February 9, 2017
I compiled these notes after a summary review of the Hadley-Albright presentations and their report. It is neither new, nor encouraging, but exemplifies what has been a longer history of US oil-military action in the region, as detailed and critiqued by Mitchell in Carbon Democracy.
The Atlantic Council is a think tank focused on US-Europe relations with programs in a range of areas, including the Middle East. In 2014 it was featured in a NY Times investigation into the influence of foreign governments on US think tanks. In this case, it was suggested that scholars at the Atlantic Council were influenced in certain directions, in one case, not to criticize the military government of Egypt (which receives significant amounts of US foreign aid). The Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East was funded by the family of, and named after, Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon, assassinated in 2005. It thus appears to be the case that the Atlantic Council, staffed and advised by prominent members of the national security community, maintains close relationships with the military-oil oriented status quo in the Middle East.
Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley, who came to WUSTL on February 8, 2017, are the co-chairs of the Middle East Strategy Task Force at the Atlantic Council. As I wrote elsewhere, briefly, they are both associated with a "hawkish" (militaristic) approach to the Middle East, Hadley even moreso than Albright. Hadley has been deemed a 'war criminal' by the feminist and women-led anti-war organization Code Pink.
Stephen Hadley, who spoke today @wustl, not only lied his *** off, he is on @codepink 's war criminals list. https://t.co/vfLfGwH6HD— Bret Gustafson (@bretgustafson) February 8, 2017
Hadley and Albright oversaw the production of a "Final Report" on the "new" approach to the Middle East, which is the basis of their ongoing 'educational' tour that brought them to St. Louis. The list of 'senior advisors' to the co-chairs on the report is a who's who of defense community, NATO, and Middle East country officials (including Saudi Arabia), along with conservative representatives of the US think-tank and academia (report, pp. i-ii).
The task force was convened in February of 2015. It is reasonable to think that the idea was that the report, in some way, would inform US foreign policy once Hillary Clinton (or one of the non-Trump Republicans) was elected. It looks like Trump threw a monkey-wrench in that plan so the road show is an attempt to promote it against Trump's rather chaotic - though sometimes brutally honest – talk about cutting heads off and taking oil in the Middle East.
The language of the report is one of "development" and "opportunities" for creating a "stable and peaceful order of sovereign states". To wit, from the executive summary:
...a global crisis emanating from the Middle East convulsing much of the region in instability and violence, while projecting the threat and reality of terrorism and disruption far beyond...There are opportunities in the Middle East, not just challenges.
To be able to harness these opportunities, it is necessary to change the political trajectory of the region from state failure and civil war toward a stable and peaceful order of sovereign states. It goes without saying that the states and peoples of the Middle East have the greatest stake in what happens there. Yet the United States also has vital interests that impact both the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their families: keeping citizens safe from terrorism; protecting the US economy; empowering friends and allies; enabling American global military operations; preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction; and averting destabilizing humanitarian disasters.
Advancing American interests will require far more than a unilateral “American strategy.” Outsiders cannot x what ails the Middle East. Neither can they avoid its global consequences through some combination of defense, disengagement, and containment.
The basic "new" strategy has two "prongs" [note the militaristic language]. First, military force exerted by "external powers" (i.e. the US) and second, 'development' efforts to "unlock the region's rich, but largely untapped, human capital – especially the underutilized talents of youth and women" (p.2). This sounds reminiscent of the discourses of self-determination and intervention, and the 'good will' imperialism of 'development' that Mitchell describes for the last 60-70 years of US policy.
Military action
In short, ramp up US military activities in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen to "wind down these civil wars."
Push for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine (but makes no statement about settlements).
Contain Iran so it does not become hegemonic. This is a nod to Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both oppose Iran.
Development (aka "unleashing the region's human and economic potential")
"develop the region's human capital"
Translation: education reform without large bureaucracies (the neoliberal model) and encouragement of American-style education and universities. Updated 2/13/17: After reflecting on Mitchell (ch. 4), you should see quite clearly how this story of the need to improve the "human capital" of the Middle East not only masks a not-so-subtle colonial racism, but echoes the projects of racial improvement from decades past. This is the heart of "development" as a form of imperial or indirect control.
"Big Bang" regulatory reforms
Translation: promotion of a free-market agenda, the discourse of "entrepreneurialism", promotion of private industry, free trade "trade barriers must be eliminated", promote foreign investment through deregulation, nothing said about NOCs, but the message is to make the region safe for foreign corporations
"citizen participation in civic problem-solving"
Translation: introduce the category of 'civic' and 'civic groups' as central in the society, to correspond with weakening of labor unions and other forms of political identification and engagement, position support for women as a key justification of intervention
"good governance" by "local governments"
Translation: push for decentralization, a long-standing mantra of neoliberal reformism, which gives more influence to large corporations and capital vis-a-vis the state, a technical approach to "solving problems" rather than a political approach to addressing political and economic inequality
"regional framework for dialogue"
Translation: make a new regional organization that weakens the influence of the Arab League (and maybe OPEC?)
"Regional Development Fund for Reconstruction and Reform"
Translation: Create a Marshall Plan or World Bank style fund that could exert influence and interventionism by offering or withholding credit in exchange for certain policy adoptions, i.e. "encourage and drive private sector development".
Where's the oil? In no part of the executive summary is the word oil mentioned, or even obliquely referenced, except in the part relating to American interests, where one might infer that helping the "American economy" and "enabling American global military operations" means, making sure the oil keeps flowing as it has been. [Note, it is curious that a new approach "for" the Middle East and "from" the Middle East is to advocate for and "enable" American military operations. That in itself is a bit mind-boggling but reveals not so subtly the hand of the oil-militarism nexus at work.]
The word oil is only explicitly mentioned in later sections (p 15-16), in the context of the importance of American exports to the region (though arms and military equipment are not mentioned) and American economic stability. And again, briefly, oil prices are referenced in the links between lower oil prices and changes in Saudi government and education (p37) (aspirational, not yet real); the conflict between Kurds and Iraqi national leadership (p 68); and some efforts of US universities to establish campuses in places like Doha and Abu Dhabi (p86).
Note the focus on the 'price' of oil with no mention of the problematic relationship of weapons for oil, or the close historical linkage between this relationship and the reproduction of oligarchic and violent rule across the region (c.f. Mitchell).
There is absolutely no mention of climate change or global warming. The word climate appears twice, once in reference to the "macroeconomic climate" (53) and once in reference to a "regulatory climate" (88).
The word "environment" appears only once as such, in reference to some initiatives for youth in Jordan. Otherwise it appears repeatedly but is used in what we might call the thinking of economic (free-market) calculation: in reference to "security environment" or "enabling environment" (96) or "investment environment" (88) or "entrepreneurial environment" or "legal and regulatory environment" (e.g. 87), all of which are used to orient discourse toward the pro-business, free-market approach to 'reform'.
None of this sounds very "new" nor does it address the fundamental problem of the American oil-weapons nexus with the Middle East, nor the problem of the overconsumption of oil and global warming.
Whereas Mitchell argues that oil is at the heart of the political machinery that currently exists, and that the political machineries of the West and the Middle East are entangled through oil, this report is one of economic calculation and imperialistic approaches to so-called 'self-determination' (now through development) that obfuscates that reality.
It thus exemplifies the way of thinking and the longer historical patterns that Mitchell sets out to critique.
St. Louis Public Radio wrote a soft-ball piece on the visit here. The article is revealing, since it shows how this tour was (mis)educating young people both on campus and in high schools, who went away feeling rosy and 'inspired' about our urge to 'help' the Middle East, but with nothing to say about the nexus between oil, militarism, and climate change.
