Going Offshore
John Mearsheimer has an article in Newsweek outlining his proposed strategy for US policy toward the Middle East “offshore balancing” as a military posture plus indifference to what goes on inside these states. I’m not so sure about the indifference, but I think it’s worth observing that Mearsheimer’s points about military posture hold up independently from the deep theoretical roots that he uses to ground them.
The question Mearsheimer is raising is whether it really makes sense for us to maintain extensive military facilities in and around the Persian Gulf. These bases are costly for the United States, both in terms of their direct financial cost and also in terms of the fact that unlike our European bases they’re extremely unwelcome. And the benefits are pretty obscure. Until the Gulf War, we got along without this massive apparatus and in fact we were able to prosecute the war successfully without it. And for better or for worse, the Iraqi threat that the apparatus was supposed to contain is gone.
Meanwhile, I think a lot of people have the sense that these bases are giving us “influence” in a key region of the world. But the influence is actually hard to see. The Saudis aren’t selling us discount oil. And our bases don’t give us any magical abilities to spread democracy.
53 Responses to “Going Offshore”
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December 7th, 2008 at 10:07 am
“Until the Gulf War, we got along without this massive apparatus and in fact we were able to prosecute the war successfully without it.”
It took months to actually build up the requisite invasion force.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
“Meanwhile, I think a lot of people have the sense that these bases are giving us “influence” in a key region of the world. But the influence is actually hard to see. The Saudis aren’t selling us discount oil. And our bases don’t give us any magical abilities to spread democracy.”
That’s pretty moronic. The Saudis are an ally and their selling us discounted oil would be potentially ruinous. I also doubt that you can infer from the actual history of American/western involvement in the ME a serious intention to “spread democracy”. Prop up client regimes yes–spread democracy…obviously not.
Because influence isn’t easily measurable doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Indeed it’s subtlety is a tribute to its efficacy. I don’t know the relative weight that a landed foreign military presence has vis a vis other factors (weapons sales, oil sales, Israel, naval task groups, general economic cooperation) but it’s difficult to believe that it has no influence at all. Imagine, for instance, if Russia set up nuclear launching facilities in Cuba.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
What is it about the field of international relations that drives its practitioners into barren abstractions and elaborate circumlocutions and circumventions: “interests”, “threats”, “balance”, “influence”. Policies need to be tailored to the real world to serve, specific concrete ends. They don’t exist in this kind of neutral terminological vacuum. It would really help advance rational discussion if Mearsheimer would at least state which interests precisely we need to protect, and with what priorities justifying what levels of expenditure, and if he would specify what threats precisely we must guard against.
I take it that our abiding long-term interests in the Middle East are, primarily, to prevent any one power or concert of powers from becoming militarily ambitious and establishing hegemonic political control over the regions’ oil wealth, and to prevent the outbreak of any chaotic regional wars which might serious damage the oil production and distribution infrastructure in the region or otherwise disrupt the export of oil; and secondarily, to make it somewhat more difficult for the oil exporters of the region to act as an effective cartel, but instead induce them to compete with one another.
I hope that with this new administration we will finally get a full awareness that we have a supreme interest in a national industrial and public investment strategy designed to eliminate the need for Middle East oil altogether, so we can get ourselves out of those sandy autocracies altogether, and thereby divest ourselves of our odious interest in influencing the power games there, whether by military power or “offshore” techniques.
Remember that these offshore balancing techniques might sound less brutal and blowback-inducing than military intervention. But they have always required some forms of intervention, such as selling or channeling chemical weapons ingredients and technologies to the regions assholes, or having our CIA and other agents of US influence help to elevate or depose local leaders. And even though US citizens pay little attention to these games, the resentful people who live in the region typically know what is going on.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I’m wondering why the United States continues to maintain bases in Europe.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
“It would really help advance rational discussion if Mearsheimer would at least state which interests precisely we need to protect, and with what priorities justifying what levels of expenditure, and if he would specify what threats precisely we must guard against.”
But you see Dan, obfuscation is largely the point. Newsweek is in a unique position–unlike the Economist on the one hand or, say, People, on the other, it addresses multiple classes at once. It’s largely for the mass middle class, and so it wouldn’t do to print an explicit history and diagnostics of the American situation in the ME. It would upset the narrative, disturb the minds of suburbanites who ought to be thinking of America as the self-less “world’s last, best hope”. But at the same time Newsweek has its elite audience, and so had the duty to present new avenues in elite thinking. But again, it can’t be explicit, using a kind of code, hint hint, that competent elites can well understand: in this case, that the American imperium is at this stage in history perhaps better served by the exercise of soft-power. It’s a compelling framework; no need to sweat the details.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Re Dan Kerwick
It would really help advance rational discussion if Mearsheimer would at least state which interests precisely we need to protect, and with what priorities justifying what levels of expenditure, and if he would specify what threats precisely we must guard against.
