Afrasianet - Author: Hussain Agha and Robert Malley - As its influence fades, Washington has denied and denied reality, and as time goes on, it becomes difficult to know where self-delusion ends and where the pretense begins, and the influence Washington is losing is making up for with noise. 

Foreign Affairs magazine publishes an article that focuses primarily on the chronic failure of U.S. policy in the Middle East, with a focus on the Gaza war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The article highlights the American political failure as a result of repeated lies and the decline of American influence in the Middle East. It presents the idea that the United States, despite its military and economic power, is incapable of turning its political discourse into actual results, and that its policy relies too much on pretense and wishful thinking rather than realism.

The following is the text of the article:

On any given day, a Biden administration official would be expected to come out to confirm one of the following: a ceasefire is imminent, the United States is working tirelessly to achieve it, it cares about Israelis and Palestinians alike, the historic normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel is within reach, all of which is on an irreversible path toward Palestinian statehood.

But none of these statements carried a shred of truth. A ceasefire was talked about for a long time, and when it was achieved intermittently, the understandings quickly collapsed. The United States refrained from taking the only step that would have enforced a ceasefire: tiing up or halting military aid to Israel. That step alone would have demonstrated a genuine American commitment to protecting the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, far from clichés.

Saudi Arabia has maintained that normalization with Israel is contingent on progress toward Palestinian statehood, while the Israeli government has ruled out any progress in this direction. Over time, U.S. statements have been exposed for what they are: empty words met with disbelief or indifference. Yet Washington has not stopped repeating them.

Did U.S. policymakers really believe what they said? If not, why did they insist on repeating it? If they are convinced, how can they ignore all the clear contradictory evidence before their eyes?

Deception was not new; its roots stretched well before the Gaza war and beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has become a well-established approach. For decades, the United States has pretended to be neutral and mediated, while being completely biased. It lied when it helped build a "peace process" that deepened and stabilized the crisis rather than overturned it. It lied when its policies in the Middle East were portrayed as promoting democracy and human rights. It lied when it claimed success, while its efforts led to successive disasters.

As lies became more obvious and difficult to ignore, U.S. influence declined. Israelis, Palestinians and others ignored this farce, abandoned vulgar slogans about a two-state solution, democracy, and U.S. mediation, and returned to more explicit and radical positions stemming from history. As in previous decades, the Palestinians, lost without leadership and charged with anger and a desire for revenge, resort to sporadic acts of violence and, as always, Israel encircles itself with an iron fist and extends wherever it sees  it.

A Palestinian Threat" that Calls for Killing: The 1970s in Amman, Beirut, Tunis, Paris and Rome; and today in Doha and Tehran. On both sides, the worst is yet to come. And the United States? All you will do is watch the ruins.

Anatomy of failure

Failed U.S. policy in the Middle East goes through repeated phases, starting with the wrong approach and misunderstanding of reality, and then with intentional or unintentional mistakes. For example, when U.S. officials insist that the best way to influence Israel is not pressure but "warm embrace." Or when they recklessly intervene in Palestinian politics, trying to install a favorite group of "moderate" leaders, support that is seen by their constituents as a stigma in the eyes of their constituents. Or when they exclude the more powerful from the peace process Ability to obstruct them.

The mystery of American politics is that its makers know a lot but they understand little. Information does not necessarily mean understanding, but it can be an obstacle to it. In 2000, senior U.S. intelligence officials assured President Bill Clinton, based on what they thought they had learned, that Yasser Arafat would have no choice but to accept Clinton's proposals at the Camp David summit, and that rejecting them would be madness. But Arafat refused, and his people celebrated him as a hero. In 2006, the Bush administration ignored the clear signs that Hamas would win the Palestinian elections, elections that Washington had long pushed for and insisted on.

Years later, with the outbreak of the 2011 uprising in Syria, U.S. intelligence presented a false picture of the battlefield: It considered that President Bashar al-Assad's chances of survival were slim in the short term, and that the rebels' path to victory was almost assured. During the Biden administration, officials relied on intelligence reports to gauge how Iranian leaders thought about the nuclear deal, but the estimates were often wrong.

Also, Washington was surprised by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, as well as by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, and then by the collapse of the Assad regime the following year. Ironically, it was surprised even by its own surprise.

These shocks were not the result of deliberate distortions in which intelligence was crafted to suit official whims, as in 2003 when the CIA told President George W. Bush what he wanted to hear: that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that the case against him  was "confirmed," but rather the product of a dynamic that was less deceptive and less deliberate, but no less treacherous.

