Michael S. Doran: The Second Carter Term
[A visiting professor at NYU’s Wagner School, Michael S. Doran is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. A version of this article originally appeared in the E-Notes series of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.]
President Obama came to power intending to rectify the perceived mistakes of George W. Bush in the Middle East. With that goal in mind, he announced two major initiatives: reaching out to Iran and intensifying efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Neither effort has borne fruit, as two speeches at the recent meeting of the United Nations General Assembly have reminded us. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his address to shun yet again the outstretched American hand. This time, he suggested that the United States had orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in a futile attempt to maintain its faltering grip on the Middle East. Iran is on the rise, he said: The United States is a spent force. For his part, President Obama urged the Israelis and Palestinians to sign a peace agreement within one year. Less than a week after this exercise in direct presidential encouragement, the talks between the two sides have faltered and may well be suspended. In the light of these setbacks, it is a good time to reconsider some of the fundamental assumptions of what might be called Obama’s “strategic belief system.”...
Like Obama, Carter took office believing that his predecessors had exaggerated the strategic threat of the day, and had prosecuted a senseless, self-destructive war. The threat, of course, was the Soviet Union; the war, Vietnam. In seeking a hard-power solution to the spread of Communism, the United States had grown estranged from its better angels and, in doing so, undermined American security. The international system, Carter assumed, was relatively benign—provided, that is, that the United States would stick to the high road and refrain from stirring up opposition to itself. In his first major foreign policy speech, Carter famously claimed that fears of Communism were “inordinate.”
A series of provocations from Moscow, however, made it very difficult for the president to defend his policy of outreach. In December 1979, the tipping point came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter’s newly awakened perception of danger was magnified by the fact that the Red Army had rolled across the Afghan border less than a year after the Iranian revolution. The confluence of these two events stoked fears in Washington that Moscow might seek to exploit American vulnerabilities in the Persian Gulf....
Obama sees himself as providing an identical corrective to the perceived excesses of his predecessor. Bush, he believes, moved too close to the Israelis. By supporting them unquestioningly, he alienated Muslims throughout the Middle East. An invigorated peace process, Obama believes, will reduce hostilities across the board and render the region more hospitable to the United States....
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President Obama came to power intending to rectify the perceived mistakes of George W. Bush in the Middle East. With that goal in mind, he announced two major initiatives: reaching out to Iran and intensifying efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Neither effort has borne fruit, as two speeches at the recent meeting of the United Nations General Assembly have reminded us. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his address to shun yet again the outstretched American hand. This time, he suggested that the United States had orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in a futile attempt to maintain its faltering grip on the Middle East. Iran is on the rise, he said: The United States is a spent force. For his part, President Obama urged the Israelis and Palestinians to sign a peace agreement within one year. Less than a week after this exercise in direct presidential encouragement, the talks between the two sides have faltered and may well be suspended. In the light of these setbacks, it is a good time to reconsider some of the fundamental assumptions of what might be called Obama’s “strategic belief system.”...
Like Obama, Carter took office believing that his predecessors had exaggerated the strategic threat of the day, and had prosecuted a senseless, self-destructive war. The threat, of course, was the Soviet Union; the war, Vietnam. In seeking a hard-power solution to the spread of Communism, the United States had grown estranged from its better angels and, in doing so, undermined American security. The international system, Carter assumed, was relatively benign—provided, that is, that the United States would stick to the high road and refrain from stirring up opposition to itself. In his first major foreign policy speech, Carter famously claimed that fears of Communism were “inordinate.”
A series of provocations from Moscow, however, made it very difficult for the president to defend his policy of outreach. In December 1979, the tipping point came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter’s newly awakened perception of danger was magnified by the fact that the Red Army had rolled across the Afghan border less than a year after the Iranian revolution. The confluence of these two events stoked fears in Washington that Moscow might seek to exploit American vulnerabilities in the Persian Gulf....
Obama sees himself as providing an identical corrective to the perceived excesses of his predecessor. Bush, he believes, moved too close to the Israelis. By supporting them unquestioningly, he alienated Muslims throughout the Middle East. An invigorated peace process, Obama believes, will reduce hostilities across the board and render the region more hospitable to the United States....