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Although Kurds, Shiites and many others in Iraq never regretted the 2003 American invasion, most Americans do. From many Americans’ point of view, the younger President Bush turned out to be reckless, squandering vast sums of the country’s blood and treasure on risky, ill-prepared and mendaciously justified undertakings. While the toppling of Saddam turned out to be easier than most people expected, the occupation of Iraq cost Americans much too much for far too little in return.
It was thus an America tired of war that elected Mr. Obama in 2008. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Obama was elected on a platform promising to focus on domestic rather than foreign policy problems. The slogan “Yes we can!” was certainly not meant to apply to any new ventures abroad. It should also probably come as no surprise that in contrast to his predecessor, Mr. Obama also appears exceedingly risk averse in foreign policy. Whether the issue is Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Russia’s advances in the Ukraine, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil war in Syria or just about anything else, the new president seems to prefer cautious non-committal to decisive engagement or action.
As I have written in previous columns, the rise and recent advances of the Islamic State (IS) demonstrate this tendency in the White House very well. Initially Mr. Obama dismissed the IS as a two-bit junior varsity regional problem. When the IS captured Mosul and much of Western Iraq in June the Americans seemed to be caught with their pants almost as far down as the Iraqi Army’s. When the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga faced their own surprise humiliation at the hands of IS in early August, again the Americans appeared too hesitant and unsure about what course of action they would take. Only when Erbil itself seemed to be under threat and tens of thousands of Yezidi civilians had already been on Mount Shangal five days did the American President decide to say something and act.
The action he chose was “limited air strikes to protect American personnel in Iraq and the civilians on Mount Shangal.” This was combined with a promise not to send American troops into Iraq. The arming and resupply of the Kurds fighting the IS would only occur with Baghdad’s approval and collusion. Throughout August, Mr. Obama’s apparent position remained that the IS was the problem of others in the region, stating that “We’re not the Iraqi military, we’re not even the Iraqi air force,” and “I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.” Most recently, the President added that regarding the Islamic State, “I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We don't have a strategy yet.”
In other words, while President Obama reassesses the IS and attempts to devise a strategy, he continues with his non-committal cautious policies, adding relatively small tweaks to the status quo foreign policy only when forced to do so. The caution instinct seems to run so deep that the President even promised not to send troops back to Iraq and admitted to not having a strategy to defeat the Islamic State.
But why would anyone enter a contest by placing limits on what they can do, and then publically admit that they have no idea what to do? America may not need to send significant numbers of troops into Iraq or Syria, but surely there is no need to tell its enemies that it will not do so under any circumstances? Likewise, can the public admission of lacking a strategy inspire confidence in American allies battling the IS Jihadis as we speak? What if instead of looking indecisive, Mr. Obama threatened both the IS and others that he will back allies like the Kurds one hundred per cent, without limit or conditions? At the same time, he could privately tell the Kurds what they actually have to do in the short term to receive unrestrained American assistance in this war.
Cautious diplomacy and minor tweaks to the status quo foreign policy can not possibly be the right answer to every single challenge facing the United States. Leaders that turn out to be too risk averse may endanger their country and its interests just as much, or more than, reckless ones.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
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