Intelligence reports often come with clear warnings. Officials are reminded that information may be the result of a single conversation, in a specific place, at a particular time, without broader analysis, context, or awareness of unspoken assumptions.

They are told that what they have in their hands is not the whole picture, and that having pieces of the puzzle may be more misleading than its absence. However, the value of these warnings quickly fades. Those who have never treated raw intelligence as an interceptor of a conversation, or The contents of a secret note, it may be difficult to imagine that euphoria: the feeling of sitting in the chamber of secrets, possessing a unique privilege that others can only dream of. You feel you know. But you don't know. American policymakers have read and barely understood. They read more, and they understood less.

The mystery in such cases is not the mistake itself; misappreciating or understanding external dynamics or domestic actors is commonplace, and it is part of the work of policy. What is uncommon and difficult to explain is the recurrence of these failures at an astonishing pace, and how their accumulation has not led to real accountability, personal or institutional accountability, and often the consequences have not been more than a mild rebuke. More dangerously, they have not led to a radical rethinking, but rather the ability of the United States to learn from its mistakes Amazingly slim.

The issue, then, is not the fault, but the country's constant resistance to changing its methods. The next step in the life of American failure?

Even more confusing than mistakes or their stubborn repetition is the habit of U.S. officials telling lies, even after they know it's not true, and even after they realize that others know it's not true. The final stage of failure is lying: a lie born out of failure, and it grows with its recurrence.

American policymakers do what they think will work, and then repeat it even if it proves to be successful. They claim that it will work while everyone knows it won't, and they keep promising it after everyone loses their patience and confidence. As they move further away from reality, their statements turn into hollow, optimistic words.

It is more than a distortion, it almost amounts to a deliberate attitude, more like a strategy based on unlimited joy, which is completely contrary to common sense and everyday experience. Thus, the United States almost automatically makes optimistic statements that defy all evidence, and sharply contradict its shameful record. 

How an illusion turns into a lie

Lies lie at the heart of politics and diplomacy, but not all lies are the same. There's a lie that claims to serve the common good, as happened when U.S. President John F. Kennedy misled the public about a secret agreement with the Soviets to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey in exchange for ending the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. And there's the big, blatant, and repetitive lie that aims to turn its audience into quasi-zombie believers. And there's the cunning lie, the pessimist's lie, mastered by Henry Kissinger, into which the George W. Bush administration was mired before Invasion of Iraq. It is a lie that can justify or prevent a war, break a stalemate or cause a killing.

There are lies that get things done, even if what they accomplish is ugly or violent or hateful. Lies that have a purpose, even if it's not sublime. But the slanders that have marred U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East are not of this kind. They're different because they don't deceive anyone, and those who release them know that no one is deceiving. They happen when one administration after another declares its commitment to a "two-state solution" that has long been impossible, or when the Biden administration asserts that it is giving equal value for Israeli and Palestinian lives; or when it claims to be tireless in pursuing a ceasefire, or when Saudi-Israeli normalization is just around the corner. 

Many of these claims don't start out as a lie, but as self-deception or misunderstanding. On the eve of the 2000 Geneva summit between Clinton and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, every member of the U.S. team was convinced that Assad would reject the Israeli proposal they were asked to make, and they informed the Israeli prime minister of it. However, they convinced themselves that there was an opportunity; otherwise why did they go?

At Camp David in 2000, U.S. mediators also convinced themselves that an agreement between Arafat and Ehud Barak was imminent, even though nothing had been agreed upon: no division of territory, no status of Jerusalem, no fate of refugees. When Secretary of State John Kerry announced during Obama's second term that the two sides were closer to an agreement than ever, he was probably not pretending. Rather, like his predecessors, he believed that will and perseverance would make any path work, qualities he thought he possessed.

When Biden administration officials said that Saudi Arabia was ready to normalize with Israel, they were often serious, after all, this is what Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman secretly conveyed to them.

Over time, it becomes difficult to know where the self-delusion ends and where the pretense begins. Eventually, after repeating enough words, the distinction fades and becomes less, if at all, important. The two merge together: the illusion that repeats endlessly, despite its obvious lie, ceases to be an illusion and becomes a lie; and a lie that is told incessantly can become a second nature, so ingrained and instinctive that it departs from its origins and becomes a self-delusion.

