Written by Nasser Kandil,
When a President of a country such as America uses the term the patriotic strategy of the national security and reads a document prepared by the security services, diplomacy, and army then this requires dealing with the text away from the tactical political employment as a project based on scientific rules to express the interests of a country which announces the project away from the legitimacy of these interests.
To know that the US interests are illegitimate is something, and to know that the draft strategy is a lie is something else. Most often the US interests are illegitimate, and America often has a project and strategy, but this time the issue is not related only to interests and their illegitimacy, but to the lie when talking about project and strategy.
What was announced by Donald Trump as a strategy is a set of tactical slogans, most of which have a negotiating aspect that are not stable, which strategies usually are characterized with. In strategy it is neither possible to talk about Russia as an ally and opponent, nor to talk about China as a partner and an enemy, nor to talk about Iran by separating between its nuclear file and the missiles file, because this is not strategy.
Trump said through his fabricated strategy that his administration considers Iran as the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world and the biggest manufacturer of missiles so it forms a threat to America and its allies and what it does in the region as the expansion of its influence forms a threat to the US national security. So in case the US President presented a strategy then he would have to announce immediately the cancelation of the American signature on the nuclear understanding with Iran, and to announce that his forces in Iraq will confront the Iranian  expansion, and thus he must call the Iraqi government to resolve the position between the cooperation with his administration and its forces or the Iranian government and its Revolutionary Guard, furthermore, to announce that his forces would remain in Syria to fight Iran and its allies, and to call the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to stick to the referendum on the secession, putting the American support as a guarantee against the threats of Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara, furthermore, to send his military troops to deploy in Yemen at the gates of Bab Al-Mandab and the Red Sea coast, and to consider their staying a condition for any political solution in Yemen.
If what was announced by Trump was a strategy, then he would estimate with his administration what he called the dual acts of Russia and China, and would issue his assessment upon its outcomes, and would warn them by stopping the cooperation with Iran and the North Korea otherwise they would be on the enemies’ list or to they would be classified as friends and allies , so he calls them to contribute in solving the problem with Iran and Korea through negotiation away from rhetorical words as power builds peace.
Each strategy based on identifying the enemy, and subduing the rivalries to a rule based on the choice between the partnership in confronting the enemy as possible allies or to join to the enemy’s front and the willingness to be treated as enemies. But this was not mentioned in the strategy neither in form nor in content, neither in the case of ISIS, nor in the case of Iran, nor in the case of South Korea. In the three cases Trump did not say who the main enemy is; ISIS and Al-Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea or all of them, he did not put the relationship with Russia and China under resolving on the basis on this identification. All what he did was rhetorical words against Iran and Korea and reminding of ISIS, as well as descriptive words about Russia and China. All of these can serve as "tweets" not as a strategy.
What is the most important for America, to maintain the stability of the Middle East as a vital region for policies and interests, or to keep the balance of forces in favor of America and its allies? So upon the answer the strategy is based, away from the descriptive words of the forces, which the option of the stability depends on the cooperation with it, or the option of turning scale in favor of America and its allies obliges it to confront it, in the heart of these forces there is Iran, and in the heart of cooperation and confrontation there are Syria and Iraq. Did Trump answer any of these questions?
Is it possible to imagine that the American strategy is unable to give answer about the evaluation of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the most complicated accurate issue in the region, due to the American policies? Is Washington ignoring the peace process which was always at the heart of its strategies or is it drawing for it new ceilings? The intention is to determine the possible partner on the Arab and the Palestinian side as long as the opposite partner is surely Israel. Is there a Palestinian partner according to America’s specifications of peace, which their ceiling was drawn by Trump’s decision about Jerusalem? is the Saudi-Israeli alliance enough to fill this gap in Palestine, and is it possible to build a global strategy without a Middle East strategy where Palestine is in its center as a factor of making stability and a source for igniting wars?
What Trump did was mere rhetorical escalating message to provoke the tension in a tactical confrontation with Iran that he does not want it to get out of control and turn into an open confrontation or into a source of irritating Russia and China and loss of their mediation in the North Korean file, or a reason to expose its forces in Syria and Iraq to danger. It is a tactical confrontation that draws the pre-compromises limits of balances, so it must be governed with cohabitation imposed by geography as presented by the Iraqi scene which alone is enough to belie the American discourse.
Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

2017-12-23 | عدد القراءات 2115