From Mark Moyar

I started writing A Question of Command in the middle of 2007, near the nadir of the Iraq war, in large part because I was distraught at the daily slaughter in Iraqi cities. Having recently completed a book on the first half of the Vietnam War, I had started on the sequel but decided to put it on hold in order to write something of more immediate value to the Americans serving abroad. The United States, I was convinced, was not providing its military officers with the proper instruction before sending them into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. I believed, in addition, that America’s strategic and policy decisions had suffered badly from a lack of understanding of counterinsurgency that stemmed, in considerable measure, from the scarcity of good books on the subject.

For the preceding three years, I had been teaching mid-career officers at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia. During that period, a new colonel took charge of the college and re-oriented the curriculum towards counterinsurgency, as a result of his experiences commanding a Marine regiment in Fallujah. I had responsibility for identifying new instructional material for one of the core courses taken by all of the students, so I rapidly gained familiarity with historical and theoretical works on counterinsurgency that lay outside my lane of the Vietnam War.

As I waded into new sources, I reached the same conclusion I had reached in the course of writing two books on Vietnam—that most of the scholarship did not delve adequately into the actual business of how to defeat insurgents. Too much of it focused on high-level strategy and policy and on theoretical questions. There were only a few noteworthy exceptions, and they were historical works rather than theoretical treatises, like Brian Linn’s The Philippine War and Andrew Birtle’s U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine. Teaching experienced military officers, many of whom had already served in Iraq or Afghanistan, allowed me to see better the lack of practical usefulness of so much counterinsurgency research.

My broadening awareness of the counterinsurgency literature also revealed that Vietnam specialists were not the only people who accepted too readily the “hearts and minds” theory of counterinsurgency, which claims that counterinsurgencies should be defeated primarily with social, economic, and political reforms, not with military force. Through many years of research on Vietnam, I had concluded that the hearts and mind theory did not work in the case of the Vietnam War, and I came to the same conclusion for many other counterinsurgencies. In A Question of Command, I argue that security and good governance, rather than sweeping reforms, are the key activities in counterinsurgency, and that success in those two activities is principally a function of leadership. Rather than focusing on finding the right methods, as the “hearts-and-minds” school recommends, counterinsurgents should concentrate on finding the right leaders.

With the publication of A Question of Command, I hope to influence three specific audiences, in addition to the general public. The first is the U.S. military’s officer corps. Through its historical analysis and theoretical analysis, the book illustrates the leadership attributes and methods that have produced success in the past and are likely to do so in the future. It explains how to develop leaders, put them in the right positions, delegate authority efficiently, co-opt new groups of leaders, and influence an ally’s leadership. These subjects have been ignored almost entirely by previous scholars, in favor of topics of considerably less value to practitioners.

The second audience is policymakers, who are apt to make bad decisions in counterinsurgency situations if they do not understand the dynamics of counterinsurgency leadership. For example, American policymakers would not have barred Iraq’s traditional ruling class from the new Iraqi security forces had it known that building security force programs on a crash basis without experienced officers is a recipe for disaster.

The third audience is the scholarly community, particularly in the areas of history and political science. I am hoping to convince them that they have given insufficient attention to the role of leadership in counterinsurgency, and will therefore redirect attention in such a way as to promote greater learning in this area.

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On November 27, 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted a strong resolution that expressed “serious concern that Iran has constructed an enrichment facility at Qom [Iran] in breach of its obligation to suspend all enrichment related activities.” This censure of Tehran was preceded by a November 16 report that the IAEA reportedly suspects Iran may have additional hidden nuclear facilities beyond the previously undisclosed underground enrichment facility at Qom revealed during October. Parallel, clandestine nuclear fuel cycle facilities make sense. Without additional secret facilities, if Tehran enriched its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to bomb-making level, it would have to divert fuel from IAEA-monitored facilities.

The IAEA resolution and report coincide with Iran reneging on a tentative nuclear deal reached in Geneva during October. That understanding would have allowed Iran to ship some of its LEU out of the country for processing into fuel for use in nuclear reactors, but not nuclear weapons.