The reason why Prof. Mearsheimer doesn’t address Mr. Kerwicks’ issues is very simple. Prof. Mearsheimer, as he implied in the infamous tome he co-authored with Stephen Walt, thinks that a non-interest and non-priority of US foreign policy is the State of Israel. Without explicitly stating it, he certainly gives the impression that the best interests of the US would be served by the State of Israel disappearing from the world scene. Now that he has come under some strenuous criticism for his views as expressed in that book, he has become more cautious in his writings and now avoids such implications.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:04 am
The danger from the U.S. to Israel doesn’t come from people like Mearsheimer. It comes from the moment a mass of hard-pressed citizens look at our unflinching support for that country no matter what the cost and ask that most primal of political questions: “What’s in it for me?”
December 7th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I don’t see that a base in Qatar at the invitation of that government, as opposed to trying to keep a string of permanent bases in Iraq, has that huge a cost in terms of regional disaffection. Essentially, we guarantee the security of all those small Gulf states against Iran. We’d do essentially the same thing under Mearsheimer’s proposal, but the Qatar base makes it easier, more credible, and less likely to produce miscalculations about American intent, like the one that started this whole mess back in 1990.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
A. says of US ME policy “[its] subtlety is a tribute to its efficacy.”
Ummm, there’s nothing subtle about US bases, weapons sales, wars, diplomacy, and (anti-)humanitarian rhetoric in the Middle East. I get what you’re saying: to the de-politicized disinterested US citizen the corporate media has managed to portray ME policy as a series of events in which the US is reacting to circumstances in its pursuit of all things noble.
I’d wager, however, that you’re aware of public opinion in the ME where residents experience far more diretly US influence. “Subtle” is not a word they would use, and they’d be correct.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Plus, we do get oil at a discount, if you consider the prices Iran would try to produce with greater sway over the Gulf oil states. Offshore balancing assumes that the Saudis can deter Iran in some sort of stable balance. Seems like a bad bet, and the cost of having to intervene to redress any imbalance is the kind of direct military conflict that an credible, sustained deterrent would prevent.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Seriously, b9n10t, did you actually read A’s comment, or are you a bot pattern-matching on “subtlety”?
December 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
b9n10t,
I don’t think there’s anything subtle about bases in themselves. But Matt can’t “see” the influence they have and I would concede that I’m unable to quantify their impact or point to a specific result and say with confidence “that’s because of bases”. But transparently bases have an impact–imagine a stranger sitting in your living room holding a weapon, would you behave any differently? I just mean to say that, in consideration of other factors, there’s no telling how decisive these bases are. Quite likely the bases are beyond the horizon of most MEastern elites–which I would think is precisely their significance: an American military presence is something they’ve gotten used to. The wogs do their thinking/acting in a universe conditioned by bases. The bases themselves need not specifically enter the discussion.
And that’s above and beyond the usefulness of bases to the United States, which is also transparent and hardly subtle, as repositories for equipment and personnel and staging grounds for operations and flight.
On thinking about it I would revise my comments on Newsweek and its ideological function. Replace “elites” with “merit class”–managers read Newsweek, policy makers don’t.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Walt, I don’t understand your criticism.
A. claims that US ME policy is “subtle”. My rejoinder is that, as A. later clarifies, it’s subtlety is indeed a US construct for domestic consumption, but crucially it’s not subtle to the targets/victims. That’s what I wanted to add.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am
It’s worth noting that Mearsheimer’s realist theories have, in the past, led to him being dramatically wrong.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Off-topic. But maybe you could ask your colleague Matt Miller what in the hell he is thinking proposing absurd ideas like this in the WAPO.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:47 am
> But transparently bases have an impact–imagine a
> stranger sitting in your living room holding a weapon,
> would you behave any differently? I just mean to say that,
> in consideration of other factors, there’s no telling
> how decisive these bases are.
Well, according to the standard American iconography any and every Real American _would_ change his behaviour: he would bend every effort, up to and including the sacrifice of his life and his children’s lives, to kill that stranger or at least drive the stranger out of his house and his neighborhood. Is that what you were referring to?
