I Apologize To Ronald Reagan

Yes.  I'm apologizing to the memory of Ronald Reagan.

Not for his economic policies, which still remain in force to this day, or for his Central America policy, which did more harm than good, and certainly not for Grenada, but for his Iran strategy.

What?  Hear me out.  In attempting to deal with a troublesome theocratic regime in control of Iran, Ronald Reagan sought to pursue quiet diplomacy with the mullahs and clerics who sustained the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  Iranian proxies were holding hostages in Lebanon, and Reagan was desperate to get them out without having to pull something as foolhardy as Desert One (and the 1983 Beirut bombing of a Marine Corps barracks probably scared the Shinola out of him when it came to using force in the Middle East).  So he approved a secret strategy to trade low-grade, low-priority military hardware for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, ultimately getting three of them released before the operation was exposed in November 1986.  Attitudes toward Iran were still bitter with the hostage crisis of 1979-81 still fresh in people's minds in 1986 (including, I suspect, the mind of a 40-year-old real estate developer named Donald Trump), though, and the operation did not go over very well with the American people.  After having vowed never to deal with terrorists, Reagan seemed to be doing just that.  How could he do such a thing?

To understand why he did so, you have to look back at what was happening in the 1980s.  Iran was slowly gaining influence in the Middle East and was in a protracted war with Iraq, then under control of Saddam Hussein.  In the interest of playing Iran as a counterweight to Iraq, reducing Soviet influence in the region, and trying to quell the civil war in Lebanon, Reagan sought to deal with the Iranians in secret to improve relations with the Khomeini government.  Robert McFarlane, President Reagan's third national security adviser, summed up the reasoning for a rapprochement with Iran in the following memo from June 1985: "Dynamic political evolution is taking place inside Iran. Instability caused by the pressures of the Iraq-Iran War, economic deterioration and regime in-fighting create the potential for major changes inside Iran. The Soviet Union is better positioned than the U.S. to exploit and benefit from any power struggle that results in changes from the Iranian regime . . .. The U.S. should encourage Western allies and friends to help Iran meet its import requirements so as to reduce the attractiveness of Soviet assistance . . .. This includes provision of selected military equipment."

So, Reagan was trying to make nice with the Iranians rather than make war on them.  And he did so over the objections of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz.  There was just one problem, something Weinberger and Shultz sensed - the Iranians were never really interested in any sort of rapprochement.  Reagan was sincerely trying for a major foreign policy breakthrough not unlike Nixon going to China, but Khomeini, unlike Mao, was never going to meet with the enemy.  He played Reagan for a fool.  That's not Reagan's fault.  Khomeini could have reciprocated for the good of stability in the Middle East, but he preferred to humiliate the U.S. instead. But, given Trump's current saber rattling, Reagan's explanation of his Iran operation in a televised address to the nation on November 13, 1986, sounds quite reasonable: "My purpose was . . . to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the U.S. and Iran] with a new relationship . . .. At the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our relationship. The most significant step which Iran could take, we indicated, would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages held there."  I thought at the time that we were headed for a war.  Silly me.  If Reagan had tried to do what Trump is doing now, I would have been more justified in that fear. 

But what about the scandal?  The scandal involved the proceeds of the money received from the arms sales going to help the Nicaraguan rebels - the contras - which was illegal.  We remember the Iran-contra affair as a scandal, but it was the contra part, not the Iran part, that was the scandal.  And that was orchestrated by John Poindexter and Oliver North without Reagan's knowledge.

Reagan survived the scandal, and looking back on his efforts to set things right with the Iranians, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time - certainly better than starting World War III.  His strategy had this much in common with Desert One, though - it would have been a positive game-changer had it worked. :-(   

Muammar Gone Daffy

Up until now, the events of the Middle East has made this time an exciting one in which to be alive. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, Islamic nations are casting off their old dictators and making steps toward democratic government. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt have already been forced out, and despite attempts to suppress their people, the king of Bahrain and the president of Yemen are feeling more than a little bit of pressure. Not to mention the mullahs of Iran. While some people in the region - the Egyptians, most certainly - are ready to form governments based on democratic principles, some countries could easily slip into greater authoritarianism under new governments. They could resemble the old banana republics of Latin America more than the emerging post-Communist regimes of eastern Europe.

No one knows which way Libya is going. In fact, thanks to its legendary dictator, Muammar El-Qaddafi - in power since 1969 - Libya could blaze its own self-destructive path. The flaky Qaddafi, who became synonymous with terrorism in the 1980s with his support of commando attacks in Europe and his backing of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing - is holding onto power by any means necessary, even employing the Libyan air force to mow down demonstrators. (Two senior mutineering air force pilots flew their fighter jets to the nearby island nation of Malta and requested political asylum after defying orders to bomb protesters.) Qaddafi, 68, made a bizarre appearance on Libyan television to insist that he remains firmly in power, and in fact he did not look at all well. No one seems to know who's in charge over there, and oil traders have responded accordingly, sending prices upward.

Other countries in the region undergoing unrest may become democratic republics or military dictatorships when all is said and done, but Libya is looking more and more likely to become after Qaddafi a society no one will be able to define or recognize.

Pan Arab Revolt

The recent mass uprisings in Tunisia, Yemen, and, more dramatically, Egypt would be exciting if they weren't so scary. The idea of common people rising up against totalitarian governments sounds so wonderful, but the most recent reports out of Egypt depict a country in chaos and turmoil. The demonstrations have been spontaneous, with little leadership in the truest sense of the word, and the Muslim Brotherhood - hardly an organization devoted to expansion of democracy - is in a position to take control of the resistance. This isn't the Berlin Wall coming down; this is order breaking down, and the White House knows it. If Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were to fall, no one knows who or what would take his place, or how it would influence (likely adversely) the rest of the Middle East - especially Israel.

