Oil And Ignorance: Trump Steps Right Into The West’s Long History Of Failing The Middle East

BERLIN — It is not the fault of some mythical traits — real or imagined — of the “Orient.” No, there is another reason that things in the Middle East tend to turn out differently than expected, that actions produce unintended and often overwhelmingly negative consequences. 

It’s not a mirage, nor the shimmering heat, nor the buzzing bazaar that’s to blame — it’s the West itself, repeatedly falling into the same traps. It has interests in the region, but no real interest in the region.

With that in mind, the question of whether the U.S. was justified in entering Israel’s war against Iran feels almost beside the point. Even if the motive was rational and even noble, the consequences could still be irrational and illegitimate. 

No one yet knows whether these mega-bombs dropped from mega-bombers will achieve their intended effect — a “nuclear decapitation” — or set off entirely different and even more disastrous chain reactions. In such cases, humility would be a wise counselor. But humility has been the one thing conspicuously absent from Western policy in the Middle East for the past 80 years — or longer. Needless to say, for someone like Trump, “humility” is a foreign concept.

Deep indifference

The central contradiction of all Western policy in the Middle East — having interests in the region without any real interest for the region — once again means all efforts are in vain. No bomb is big enough to change that. In fact, the indifference runs so deep that in the German-speaking world, it’s still unclear when to say “Middle East,” when to say “Near East,” and when to split the difference with “Near and Middle East.”

Let’s start this history with a pivotal meeting on Feb. 14, 1945. Aboard the cruiser USS Quincy, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Saudi King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. The two struck a strategic deal centered on oil and security. Soon after, the impoverished desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia became immensely wealthy. 

But that newfound luxury, especially the “godless lifestyle” of the elite, sparked a religious crisis. It erupted in November 1979, when Islamist militants stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

The Shah was more willing to play ball

Though the revolt was suppressed, the underlying conflict between petrodollar-funded decadence and Saudi religious fundamentalism — Wahhabism — remained. One wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden, couldn’t stomach it. On September 11, 2001, he attacked the United States, which he blamed for corrupting his homeland.

Lesson One: Petrodollars breed fundamentalism — and ultimately terrorism.

A second chapter begins on Aug. 19, 1953, when the U.S. and Britain orchestrated a coup against Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, replacing him with the more compliant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh had dared to sell oil on fairer terms; the Shah was more willing to play ball. 

But the Shah’s Western leanings and lack of Islamic credentials alienated most Iranians. And so, just as Saudi Arabia faced its own religious reckoning in 1979, Iran underwent a revolution of its own — though with a very different outcome: the anti-Western, anti-Israel theocracy of the mullahs came to power.

Lesson Two: Pro-Western interventions often pave the way for anti-Western regimes.

The third act follows without pause. On Sept. 22, 1980, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, launched a war against Iran — with backing from the U.S. Washington’s bet was that the new Iranian regime would collapse under military pressure. 

Playing chess with strongmen

Instead, the war dragged on for eight years, costing around a million Iranian lives — many of them children — and leaving the Islamic Republic more entrenched than ever. The U.S. ended up supporting both sides at various points. Saddam, eventually broke, invaded tiny, oil-rich Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. The U.S. stepped in, citing international law, and reversed the invasion. But they left Saddam in power. Meanwhile, Iran resumed the Shah’s old nuclear ambitions.

Lesson Three: The opposite of what’s intended tends to happen.

In other words: if you try playing chess with Middle Eastern strongmen, don’t be surprised when you find yourself on the board.

Had the Americans taken the region seriously, they might have learned something from these three cautionary tales. But instead, after 9/11 — the fourth act in this saga — they drew the exact wrong conclusion: don’t scale back intervention, scale it up. 

And because this flew in the face of all historical precedent, it required an ideological framework — namely, interventionism. The war in Afghanistan made as much sense at the time as the current attack on Iran appears to now, and it too ended in disaster. The war’s conclusion devoured its rationale; reality swallowed its noble intentions.