Cranky
December 7th, 2008 at 11:49 am
A. #12: I agree completely.
Dan Kervick #3: I think abstractions are a necessary part of international relations. I don’t think policies need to serve specific, concrete ends and I certainly don’t think you can analyze states in this way. How many moves in chess serve the specific concrete end of check-mate? 1, if you’re lucky. Most moves are about “winning”, “defending”, “distracting”.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
#16,
Well rejoined. I am continually mystified by American policymakers’ and people’s inability to see the obvious source of resentments in the region.
In 1622, Iran established trade relations with England and France to halt Russian expansionism. In 1812, England again stepped in to strong-arm Russia into fighting France instead of the Ottoman Empire–and was rewarded with 70 years of alliance with the Porte. Saudi Arabia allied with America in the 1930s to balance against Britain’s ambitions. Turkey clamored for American alliance in 1947 against the Russian threat. The most significant constant in Middle Eastern relations with external powers for the last 400 years has been alliances with the power least likely to put troops on the ground in the region. If we want their alliance, we are best served by going away ’til they need us. Some regional power somewhere will, in time of crisis, open their bases to us so we can come back. We are best served by making them demand our presence.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Cranky, I think we’re on the same side, just referring to different things. The resentment of the native population to the presence of bases is completely predictable but to us largely irrelevant. The discussion Walt and Matt want to have is the influence of bases in regards to the ME elite–namely, do bases make them obey. Matt and Walt say not really, we can make them obey by other means. I say, to an indeterminable degree, in conjunction with other factors.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
You should actually read what you link to. Mearsheimer’s prescriptions for avoiding the pitfalls he mentions were followed. You can’t call someone wrong when you follow their advice for avoiding problems and those problems don’t occur.
Had we ignored Milosevic, and everything turned out fine, then you could call him wrong. Of course, had we ignored Milosevic, Hungary might have invaded Rumania, Turkey might have invaded Bulgaria and so on to protect resident ethnic minorities in those states. Once we started down that road, there is no telling where it would stop.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
> The resentment of the native population to the
> presence of bases is completely predictable but
> to us largely irrelevant.
I don’t want to sound like Rudy Guiliani here, but do you seriously consider 9/11 “irrelevant”? Resentment over the US bases in Saudi Arabia and the female US soldiers stationed there was not an insignificant contributor to an act of terrorism which arguably exceeds the Civil War in the amount of damage done to US society.
Cranky
December 7th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Re: In 1622, Iran established trade relations with England and France to halt Russian expansionism.
In 1622 the more likely concern for Persia was the Ottomans, not Russia, which did not reach the Caucasus until well into the 18th century. The Turks and the Persians fought along their border for generations, until both were exhausted. Much of the Sunni-Shi’ite hoistility in Iraq today derives fom that era.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
unlike our European bases they’re extremely unwelcome
I don’t think our bases in Kuwait are all that unwelcome; and the navy bases tend to have a comparatively small footprint so don’t effect opinion one way or the other.
And back in the day, there were plenty of protests outside European bases wanting them gone (not as much as in South Korea, or even possibly Japan I grant you) They only stopped as the bases closed – and sort of like the San Fransisco Bay area, started to do the opposite and protest that all those bases were closing, taking away the jobs provided by the US military industrial complex. (The protests in Korea and Japan continue. There’s still regular activity in front of Youngsan in Itaewon with simulates efforts by the municipal goverment to extend the projected base closure timeline as much as possible. And Yokosuka gets about ten times as many people to show up for open houses as the largest crowd that shows up to protest the carrier basing.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
simulates should be simultaneous.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
“I don’t want to sound like Rudy Guiliani here, but do you seriously consider 9/11 “irrelevant”?”
Christ Cranky I’m starting to wonder if you’re being deliberately obtuse. Of course 9/11 objectively matters; of course it’s terrible that whole populations . But the question is whether all of that matters to American policy makers. Do you think, Cranky, that American policy is designed to accomodate the views of the native population. That we eagerly try to placate their wishes. Does 9/11 matter? I don’t know. Has it opened the eyes of the American elite, resulted in new non-imperial patterns of American behaviour. Is that the meaning of our recent subversion of the elected Hamas government–our newfound solicitation of Arab opinion?
Or are the views of Arabs taken into account only in regards to the question of, how can they be contained?