The repeated claims by U.S. officials, over the decades, that they were committed to a two-state solution and that another round of U.S.-brokered talks could achieve that were undoubtedly based on a genuine conviction. But as they continued to repeat the slogan, failure after failure, it was no longer an illusion but a deception. It is a phenomenon that can only be understood by experience.

U.S. officials had faith when they went to Geneva and Camp David, knowing that both would be a failure; they believed in Kerry's initiative, knowing it was imaginary; and they believed in the possibility of Saudi-Israeli normalization, before succumbing to the fact that, for now, it was just a distant dream. They knew and they didn't know at the same time, and they weren't sure which was more honest.

George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel (1984): "The past has been erased, the erasure has forgotten, and the lie has become a reality."

Limits of power

At one time, in its dealings with the Middle East, the United States began to be deliberately optimistic, embracing a wishful ideology, professing empty talk, and making claims that are easily refuted by events. It is difficult to pinpoint an exact date for the beginning of this habit, but it is easier to pinpoint a possible cause: it is inseparable from the erosion of American power and influence.

No one can match U.S. hegemony militarily or economically, but a growing number of partners and adversaries in the Middle East have learned to ignore it. The United States, despite its strength, has been repeatedly rejected by Israel, and often even by the Palestinians, and has done nothing but watch its embarrassment. If power means the ability to transcend its objective limits and direct the behavior of others, it has been quite the opposite. The tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is not Washington's fault alone, but it is hard to imagine a bigger gap between capability and achievement. The bully was bullied, and he did nothing about it.

Elsewhere, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has shown its inability to fight the war, let alone win it. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have lost their lives. The Iraq war ended with an Iranian-backed government, and the Afghanistan war ended with the Taliban returning to power following a shameful U.S. withdrawal.

The United States has demonstrated its inability to manage peace, too. Across the region, it embraces autocrats, rebukes them, and then re-embraces them. It sought to promote Egypt's democratic transition in 2011, but the separation ended in the entrenchment of a government that is more repressive than the one its leaders had helped overthrow. In Libya in 2011, Obama ordered strikes that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi. The result was civil war, instability, and the proliferation of armed militias, along with the flow of weapons across Africa and the flow of refugees into the country Europe. The U.S. president hoped the operation would work, and later called it  a "nonsense show." He was right on one of these points.

The Obama administration's subsequent efforts to topple the Syrian regime by investing heavily in the armed opposition followed the same pattern: U.S. intervention helped prolong the civil war, encouraged broader interventions from Iran and Russia, and failed to bring the rebels to power. Worse, many of the weapons Washington helped ship to Syria ended up in the hands of jihadist groups that the United States itself then rushed to fight.

Intervention Illusions and Consequences of Failure

In these and other cases, the Arab uprisings took a dark and ugly path. When they broke out, Obama famously spoke of U.S. support for the winds of change, asserting that it was on "the right side of history." But history paid no attention to that. Each time, wishes were shattered on the rocks of hard facts, and the United States seemed strangely oblivious to the lessons of its long experience in the Middle East:  Its overconfidence, its limits of power, the resilience of existing regimes, the unreliability of local partners eager for U.S. support who are indifferent to Washington's advice, the repercussions of empowering armed groups that Washington knows little about and controls; and its frequent attraction, like a butterfly to fire, to a region from which it has repeatedly promised to withdraw. In short, lessons about Washington's unbridled desire to intervene are coupled with its deep ignorance of the region's characteristics.

Even when the results it strived to achieve were achieved, they did not come at their request. Years of U.S. efforts to weaken regional armed movements such as Hezbollah, Iraqi factions, Palestinian armed groups, and the Houthis have not succeeded in reducing their influence. The U.S. has tried to paralyze its movement in various ways, and has received blows, but those groups have revived and flourished under adversity.

Before Assad fled Damascus in December of that year and his regime disintegrated, Washington concluded that he was staying and considered a deal to improve bilateral relations. In the meantime, shocked U.S. officials could only watch a group designated by Washington as a terrorist organization quickly ousted Assad, complete the task it had failed to accomplish, and then sit down with a man they saw as a "jihadist" to a "statesman" in his rapid transition from opposition to power.