Heightened fears about Iran’s secret nuclear capabilities and stumbling nuclear talks point toward yet another round of UN sanctions. Previous U.S. and UN sanctions against Iran have been “smart” sanctions—targeting individuals and entities related to specific behavior, while leaving the overall economy unaffected. The next round, likely to involve restricting Iran’s imports of gasoline, represents a different approach, designed to have a macroeconomic impact to change the strategic calculus of Iran’s rulers.

The success of such sanctions centers on restriction of Iranian imports of refined petroleum depends on the degree of economic hardship and whether it threatens the regime’s hold on the population; economic impact depends on whether Iran’s refined petroleum suppliers participate in sanctions.

According to the Energy Information Administration, as of 2008, Iran’s internal refining capacity is 1.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d), with plans to increase capacity to about 3 million bbl/d by 2012. Today, consumers are allowed 32 gallons of gasoline per month at the 37 cents/gallon subsidized price. Of the approximately 400,000 bbl/d of gasoline consumed, Iran imported about 94,000 bbl/d by the end of 2007.

Gasoline is important among refined petroleum products because of regime subsidies. In times of gasoline scarcity, Tehran faces a difficult decision between reducing subsidies to raise prices and depress demand or keeping scarce gasoline cheap and allowing pumps to run dry. Either choice is politically perilous. During summer 2007, Tehran instituted limits on the amount of subsidized gasoline for purchase, resulting in riots at gas stations across the country. A substantial disruption in supplies of imported gasoline could precipitate additional riots and reinvigorate the Iranian opposition.

Unilateral options for the United States to restrict such imports are limited because Washington already prohibits U.S. persons from conducting business with Iran, particularly in the oil and gas sector; it is doubtful that import denial via naval blockade is among options on the table at this time for the Obama administration, although there is sentiment on Capitol Hill for blockade.

Unilateral steps short of blockade will have only a marginal impact. The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2009, which passed the House and Senate during mid-October, would allow state and local governments to divest from companies doing business with Iran’s petroleum and natural gas sector. But divestment is unlikely to compel corporations to cut ties with Iran.

The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 would have teeth, as it would authorize the President to deny U.S. government contracts to companies selling gasoline to Iran, and firms tangentially involved, such as shippers and those insuring tankers. Versions of the bill passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Banking Committee.

But despite Reliance (of India) cutting off gasoline sales to Iran, it is doubtful that Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Lukoil, Zhuhai Zhenrong, or any of Iran’s other gasoline suppliers would sacrifice lucrative contracts with Iran because of a threat of being cut off from U.S. government contracts. Russia and China could lose economic investments in Iran if those countries participated in gasoline restrictions.

That said, the toughly-worded resolution of November 27 reportedly “had unusual backing from Russia and China, broadening the message of international displeasure with Iran that is frequently voiced in the West.” Beijing is apparently sensitive to the argument that without support for tough diplomatic stance against Tehran (perhaps including another round of sanctions), Israel is likely to take military action that would interfere with Chinese supplies from Iran. The jury, however, is out whether China would vote for sanctions that target Iran’s economy.

The United State has reportedly persuaded the UAE and Saudi Arabia to surge oil exports to China in the event Iran cuts off oil exports in retaliation for Chinese participation in gasoline restrictions. Given Saudi dedication to oil price stability, however, it is unlikely any surge in oil exports will be large enough to make up for China’s loss of Iran as Beijing’s number two supplier of oil.

Even if some of Iran’s international suppliers were recruited to stop selling gasoline to Tehran, the Iranian regime has options to plug any supply gap. For one thing, the IRGC is heavily involved in smuggling goods, oil and gasoline included.

Venezuela has signed a deal with Tehran to supply 20,000 bbl/d of gasoline, which would help plug any shortfall created by sanctions. If Russia so wished, it has enough excess refining capacity to plug the gasoline gap. And though there is always cause for skepticism about Iran’s technical-industrial prowess in the petroleum sector, Iran’s expansion of refining capacity to make the country self-sufficient in gasoline production could be in place by 2012, making import restrictions irrelevant: Any sanctions storm will only need to be weathered for about two years.

Given the Iranian regime’s continued refusal to surrender its nuclear programs in response to economic incentives and threats—what Iranian President Ahmadinejad has characterized as “chocolate in exchange for gold”—gasoline sanctions are unlikely to have enough impact to cause a strategic rethinking in Tehran.

