Colonialism, interventions, the war on terror: the West’s Realpolitik has failed. We have to fundamentally change our relationship with the Muslim world.
Von Bernd Ulrich
24. November 2015
The West is in mourning and despair over the deaths in Paris and it shows it. This honours the West, this honours us. What’s more the West is in mourning and despair over not knowing what it should do. This doesn’t show but rather hides behind aggressive gestures. This doesn’t honour the West, and this is dangerous.
From fear to war?
Talk is now of war. But haven’t Europeans and Americans been leading wars in the Middle East non-stop for the past fourteen years? And even before the 13th November hadn’t French planes already begun dropping bombs?

Supposedly, there is now a new alliance with Russia in the fight against Isis. But isn’t Russia already fighting in Syria? And if they haven’t been targeting Isis up until now and just fighting for Assad, why should this now change?

The French President has vowed to be “merciless” in his pursuit of the terrorists. It’s understandable – he’s angry and he believes he has to show strength. But did France and the West, at any point, ever show too much mercy in North Africa? Did the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the intervention in Libya end in chaos because the West was too considerate?

Unlike the West Isis has a plan: it wants to provoke Europeans, Americans and more recently Russia into large-scale retaliations to the point where it descends into chaos; Isis is pushing for the West to target them with air attacks because it knows the collateral damage which inevitably results. And it knows that any loss through collateral damage is to their gain. Bombs kill terrorists – and produce new ones. The Guardian reported this week that American drone attacks in Pakistan often killed twenty times more people than intended.

If Isis actually welcomes these air attacks, how are these air attacks then supposed to help fight Isis?

Shortly after the Paris attacks the West sat down with Islamistic Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in Antalya to discuss how they can work together to fight Islamistic terror. Of course, based on some twisted logic it could be worth trying to fight Islamists with Islamists, in fact they’ve been trying it for decades. The first group to appear was Al-Qaida led by the Saudi, Osama bin Laden. Then came “Islamic State” sponsored and sustained by sources in Saudi Arabia. This year the Brookings Institution counted the number of Isis followers on Twitter and the result: most Isis supporters, by a large margin, come from one country: Saudi Arabia.

How often can you try to use Beelzebub to fight the devil?

Fourteen years of war on terror and what has come out of it all? More war, more chaos, more terror. Where once there was Al-Qaida, we now have the more powerful and more brutal Isis. Where once states harboured terrorists, terrorists now destroy states. And we are now seeing something which hadn’t been seen before the start of this glorious war on terror: countless refugees trying to make it to Europe.

And are we to now repeat it all over again? And as if it’s lost its mind, the West is once again attempting to peel an egg with a sledgehammer.

Is it not about time to take a step back and carefully examine Western strategy in the Middle East and indeed our entire relationship with the Islamic world? And pose the deeply-worrying question why so many Muslims feel hurt and humiliated by the West and consequently, why there is a never-ending stream of people turning to terrorism?

Is a Western “Realpolitik” even an ideology?

Having said that we shouldn’t be under any illusions. Even if we could ease the situation in Syria and push back Isis slightly, the Arab-Islamic world is yet to reach the peak in its destructive progression. For example, Algeria could descend into chaos at any time should its dictator of advanced years, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, pass away. Even Saudi Arabia is far from stable and not just because the oil price has hit rock bottom. The costly war which the Islamistic dictator is leading in Yemen has already led to significant power struggles in Riyadh. How long will the current regime continue? Two years? Five?

The worst could yet be to come.
Whether this actually happens or whether a change in the region is really possible, doesn’t just depend on America and Europe. However, they do have a huge say in it either way. It’s therefore worth making an honest assessment of the West’s Middle East policy as well as considering what a completely new approach in their relationship with the Islamic world could look like. Let’s start with the criticism.

“Too big to learn” – Realpolitik as an ideology

America and Europe are so stuck in their ideology of a supposed “Realpolitik” that they often lose sight of reality. Generations of politicians and journalists have been influenced by this school of thought. If we can’t defeat it now, the fight against terror threatens to end in failure just like the much touted fight to address the causes of the recent wave of mass migration.

Is Realpolitik an ideology? There are, of course, examples of genuine and successful Realpolitik, which consider the end result, are based on their own values but don’t get carried away, look closely at the situation, carefully weigh up their resources and don’t automatically think well-meant equals well-done. However, such examples of Realpolitik have almost never been seen in the Middle East. Instead Western “Realpolitik” in the region has mutated into a dangerous ideology.

