One More Nail

On November 13, 2023, the Middle East Monitor (MEM) headline reads, “Iraq: PetroChina to replace Exxon as lead contractor for West Qurna 1 oilfield.” The article declares, “Following Exxon’s exit from the oilfield-which is one of the world’s largest, the company will no longer have a presence in Iraq’s energy sector.” Regarding the current fight for global dominance, this chilling news begs the question,” Who is winning or, more accurately, who has won? The evidence keeps mounting that it is not the United States.
In an article written in 2020, China’s Emerging Middle East Kingdom, by Michael Doran and Peter Rough, they state, “American policymakers have long assumed that Chinese and American goals in the Middle East are largely complementary. Beijing, so the prevailing wisdom holds, is fixated on commerce, with a special emphasis on oil and gas. “China’s strategy in the Middle East is driven by its economic interests.” They go on to say, however, that “…China is very actively engaged in a hard-power contest with the United States—a contest that the Chinese occasionally acknowledge and are capable of winning. Concurrently, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued an unprecedented white paper on its Arab policy. It states, “…we will deepen China-Arab military cooperation and exchange. We will … deepen cooperation on weapons, equipment, and various specialized technologies and carry out joint military exercises.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been a nation looking for a grand strategy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US focused its strategy through the lens of the world’s only remaining superpower; in the decades since we have failed to accept the inevitable rise of powerful and influential rivals. We have maintained our view of a unipolar world. Our current vision is one based on high moral principles. As a country, we have become arrogant enough to think that other nation’s goals, objectives, and desires are compatible with ours. Our political leaders have convinced us that the US has achieved the moral high ground, so we must be right. That would be fine were it not for China’s competing strategy.

Our current grand strategy is one that is incompatible with other nations’ vital interests and implemented strategies, particularly China’s. Failing to recognize that the US is in a different fight than just a few decades ago, our political and intellectual classes have put America’s vital interests in the crosshairs.
If proof is needed, read our latest National Security Strategy document published by the Biden Administration. The National Security Strategy is published by law and is the guiding document for policymakers at all levels. Read the document and think about the direction it guides the country. It clearly states, “We will lead with our values.” It emphasizes globalism, equity, and climate change. In fact, it makes this declaration, “Of all of the shared problems we face, climate change is the greatest and potentially existential for all nations,” There is written proof that because we believe in the existential threat of climate change, consequently, it is obvious that every other nation and its people must believe in it too. In the age-old economic argument of how a nation chooses to spend its wealth and treasure on guns or butter, the US has chosen… climate change. So, we cede the Middle East and the Hindu Kush along with its oil, gas, and mineral riches to China because those energy sources are not as important as they once were. But, China’s primary interest is only economic. Right? China is using our misdirected focus as a stranglehold in order to win world dominance. Charles Krauthammer said it best. “Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete.”

China has moved headlong into the Middle East militarily and diplomatically. Some years ago, China moved a naval task force into the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and stated its purpose was solely to perform counterpiracy operations. Not surprisingly, the mission expanded to exercises and combined operations with regional navies. Then, in 2017, China built its first overseas support base in Djibouti, close to a globally strategic maritime choke point. That base was then expanded to handle aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, platforms not typically effective in counterpiracy operations. Today, six Chinese naval combat vessels, including support ships, have moved into the Middle East in response to the US movement of two carrier groups into the region as a reaction to the Israeli-Hamas conflict. Wake up. China’s interests reach beyond the economic realm and have little in common with the US fixation on globalism, equity, and climate change.

The willful exit of an American oil giant from the Middle East indicates a failed and just plain wrong national strategy and associated policies of the United States. At our most senior leadership echelons, we have people who are, at best, well-meaning but wrong. Alternatively, they are inept. Or, through their intellectually-directed arrogance, they have failed to learn.

We don’t have to go that far back in time to see our mistakes. In 1979, President Carter allegedly ordered the Deputy Command-in-Chief of the US European Command to make a phone call to Shah Pahlavi to tell him to leave Iran, turning the country over to the radical Islamic regime that is still in power today. That same year, Russia invaded Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussain rose to power in Iraq. Think of how we are still living with the consequences. Over the last four and a half decades, the US grand strategy in the Middle East has exhibited more failure than success. As a result, we have lost economic, diplomatic, and military influence over Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and consequently, the Middle East, the Hindu Kush, and the Persian Gulf. This author has insisted the US needs a strategic regional partner who influences the Middle East, and there are only three countries that could handle the role. They are Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Some would say they are not very palatable choices, but they are the only ones. So, pick one, pick one! Unfortunately, it seems we have, and it is obvious we have picked the wrong one in Iran.

Consequently, China and Iran now dominate in the region. Instead of learning from the strategic mistakes of the past 45 years, we compound them by doggedly sticking to moral and nirvana-like principles like climate change to drive our grand strategy. The Middle East region has not reached that point of self-actualization.

This continues to be a time of dramatic global change. Through our current leadership’s actions and equally important inactions, we have ceded our global dominance by exiting the Middle East. That strategy has been set by members of the Washington elite and by members of the American intelligencia who have never been in the mud of international reality, be it the marketplace or the diplomatic and economic arena. They continue to believe what they have always believed, and the rest of the world should agree. One of this author’s favorite philosophers put it better.

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. Eric Hoffer

A final note to any of America’s leaders who truly understand or who want to and are capable of implementing a real strategy: the US is in a fight for our national life. Accept that, along with the fact that this is never-ending. John Steinbeck writes, in The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, “The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplementary.”