Insecurity Communities of South Asia and the Middle East

Consequences of US Foreign Policy

Majid Sharifi

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000258714
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique du Moyen-Orient

This book critically examines how US foreign policy has produced a regional regime of instability and insecurity in South Asia and the Middle East. It focuses on three interconnected zones of conflict—Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia, Iran and the Persian Gulf states, and Iraq and its neighbours.

In a comprehensive historical survey, this work compares the governing behaviour of these states with that of the West, where the American foreign policy establishment has, in contrast, pushed for investing in collective security. The author studies various events throughout history such as the Taliban regime; the US-led war in Afghanistan; the Obama administration and Pakistan; the first and second Gulf wars; the Arab Spring, and the rise of ISIS to present a theoretical analysis of Washington's consistent pursuit of multibalancing and regime change wars in the region.

An important critical assessment of Western foreign policies, this book will be indispensable for students and researchers of US foreign policy, defense and security studies, strategic affairs, politics and international relations, political economy, nation-state building, identity studies, globalization studies, Middle East studies, and South Asian studies.

Part I
THE MAKING OF INSECURITY COMMUNITIES

1
INTRODUCTION

Why is there no security in the heart of the Muslim world or its geographic proxy, South Asia and the Middle East (SAME), also known as the greater Middle East (GME)? This book intends to answer this question by focusing on the role of the United States in producing and maintaining what could be called a regional regime of insecurity that shapes the governing rationality (governmentality) of every state in the region. Since Muslims live in many countries, this book focuses on three interconnected spaces of conflict: Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia, Iran and the Persian Gulf states, and Iraq and its neighbors. These countries represent what I call the heart of the Muslim world. Admittedly, referring to this general region as such is as problematic as calling it by any other name such as the Middle East, the Persian Gulf area, or West Asia. However, the main purpose of this study is to examine the pervasive insecurity in the region, not its Islamic character. Therefore, the category should be taken as a heuristic concept for examining the pervasive insecurity that characterizes every government in the GME, regardless of its leadership style, regime type, ideological orientation, or foreign alignment. On a systemic level, I attribute this pervasive insecurity to Washington’s consistent pursuit of multibalancing and regime change wars in the region.

I define multibalancing as the act of dividing the region into overlapping zones of conflict. For example, the United States has divided the GME into three major spaces of conflict: the Near East, the greater Persian Gulf area (GPG), and South Asia. In the Near East, the space of conflict is defined by a US-led regime of balancing that has favored Israel against its immediate neighbors as well as the rest of the Muslim world. In the GPG, the space of conflict has been defined by a US-led regime of balancing in favor of the rich oil-producing monarchies of the Persian Gulf. In South Asia, the space of conflict has been defined in terms of balancing Pakistan against Afghanistan while favoring India as a balancer against China. Meanwhile, the United States has provided off-and-on support for Pakistan to carry out its wars. Of course, the dynamics of US regional balancing have changed over time. For example, the GPG region was first formed against the rise of Arab socialist nationalism targeting Iraq and its allies until 1979, then in cooperation with Iraq against Iran until 1990, next against both Iran and Iraq until 2003, and finally against Iran since 2003. This book examines the disastrous results of these multibalancing policies since the 1970s.

Regime change can be defined as the most coercive, interruptive means of enforcing multibalancing, in which the United States uses its economic, political, and military might to replace a noncompliant regime with an ally. Historically, regime change and state-building have constituted two phases of the same strategic path. This book traces how US-induced regime changes are followed by its state-building projects, a process that has helped create a series of politically weak, militarized, socially disembedded regimes in the region. Despite their deep differences in politics, economy, society, geography, and governing styles, all regimes face two sets of interrelated challenges: (1) existential threats posed by their real or imagined enemies and (2) how to build a tiny but loyal and reliable social base to survive.

These regimes constitute the building blocks of what I refer to as the insecurity communities of South Asia and the Middle East (ICME for the sake of brevity). Conceptually, the ICME can be compared to the North Atlantic Security Community (NASC) that the United States helped build for its Western European allies. In the aftermath of WWII, the United States heavily invested in the NASC to prevent its Western allies from preparing to wage war against each other. Moreover, rather than deploying regime change to coerce compliance, as it has done in the GME, the United States invested in promoting interstate economic, political, and cultural integration. The result was the gradual evolution of the NASC into a regional community whose members no longer prepare for war with each other. Instead, they have become allies of the United States in forming the US–NATO alliance, which is aimed at establishing a US-led capitalist world order.

The opposite has been true in the ICME, where the United States has pursued multibalancing and regime change to divide the region into several zones of perpetual conflict. In so doing, it has introduced systemic instability that inhibits any ruling regime from nationalizing the state it governs. By nationalizing the state, I mean the long process of building socially embedded regimes endowed with the institutional capacity to construct an official national identity to stitch together the otherwise fragmented bodies of Middle Eastern nations together and develop the capacity to govern them through consensus building rather than coercion. In other words, the nationalization of a regime translates into legitimizing its authority by creating a shared sense of national we-ness. Tragically, since WWI, no regime in the ICME has been able to legitimize its authority. This handicap has left every ruling regime in a perpetual state of war with most of its societal forces. Internally weak and socially disembedded, these un-nationalized regimes remain vulnerable to external threats.

