Neocons and Liberal Interventionists — Like Hillary — Are Converging on Foreign Policy

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  • Alaistair Crooke dans le Huffington Post s’interroge sur la cause de la narrative étroitement confessionnaliste qui est faite ici, à l’instar des médias du Golfe, des combats pour la reprise de Falloujah, narrative qui peut se résumer en « les Chiites attaquent les Sunnites de Da’ich » (voir à tire d’exemple ce signalement d’@nidal : http://seenthis.net/messages/495898 ).
    Crooke, à partir d’une analyse d’un document du Center for a New American Security, groupe bipartisan de membres de l’establishment de la politique étrangère US, donne une explication de cette narrative qui résiderait dans la convergence de vues entre néo-cons et libéraux interventionnistes (à la Hillary) sur le fait que l’Iran reste le problème fondamental, plutôt que l’idéologie takfiriste d’inspiration wahhabite. Ces deux courants partage une même opposition au désengagement relatif des USA du Moyen-Orient proclamé par Obama et veulent maintenir une domination sur cette zone pour laquelle la puissance iranienne est un obstacle, et d’autre part partagent le même biais pro-Israël pour qui, dans le contexte d’une volonté de normalisation des Etats du Golfe avec lui, l’axe Iran/régime syrien/Hezbollah reste l’ennemi. Raison pour laquelle ce document du CNAS désigne l’Iran et Da’ich comme ennemis mais aucunement la branche syrienne d’al-Qaïda qu’il passe sous silence.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/hillary-foreign-policy_b_10338608.html

    In short, the ephemeral global narrative does not relate well to the facts on the ground where there is much less sectarianism than this Western-Gulf narrative purports to exist.
    But let that pass. This narrative, echoed widely beyond the Financial Times, is Orwellian in another way. It serves another deeper purpose. It has much to do with finding and articulating, as Jim Lobe notes, the point of intersection between liberal interventionism and neoconservatism. This intersection is the subject of a May 16 report from the Center for a New American Security, which was drawn up by a bipartisan task force of 10 senior members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and augmented by six dinner discussions with invited experts.
    Their approach is to cast Iran as the source of all ‘regional tensions’ and to hold onto America’s Gulf bases in order to be a ‘force that can flex across several different mission sets and prevail.’
    It is, in a sense, the riposte from the two interventionist wings of American politics to Trump’s iconoclasm in foreign policy. And, Lobe writes, “it’s fair to predict that the above-mentioned report is likely to be the best guide to date of where a Hillary Clinton presidency will want to take the country’s foreign policy.”
    The report is all about how to maintain America’s benevolent hegemony — or how to maintain and expand today’s “rules-based international order,” which implies maintaining and expanding the geo-financial order as much as the political order. As we saw in U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s interview with Vox, there are clear, though somewhat cushioned, echoes of the 1992 U.S. Defense Planning Guidance. [...]
    Another gloss in the CNAS report is striking: while ISIS as a threat is made much of, and a call is issued to “uproot” it, when it comes to Syria, the report simply states that “it is also essential to assist in the formation of a Sunni alternative to ISIS and the [Syria President Bashar] Assad regime” and to create “a safe space ... where moderate opposition militias can arm, train, and organize.” Yet there is no mention of Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syria wing. Its role simply is not addressed. This conscious lacuna suggests that the authors do not want to embarrass Saudi Arabia for all its fired-up Sunni jihadist tools. The old Western standby of using psychologically inflamed Sunni radicalism as a means to weaken opponents seems like it won’t be dismantled completely. It is fine, evidently, to make a hoo-ha about ISIS while Nusra is to be slipped quietly into the Syrian calculus in order to shift the military balance and convince Assad that he cannot remain in power. [...]
    It is not that the report’s authors don’t grasp these points, but if the neocons have one constancy, it has been their unwavering support for Israel. They think that the Gulf states are ready for a normalization with Israel and wish to do profitable business with it. What stands in the way of this rapprochement, in the neocon view, is Iran, Syria and Hezbollah’s vehement opposition — and their ability to ignite public opinion across the Muslim world on behalf of the Palestinians.