NOVANEWS
George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs hosted a book launch and discussion on Sept. 19 with author and University of Washington professor Joel Migdal at its Washington, DC campus. Titled Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East, Migdal’s book provides readers with a history of American philosophy towards, and involvement in, the Middle East.
Migdal began his remarks by taking a look at President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for the United States’ role in the world following World War II. By early 1945, Roosevelt’s goal was to execute a plan called “shared governance,” wherein the Allied countries—lead by the U.S.—would share the burden of supervising the transition into peacetime. At the same time, they would also prevent any further large scale conflicts from erupting around the world. Migdal explained Roosevelt’s philosophy: “Think of the world as a corporation, and the U.S. being a 51 percent shareholder. Sure, we hold a majority stake, but we cannot ignore the other shareholders’ opinions without causing conflict.”
A major factor in Roosevelt’s decision to allow the other superpowers so much latitude was his concern that the United States could not be the sole guarantor of world peace without driving itself to bankruptcy, Migdal said. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, and Truman’s ascension to the presidency, only slightly changed the plan—instead of the U.S. being a 51% shareholder, as Roosevelt envisioned, Truman insisted that the United States be an undisputed hegemon, but with “strategic partnerships” in every region to help counter Soviet influence. This policy didn’t much care for regional concerns and politics, so long as American security concerns were addressed.
Fast-forward 30 years, and the United States found itself frustrated by the quickly changing dynamics of the Middle East, Migdal explained. The Shah of Iran’s deposal, he said, marked the definitive end of regional nationalism and the beginning of Islamism as a primary ideological basis for governance in the region. Meanwhile, the U.S. was still being hampered by its cookie-cutter approach of looking for “strategic partnerships.” The region, he opined, changed too quickly for the United States to successfully maintain this parochial system, which Washington still insisted on applying without paying mind to the long-term effects of ignoring local politics. Thus, Migdal noted, the U.S. carried on with its client-state partnerships.
With the first decade of the 21st century behind us, Migdal did a quick appraisal of the United States’ recent conduct in the region. “The idea of ‘shared governance’ was thrown overboard in the 21st century,” he said. In the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks, the United States emerged as the Middle East’s hegemonic power. Unilateral action against Iraq was a complete departure from the practice of sharing the financial and military burden in a security partnership. “The 2003 invasion of Iraq did exactly what Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower worried about—it pushed the United States to its financial limits and has prevented us from engaging with the world in the measured way that FDR envisioned in 1945,” Migdal explained.
When asked exactly how the United States has been handicapped by the more than $1 trillion war, he gave a specific example: “the weakening of the United States’ economy post-Iraq made it so that we couldn’t respond to the financial crisis as well as we responded to the Savings & Loans crisis of the 80s. Iraq weakened us terribly.”