The most important mark of any ideology is, according to Karl Popper’s definition, that it can’t be falsified, in other words it’s irrefutable. In reality the Western “Realpolitik” in the Middle East works based on hypotheses and methods, which could never be refuted in their application in the Arab and Persian world. For that there was far too great a disparity in the balance of power. Mistakes made by Britain, France or America were never really punished, in fact these mistakes could be made to disappear by making new and even bigger mistakes, turning them on their head or through even more drastic interventions.

Case one: Afghanistan. In the mid-eighties America armed the so-called Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet occupation. Then after the fall of the Soviet Union they were left to decide their own fate. The heavily-armed Mujahideen formed a gangster-style regime without any political or religious legitimacy. This lasted until the Taliban took over large parts of Afghanistan and finally provided Al-Qaida with a base from which to plan and prepare the attacks on the World Trade Center, which led to the West invading with a vast military alliance. Western soldiers remain there to this day, although the Taliban is once again on the advance. Lessons learned: none.

Case two: Iraq. America armed Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the eighties so that he could wage his war against Iran, where the bearded Ayatollahs had taken power. He neither won nor lost the war but it came at a huge cost, which led to him annexing small oil-rich Kuwait. After which the USA, in their first Iraq war, threw Saddam out of Kuwait but left him in power. We then fast forward to 2003 when they – for reasons still being discussed – invaded once again to topple their fallen-from-grace erstwhile ally.

So mistakes aren’t corrected, they are exponentially multiplied. Western “Realpolitik” in the Middle East works according to the saying: why falsify it when you can escalate instead.

Only the gestures count – “Realpolitik” losing sight of reality

Given that the West’s “Realpolitik” has such immense resources at its disposal, it doesn’t really have to deal with reality, especially when it can, at any time, destroy, overthrow, buy up or turn its back on a situation. That’s just one reason as to why “Realpolitik” often loses sight of reality. The other is based on its most effective stance. Because in truth it doesn’t feel it has a particularly strong position in the situation where it has meticulously and patiently studied the background of the country and its people, to then do something which actually goes slightly against Western values and principles but nevertheless serves the cause and its own interests.

A pilot murderous game of the West

It’s often the other way around: it’s not how close it is to reality that gives “Realpolitik” its certainty but rather how far away it is from its own values and rules. The further away it is from its ideals, so goes the fallacy, the nearer it is to reality. However, that is down to the male attitude towards “Realpolitik”, which, when it becomes serious, always signals: (clerics and women please look away) that the hardest of men should now come and resolve the problem. This is wishful thinking. Of course, most of the time they don’t settle anything.

There’s an important piece of wisdom here: whoever moves too far away from their own values and pays no attention to the interests of the Arab and Persian people affected, loses their sense of reality and proportionality. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise given that our values and ideals were not concocted at some kid’s birthday party but the product of centuries of fighting, consideration, trial and error and rejecting ideas. They illustrate the lesson, which we distilled from millions of litres of senselessly spilled blood.

How many deaths for how much oil? – The “Realpolitik”” pyramid scheme

Missing proportionality as well as the custom of burying mistakes under even bigger mistakes have made a pyramid scheme out of “Realpolitik” in the Middle East. If we take out just a few strands, we can illustrate how this programme works and why it has entered its final phase.

From Afghanistan we learned that carrying out the West’s operations in a typical mix of intervention and indifference, required ever increasing resources in order to fix the mistakes from each of the previous interventions. In Iraq a similar example is shown.

A more striking example is, however, the actions of the West in Iran. In August 1953 the democratically leaning government under Prime Minister Mossadegh was toppled by the American and British secret services. The reason: he wanted to secure a higher share of the profits from the oil fields for the Iranian people. In the interests of the West’s oil corporations Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was installed at the top. He was named Shah but was simply a secular dictator who literally trampled over the religious wishes of his people and carried out a westernisation of Iran – minus democracy and human rights plus torture and an all-powerful secret service.

In 1979 his aggressive secular regime reached a logical end with the Islamistic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. In order to then curb his influence, the USA sponsored Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran. In this brutal war of attrition 800,000 Iranian men and boys died. A huge death toll which stabilised the Mullahs and made Iran the USA’s mortal enemy. When the USA carried out their two invasions of Iraq, firstly to bring their former comrade Saddam under control and later to topple him, this in turn strengthened Iran, the enemy of the West. Consequently, the Islamistic but Sunni Saudi Arabian regime felt forced to stand against them. The co-operation of the Islamists from Riyadh with the West was and still is offset by the regime through the extensive export of Islamistic ideology throughout the region, a practice similar to that of selling indulgences. In doing this the religious conflict between Shiites and Sunnis has been heightened by the West and topped up with weapons and money, which then spread the conflict across the region. Isis is just one of many indirect consequences of Western actions.