This is not to say they should not be tried, because any economic pressure, even if it not decisive, is welcome. And producing consensus for another sanctions round is useful in case force has to be used later. But there is little leverage to compel international corporations to suspend gasoline sales to Iran, and Tehran has options for plugging the shortfall and dampening economic damage. Because of the low likelihood of success of another round of sanctions, the breakdown in nuclear talks, and the absence of a regime-change alternative focusing on the Iranian opposition, the West is moving toward having to decide between accepting an Iranian nuclear bomb or bombing Iran.

In October, Lebanon was elected to one of ten non-permanent member seats on the United Nations Security Council. Come January 2010, Lebanon will assume Asia’s “Arab League” seat, replacing Libya for a two-year term on the critical international body.

The UNSC seat was the brainchild of Lebanon’s president Michel Suleiman, who used his 2008 UN General Assembly address and his side meetings during the 2009 gathering to press Lebanon’s candidacy. The notion of a seat on the council reportedly appealed to Suleiman, who prides himself on returning Lebanon to the “international political arena.”

Washington quietly opposed Lebanon’s candidacy. Senior administration officials were concerned about potential problems for the bilateral relationship that could arise from Lebanon’s voting decisions. While the pro-West March 14 coalition won the June 2009 elections, it was clear—even prior to the formation of the government in November—that Hezbollah and its local and international allies Syria and Iran would exert preponderant influence within the new government and the state’s foreign policy. Indeed, in the current government as with the previous one, Hezbollah—via its subsidiary Shiite party, Amal—controls the foreign ministry.

It’s not difficult to envision the kind of problems that will ensue. In the coming year, for example, it is all but assured that a resolution to implement “crippling sanctions” against Iran will come before the Security Council. Given Hezbollah’s influence—and the ever present threat of violence—the best Washington could hope for during a UNSC vote would be a Lebanese abstention. More likely, under pressure from Syria and Iran, Lebanon might vote against such a resolution.

Worse still, if history is any indication, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam—who himself is sympathetic to March 14—could be ordered to abstain or oppose Security Council resolutions in connection to UNSCRs 1701 and 1559, if not the Hariri tribunal, which Hezbollah and its allies do not support.

An article from the Lebanese opposition daily Al-Akhbar published on November 17 hinted that a resurgent Damascus—whose influence in Lebanon, according to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, is stronger now than it was when it maintained troops in the country—would try to take advantage of Lebanon’s seat to promote its own interests in the Security Council. Here’s a translation of the short article:

On the sidelines of the summit that brought together the Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Assad’s political and media advisor Buthaina Shaaban agreed with the delegation accompanying Suleiman to raise the level of coordination between Lebanon and Syria’s mission to the United Nation in New York, and that Syria will increase the number of its representatives (at the UN mission) to coincide with the Lebanese increase that came after Lebanon was elected a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

So in addition to flexing its muscle in Beirut, according to Al-Akhbar, Damascus is looking to control Lebanon’s UN mission more closely.

Given the potential pitfalls, Washington discouraged the government of Lebanon from moving forward, and reportedly even asked Riyadh to forward Saudi Arabia’s candidacy instead. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t bite, and Lebanon wouldn’t back down. So in January, Beirut will take its seat on the UNSC, a position that not only promises to annoy the administration and Congress—which has to sign off on the significant aid packages to Beirut—but also to be yet another source of increased tensions at home.

Despite the inherent problems associated with the Lebanese seat, Suleiman, not surprisingly, is exceedingly pleased. Some Lebanese scholars are, too. Carnegie’s Paul Salem recently told the Daily Star: “I’m very, very happy about it.… It boosts Lebanon’s presence in the UN and the Security Council… to push the items on its agenda.”

While Lebanon’s international profile might be raised, it’s hard to see how the benefits to Beirut outweigh the downsides.

The tragic killing of the 13 U.S. soldiers in Fort Hood by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is one is a string of events involving Muslim soldiers and veterans who have gone astray, raising delicate questions about the role and trustworthiness of the 3,000 Muslim soldiers in the U.S. military. The major incidents include the March 2003 attack in Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait by an American Muslim soldier, Asan Akbar, who rolled grenades into three tents where officers of the 101st Airborne’s 1st Brigade were sleeping, killing one serviceman and wounding 15; the six Islamic radicals who in May 2007 plotted to storm New Jersey’s Fort Dix Army Base with automatic weapons and execute as many soldiers as possible; and John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, a Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam who was responsible for 16 shootings and 10 murders and who is scheduled to be executed today.

