, and that optimism was to extend to his diplomacy with Europe. The question, from a U.S. standpoint, was which path to Europe offers the highest probability of success? Should the new administration reach out to individual European nations — that is, the bilateral approach — or is it best to engage with collective bodies, such as the European Union (EU) or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? And how different would Barack Obama’s approach be in reality from that of George W. Bush?

Read Full Article: InFocus

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

The Threat From Israel’s Arab Population

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(InFocus) – While Iran and Syria, along with their proxies Hamas and Hizbullah, are often cited as Israel’s primary security concerns, Israeli Arabs are a growing strategic threat. What began as hostility toward the Jewish identity of the state has evolved into a growing identification with Palestinian nationalism and Islamism. Thus, the challenge posed by Israel’s Arabs to the security of the state is now characterized by religious ideology as well as political identity, making rapprochement increasingly less likely.

Israeli Arabs in Context

Despite allegations that Israel cleansed itself of its Arab population, Arabs have lived in the state of Israel since the founding of the state. Approximately 150,000 Arabs elected to live in Israel after the armistice of 1949. In accordance with Israeli law, the state took measures to ensure that Israeli Arabs enjoyed the same rights and privileges as Jewish Israeli citizens. Over six decades, however, the Israeli Arabs have developed a unique political identity, distinctly separate from the Israeli political identity, and often hostile to it.

In 2000, a poll published by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot revealed that 66 percent of Israeli Arabs would back the Palestinians in any confrontation with Israel, while only 13 percent would support their own country. Similarly, a 1999 survey by the Institute for Peace Research at Givat Haviva found that 32.8 percent of Israeli Arabs believed that only “Israeli” was “appropriate to their self-identity.”

At the beginning of 2001, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) reported that 18.7 percent of Israel’s population, including East Jerusalem, was Arab. Today, the Israeli Arab population centers and political hotbeds outside of Jerusalem are found in an area known as the “Triangle” in Northern Israel, where the majority of the Israeli Arabs live.

Read Full Article: InFocus

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Reflections on U.S. policy, international affairs and the limitations of the Bush administration

Strategic Intelligentia

(The Henry Jackson Society) – In a candid conversation with Barak M. Seener, Richard Perle offers insightful observations and analyses ranging from the current administration’s recent departure from neo-conservatism, the failings of the Presidential bureaucracy, and the fundamentally flawed strategy pursued by the U.S. in Iraq. Perle delves into the principles of neo-conservatism and addresses the misconceptions surrounding it. He asserts that the promotion of alternative energy is central to national security. Perle goes on to construct an argument for the continued use of interventionism as a legitimate and justifiable policy option. He also delineates the threat of U.S. military primacy and the steps necessary to sustain it. Finally, he discusses his perception of the inevitable failure of any Israeli- Palestinian peace negotiations which ignore the aims of Palestinians, and considers the possibility of militarily engaging Iran and North Korea.

B.M.S. Do you not find it problematic that the Neo- Conservative movement was short-sighted in the fact that they promoted a coherent philosophy which stated that there exists a nexus between autocratic states which lack human rights and their attempt to provide logistical and financial support to terrorist groups around the world? These same regimes threaten international security by their promotion of nuclear proliferation which may find their way into sub-state actors. On the other hand, they did not conduct a rigorous quantitative study as to how the current troop capacity would be able to achieve the grand aims of macro-democratization in the region.

R.P. I would, firstly, like to say that there does not exist a Neo Conservative’Movement’.Neo-Conservatismisaninclination and what does exist is a group of like-minded individuals that share the same inclination on a number, but by no means all, issues. The people who advanced the need to promote democratization as a doctrine did not have in mind military force to facilitate this. To associate support for regime-change with the advocacy of military force is a common misconception. Amongst the many of articles I have written, testimony I’ve given to Congress, television appearance and the like, I have never advocated the use of force as the way to achieve the development of democratic institutions. Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz have argued against the use of military force to achieve this end. Thus, there was no Neo- Conservative focus on the Revolution in Military Affairs in connection with the advancement of democratic institutions. They simply did not consider force. Rather, they saw the necessity in creating institutions such as the National
Endowment for Democracy which would offer political and moral support for subjugated people seeking democracy. Portugal under Salazar or Franco under Spain, as well as Serbia under Milosevic, were all democratized primarily through political action.

Read Full Article: The Henry Jackson Society

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Report and Retort: A Response to John Hulsman

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – The following is part of an ongoing debate between Barak M. Seener and John C. Hulsman.Seener offered a critique of Hulsman’s article “Designated Driver Diplomacy.” Hulsman responded, and Seener gets the last word here.

It is impressive how a supposed response manages to ignore several examples of how Britain either openly opposed or pro-actively reinforced U.S. foreign policy. These examples cannot be dismissed as merely being “trees pointing the other direction” in comparison to a forest, as they were pivotal moments in history. Instead, an onslaught is made upon my alleged policy leanings due to my being a “representative of the Henry Jackson Society.” I have never been affiliated with neoconservatism for reasons described below. Ironically, I find myself in the position of wanting to cite the same Cary Grant lines despite it being unbefitting for an alleged neoconservative to recall the effeminate and debonair British actor.

In an emotive appeal to those subscribing to conspiracy theories, the author holds neoconservatives responsible for hijacking U.S. foreign policy. None of the Bush’s cabinet advisors were neoconservatives. They were traditional realists who perceived the world as a dark and dangerous place with amorphous transnational threats that needed to be tackled, especially after 9/11. The notion of a neoconservative coup- which ignores most Democrats’ position in 2002-is facile. It also enables those not subscribing to neoconservatism to evade responsibility for also actively promoting Iraq’s invasion.

Just as historical readings ought not be conducted in a two-dimensional manner, similarly policy affiliations are allowed to be nuanced.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Report and Retort: The Special Relationship is Not Flat

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – In “Designated Driver Diplomacy”, John C. Hulsman applies an ill-advised one-dimensional world-view to U.S.-British relations, writes Barak M. Seener.

In 1884 Edwin A. Abbott published his famous book Flatland, followed in 2001 by Ian Stewart’s Flatterland. The main message of these books is that persons thinking in terms of one or two dimensions are unable to comprehend “depth” and cannot grapple with multi-dimensional dynamics. Despite geo-strategy’s nuance and evasion of neat policy formulations, John Hulsman engages in “flat” thinking in his article “Designated Driver Diplomacy.” Hulsman suggests that the Macmillanite strategy-“The Americans are crazy; we must always agree with them strategically, and curb their excesses (and promote our national interest) tactically”-defines British policy towards the U.S. post-Suez.

It remains conjecture whether Macmillan disagreed with U.S. presidents in private. But by stating that Britain has aligned itself with the United States merely to curb the latter’s excesses, Hulsman paints a monochromatic picture of the geopolitical landscape. In fact, Britain has overtly opposed American leaders’ foreign policy without engaging in subtle Machiavellian strategies to “curb their excesses.”

Prime Minister Harold Wilson ignored Lyndon Johnson’s desperate pleas for even symbolic participation in Vietnam, while Australia obliged Washington’s requests.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.