If Egypt, with its poverty and bad economy, is in a precarious state, then Yemen is far worse off. Yemen is a country once divided by colonialism and then the Cold War. The north achieved independence from Turkey in 1918 and was a monarchy until 1962, and an oligarchic republic after that. A communist republic in the south replaced in 1967 the British protectorate that had been established there in the nineteenth century, centered around the port city of Aden. Dirt poor, with few resources of its own, and an active Islamic movement among its population, Yemen has long been a source of unrest and instability. Al-Qaeda is active here by all accounts, and it was al-Qaeda that was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. Yemen's post-Cold War unification in 1990 (under the northern government) was marked with much less fanfare than the reunification of Germany that same year, and alas, the Yemeni government's often futile attempts to integrate the country economically haven't received much attention either. To be fair, some progress has been made in the past twenty years, with some economic development that reduced the national budget deficit's share of the country's gross domestic product. But progress comes very slowly in this part of the world.

Tunisia will likely have the easiest transition from authoritarianism, with the president having been deposed and with the chief of the Tunisian army siding with the protesters with the promise to "defend the revolution." Also, it has a vibrant middle class. Egypt is too unpredictable, and with the arrest of Egyptian Nobel laureate Mohammed El-Baradei after his return to the country and the shutting down of Internet services, the situation is likely reaching a tipping point. Yemen could pose a danger for U.S. naval operations in the Middle East, given its proximity to Mandab Strait separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden (and, by extension, the Arabian Sea). And I haven't even mentioned how an Egyptian revolt could produce another Suez Canal crisis that could humble the United States in the same way that the 1956 crisis reduced Great Britain and France to second-rate powers practically overnight.

No, this is not as thrilling as the Cold War's end twenty years ago. But given the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in Romania in 1989, fears of a reunified and renewed Germany, and the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania in January 1991 and the attempted internal overthrow of Gorbachev that August (before the Soviet Union was dissolved that December), there were times when that march to freedom also traveled treacherous terrain.

Iraq: It Started With a Bang

President Obama addressed a convention of disabled veterans in Atlanta today declaring that all American combat troops in Iraq - which, I believe is still trying to form a new government after the elections in March - and even though today is the twentieth invasion of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Mr. Obama did not mention the event.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was actually a watershed moment for the world, as it was the point where the Cold War began to end and a new era of geopolitics began to emerge. With greater instability in the Middle East and Iraq's sudden control of over 20 percent of the world's oil as a result of his occupation of Kuwait, Western focus shifted from the Soviet Union - a year and change away from dissolving - and eastern Europe to the rise of Arab and Islamic influence. President George Bush sent troops to Saudi Arabia to check the Iraqi army from going any further and then push Saddam's troops out of Kuwait when it became apparent that Saddam wouldn't give it up without a fight. This angered Osama bin Laden, who resented the presence of American troops in his homeland, which led him to form al-Qaeda from the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan, from which the Soviets had withdrawn and which the Americans forgot about. (Bin Laden wanted to use his commandos to defend Saudi territory, but King Fahd would have none of it.) Bin Laden himself took up residence in Afghanistan much later after living in Sudan, where he approved and oversaw the plotting of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks that took place in September 2001, which the second President Bush used as an excuse to invade . . . Iraq.

Before August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein was a thuggish dictator who persecuted his own people and had grand but unrealized ambitions of controlling more of the Middle East. His invasion of Kuwait upset the balance of power in the Persian Gulf region. In the eighties, the United States had supported his regime as a counterweight against the Islamic fundamentalists who ran Iran, and American support allowed Saddam to wage an eight-year war against Iran. When he forcibly annexed Kuwait, the elder Bush must have wondered who would provide a counterweight to Saddam.

I must admit this: The Persian Gulf War was the right war to prosecute, although I didn't think so at the time. Although I feared it would lead to World War III and last interminably, what happened was that the Iraqi army was decimated in six weeks, Kuwait regained its sovereignty, and a peace was quickly established in which Saddam was contained by the American and British air forces. War was never actually declared against Iraq - an official declaration of war, if I'm not mistaken was made in advance by Saddam's rubber-stamp Parliament recognizing a state of war if Kuwait was invaded by the Americans and their allies - but the resolution Congress gave to the senior to wage war was used judiciously. Bush could have allowed American troops to go deep into Iraq, march on Baghdad, and overthrow Saddam - but he merely wanted to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty, not remake Iraqi civilization. Besides, Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, and General Norman Schwarzkopf knew what would happen if they tried to invade and occupy Iraq. Exactly what happened when Bush's son did the same thing. The younger Bush's war didn't start a global conflict, but, boy, has it been interminable.

Was it about oil? Of course it was about oil, but bear in mind that in 1990, the U.S. only got twelve percent of its oil from the Gulf region, while Germany and Japan got much more of their oil from there. Japan actually paid for much of the military operation then called Desert Storm. Had Saddam been allowed to annex Kuwait, it would have amounted to appeasement and given carte blanche to starve the West of oil. The Saudis, who have more oil than they need, are happy to sell it to anyone, but Saddam would likely have used greater control of the world's oil as a weapon. It figures that American policymakers only realized that after it was too late, after having propped him up for eleven years.

If Albert Gore - who supported the Persian Gulf War but has never supported the current war in Iraq - had become President in 2001 instead of George Walker Bush, there likely wouldn't have been another war in Iraq, but we'd probably still be in Afghanistan and we would still be struggling against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And while our dealings with Iraq would have been different, they wouldn't necessarily have turned out better. It's only fair to say they would have been different.

The effects of the invasion of Kuwait twenty years ago today, despite shift in American policies based on who's in the White House, are likely to last for a long time.