The USA will go for containment of Iran
It might not be called by its original name but the old strategy used against the USSR for the first thirty years of the Cold War will also work against Iran. Trump will likely end up with the practical outcome of the theory anyway, as he seems intent on threading the needle between the appeasement of Obama and the interventionism of Bush.
Trump is Jacksonian: President Andrew Jackson’s philosophy of national security was focused on nationalistic concerns rather than global visions, while striking at any foreigner who attacked or killed Americans, but avoiding wars. Certainly Trump is finding the ME to be the same tar pit it has been for every President since Carter, but several factors have changed in the last decade that means he can more easily break free.
PROS
First and foremost, the USA does not need ME oil, unlike the 1970’s. US imports of such had dropped to low levels by the early 2000’s anyway thanks to Canada and Mexico, but the technology of fracking has been a game-changer, turning the USA into an oil producing giant itself. Several years ago an interesting little article on the economics of fracking included the following side note:
Whether America elects another Democrat or a Republican in Nov. 2016, the reality is that America is set to move through energy independence to being a world energy supplier in a five-to-10-year time frame. This will utterly change America’s foreign policy & national security relations.
…
In short, rather than being an international globalist, an energy independent or exporting America means American presidents can put American interests first.
Sounds like a blueprint for Trump, but future Democrats will be in the same comfortable position. In fact the USA will be a direct energy export competitor with Russia, Iran and the Gulf Arabs.
Second, the flow of US oil is such that even the loss of a major producer like Iran or Venezuela has had little to no effect on the global price, so the US does not have as great a need to intervene in the ME, even diplomatically. Even a small war there no longer has the same massively negative implications for global oil supply as it once would have. Events of the last few years have demonstrated this, as some attack or other has caused oil prices to do little more than spike for a few days.
Third, what these first two factors mean is that the US no longer has to be the “guardian of the Arabian Gulf” to insure the energy supply of the USA & Europe. For example, in the 1980’s the USA felt compelled to intervene in the so-called Gulf Tanker War between Iran and Iraq to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. But now it only has to think about keeping them closed – while the Iranians need it open to smuggle out what oil they can. As with much else about the Iranian military threat, that is a problem of defense which is much easier to deal with and can be passive, leaving it to Iran to struggle with the risks of escalation.
Fourth, Iran has significant internal economic problems which the US can take advantage of merely through sanctions that require little or no military effort. As with the USSR, the more problems at home the less the Iranians will be able to stir up trouble abroad as they have to placate an increasingly angry population who are more interested in improving their lives than spreading a dingbat messianic revolution. This will take time to topple the Iranian religious government, but it will eventually, and appears to have already begun to do so, judging by the massive protests against the Iranian leaders in 2009 and 2019.
Fifth is Trump’s own attitudes towards the ME. When he describes those nations as shit holes no one doubts that he means it, thus his instincts are against US involvement in a ME war, and that’s reinforced by his understanding of how war weary Americans have become, which was a key factor in his 2016 win and will be again in 2020. The Jacksonian aspect again, both foreign and domestic.
Containment worked well against the USSR, although the USA began to ignore Kennan’s key piece of advice that the military component should be minimal, and began escalating combat against USSR-backed communist movements, culminating in Vietnam. That won’t happen this time because containment will work even better against a nation that is no superpower but merely a regional player to start with and which has no great ideological or religious appeal to outsiders, even other Shiite Muslims.
CONS
There are three possible countervailing factors that could weaken containment: Iran getting a nuclear weapon, the China-Russia nexus and the US Democrat Party.
Iran goes nuclear
Containment worked against the USSR as a nuclear power, so Iran getting a nuclear weapon would not change the strategy. Certainly it would provide a much better umbrella than exists now for them to push outward with their proxy forces, but conventional US strikes against such forces were the norm in the Cold War, and would be again. The Iranians don’t yet realise that nuclear weapons are a double-edged sword.
