When President Barack Obama entered the White House in January of 2009 the United States had already begun its reduction in forces in Iraq with aims of having a residual force remaining to assist in training the Iraqi forces and assisting with security if required and were starting to shift the nation’s and military’s attentions to Afghanistan. This presumably fit well with the new President’s announced intentions as President Obama stated that Iraq, being a war of opportunity, was being the wrong war and Afghanistan was the real war which required the full attention of the United States. The real intentions of President Obama became evident early on as while announcing his intentions to apply a tactic which had worked well in Iraq, a surge of troops to turn the tide of battle, he announced an actual date when the additional troops used for the surge would be redeployed outside Afghanistan. At some point President Obama began to hold secretive negotiations with the Taliban in the hope of arranging an agreement where the Taliban would share power in a future Afghanistan after the United States had pulled up stakes and gone home. Two things resulted from these negotiations; first the Taliban realized that if they simply bide their time the United States would depart and leave Afghanistan ripe for the plucking and second Afghanistan President Karzai eventually discovered President Obama’s perfidy and entered into negotiations of his own with the Taliban and great distrust grew between the United States and the Afghan leadership. This eventually led to the refusal of the Afghans to sign another continuing resolution allowing the United States forces to remain in country and instead made plans to continue forward in concert with the Taliban. Whether any agreements and arrangements between President Karzai and the Taliban will hold up or if the future will simply result in another civil war in the Middle East, this time between the Afghan military and their current leadership and the Taliban and their allies. Should the result of the United States forces departing result in an Afghan civil war, it will be yet another civil war directly resulting from the actions of the United States and their adventurism which has set the entire Middle East on fire from Syria to Yemen, Tunisia to the Sinai, Libya to Iraq and even the possibility of generating a nuclear arms race should the Iranians develop nuclear weapons spurring similar developments in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and who knows where else.
There have been additional ramifications of decisions made in foreign affairs under the current administration. Because of the perception that President Obama has less than forthright intentions to actually prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia has taken steps to find additional allies other than the United States suspecting that there may have been a dramatic shift in the foreign intentions of the United States some of which may be at the expense of Saudi Arabia. Due to President Obama’s outspoken support for the Muslim Brotherhood even to the extreme of demanding that the Egyptian military stand down and return elected Muslim Brotherhood supported President Morsi to power after the military removed him in a coup they claimed was necessitated by the will and massive displays of opposition demonstrated by the people of Egypt. The continued pressure from President Obama and his administration for returning power to the Muslim Brotherhood and the protestations over the use of force, mass arrests and trials and other tactics considered to be overt and anti-democratic by the Egyptian military has driven the Egyptians to seek other allies as they perceived an unreliable and antagonistic United States President and Administration. Then there has been the egregious and unremitting pressure President Obama has inflicted on Israel demanding they surrender on virtually every demand and go to great extents to placate any and all complaints raised by the Palestinians. This included President Obama personally making uniquely demanding and previously unexpressed demands of the Israelis including but not limited to their withdrawal to the pre Six Day War borders, initiate an open-ended building freeze throughout Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem and more recently continue to negotiate with the Palestinians despite their inclusion of the terrorist groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into their new unified governance. Israel has remained just as trustworthy and steadfast ally of the United States with the Israeli government providing assurances and justifications for their continued trust and attempts to continue their friendly relations with the United States. Still, the Israelis have also signed scientific research agreements with the Europeans, expanded trade relations and opened additional areas of trade with both China and India and sent out feelers to initiate more open relations with Russia. All of these changes, shifts, recriminations and manifestations of a changing United States Middle East foreign policy, the big questions are numerous with two of the top queries being who will prove preeminent in the new Middle East in the future and where will the future players be from outside replacing the United States as the mediator and enforcer in the future Middle East?
