Rubin sums up America’s mad Middle East policy

Howard Sutherland writes:

Barry Rubin writes a scathing summary of Obama administration missteps and misdeeds in Middle East policy. Strategic incompetence? Deliberate destabilization? It is a damning list of particulars, to such an extent that the motives almost do not matter, and Rubin does not delve into them. I suspect elements of both, but there is no denying that the American position in the Middle East, not great to begin with, is considerably worse than when BHO took office. And that is with full recognition of the damage the Bush II administration’s nation-building misadventures had already done. Any Israeli relying on the United States today is deluded. The U.S. government can’t be relied on to advance American interests, in the Middle East or anywhere else; why should anyone expect it to be capable of advancing Israel’s?

This former Cold Warrior finds himself in the unexpected position of hoping Russia is capable of providing some adult supervision of its unruly Islamic southern neighbors!

LA replies:

Just because the U.S. has become so extremely feckless or worse, does not mean, contrary to the beliefs of many paleoconservatives, that Russia is a responsible power. As Australian writer Edwin Dyga argues at length in “Eastern Promise—Why the West needs Mitteleuropa,” in the Summer 2011 Quarterly Review (the article is reviewed at The Brussels Journal), Russia under Putin is an expansionist power seeking to reclaim the empire once held by the Russian Tsars and the Soviet Communists. Why should anyone expect responsible behavior from it?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 20, 2011 02:32 PM | Send