Hillary’s Middle East

The thrust of Clinton’s Mideast policy – including on Israel – will be much more a continuation of Obama than a clear departure.

By ALON PINKAS
Hillary Clinton (photo credit: SHANNON STAPLETON / REUTERS)
Hillary Clinton
(photo credit: SHANNON STAPLETON / REUTERS)
THE MIDDLE East seems happy.
It’s January 2017 in Washington, DC. On a clear, cold, blustery day President-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. She has just won 52.1 percent of the popular vote and a comfortable majority of 320 Electoral College votes.
The new president and former secretary of state is confronted with a Groundhog Day scenario that newly elected American presidents by and large dread, resent and are traditionally haunted by – revisiting the Middle East. The region, which, if you dare ignore, ominously reminds you of its existence and often expresses it in multiple, violent crises.
The region, in broad terms, welcomes Clinton’s presidency. They think she will change the course her predecessor Barack Obama took and revert to the good old days of US involvement and intervention everywhere and in everything.
The Middle East is wrong. Slowly but surely, President Clinton will continue Obama’s calculated withdrawal from the thankless region.
Further complicating matters, she inherits a toxic, crisis-laden and agitated relationship with Israel – a “special,” “unique,” “unshakable” alliance that showed visible cracks while Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed it. Those cracks permeated the US political system and while Clinton won 70 percent of the American-Jewish vote, the distress and burdens of the relationship have ruptured the bipartisan approach on Israel.
It is probably easier to engage in educated speculation and describe in detail and depth Hillary Clinton’s presumed “Mideast Policy” than it is to assume to know, predict or guesstimate what will actually transpire in the region in the more than 550 days until the US presidential elections.
For the sake of this article, let us make four basic and relatively safe assumptions: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been resolved; an agreement with Iran to curtail its nuclear program is in place and is being monitored, inspected, verified and evaluated with several indications that Iran is not adhering to it; ISIS may be in retreat but is still a menace and getting very close to toppling the Assad regime in Syria; and the Arab Middle East is in disarray but has not imploded entirely.
I would not go to Las Vegas with these assumptions but limited to this discussion only, they’ll do.
As she embarks on her presidency, Clinton has three fundamental Mideast related issues to deal with: 1) Does the US under her presidency formulate a comprehensive and coherent policy for the region? Is such a policy at all possible or even desirable given the dynamics of change and the diverse challenges? 2) Will her policy depart from or roughly continue along the lines of Obama’s trajectory? 3) Can she repair relations with Netanyahu, a prime minister with whom she has a working, albeit tenuous, relationship but one who repeatedly confronted her husband, Bill Clinton, during Netanyahu’s first term between 1996-99 and one with whom she had several unpleasant non-confidence-building spats during her tenure as Obama’s secretary of state between 2009-2013? The key point is this: on the strategic level, the US is undergoing a major policy shift. It is gradually disassociating from the Middle East. While some of the main actors in the region, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia, are exhibiting withdrawal symptoms and a fear of abandonment, the process, however slow and phased, is going forward.
The US is revisiting and re-prioritizing its interests in the Middle East, and it all points to a retreat and redrawing of the interests map. America is fatigued, scarred and disillusioned by its foreign entanglements in the Mideast, and sees no vital US interest at stake.
It looks at the region and sees three major powers: Israel, Turkey and Iran, none of which is Arab. The US is on the verge of energy independence, and less than 20 percent (and diminishing) of its oil imports originate from the region. The “pivot” to the Far East is real.
The emergence of ISIS and its destabilizing effects have created the impression of deepening US involvement, but it only put the shift to the Far East on temporary hold.
Clinton may change emphases and modify tones, and she may do a better job at assuaging regional allies’ fears and anxieties. But the thrust of her Mideast policy – including on Israel – will be much more a continuation of Obama than a clear departure. The sooner the region comes to terms with this reality, the better.
Alon Pinkas, a foreign affairs analyst and expert on Israel-US relations, is a former Israeli consul general in New York