It would be inappropriate to malign or even question the loyalty of the hard-working Muslim men and women wearing the uniforms of the United States. But it would be equally irresponsible to ignore the amassing evidence that subversive and combustible elements with radical Islamic persuasion have infiltrated our military, often putting our personnel at bigger risk in their own bases than from their enemies on the battlefield.

While Muslim soldiers have served in uniforms loyally for decades, it is the rising number of Wahhabi-trained and converted Muslims that is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since Wahhabism is one of the most radical and puritan strands of Islam, the penetration of Wahhabi thinking into the ranks of the military must be treated with care.

The genesis of radical Islamic thinking within the military was in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when nearly half a million soldiers and marines were deployed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and defend the oil kingdom from Saddam Hussein’s aggression. While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.

According to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s aide Rick Francona,

Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members. Once a particular American was ‘targeted,’ […] a few Saudi military officers, including a military imam, would attempt to meet the American in either a purely social setting or at least outside of the work area. These approaches usually included fairly generous gifts and of course, literature about Islam. The gifts included expensive briefcases, pens, books and other personal items. Americans who decided to convert to Islam were rewarded handsomely […] including all expenses paid trips to Mecca, and payments as high as $30,000.

The commander of Saudi forces in the Gulf, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bragged in his memoir that more than 2,000 American troops converted to Islam through this campaign. “These Muslim troops are now the messengers of Islam in the U.S. forces,” said Dr. Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam (1972) who worked during the Gulf war under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force while converting U.S. troops to Islam in his spare time. After the war, Phillips moved to the United States to “set up Islamic chapters in the U.S. Defense Department.”

Nearly two decades have passed since the Saudi conversion campaign, and most of the converts may no longer be in uniforms. But the seeds sown during the Gulf War have germinated, creating scores of radicalized Americans who are a threat to their comrades in uniforms as well as to their civilian communities.

Fort Hood’s Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar“—Arabic for “God is Great”—just before the shooting. As Camp Pennsylvania’s killer Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Allahu Akbar, “you guys,” “our countries”—strong words which tell us that it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.

“It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

—President Barack Obama, statement on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 4, 2009

The assumption represented by the fresh statement by President Obama on Iran is that all people and peoples are the same: at heart, all people and peoples basically want the same things, basically understand the world in the same way, basically are prepared to come to terms in the same way as everyone else. This is particularly clear in the assertion that what the people of Iran seek is “universal rights.” Such a culture-free world as envisioned in this statement would make communication and agreement a lot easier. The reality, however, is that cultures do differ, and that people and peoples do not see life and existence the same way, and may disagree on goals. Iranian regime goals of Islamic and Shia domination are not secret; these are the explicit raison d’etre of the regime, not to be negotiated away to build “confidence” and a “more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”

Similarly this statement appears to assume that there are not real conflicts of interest between countries, or between the regimes running those countries. In this view, disagreements are basically misunderstandings, which, with good will and open communication, can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. But power, control, and honor are gained and held only at the expense of other parties. There are winners and losers. Regimes wishing to improve their positions cannot do so by compromising with other parties. Furthermore, it is notoriously necessary in Middle Eastern despotic regimes to control the populace through confrontations with external enemies, real, imagined, or manufactured. Improving relationships with identified “enemies” is not in their interests and not on their agendas.

Finally, what good does it do to acknowledge the “powerful calls for justice” of the Iranian people when you are about to throw them under the bus by trying to make deals with the regime that is shooting them down in the street, torturing them in prisons, and executing them?

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As the Goldstone report on the Gaza war wends it way up the UN food chain, casting further opprobrium on Israel at each level, it is legitimate to question Israel’s handling of this challenge. Did the Israeli response lessen or aggravate the damage?

There are serious critiques that could have been levied against Goldstone’s mandate even before a single accusation was heard. UN investigations of wars, including this one, typically focus on jus in bello, on the laws of war on the battlefield, and ignore jus ad bellum, the justification for going to war in the first place. It can be argued with great cogency that it is unreasonable to judge the conduct of a war with little or no reference to its causes; echoes of this can be heard in Israeli complaints about the lack of attention to claims of self-defense.

