America’s blatant pragmatism and Middle East policy

In their foreign policy dealings, successive US administrations have adopted pragmatic approaches based on “national interests”. Despite the debates about the differences between Obama and Trump, both are pragmatists in their own way with regards to their empirical, imperialist and human rights policies.

However, pragmatism is ambiguous, not least in its justifications, the values of which depend on its ability to achieve its objectives. While Obama adopted pragmatism based on “creative ambiguity”, Trump prefers it to be based on “blatant clarity”.

Donald Trump’s policy differs from his predecessor’s in terms of “the politics of truth”, given their differences in social, economic and educational backgrounds. While the current US president delivers clearly one-sided populist speeches, Obama’s were very ambiguous, pluralist and eloquent.

Read: US pledges ‘zones of stability’ for refugees during anti-Daesh summit

Nevertheless, the truth is that Trump is basically following in Obama’s footsteps although he denies it due to their difference in the vision of the “greatness of America”. He still speaks and acts pragmatically, though. Indeed, since Trump took office, he has followed Obama on major foreign policy issues, despite contradicting him in word and deed.

The removal of Bashar Al-Assad from office was not a priority for Obama. After the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, his administration called on the regime to make reforms that would meet the protestors’ demands and called for an end to the violence. Washington under Obama then exercised limited pressure on Assad in the form of a batch of financial and economic sanctions on 18 May 2011 against him and some of his political and security officials. Obama told CBS on 12 July 2011, that Assad had “lost his legitimacy for failing to lead a democratic transition”, but he did not call on him overtly to step down.

When the action group on Syria reached the six-point Geneva agreement on 30 June 2012, the Obama administration left the future of Assad open to interpretation during the transitional period. At the time, Russia insisted that the agreement did not set Assad’s departure as the starting point for its implementation.

President Obama was clearer during his State of the Union address on 12 February 2013, but he did not address the issue of Assad’s departure. Instead, he said he would continue to put pressure on the Syrian regime and support the opposition leaders.

The Trump administration’s position on Assad’s departure is no surprise; it is an extension of Obama’s, albeit with more clarity. When the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, stated on 30 March that her country’s policy is no longer focused on the departure of Assad, she was removing Obama’s cloud of ambiguity. “Our priority is to really look at how we get things done,” she explained. “Who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria? We can’t necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the Syrian people would decide Assad’s fate in the long run. In the spirit of the policy of blatant clarity, White House spokesman Sean Spicer added, “There is a political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now.” This was a reference to Bashar Al-Assad’s rule. “The United States has profound priorities in Syria and Iraq and we’ve made it clear that counterterrorism, particularly the defeat of ISIS, is foremost among those priorities.”

Read: US priority on Syria no longer focused on ‘getting Assad out’

The focus on the elimination of Daesh and Al-Qaeda reiterated by the Trump administration is the same as that adopted by Obama. Moreover, Trump’s officials have adopted Obama’s strategy regarding a limit on the deployment of US troops abroad. They rely on the same strategic plans that were prepared under Obama for the retaking of Mosul and Al-Raqqah using air strikes, support from US advisors on the ground, establishing military bases and relying on various local forces. In Syria, this excludes Turkey from the equation.

Ultimately, the difference between the two presidents is how best to protect US interests. According to Obama, inappropriate terminology harms US interests and its efforts against extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere, especially generalisations about Islam, Muslims and terrorism.

“They tell us we can’t beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists’,” he said. “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.” He noted that “there’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam’.”

Trump may not believe in ambiguity, but he does not actually depart from what Obama planned. This makes him popular with the region’s dictatorships, especially the Assad regime, which welcomed his election and expressed a willingness to cooperate with his administration. This was after hearing his linking of Islam and terrorism. Although the Syrian leader, according to Trump, is a “bad man… he is good at killing terrorists.”

Even though he told the Guardian of the need to focus Washington’s attention on addressing domestic issues rather than “nation building” abroad, Trump told Reuters that defeating Daesh takes priority over convincing Assad to step down. He expressed his doubts about the nature of the armed Syrian opposition backed by the US and suggested that the opposition representatives may be loyal to the extremist group.

We should not forget, either, that it was Obama who first suggested designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. At the time of writing, it appears that Trump is holding back from taking such a step.

With no new strategies adopted by Trump on foreign policy, he is also following what Obama put in place with regards to Iran too. His speeches may come across as being more hostile towards Tehran, but his administration’s action in this respect is pretty much business as usual.

US pragmatism, therefore, is designed to protect and develop American interests, wherever they might be. If the issue of Assad’s departure is clear between Obama and Trump, it is even clearer in the context of “Islamic terrorism”. We will not see fundamental differences in the other regional issues, including those related to Iran or even the Palestinian cause. Support for dictatorships will remain, as will the delusion that all of this is intended to create stability. That will be the case only if it suits US interests to do so.

Translated from Arabi21, 2 April, 2017

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.