American intervention and alliances have been thrust into geopolitics in recent weeks. NATO and the Middle East are my main focus and earned a badge of honour or epitaph last week from the communist Morning Star that kindly called me a “veteran pro-imperialist campaigner.”
It was prompted by my helping found Labour Friends of NATO. The paper’s insult riffs puerile student cancel politics with an echo of show trial rhetoric from Stalin’s rule into the 1950s.
In 1952, NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay famously quipped that its aim was to “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The Russians are still at it while German rearmament is becoming a powerhouse of European defence.
The Americans remained a mainstay of the transatlantic alliance despite increasing resentment about the unfair burden on their taxpayers. At a briefing at NATO or at the Pentagon a quarter of a century ago, I heard this described as the Americans doing the cooking with the Europeans merely doing the washing up.
The first Trump presidency used that to question American membership of the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s astonishing threat of military action against a NATO ally, Denmark and his offensive remarks about the American allies’ sacrifices in Afghanistan remain raw.
Europe should build military resilience against Russia whatever America does. Abrupt delinking from America would entail huge costs. Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General says increases in defence spending could reach 10%
The Iranian regime’s bloodbath against a revolution may yet mean American intervention and even its threat could accelerate the demise of the odious regime. The old Iran is dying, and a new Iran is being born but no one knows how long it will take. Their day will surely come.
A mainly young and secular society yearns for women, life, freedom and good relations with their neighbours. Inconveniently for armchair anti-imperialists, Iranian revolutionaries seek further American intervention. Iranians are waiting. The old view that an external attack, but not boots on the ground, would rally Iranians to the flag no longer applies.
There are two instructive parallels from Iraqi interventions. John Major’s brave, moral, and pioneering decision in 1991 to impose a safe haven and no-fly zone rescued the Iraqi Kurds from further genocide and enabled the Kurdistan Region’s survival as a decent if flawed beacon of tolerance in the Middle East.
President Bush senior was reluctant to keep his troops in the Middle East after successfully liberating Kuwait on a UN mandated mission with a restricted remit. Major’s genius was persuading them to join Britain and France in policing the safe haven from the air for 12 years. At a webinar with Major on its 30th anniversary, he wryly smiled when I recalled that the number one chart hit at the time was “Should I stay or should I go” by the Clash. Thankfully, the Americans stayed.
Another Iraqi parallel is the work of the Iraqi National Congress, supported by the British and American governments. It convened Kurdish and Shia opposition parties to plan a new Iraq before Saddam Hussein’s demise in 2003. They endorsed federalism, with Arab reluctance, but it was agreed in an Iraqi referendum in 2005. Iraqi Shia parties have since diluted the federal pledge with Iranian support.
But the principle is right. Kurdish parties in Iran now seek federalism because centralisation suffocates national minorities that make up half the population. Supporters of the son of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi equated federalism with balkanization at meetings where I suggested that a constitutional monarchy with federalism is possible.
That’s for a free Iran to decide but Governments could mobilise external expertise from think tanks and academics on nation-building, a new constitution, and assisting unions and other civil society organisations in a free Iran.
Centralisation in the Middle East typically demonises and distrusts significant minorities such as Kurds, Christians, and Yezedis. There’s an accelerating affinity between Kurds and Jews as I saw at another meeting I helped organise in the Commons. This and the end of the Iranian regime could energise the Middle East.
But the new Syrian leader and former Islamist terror chief has brutally asserted supremacy over the Kurds, a vital force in an alliance with some Arabs that fought ISIS alongside western forces. The Kurdish city of Kobani which was saved by the Kurds and the West from Daesh in 2014 is now under siege again.
This Kurdish struggle could yet be helped by American political intervention. Trump’s ally Lyndsay Graham is pushing a Save the Kurds bill through the Senate and Kurds everywhere are rallying support with 50 trucks of aid from Iraqi Kurdistan so far although these are stuck at the Turkish border. There are hopeful signs of a deal respecting the Kurds thanks to this upsurge of Kurdish activity, which was a key driver behind Major’s intervention in 1991.
Kurds well understand American imperialism and realpolitik. American support is always centred on its own interests and the fear of endless entanglement. Henry Kissinger secretly armed Iraqi Kurds in the 1970s but abandoned them when he achieved strategic goals and famously declared that “Clandestine action should not be confused with missionary work.” The lesson is that besieged beneficiaries must build their agency.
The hard-left’s one dimensional anti-imperialism is as much use as a chocolate fireguard. It loftily ignores the existential dilemmas of oppressed peoples in the Middle East and the imperatives of robust European security in an increasingly chaotic world.
Gary Kent is a graduate of international relations. After spells in management in British Rail and the Co-Op he began work in parliament in 1987 where he was active for two decades on Anglo-Irish peace activity against terrorism and then in support of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, which he has visited 40 times since 2006. He writes a foreign policy column for Progressive Britain.
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