Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2023, p. 61
Book Talks
TO PROMOTE his new book, Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, Steven Simon, former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs on the National Security Council, sat down with Barbara Slavin at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC on July 19. The pair discussed the past 40 years of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and why most of its military actions are regarded as mistakes.
The modern U.S. approach to the region was greatly impacted by the militarization surrounding the Vietnam War and the Carter Doctrine, which called for military force to protect U.S. interests in the Gulf. “The U.S military had been essentially restructured and reformatted in the wake of the Vietnam conflict,” Simon said. “There was an interest in using force.”
Following the failed attempt in 1980 to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran during Operation Eagle Claw, the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) was created and became what Simon refers to as “a very efficient killing machine.” The implementation of this unit introduced a type of response to incidents in the Middle East centered on force rather than diplomacy. “One of the things about having a great tool is that there’s a temptation to use it,” Simon said. JSOC has since been deployed on many difficult and controversial operations across the region.
This mindset was evident in the 1982 U.S. involvement in Lebanon, as it tried to stabilize the growing conflict involving Israel, and again with the targeted bombing of Libya under Muammar Qaddafi’s rule in 1986. Slavin explained that U.S. F-111s attacked Libya following the death of an American serviceman at a disco in West Berlin. The U.S. tied the attack back to a group allegedly aligned with Qaddafi.
Simon said this bombing was a way for the U.S. to test uncharted territory. “State-sponsored terrorism was just sort of getting underway and the administration was searching for some kind of policy that would respond to this threat,” he said. “The happy medium seemed to be a surgical strike with the aim of killing him [Qaddafi].”
Simon also spends a great deal of time in the book unraveling what went wrong with the U.S. dual containment policy toward Iraq and Iran. Ego was at the crux of this policy, he believes. “Once you think you have unlimited strength and you can handle any costs, then you say we can actually try to weaken Iran and Iraq simultaneously,” Simon said. Former President Bill Clinton’s desire to “exploit” U.S. power following the collapse of the Soviet Union was critical to this logic. The U.S. sought a strategy of Iraq and Iran balancing each other because Washington believed it could hold both of them back itself, “because we [had] this kind of inordinate power. But we didn’t, actually,” Simon said. The heavily criticized policy failed to have an equal impact on both countries, ultimately facilitating “the empowerment of Iran” and making Iraq weaker, he noted. This outcome hampered U.S. policy for the first two decades of the 21st century.
The other key element of the modern U.S. relationship with the Middle East has been the focus on the security of Saudi Arabia and Israel. These objectives were achieved by the 1990s, Simon argued, and the U.S. could have pulled out of the region, however the first Bush administration introduced a new focus for the U.S.: Iraq. “George H.W. Bush injected this third objective into U.S. calculations by embarking on a 30-year war with, and in, Iraq that one could argue was not central to U.S strategic objectives or national interest,” Simon said.
With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now largely completed, the U.S. has yet again another option to leave the military mindset behind and approach the Middle East in a new way, Simon said.
—Jenny Jacoby