In any case I doubt this will happen before at least 2025 with the typical development timetables of such weapons and their industrial base. If that assumption proves wrong then it’s also highly likely that Trump would strike the facilities – and if the USA didn’t there is a 100% certainty that Israel would, given what they did in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.
China and Russia will try to take advantage of all this.
I’m sure they will. But to what end? Both have their own internal demographic and economic weaknesses, which partnering up with a loser like Iran does not improve let alone fix.
China is more dependent on ME oil now than the USA was back in the day. Whatever trouble they can cause the USA by backing Iran could be more than negated by the resulting consequences with the Gulf Petro-states that supply it. China has no interest in upsetting its own oil supplies. As an example, for all the talk of it saving Venezuela and thus controlling that nation’s oil it’s reluctant to invest further in a wrecked environment: they’re actually demanding payment in oil on their loans. The last thing it needs is for the same to happen in the Gulf states or Iran. There is some talk about control of ports but again, to what end? China is more focused on control of European and Pacific ports, giving it a degree of influence in vastly richer areas.
Russia is an even worse spot. For all of Vlad’s flexing the fact remains that Russia has an economy smaller than that of Italy, with big demographic problems, while it desperately tries to hang on to the USSR’s superpower status, including its mistake of trying to have a military bigger than the economy can support. VPP has been tactically smart, with limited military support that allowed Assad to stay in power and which has enabled reaching into Lebanon and perhaps further afield in the ME.
But he’s been strategically dumb. What does “winning” in Syria even mean when you don’t have the resources to re-build the place? A warm-water port on the Med? Resource contracts for VPP’s billionaire pals? Big whoop! What balancing act will Russia perform over the decades-long struggle between Turkey and Syria? Not to mention the one over the Regional Power fight between Turkish Ottoman and Iranian Shiite visions of the ME. What does a partnership with Iran get you when you know they’re religious nutters determined to export their revolution, which will end up causing problems with all those other nations that Russia wants to be on good terms with such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? How do you squeeze the US out of its Gulf influence – especially Saudi Arabia – while Iran goes nuclear? About the only positive I can cynically see here for Vlad is that stirring up ME trouble might boost the price of oil, upon which his economy depends.
The US reply to all this should be to clap Putin on the back and wish him and his billionaire cronies the best of luck in managing these ME shit fights. The USSR is dead.
The Democrat Party
Probably the biggest negative factor here in trying to contain Iran. Unlike the Cold War the modern Democrats don’t believe in doing anything to Iran beyond kissy-face. The fact that the Democrats have swerved so wildly over just days, between saying Trump is weak in the ME and accusing him of being a warmonger, shows their complete incoherence on a ME strategy and even on short-term tactics.
But if a Democrat wins in 2020, and almost certainly in 2024, this incoherence will be a problem. Will they simply repeat Obama’s approach to Iran, which was to actually try and build it up as a regional power to counterbalance the likes of Saudi Arabia? Will they do the same with Russian and China, thereby allowing them more room to move in the ME? For all the screaming about Trump-Russia collusion, another “reset” with Russia cannot be discounted, even though this time they won’t be able to repeat the argument from 2008 that poor old Russia was merely a victim reacting against the scary warmongering President Bush.
Nobody would believe military threats from a Democrat now anyway, given their criticism of Trump and the growing revisionist criticism even of Obama’s Libyan actions. So it will have to be appeasement. But in this they will – like Trump – be aided by America’s new-found energy independence.
They also have history here of trying to do back-channel deals with America’s adversaries, from Ted Kennedy’s offers of help to the USSR against Reagan in 1983…
… to Nancy Pelosi reaching out to Assad in 2007…
… to John Kerry working with Iran in 2018.
What’s that word again? Collusion?
“You have folks who served in the previous administration who are telling the Iranian leaders today, ‘Just hang on. President Trump will lose in the election in November and we’ll go back to appeasement. America will write you a big check, we’ll underwrite your terror campaign around the world, we’ll give you a clear pathway to a nuclear weapon system. Just wait until the Trump administration is finished.’” – Mike Pompeo, 2019
No, that’s not it:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
No Minister 