Here’s another disturbing question, not at all obvious in its answer: does the specter of terrorism matter? Does 9/11 matter? Of our elite policy makers, if they insist on maintaining the forms of American hegemony, with all of its attendant, entirely predictable consequences, including terrorism and the resulting domestic collateral damage, can it safely be said that their first priority is the protection of American life? Is that what most matters?
So Cranky, you keep talking past me, because you confuse what objectively “is” with what America’s elite subjectively believes. Are the resentments of the Arab public relevant: objectively yes! In the context of American foreign policy–doubtful.
December 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
> which arguably exceeds the Civil War in the
>amount of damage done to US society
Gaia A, are you being deliberately obtuse here? Did you perhaps skim by this clause:
> which arguably exceeds the Civil War in the
>amount of damage done to US society
It doesn’t really matter what the US elites want if their actions are bringing the fundamental existence of the United States, much less its hegemony, measurable closer to its end.
Cranky
December 7th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I did skim over that particular sentence–and it’s a good thing I did because it makes my head hurt: to say that a single day’s violence in which 3000 people were killed was “arguably more destructive” than a four (?) year war which killed 600,000. Huh? Or does the stock market’s tanking outweigh the razing of the South.
But granting that it was, it’s irrelevant–since the objective badness of domestic terrorism is not the issue. What I am talking about are the actual considerations of the American policy making elite in relation to the ME. I think it’s obvious that they horrify me, but my own moral opinions aren’t at issue. I really don’t know why you can’t grasp that.
“It doesn’t really matter what the US elites want if their actions are bringing the fundamental existence of the United States, much less its hegemony, measurable closer to its end.”
Good point: it doesn’t matter what they believe or want. They only control the country. Clearly it’s enough to say that they’re wrong–no further analysis/action required!
December 7th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
> to say that a single day’s violence in which 3000
> people were killed was “arguably more destructive”
> than a four (?) year war which killed 600,000. Huh?
Huh? (see – two can play the “huh” game – if you don’t want to be mistaken for a Radical Right troll you might want to avoid “huh”)
As should be quite clear from the entire statement, I was not referring to the act on 9/11 itself but to the reaction of the political elites and the damage that they have inflicted since 9/12/2001 on US society and the US’ place in the world.
There are only 350 million USians vs 5.7 billion non-USians on this earth **and we don’t control the world’s key resources today the way we did in 1945**. We held primacy in 1998 by strength of will and worldwide respect. These elites you are so anxious to kiss up to wrecked our internal structure and destroyed the respect that much of the rest of the world had for the US. If you think that the highest purpose of every US Citizen and political analyst is to so kiss up, that’s your lookout.
Cranky
December 7th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
As an oil geologist pointed out in the 1940s, the Persian Gulf is the greatest prize in human history. The U.S. and most of the Persian Gulf states have an interest in maintaining roughly the traditional American-sponsored system where oil flows freely and each country’s property rights in their oil are respected.
We have bases in, what, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, plus an air base in Turkey? I haven’t heard much objection from the locals to those. We don’t need to be in Iraq, just as we now don’t need to be in Saudi Arabia anymore. There are plenty of little states in the Gulf that want U.S. protection, and the big states would more or less prefer that we are around to prevent piracy and land grabs.
Once we get out of Iraq, this seems like a non-issue.
December 7th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
“These elites you are so anxious to kiss up to wrecked our internal structure and destroyed the respect that much of the rest of the world had for the US. If you think that the highest purpose of every US Citizen and political analyst is to so kiss up, that’s your lookout.”
If you can read that into anything I’ve said then plainly you’re an idiot. I’d ask you to point to something that would support your opinion but obviously that’d be asking too much. Because clearly you can’t read, or, if you can, reason out the difference between a conversation about what “is” versus conversation about what is believed, regardless of what “is”.
Person 1: Robbers often commit their crimes at night, when they figure they can’t easily be seen.
Cranky: I don’t see why; robbery is wrong!
December 8th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Here’s the bottom line: nothing that happens in the Middle East – AS LONG AS THE OIL FLOWS – matters to the US population or the US economy in the least.
And if we spent the same money trying to get OFF THE OIL DOLE that we spent on military bases AND MILITARY ADVENTURES in the Middle East, we wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the entire region.
Let the Jews and Arabs kill each other in big bleeding batches. Who gives a shit? Morons are morons. They deserve to die.
What part of this can’t you morons comprehend without dealing in abstractions like “US interests”?