With more of a focus on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, I will show that this is indeed the case for every governing body (regime) that has ever come to power in the ICME. Given the verifiable fact that member states of the ICME are threatened from within and without regardless of their differences, it is, therefore, safe to assume five interconnected hypotheses. First, state insecurity in the GME is driven by the failure of local regimes to nationalize or legitimize their authorities. Second, un-nationalized regimes are by definition incapable of governing through consensus building, so they rely on coercion to deal with their internal opposition, often called “national enemies”. Third, socially disembedded and institutionally weak, these regimes are always unstable and vulnerable to internal threats. Fourth, internal threats always turn into external threats, as Barry Buzan shows.¹ Finally, facing internal and external threats, these regimes seek to remain in power by entering shifting, ad hoc alliances to balance against their regional and extra regional adversaries.

While I provide ample evidence in support of these working hypotheses, blaming Middle Eastern and South Asian regimes for securitizing their domestic and foreign relations is not the focus of this study. After all, Americentric security studies have obsessively done that by faulting the “Oriental” others for causing their own insecurity while praising the United States for providing regional security. Ironically, the reverse has also been true. For critics of the AFPE, the United States is the sole cause of regional insecurity in the GME. This study departs from such flawed binaries. Rather than focusing on the security behavior of the United States or its foes, it focuses on a conflict-generating regime of insecurity that shapes the strategic thinking of every state in the GME. This regional regime is akin to a never-ending world series in which every actor competes according to its relative power in time and space.

Although the United States is the main sponsor and the biggest player in this regional series, it cannot control or predict the outcome of any of its games. Yet, the organizing principle of this US-sponsored series revolves around a deadly competition for more power and domination for the United States and mere survival for other players. Obsessed with survival, states in the GME remain unable and unwilling to nationalize (legitimize) their authorities and broaden their social base, so they remain incapable of de-securitizing their domestic or foreign policies. This vicious cycle has continued for every Middle Eastern and South Asian state, regardless of their differences. Meanwhile the AFPE continues to insist on fine-tuning the same tried and failed strategies of multibalancing and regime change wars that have exacerbated the collective insecurity of both its allies and foes alike.

Under these circumstances, it is safe to hypothesize that the security of any state in the GME depends on its relations with itself and its neighbors. This means that security is relational. This relationality implies that either every state in a region is at peace or none are. Tragically, the AFPE has always seen the construction of a regional security community in the GME as unrealistic. Meanwhile, its “realistic” strategies have miserably failed to increase its own security, power, and prestige or bring security and stability to its allies.

AFPE

Invoking the idea of the AFPE raises a series of questions related to the intellectual sources of US foreign policy making. These sources include three concentric circles: academia, think tanks, and government agencies. By far, the largest circle is the outer one that contains texts, images, and imaginaries produced by scholars working in academic centers, institutes, and programs in the discipline of international relations (IR) or related fields. The middle circle encompasses paid field “experts” or advocacy groups that produce knowledge in accordance with a particular ideological paradigm or push specific domestic or foreign policy agendas. Euphemistically referred to as think tanks, these interest groups represent an assemblage of highly connected figures linked to private interests on the one hand and public institutions and policymakers on the other. Finally, the inner circle is composed of an ever-changing combination of appointees and technocrats associated with the executive branch; the elected members of Congress, especially key committee and subcommittee chairpersons and their respective staff; and career professionals working as heads of agencies and their senior staff members. Together, this assemblage of people produces what Michel Foucault refers to as a “regime of truth”.² Foucault introduces the phrase to explain the entanglement between power and knowledge. In his investigation of prison systems, he shows how having power over the body of prisoners simultaneously produces a particular body of knowledge that rationalizes rules, norms, and scientific techniques associated with disciplining and punishing prisoners. In other words, Foucault explains how prison authorities in their daily practices produce the kind of conversation that enables them to speak as experts who can distinguish what is recognized by society at large as true or false, right or wrong, legal or illegal, scientific or irrational, morally correct or ethically perverse. The assemblage of the AFPE does in fact act as expert authorities over the national production of what constitutes American national interests and values, who should speak for it against whom, and how it should be defined and protected.

As an assemblage, experts associated with the AFPE are organically connected with (1) well-funded institutes, centers, and programs placed in top-ranking universities; (2) privately funded advocacy groups (think tanks) that for the most part formulate and write policies; and (3) elected and appointed public officials who selectively apply them as they deem fit. Meanwhile, commercial corporate media outlets popularize the AFPE’s skewed knowledge by breaking it down into a series of sensational stories, crises, and issues presented in terms of those for or against it. For example, media debates on foreign policy revolve around flawed binaries such as how hard the United States should treat Iran or Russia; how much support America should offer Israel; how much and what kind of weapons Washington should give or sell to its regional allies in the Middle East; how the United States should lead the Middle East to peace, prosperity, and democracy; how a particular administration should promote and protect America’s interests; and so on. Meanwhile, what is missing is to ask, for instance, questions such as who appointed America to lead and who gets to define what constitutes America’s values or interests. The set...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I The making of insecurity communities
• Part II Insecurity communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Part III Insecurity communities of the Persian Gulf
• Part IV Insecurity communities of Iraq and Syria
• Bibliography
• Index