Lofty aims

Having adopted a grandiose regime-change doctrine for the entire region, the West charged into Iraq on Mar. 20, 2003, led again by the U.S. and U.K. — two nations that had already demonstrated their “vision” in Iran. It was, of course, another war with lofty aims: ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction (that didn’t exist) and removing a brutal dictator (whom they’d previously supported for decades). 

Yes, the West won the war. But then, once again, the lack of interest in the region and its people took hold. They had no idea what would come next. As if to their own surprise, Western strategists discovered that a majority of Iraqis shared the same Shiite branch of Islam as Iranians.

The consequences? First, it strengthened Iran — contrary to what war hawks like Benjamin Netanyahu had predicted. Second, the chaos after the U.S. withdrawal gave birth to a new wave of Islamist terror under the name ISIS, a brutal sequel to the already bloody Al-Qaeda chapter. For Iran’s clerics, one lesson was clear: if Saddam could be toppled, the only protection against a U.S. invasion was a nuclear bomb. So they bought even more centrifuges.

Lesson Four: It’s always more likely that you’ll get the opposite of what you wanted.

Barack Obama’s empty red line

You’d think, after four painful lessons, the West might finally learn. But no. On Mar. 19, 2011, the U.S. intervened again — this time in Libya, to oust strongman Muammar Gaddafi amid a civil war. Once again, the mission succeeded — but no one had thought through the aftermath. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who led the charge, knew as little about Libya as George Bush did about Iraq. Libya remains fractured today, a hub for terrorism and a key smuggling route for migrants heading to Europe — further destabilizing Western politics.

Then came the (until this past weekend) final act of American interventionism. On Aug. 20, 2012, President Obama drew a “red line” for Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, warning against the use of chemical weapons. Assad crossed it. The U.S. did… nothing. America’s word had lost its weight.

Lesson Five: The ideology of interventionism has failed. That doesn’t mean it’s over. As we can see now, it’s still alive and well.

Last week offered a telling moment. On TV, far-right commentator Tucker Carlson faced off against Republican Senator Ted Cruz, another hawk. Cruz supported U.S. intervention in Iran. Carlson asked him how many people live in Iran, and what their ethnic and religious makeup is. Cruz didn’t know. Carlson’s reply: maybe we should know a little about a country before we try to overthrow its government.

And so, it seems, Trump’s current military moves are not informed by humility, nor guided by the bitter lessons of history. Instead, we get the usual mix of chest-thumping and triumphalism, as if none of this ever happened before. Now, the president is even calling for regime change in Iran — conveniently forgetting that just a week ago he claimed to be against foreign interventions altogether.

You’d think, after four painful lessons, the West might finally learn.

Maybe the real mystery isn’t the Middle East at all. Maybe the mystery is us — the West. Why do we keep learning so little from so much?

Helsinki effect

A new documentary, The Helsinki Effect by Arthur Frank, offers a refreshing take. It traces the Helsinki Conference of the 1970s, where 35 countries from both East and West — including the U.S. — spent years negotiating. The process was long, dull, and uneventful — but it played a key role in the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Electric cars are the best weapons we’ve got against dictators

So if the West truly cared about the region — and not just its oil — if we took Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as seriously as we once took Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, or Mohammed bin Salman as seriously as East German ruler Erich Honecker, we could initiate a similar long-term process.

But that would also mean breaking our addiction to oil. We’d need to accelerate decarbonization. The petrodollars amassed over decades have poisoned the region and generated endless costs for the West. They’ve financed terrorism, including attacks on Israel, driven migration, propped up the Mullah regime — and strengthened Russia.

Now Iran threatens to mine or strike the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation, putting a quarter of the world’s oil supply at risk.

To that, we might say: electric cars and heat pumps are the best weapons we’ve got against dictators — whether Russian or Iranian.

More Helsinki, less CO₂. That’s a strategy worth trying.