The US needs to PULL OUT UTTERLY from the Middle East and Central Asia. Nothing that happens there is relevant to US national security. The ONLY reason we are there is because what happens there is relevant to CERTAIN OIL COMPANIES and their investors and the scumbag politicians like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that they own.
And of course, a bunch of rich Jew billionaires who want the US to guarantee Israel’s safety – a losing proposition if ever I heard one.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:25 am
He has also been dramatically right much more recently, when it came to his criticisms of our planned invasion of Iraq. His predictions of how Desert Storm would go were also pretty much spot on.
His track record has been pretty good, and he’s certainly right to point out that direct intervention in the region and “dual containment” didn’t work.
December 8th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Re Richard Steven Hack
Mr. Hack is right for a change, proving that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, relative to the US, Europe, and Japan getting off the oil dole. Of course, this has been obvious for 40 years through the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. The question is, what has been done about it? The answer is, fuck all. If the money that has been spent on the military activities in the Persian Gulf had been spent on reducing the demand for oil, we quite likely would not be in the current mess.
The next question is, what is President Elect Osama going to do about it? If the past is prologue to the future, the answer is, fuck all.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I have to say, writing in 1990 that the next 45 years would see more wars in Europe than the last 45 doesn’t seem hilariously wrong to me.
So far, I count Slovenia vs. Yugoslavia, Croatia vs. Yugoslavia, Bosnia vs. Serbia, Mecedonia vs. Serbia, Serbia vs. NATO, Russia vs. Georgia, and I’m probably forgetting some.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It was US policy to try and get middle east bases for a generation before the gulf war. The Saudis, in particular, always refused. Instead we had material pre-positioned in Diego Garcia. I think the idea that putting boots on the ground would result in a permanent stay was a big impetus behind the gulf war.
In practice, ease of stupid Iraq mistakes, and the blow back from lunatic Saudis, show that getting what you wished for, isn’t always such a great thing. I’m not sure it didn’t make us MORE vulnerable to the Iranians too.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
SLC is likely to turn out to be right when he says Obama is going to do “fuck all” about it.
Which also proves that a stopped clock is right twice a day (actually only once, depending on whether it uses regular or military time.)
December 10th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
One thing to remember is that the U.S. did not begin to have permanent bases in the Gulf just to bug the local people for kicks. Prior to 1990, it used more indirect methods of influencing the place.
After the Gulf War, the U.S. military went into reflex mode, sticking to permanent bases. There were historical reasons for this. US troops left Europe after WWI, and had to come back in WWII. US troops left Korea in the late 1940s, and had to come back in the Korean War. British troops left the Gulf, some Soviets moved into Aden, and the U.S. relied on Iranian and Saudi policing. Then the Iran pillar collapsed. Then finally Iraq became unreliable, so the U.S. decided to apply the lessons of Western Europe and the Pacific Rim to the Gulf – stick around so that you don’t need to fire shots in anger. At the time the decision was made to keep a large base presence, both bases and dual containment seemed like the least bad items on the menu.
People have commented on this upthread. They are not unwelcome by the rulers of the smaller Gulf States. In places like Qatar or Kuwait some decent fraction of the *citizens* is alright with them. But they do bother the sensibilities of the populations of the larger countries pretty universally.
Although all the southern Gulf regimes saw some benefit to a U.S. presence at one time or another, the average member of the public in the more populated countries thinks its yucky, and believe there should be some sort of Arab monroe doctrine precluding such bases in the whole region, even if rulers or citizens in Kuwait like it.
Yes, the Saudi Arabia bases got guys like Bin Laden steamed at the U.S. in a way out of proportion with the anger against US bases in other countries where US troops did actally behave more provocatively than they were ever permitted to in Saudi.
But it does require more leadtime and makes deterrence harder.
Well that’s the best reason to reconsider them, and a reason why bases in *Saudi Arabia* are definitely not worth the hassle. Saudi Arabia not only adds to the anger but our troops needed to work under demeaning rules there.
There’s still the issue of how the balance of power between Iran and its southern Gulf neighbors plays out in the absence of US bases or regular naval/air deployments.
Only the influence that comes with deterrence.
Also, Iran’s neighbors, implicitly or explicitly under the U.S. may be more tempted to launch their own nuclear weapons programs without U.S. bases in the region.
that really hasn’t been the point.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Nairobi, Nov 19 (DPA) A Greek ship has become the third vessel seized by Somali pirates since they took control of a Saudi supertanker over the weekend in their most daring raid yet, a maritime official said Wednesday.Andrew Mwangura of the
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