A second critique is that international law has not kept pace with changes in warfare. Most contemporary armed conflicts involve what Rupert Smith has called “war amongst the people,” rather than classic set-piece battlefield scenarios from which laws on wartime conduct (jus in bello) were drawn. These laws seek, quite rightly, to minimize casualties among civilians, but how should they be applied when the very blurring of the military-civilian distinction is a basic strategic axiom of one party? Are insurgents entitled to more rather than less immunity if they refuse to wear uniforms (as required by conventional law)?

So Goldstone’s approach was already blinkered by the framework in which he, without audible complaint, was thrust. This was then compounded by the lack of an Israeli defense to the specific accusations that were brought. Having no “official” explanation that needed to be taken into account, as a straight-laced jurist he then not only accepted any claims of atrocities at face value but also attributed them to deliberate policy rather than the mistakes, negligence, and misconduct out of which most wartime violations are compounded.

Ruth Lapidoth, who has represented Israel in many international legal frameworks, and other leading Israeli jurists have argued that it was a mistake to leave Israel unrepresented in the presentation of evidence and argument before Goldstone. It may be that the final product would still not have been to Israel’s liking, but presenting one’s case in full force would make it more difficult to ignore the basic limitations of the framework (lack of attention to causes, unconventional warfare) and to assign to deliberate policy what could be attributed, in “the fog of war,” to deviations from the rules of engagement that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) had in fact set out.

A second effective means of damage control would be to address forthrightly the specific cases in the Goldstone report and to draw the necessary conclusions: a clear statement of the facts if the accusation is not warranted, and appropriate disciplinary action if it is. In fact, in international law, taking this step would remove the threat of prosecution abroad that now appears to hang over the head of top-level Israeli military commanders. The army that can fight a bloody conflict in an urban setting, without any cases of misconduct among its ranks, has yet to be created.

According to recent report, it was Defense Minister Ehud Barak who prevailed on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to boycott the UN inquiry. If so, it is further testimony to Barak’s inability to learn from experience, and it comes as no surprise that the latest poll predicts that, if elections were held now, his Labor Party, once the dominant force in Israel, would be reduced to an abysmal seven seats.

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The role of Iran in fueling insurgency in Iraq, particularly attacks against U.S. forces, has been well-documented and forms one front in Iran’s proxy war against the United States. Receiving much less attention than Iraq, is the role Iran has played in supporting anti-NATO insurgents in Afghanistan as a second front against U.S. and NATO forces.

At first blush, such support seems bizarre given the intense antagonism between radical Shiites in Tehran and the fringe Sunni Taliban movement, each of which sees the other as lying outside the bounds of true Islam. Indeed, the two were at odds throughout the 1990s, at times approaching what some considered a full-blow regional crisis. Late 1998 saw the Taliban murder of hundreds of Shiites in Mazar-e-Sharif and an Iranian buildup of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps troops along the border with Afghanistan.

By 2000, however, the Taliban had dispatched an emissary charged with reaching out to the Iranian regime, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa. Cooperation, even with ideological enemies, fits with Tehran’s pattern of willingness to work with any ally to oppose the United States. (Iranian regime support for Al Qaeda in Iraq is part of this trend.)

During a January 2000 meeting in Iran, its representatives offered weapons assistance in light of the Taliban’s inability to procure weapons on the open market; and at a November 2001 meeting, Iranian diplomats offered anti-aircraft weaponry to the Taliban for use in impending action with the United States and NATO and offered safe passage of fighters, weapons, and money across the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Direct Iranian government assistance to the Taliban was first alleged by U.S. officials during 2007. In January of that year, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns alleged that “There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it’s a pattern of activity.… It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”

A 2007 Treasury Department Fact Sheet identifies the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force as Tehran’s main vehicle for providing the Taliban with financial and weapons support. Secretary Gates has argued that the quantity of materiel proffered to the Taliban from Iran requires senior Iranian government involvement. Such support, even if not directly ordered by senior political leadership in Tehran, is certainly known of and allowed to continue unabated.

