US gambling away security in Middle East

Like a gambling addict who has to keep betting more to cover his previous losses, the Bush administration's recently announced plan to provide some $65 billion worth of advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel over the next 10 years represents a reckless, poorly considered attempt to mitigate the consequences of its ill considered invasion of Iraq. The deal also represents an admission of failure of several of the key elements of U.S. security policy in the Middle East, and, perhaps most significantly, it represents a clear abandonment of President Bush's democratic reform agenda in the region.

Bush's plan to increase arms to the region is an admission of failure on several fronts. The first, and most obvious, is the failure of the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein to have any positive effect in the region. No one denies that Saddam was a brutal ruler (he certainly was one when he enjoyed U.S. support) but it's clear now that a military invasion and occupation was not the appropriate way to deal with the potential (at worst) threat that he represented.

During Iran's massively destructive eight year war with Iraq, Iran's ruling mullahs could not in their wildest dreams have imagined a victory over Iraq as complete as that which was provided them by the U.S. in 2003, paid in the treasure of U.S. taxpayers, and the blood and limbs of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. It was always a fantasy that a democratic, Shia-dominated, Iraq would tilt toward the Sunni Arab world and Israel, rather than Shia Iran. Yet this was the imagined outcome for the neoconservative planners of Bush's Iraq policy. Reality has proved otherwise.

The militarization of the region through the proposed sales represents, to some extent, a repudiation of the principle of nuclear deterrence, specifically in regard to Israel. Though it has never officially admitted having nuclear weapons, it is understood that Israel does, in fact, have nuclear capability. This policy of "strategic ambiguity" is justified by Israel on the grounds that it is surrounded by enemies, such as Iran, who want to destroy Israel.

It's unclear how providing $30 billion of sophisticated new weaponry would enhance Israel's security in a way that a nuclear arsenal could not. As Zbigniew Brzezinski asked at a security conference this June, "If the Israeli nuclear arsenal — some 200 weapons capable of destroying Iran if Iran were to attack Israel — is not a sufficient and credible deterrent, than what is it for?"

Israel already has the most powerful and technologically advanced military in the region. If Iran wouldn't be deterred by Israel's nuclear weapons, why would they be deterred by some new laser-guide bombs? And if new-laser guided bombs do the trick, what then is the justification for having nuclear weapons?

The arms deal lends credence to some of al-Qaeda's worst claims about the United States' intentions. Indeed it seems designed to confirm the Arab and Islamic world's darkest belief about America: that we are actively fomenting war in the land of Islam in order to control the oil that lies beneath. Having upset the balance of power in the region by removing Saddam Hussein, empowering Iran by removing the most significant check on their regional hegemony, and having transformed Iraq into a terrorist training ground, the United States now proposes to supply new weapons to its allies in the region to help them deal with the new security environment which it created.