pressing reason for such an effort. This nation-building motivation was in fact a lie. As we noted in the case of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, great presidents often have to lie to serve their greater moral purpose. But Bush failed to convince because his clearly stated moral imperative—defeating terrorism—had diverged from strategic reality to such an extent that his entire foreign policy appeared convoluted and chaotic, which made him appear incompetent. There were too many separate explanations, too many cases of special pleading. The failure to align moral objectives with strategic goals, and both with a coherent myth for popular consumption, crushed him.
In 2007, too late to save his presidency, Bush instituted the surge. This effort had less to do with military strategy than it did with using military force to set the stage for a negotiated settlement with the Sunnis. Once that was put in place, the Shiites, afraid of an American-backed Sunni force, became somewhat more cooperative, and the violence died down.
With Iraq no longer an effective counterweight, the balance of power with Iran broke down completely. An American withdrawal of forces would leave Iran the dominant force in the region, with no local power to block it—a prospect that completely unnerved the Arabian powers, as well as Israel and the United States. It is this imbalance that sets the stage for the regional problems that will continue to face the American president in the decade to come.
THE IRANIAN COMPLEXITY
As the second decade of the twenty-first century began, the dual problem facing the United States in this region was withdrawing its forces without leaving Iran unchecked by a countervailing power. Given that there were no other candidates for the job of blocking Iranian ambitions, it appeared that the United States could not withdraw from Iraq until it had created a government in Baghdad strong enough to restore balance.
The Iranians had clearly welcomed the invasion of Iraq. Long before September 11, they had done everything possible to induce the United States to step in and eliminate Saddam Hussein. Indeed, much of the intelligence forecasting that American troops would not encounter resistance had come from Iranian sources.
Once American boots were on the ground, Iran began to threaten U.S. interests in Iraq directly by becoming deeply involved with various Shiite factions, then by supplying weapons to the Sunnis to keep the conflict going. Iran had also supported Taliban forces in western Afghanistan, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Iranians had expected the United States to create an Iraqi government that marginalized the Sunnis and emerged as primarily Shiite. They anticipated that once the United States withdrew, such a government would become an Iranian satellite. They expected the Americans to lean on Iran’s Shiite allies to govern Iraq, but the United States threw them a curve by attempting to govern Iraq directly through various institutions and individuals. Nonetheless, given the protracted difficulty of forming a government and the eventual withdrawal of the Americans, the outcome is likely still to leave Iran in a favorable position.
But these factors are exactly what has proved so dangerous to the government in Tehran. Trapped between trying to govern a rebellious country directly and turning over responsibility to a government penetrated by Iranian agents and sympathizers and then withdrawing, the United States had to consider a more radical possibility: an attack that would overthrow Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the regime that his presidency was based on.
With its 70 million people inside mountainous borders, Iran is by virtue of topography an effective fortress. Given that the terrain makes a direct invasion impossible, the Americans have tried multiple times to generate a revolution similar to the ones that toppled governments in the former Soviet Union. Over the years, these attempts have always failed. But after the failures in Iraq, and to the extent that the United States could neither revive the balance of power nor leave Iran the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region, it would be natural enough for the Americans to consider some kind of attack to oust the Iranian government. The fact that this regime is split between old clerics who came to power with Ayatollah Khomeini and younger, nonclerical leaders such as Ahmadinejad adds to Iranian worries. But the leaders’ primary concern is that they have seen other U.S.-sponsored uprisings succeed, particularly in the former Soviet Union, and they cannot take the chance that the United States won’t get lucky again.
The Iranians noted the manner in which North Korea had managed a similar problem in the 1990s, when its government feared that the collapse of Soviet communism would lead to its own collapse. Trying to portray themselves as more dangerous and psychologically unstable than they were, the Koreans launched a nuclear weapons program. To convince people that they might actually use those weapons, they made statements that appeared quite mad. As a result, everyone feared a regime collapse that might lead to unpredictable results. Thus the North Koreans managed to create a situation in which powers such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea tried to coax them to the table with aid. The North Koreans were so successful that they had the great powers negotiating to entice them to negotiate. It was an extraordinary performance.
Playing to America’s nuclear phobia, the Iranians have been working on nuclear technology for a decade, a program that has included crafting themselves in the image of North Korea, as unpredictable and dangerous. Like the North Koreans, they managed to maneuver themselves into a position where the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, were trying to negotiate with them over the issue of whether or not they would negotiate.
The collapse of Iraq had left the United States in an extremely difficult situation with limited options. An air strike against Iranian nuclear targets would most likely spur a patriotic resurgence that would only strengthen the regime. And Iran had substantial counters, including the ability to further destabilize Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan. Iran could also unleash Hezbollah, a far more capable terrorist organization than al Qaeda. Or it could mine the Strait of Hormuz, creating economic chaos by blocking the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.
Thus the violation of America’s long-standing policy of regional balances and limited engagement led to a geopolitical worst-case scenario. Iran was now the dominant native power in the Persian Gulf, and only the United States had the means to counterbalance it, which would further violate America’s basic strategic principles. Moreover, the unbalanced focus on this one region left the United States weak in other parts of the world, trapped off-balance, with no clear counter in sight.
This is the defining geopolitical problem that President Obama inherited and that he and all other presidents of the next decade will have to deal with. Iran has become the pivot on which the Middle East will turn. In many ways, it was always the pivot. But before the United States could deal with Iran, it had to do something definitive about Islamic terror. It devoted its resources to wars it saw as directed against terrorism, which effectively insulated Iran from the threat of American intervention and even enhanced its position in the region.
The economic and geopolitical events of the past decade were intertwined. They created a crisis of confidence in the American public as well as drawing American strategic thinking into a series of short-term, tactical solutions. The Iran question is tied up with fears that rising oil prices will crush the economic recovery, as well as with the impact of action on the jihadist war. September 11 and the events of 2008 have combined to create a trap for American strategic thinking. As the United States moves forward into the next decade, it must escape the trap. The economic problem will resolve itself in time. The geopolitical challenge of terrorism requires decisions.
Chapter 5
THE TERROR TRAP
President George W. Bush called his response to the al Qaeda attacks of September 11 the Global War on Terror. If he had called the response a war on radical Islam, he would have alienated allies in the Islamic world that the United States badly needed. If he had called it a war on al Qaeda, he would have precluded attacking terrorists who were not part of that specific group. Bush tried to finesse this problem with a semantic sleight of hand, but this left him open to political and strategic confusion.