The same Explosively-Formed Penetrator IEDs Iran ships to Iraq are turning up in western Afghanistan, a previously quiet area compared to the eastern border with Pakistan. There have been 15 U.S. deaths in western Afghanistan in the last five months. One Taliban commander told BBC News in mid-2008 that Iranian businessmen sell Explosively Formed Penetrators, called “Dragons,” at a premium price to select Taliban commanders. In addition to businessmen who sell the weapons, the Taliban commander added that “There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons.” The Afghan press is reporting in October 2009 that Afghan security forces confiscated 860 Iranian-made land mines in northern Afghanistan. Tehran is also escalating by sending shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to Afghanistan, which would greatly complicate NATO operations.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, alleges in his September report to the White House that in addition to supplying weapons, “The Iranian Quds Force is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups.”

As U.S. forces gradually shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, Tehran likely sees the opportunity to bog down the American military in a way it was unable to do in Iraq. Such an analysis accords with American assessments that see the U.S. position in Afghanistan as tenuous at best.

The Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council (P5+1) initiative to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and use maximum leverage to do so, diminishes the ability of NATO countries to use diplomacy to discourage Iranian support for the Taliban. Success against Iranian infiltration in Afghanistan will almost definitely require changing the security environment on the Afghanistan side of the border, rather than transforming the behavior of Tehran on the Iranian side of the border.

As President Obama weighs General McChrystal’s request for some 40,000 additional troops to execute a population protection counterinsurgency strategy, it is important to bear in mind that with external support from the likes of Tehran, the Taliban is unlikely to be defeated by anything less than rejection by the Afghan people themselves. To this end, the United States may be well-advised to seek support of members of Pashtun tribes that have formed alliances of convenience with the Taliban. A counterinsurgency strategy with enough U.S. forces to win the trust of locals by providing security will be essential to allow the American military to wean some of the Taliban’s tribal Pashtun allies away from the insurgency.

Walter Laqueur contributes a new paper to MESH’s Middle East Papers series, on Russia’s Muslim strategy. That strategy, barely coherent, is riddled with contradictions, as Russia vacillates between resentment of the American-led world order and fear of an ascendant Islam. For now, it’s the resentment against the West that dominates the Russian outlook, resulting in a makeshift approach to Islam at home and abroad that may prove inadequate as Russia’s own Muslim minorities and neighboring Muslim states grow stronger. Download here.

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Turkey’s ties with its neighbors have been transformed since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power almost seven years ago in November 2002. Some analysts have described the AKP’s foreign policy as a “zero problems with neighbors” approach. Under the AKP, Ankara has indeed eliminated problems and built good ties with some neighbors, such as Syria and Iran, and signaled a thaw with Armenia, with whom Turkey shares a closed border. On the other hand, Ankara’s traditionally good ties with other neighbors such as Georgia and Azerbaijan have deteriorated under the AKP, and Turkish-Israeli ties could unravel despite diplomats’ best efforts. The AKP’s foreign policy, far from producing “zero problems with neighbors,” has resulted in significant ups with some neighbors and significant downs with others—especially those that are pro-Western.

For starters, the AKP’s foreign policy has focused heavily on the Muslim Middle East. Some analysts have referred to the party’s foreign policy as “neo-Ottomanist,” suggesting “secular” imperial ambitions or desire to achieve status as a regional power. But the AKP’s foreign policy energy has not asserted Turkey’s weight equally in all the areas that were under Ottoman rule, namely the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Instead, the AKP has focused its energy on the Middle East, with a slant towards Islamist and anti-Western actors, while building a finance-based relationship with Russia.

In this regard, the party’s use of diplomacy is evocative: a study of high-level visits by AKP officials to the Middle East, Balkans and Caucasus reveals that the party focuses asymmetrically on anti-Western Arab countries and Iran, while ignoring Israel, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Between November 2002 and April 2009, the Turkish foreign minister made at least eight visits to Iran and Syria, while paying only one visit to Azerbaijan (a Turkic nation once considered to be the closest country to Turkey) and one visit to Georgia (despite the fact that after Georgia’s independence, Turkey had acted as a mentor for that nation). During the same period, the Turkish prime minister made at least seven visits to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while paying only two visits to Greece and Bulgaria, Turkey’s two immediate European and Balkan neighbors.