Israel is still one of, if not the most, powerful nations with the best armed and trained military within the Middle East and North Africa but this may be challenged much sooner than many might believe. Currently Egypt is still receiving military hardware from the United States though many of the equipment is either sent after some period of delay or are being placed on hold in an attempt to influence Egyptian politics and the struggle for power which continues between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military as well as the problems with terrorist attacks plaguing Egypt coming from within the Sinai Peninsula but still striking within central Egypt and have even assassinated some Egyptian government officials, members of the leadership and leading figures and others from within the Egyptian judicial and law enforcement system. In addition to any aid received from the United States, with aid monies provided by Saudi Arabia, Egypt has begun to supplement their military hardware with Russian equipment and President Putin has stated that he intends to equip the Egyptian military with weaponry and systems equal or superior to those possessed by Israel. Additionally, the Russians have made similar statements concerning arming Saudi Arabia. This is all part of a Russian plan to replace the retreating United States and become the predominant external power in the Middle East. Then there is the potential for additional Chinese presence should they expand their trade and other relations with Iran which are in addition to the relations and cooperation between Iran and Russia in the areas of trade, nuclear generated power, military equipment and technology, nuclear research in medicine and other areas, and other general areas of trade, finance, petroleum industries and on and on. These are the current potential trends should the retreat of the United States continue into the future even beyond this last term of President Obama. Of course some of these developments will be highly contingent on who takes up residence in the White House come January 2017.
Then there is the question of the striations of power within the Middle East and North Africa. Should Iran become a nuclear armed nation, this will have extreme ramifications throughout the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa, and North Africa must be included in these determinations due to the numerous predominantly Muslim nations found there. Already the intentions to also seek nuclear weapons capability should Iran become a nuclear power have been announced by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. One can only postulate who else might pursue nuclear weapons capabilities once the nuclear jinni is released from the bottle. Once Iran develops nuclear weaponry there is a high probability that Syria would also receive the necessary tools, knowledge and likely access to equipment and even nuclear material for their own nuclear weapons program. The real fear would be nuclear weapons in the hands of Lebanon which would place such weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Hezballah, one of the most capable and widely spread terrorist organizations in the world with bases within Europe, South America, Central America, and suspected assets already within the United States. The possibility that terrorists beyond Hezballah such as some of the numerous al-Qaeda groups which now can be found in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and elsewhere along with other terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PLO and the pirates and others in places such as Somalia, Eritrea, and others throughout the Islamic world and beyond, then the likelihood of a nuclear attack anywhere in the world would become not only possible but probable since a nuclear armed terrorist group would not have the facilities to store and provide the necessary upkeep required by a nuclear weapon. These limitations would make any nuclear device they possessed to possess a limited life span before it would become inoperative thus necessitating its use before it became inert. This means that a nuclear armed terrorist group would almost guarantee a nuclear attack within a short period of their receiving such a weapon and most likely such an attack would take place relatively close to the point of receipt. This would actually make the highest risk areas for the use of a terrorist nuclear weapon to be within the Islamic sphere of influence or some neighboring nation such as India, Israel, Russia, China, Eastern Europe or South East Asia. This does not mean that other targets would be out of the question as it is already known that there is some cooperation between the drug cartels and the terrorist groups especially in areas where the cartels have significant roots and power as well as anywhere that the Cartels have established smuggling routes into nations of interest to the terrorist organizations which definitely includes the drug cartels in Mexico and their smuggling routes into the United States. This means that there is some calculable risk of use for a terrorist nuclear device virtually, if not everywhere on planet Earth. Nowhere is truly beyond their reach and thus can afford to be complacent regarding terrorists coming into possession of a nuclear device. All of these threats and dangers must be taken into consideration in the future should Iran become a nuclear armed nation. Since North Korea and Iran share much information and research into such areas as nuclear technologies and rocket and missile technologies, the worst possible scenario may already be reality as North Korea is presumed to have at the least a primitive nuclear weapon and the probability that it is so rudimentary as to make it undeliverable should not make anybody complacent or comfortable with this fact. The termination of stewardship provided by the United States which has been the stabilizing influence in the ever turbulent Middle East and North Africa coming to an end should send shivers up the spine of any conscious and intelligent member of the human race and this is the future which may arrive before we are prepared or even have considered all of the ramifications. If this prospect makes you feel some degree of trepidation and cause a growing anxiety, then congratulations, you are a reasoning, intelligent and potentially insightful person and a likely contributing member of the human race. Thank you for your contribution to the general consciousness of our little pebble swimming in this corner of the vast cosmos. May we continue long enough to explore the far beyond of that cosmos.