From Jerusalem to Kabul via Baghdad and Tehran, the U.S. president faces an "arc of crisis" evolving dangerously.
In foreign policy, Barack Obama faces the ride deleterious Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, all from the "arc of crisis" in the Middle East. The first is called Palestine, the second Iraq, Iran's third, fourth Afghanistan. The most powerful man in the world will reach there in the next three years, to stop the four horsemen who, for now, all go in the wrong direction? The task is arduous, but lack of success at least partially, the U.S. president would jeopardize his chances of being reelected in November 2012.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could last sixty years the relations of the West with the Arab-Muslim, Barack Obama faces a double jeopardy did not know that the last Democrat holding the White House, Bill Clinton, the Israeli government's intransigence and lack of an interlocutor able to negotiate behalf of all Palestinians. Since the 2009 elections, the government headquarters in Jerusalem right-most ever recorded in the Jewish state since its founding in 1948. The recent refusal of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank has resulted, on June 25 last, the first diplomatic incident between Israel and the new American administration: George Mitchell U.S. President's Special Representative for the Middle East, abruptly canceled the meeting he was having with Netanyahu in Paris. Contrary to international law the settlements in West Bank (territory occupied by Israel in favor of its military victory in 1967) has taken over the last dozen years, such a magnitude that it threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state ( that would include the West Bank and Gaza, or 22% of the territory of Palestine under the British Mandate).
A division of Jerusalem in the alley near Second
difficulty, negotiators Americans have in front of them Palestinians deeply divided. In 1993, during the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat represented the entire Palestinian nation. Today, his successor as head of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, represents a movement which was defeated by the Islamist Hamas to free elections only ever known Palestine. Hamas, which still denies the right of Israel to exist (and which, therefore, America refuses to negotiate), holds an iron hand in the Gaza Strip, after having killed or expelled leaders local Fatah. The latter manages somehow the Palestinian cities and towns West Bank. Despite endless efforts, the Egyptian diplomacy has failed to reconcile the Palestinian enemy brothers, so they are a "government" of national unity, with which we could begin to seriously negotiate a solution. It is true that the support Hamas receives from Hezbollah and Iran do not grow especially the Palestinian Islamist movement in temperance.
Former national security adviser under President George Bush Senior, General Brent Scowcroft told Le Figaro his hope that President Obama "would soon assert that the protocol Taba was the solution chosen by America to resolve the conflict. " From January 2001, Israeli-Palestinian talks at Taba (unfulfilled because of electoral defeat of Prime Minister Ehud Barak defeated by Ariel Sharon) had drawn all the cards split between the Jewish state and Palestinian state, including those of Jerusalem, near the alley. Large Israeli settlement blocs were incorporated into the territory of the Jewish state, which reverted to the Palestinian state as many square miles. Smaller settlements located deep in the West Bank were dismantled (Today, this would represent more than 80,000 settlers to be repatriated by force).
If Obama would adopt the reasonable alternative of Taba, Congress let him he exert real pressure on Israel? In 1991, President Bush senior had forced the Israelis to come to the peace conference on the Middle East he had organized in Madrid by threatening to suspend the guarantees attached to the American Israeli loans. He was not reelected next year ...
Second Horseman of the Apocalypse, Iraq. Tuesday, June 30, all U.S. troops pulled out of Iraqi cities, causing the jubilation of the people and the relief of the Pentagon. But during the previous week, a campaign of bombings, mostly perpetrated in Shiite neighborhoods, killing more than 250 victims. Prime Minister Maliki (a Shiite) accused the Sunni extremist groups linked to al-Qaida to try to revive the Sunni-Shiite civil war in the dark years 2006 and 2007. The units of the Iraqi army and police will they show the energy and impartiality necessary to maintain order in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk? Nothing is less certain. So far, they are rather remarkable for their corruption and sectarianism. The fact is that the vast majority of Iraqi Sunnis do not support the idea of being ruled by Shiites. All ingredients that can fuel a recovery in the civil war are still there. We do not see the Saudis stop funding arms purchases by the Sunni militias, Iranian Revolutionary Guards nor suspend their military support to Shiite militias that they are subservient. As for the Kurds, now totally independent, we do not see them peacefully relinquish control of the Kirkuk oilfield. Barack Obama has promised a withdrawal of all troops from Iraq in 2011. What would be the political cost for him to leave behind it a civil war in Iraq and in the process of decomposition, the image of Lebanon the years 1975-1990?
Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, Iran is by far the most dangerous for Obama. The strategists of the White House had absolutely no plans of Ahmadinejad gigantic fraud in the elections of 12 June that the Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani describes as "well-planned coup to give the full power the IRGC, with the backing of aging ayatollahs. " They had not planned to start either the dignity of the Iranian people and the emotion aroused throughout the world by its manifestations. The hardening of the Islamic dictatorship in Iran do not bode well for the dialogue that Washington intended to take from the fall with Tehran on the nuclear issue. Ahmadinejad has already said he was "permanently closed". There is little dictator, shut up in his anti-Western paranoia, reverse its decision.
Increasing trade sanctions? The only additional sanctions even weaken the regime would be an embargo on gasoline. Iran, whose refineries are outdated, imports 40% of fuel it consumes. But the establishment of such international embargo would require a naval blockade of Iran, akin to an act of war. It would require prior approval of the Security Council of the UN. China and Russia, who congratulated Ahmadinejad on his "victory" would oppose it very likely.
Obama, who has no desire to get a third war on our hands, has, indeed, no way to stop Iran's race to nuclear weapons. A group of three general officers, all former heads of Centcom (U.S. central command covering the entire area of the "arc of crisis"), believes that America must prepare for the inevitable prospect of a nuclear Iran. They advocated the negotiation of a great "deal" with the Tehran regime, they do not consider more dangerous than were in their time, Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. In exchange for his admission into the nuclear club, Iran should agree to curb its protected Hezbollah and Hamas to respect the sovereignty of Iraq, to assist NATO in stabilizing Afghanistan. But can we trust Ahmadinejad to consider entering such a contract with him?
From imagination and luck
The situation in Afghanistan, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse continues to deteriorate. Led by the Taliban, the Pashtun insurgency is at the gates of Kabul. In an attempt to reconcile the "hearts and minds" of the rural population, the Americans have to formally renounce their strategy for the eradication of opium cultivation. Tactically, they have decided to drastically limit their use of air force, responsible for too many blunders. Without fun, they are preparing for re-election of Hamid Karzai, indecisive personality, whose entourage is notoriously corrupt. Like the Soviets in the late 1980s, they keep talking about the necessary "Afghanization" of war, without really believing. In this country organized by tribes and clans, no one has ever been able to build a national army worthy of the name. In Afghanistan, Americans are faced with a contradiction: they would dream to be able to leave quickly, but at the same time, they cling to the classical triptych security, development and governance, which would require decades of presence for any chance of success. The only good news came from Pakistan, whose army, mainly Punjab, seems determined to regain control of the Pashtun tribal areas, which hitherto served as sanctuaries for the Taliban and Afghan their cronies Arab al-Qaida. To achieve
resolve the Afghan conflict to make a "deal" with Iran, reliable, to withdraw from Iraq without leaving chaos to push Israel to make concessions, Obama will have to show imagination exceptional strategic and diplomatic. It will also require, as the generals dear to the heart of Napoleon, very lucky.
Renaud Girard http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/06/30/01003-20090630ARTFIG00631-barack-obama-et-les-quatre-cavaliers-de-l-apocalypse-.php?mode = print
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