Much of the AKP’s energy in the Muslim Middle East has been focused on Syria. In the 1990s, Turkey viewed Syria as an enemy, because of its support of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) terror attacks against Turkey. Yet, on October 13, Turkey and Syria opened their borders, which facilitated visa free-travel, and set up joint cabinet-level meetings which encouraged a meld in bilateral policymaking. Turkish-Syrian rapprochement began in the late 1990s when Damascus stopped supporting the PKK, but the past seven years of rapprochement under the AKP have brought about a significant strengthening of Syrian-Turkish ties. The AKP’s sympathy towards Turkey’s Arab neighbors, and its tendency to analyze the Middle East through an “us versus them” religion-based political lens, as well as to side with anti-Western causes in the region, have helped build Turkish-Syrian relations. Today, diplomats describe Turkish-Syrian relations as perfect.

Turkey’s ties with Iran have also improved under the AKP’s leadership, although not to the same extent as Turkish-Syrian ties. This is due to the fact that Tehran is a regional power which, unlike the Baath regime in Damascus, does not need patrons to survive. Still, Turkey defends Iran’s nuclearization, and as international pressure to prevent it mounts, Iran will likely launch diplomatic overtures to strengthen its bonds with Turkey. Trade links, including Turkish purchase of and investment in Iranian natural gas, will upgrade bilateral ties. Yet they will also create tensions between Ankara and the West, which will view AKP-promoted investments in Iran as undermining efforts to isolate Iran economically.

As Turkey’s ties with Iran have improved, Turkish-Israeli relations have significantly deteriorated under the AKP. The party’s critical rhetoric regarding Israel, which has eroded all Turkish public support for ties with Israel, had been dismissed for a long time in the West and in Israel as domestic politicking. However, that evaluation changed earlier this month. On October 7, the AKP dis-invited Israel to “Anatolian Eagle,” a NATO air force exercise that has been held in central Turkey with U.S., Israeli and Western states’ participation since the mid-1990s. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan justified his party’s decision by saying that Israel is a “persecutor.” Yet, the next day, the AKP announced that it had requested that Syria, whose regime persecutes its own people, participate in joint military exercises. A proverbial mountain is moving in Turkish foreign policy: the AKP’s “us versus them” mindset, which does not see nations but rather religious blocks in the Middle East, is corroding the foundations of Turkey’s 60-year-old military and political cooperation with Israel.

Rather than being pro-Western or neo-Ottoman in a “secular” sense, the AKP’s foreign policy is asymmetrically focused on anti-Western Middle East powers, as well as Russia. Rather than having a “zero problems with all neighbors” approach, the AKP’s foreign policy is a mixed bag, eliminating problems with some neighbors, yet souring previously good ties with other neighbors, especially pro-Western ones. The question is: how is that good for the United States?

On Saturday, October 17, at The Washington Institute’s annual Weinberg Founders Conference at Lansdowne, I was privileged to serve as master of ceremonies for the announcement of our second annual Book Prize for outstanding books on the Middle East published in the previous year. This is a major literary award, one of the most lucrative for non-fiction works in the world. And this year’s winners—chosen by a three-person panel of jurors that included Washington Post/Newsweek columnist Lally Weymouth; former State Department counselor (and SAIS professor) Eliot Cohen; and Emory University Middle East professor Ken Stein—merited every dollar in prize money… and more.

The first prize, worth $30,000, went to Ronald and Allis Radosh’s A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel; the second ($15,000) went to Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization; and the third ($5,000) went to Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. What a broad, fascinating and provocative array of books! They include a history of what was perhaps the most contrary decision an American president has ever taken on Middle East policy (Harry Truman’s decision to buck the Foggy Bottom establishment and recognize the new Jewish state of Israel); a bold and courageous account by an Iraqi intellectual cum public servant about what ails Muslim societies and how to fix it; and a wonderfully introspective retrospective on a scholar-diplomat’s time on the front lines in the Middle East (and the no-less-violent battles about the Middle East back in Washington). I have no role in these decisions—we are scrupulous about having an independent, omnipotent jury whose members don’t even know the identities of their fellow jurors—but I was thrilled with how their deliberations came out.

For more information on our Book Prize winners, click here.