With each failure, came the lie that became the core of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the United States repeatedly insisted that victory was imminent, until it found itself chasing its tail until it was defeated. While claiming to be fighting a battle for democracy and human rights, it was surrounded by partners — Egypt, the Gulf monarchies and sheikhdoms, and Israel — who ignored the former and scoffed at the latter. It asserted that its pressure could curb Iran's nuclear program. When pressure didn't work, it thought More of it will work. But each new U.S. sanction imposed in response to each new Iranian challenge was only further proof of their futility. It cannot be seriously said that pressure will change Iran if more pressure always leads to worse behavior.

Sometimes, and most bizarrely of all, there is an allegation and an admission of the claim. When Obama armed the Syrian rebels, he publicly asserted, "This dictator will fall." Later, he acknowledged that the idea that this opposition — a scattered group of "former doctors, farmers, and pharmacists" — would succeed in defeating an army was a fantasy. The Biden administration denounced President Donald Trump's decision in 2018 By withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Obama and reimposing sanctions, while boasting that it had not lifted any sanctions, adding more, and pledging to increase pressure, which it admitted had not succeeded.

President Joe Biden, too, when U.S. forces began pursuing the Houthis in Yemen in response to their attacks on commercial ships, and U.S. military spokesmen repeatedly claimed success, made this bizarre statement to a reporter about the strikes he ordered: "When you say they're succeeding, do they stop the Houthis? No. Will they continue? Yes." The presidents of the United States have been honest in their words, and their words are clear as water.

The less the United States has control over the course of events, the more its officials feel the need to talk about it, and it is one way to show their sense of control. What Washington is losing is compensated for by noise. It hides its impotence with gossip, it messes with rhetoric. The real power is silence. The gap between words and reality is almost impossible to understand, except perhaps as a hint of the end of an era. This suggests a nostalgia for a once-mighty superpower, longing for the days when it could achieve its goals, and the weight of an incentive structure that punishes pessimism for its judgment of American purpose, and rewards optimism for its judgment of American ingenuity, or the hope that compulsive and joyful repetition will make deception a reality. 

Back to reality

The Arab world's initial reaction to Trump's re-election in 2024 was very clear. By almost any standard, everything should have been against Trump in this regard. In his first term, he decisively turned things in Israel's favor, eager to break with tradition and abandon the self-evident realities of the peace process that he dismissed as fairy tales. During his election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a "job ending" in Gaza; whatever the moral indignation that Biden officials dared to express it about Israel's behavior in its war there, so it will not resonate with their successors. Yet, in the early days, in many corners of the Middle East, relief came faster than despair at the thought of saying goodbye to Biden's approach and, as they saw it, Obama's approach as well.

The familiar explanation that it takes a tyrant to enjoy a tyrant, and that Arab dictators have recognized someone like them in Trump, doesn't go any further. Biden, after all, has not proven to be a true crusader on behalf of democracy and human rights. What Arab leaders and a significant portion of their audiences resented is Washington's moral arrogance, its reckless expressions of sympathy, and its courageless convictions. What they found hard to digest were lies. If you're not going to stand up for the Palestinians, you should. Be decent so as not to pretend to care.

At least with Trump, they believed, they knew what they were getting, even if his actions were unpredictable and mostly unsatisfactory to them. They saw him as a leader with no moral compass, comfortable wielding power unabashedly. Unlike his predecessors, Trump didn't talk much about the fictitious two-state solution; he meant it when he said that all options were on the table with Iran. And when he allowed talks with Hamas, he abandoned the trick of refusing to deal with the only Palestinian entity Capable of making decisions in matters of war and peace. It remains to be seen how much this represents a break with the past. Yet, after years of false anger and false preaching, for many, genuine pessimism was a breath of fresh air.

...

For decades, the United States has gradually built an alternative world: a world in which happy words come true and actions produce predictable results; a world in which Washington's mission in Afghanistan leads to a modern democracy, and U.S.-backed government forces can stand up to the Taliban; a world in which economic sanctions lead to desired political change, constrain the Houthis, and impede Iran's nuclear advance.

A world in which the United States is engaged in a decisive struggle between democratic forces and authoritarian regimes; a world in which moderate Palestinians represent their people, reform the Palestinian Authority and restrain its political demands; a sane Israeli center takes over with tender American urging, agrees to meaningful regional withdrawals, and a Palestinian state worthy of that name; a world in which a ceasefire in Gaza is imminent, international justice is blind, and Washington's blunt double standards do not constantly defile the international order it claims to defend.

Then there is the actual universe, with all its flesh, bones, and lies.

Source: Foreign Affairs