The election of Barack Obama to the US presidency in 2008 was a great relief to most of the world horrified by the US military interventions during the two terms of President George W. Bush. The former Illinois senator promised to withdraw the US from various areas of conflict in the Middle East, and fulfilled his promise, pulling US troops from Iraq.
While Bush acted energetically and quickly, and only later realized the size of the damage done, Obama was the intellectual president who thought a lot about all the possible consequences of imposing US power in a foreign conflict. This often led to a paralysis of the American establishment, leaving the US with a reputation of hesitation and not being sure which way was the best. This especially happened in 2012 when Obama made his famous threat that if Syrian dictator Bashar Assad crossed the red line of using chemical weapons against his own people, the US would intervene in the civil war. Assad used Sarin gas against his population and Obama did nothing except continue the training of a small group of Syrian rebels by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The last faux pas that Obama committed was a few weeks ago when the Atlantic magazine published a long article about the Obama doctrine — based on lengthy interviews that the president had given the publication. The magazine reported that Obama said Saudi Arabia and Iran would have to come to an accommodation, and that the Saudis would have to divide the Middle East with the Iranians. This coupled with the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 left the Saudis stunned and feeling betrayed and abandoned by the Americans.
This American paralysis and unwillingness to intervene in the Middle East may largely explain the decision of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to act energetically to challenge the expansion of Iranian influence. The Saudis still strongly want the removal of Assad and for a year now have been intervening militarily in neighboring Yemen to push back the Houthi rebels and return President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi to the capital Sanaa.
The disastrous results of the US disengagement in Syria can be seen in the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees flooding Europe since last year, and the formation and strengthening of the terrorist group Daesh in Syria and Iraq. The bloody attacks of March 22 in Brussels could in part have been avoided if the US had intervened more directly in Syria. The American absence in Syria and Iraq, led by Obama and his desire to stop US military casualties, helped give more confidence to these violent terrorists, confident that the Americans would not put boots on the ground to hunt them down and kill them.
Unfortunately, instead of seeing that one of the reasons for the growth of these terrorist acts is right here in the West, in France and Belgium where Arab immigrants are not well assimilated into the local culture, newspapers like The Independent insist on blaming the Salafi version of Islam for this radicalization. The newspaper stretched its line of reasoning so much when it recently tried to put the blame of Arab youth turning to terrorism on the shoulders of the Islamic Center in Brussels, which was established in 1978.
In view of these facts, King Salman has been articulating his own doctrine. The biggest step he took so far to face the threat of Daesh was to form an Islamic coalition against terror. This coalition has 34 member states, including Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria and Turkey. Large military exercises were recently held in Hafr Al-Batin, where 150,000 troops from 20 countries practiced several scenarios of military fighting.
“While the coalition certainly has its sights set on Daesh and Al-Qaeda, it is also training for potential incursions in Iraq and Syria, in order to take on the Shiite militias that have been growing there. These Iran-sponsored terrorist groups, which have substantial arsenals and about 75,000 mostly irregular fighters, have for far too long been ignored by the Obama administration, although they are an emerging major regional threat,” wrote Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid this week on The National Interest website.
The American absence in the Arab world reached its peak a few months ago when Russia announced it was stationing fighter jets in Syria to bomb the opponents of the Assad regime, including all the rebels and Daesh. This led to the death of many innocent civilians.
Like every vacuum, which is never empty for too long until some new force comes to fill it; we should expect the vacuum left by the Americans to be filled in by the Russians and even terrorists. This is the danger of the US withdrawal from the region. Obama announced a few years ago that the US would make a strategic shift to Asia, repositioning US troops from the Middle East. This happened only in part, and has left a very dangerous vacuum that neither the Americans nor the rest of the world can ignore.
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The writer is Saudi journalist based in Brazil