The basic template for this deadly pyramid scheme becomes even clearer in the case of Iran. What started out as a banal interest to maintain Western oil corporations’ profits and a secret service mission, escalated into a devastating war killing nearly a million people and led to two further wars which the West were directly involved in. This also started to destabilise Saudi Arabia and the spread of Isis, where the knock-on effects of the West’s actions have yet to come to a head.

If you take into account the other strands of the pyramid scheme “Realpolitik” such as the escalation in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and so on and so further, and you imagine how all these conflicts permeate and fuel one another, it finally becomes clear the position we now find ourselves in: even the powerful and rich West cannot continue allocating more resources. The pyramid scheme has entered its final stage.

America’s guilt and the failure of checks and balances

Given the millions of refugees from Arab states and the widespread chaos in the region, many are asking themselves why America, who has dominated Western policy in the Middle East in recent years, doesn’t feel ashamed of her failure? Or why doesn’t she try to compensate a little by taking one or two of the millions of refugees?

When “Realpolitik” tends to colonialism

The reason is surprisingly simple: on this issue there aren’t any Americans, just Republicans and Democrats. While the Democrats hold the George W. Bush administration responsible for the invasions, the Republicans attack President Obama for retreating and blurring the red line. The fact that something could be fundamentally wrong with the entire US policy in the Middle East has never seriously entered their thinking.

It’s particularly evident in the family argument which is currently overshadowing Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. Was the second invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush not Realpolitik at all but just an overzealous attitude? This is what his father George Bush senior claims, who had, twelve years previously, decided to leave the dictator in place after the Iraq war which was sparked by the annex of Kuwait.

This criticism of his son, who otherwise deserves all the criticism that comes his way, is unfair. By his nature George W. Bush was certainly not an ideologist and a hot-blooded idealist. Nevertheless, the fact that he listened to ideologists such as Dick Cheney was down to the logical situation he found himself in within the Middle East pyramid scheme. When his father’s policy, which stopped short, leads to 9/11, then you have to do something differently: finish the job. The thinking of George Bush junior went as follows: when an ever higher stakes stability policy, from secret service missions via proxy wars all the way to ground offensives, cannot guarantee security for the American people at home, then perhaps a complete overthrow remains the only option. He felt his hand was forced by the position he inherited from his father. In doing so he didn’t violate the real-political guidelines laid down by his father, but instead suffered the consequences of them.

Bush junior wanted to end the pyramid scheme on a high with a win but only succeeded in taking it to an even more dangerous level.

America is unable to consider fundamental criticism of her own Middle East policy to ever spark a real debate, as long as her European partners either think all too similarly to them (the UK) or will do anything to avoid conflict (Germany). And that’s how the West stopped carrying out one of its most important processes in its culture – checks and balances.

Colonialism comes home – the demise of “Realpolitik”

Putting the moral questions to one side for the moment, we can still establish that Western “Realpolitik” has reached the end of its capabilities. The West has used all the tools at its disposal in every possible combination on near enough every country in the Middle East: secret service missions, drones, invasions, proxy wars, corruption, supplying arms, air attacks, sanctions, stabilising or toppling dictators.

Remorse hardly plays a role but one thing has recently become clear: straight up politics of self-interest no longer even serves our own interests.

That’s also why “Realpolitik” is coming to an end because it requires its exponents to be removed and it has to keep its targets in a closed cage. Proximity unsettles “Realpolitik” because it is directly confronted with the ramifications. That’s also why 9/11 was such a shock and was countered with a further, perhaps last explosion of conventional policies – although this had a knock-on effect as the refugees arrived at a later stage.

So what do we do now? Give up? That would be one option. People enjoy telling the story of the Middle East and how the Arab people fleeing their countries with their hateful religion cannot be helped. The argument today centres around the Arab Spring which “didn’t even achieve anything.” Isn’t that somewhat hasty and arrogant? Ultimately the uprisings were just about a desperate struggle to free oneself in a badly-governed region with a mismanaged economy unaccustomed to democracy. Perhaps if the roles had been reversed, even we heroes of democracy wouldn’t have managed it so easily.

Our wars overshadow the good deeds

You could, however, view the failure of Western politics as an opportunity. It’s not yet clear whether the Muslims truly can’t be helped, as we like to moan about, since we’ve never really tried to help them.

It’s beyond question that the West needs a new, a second toolbox. And a new theory: Muslims are people like you and me and Realpolitik has to get used to it.

The Arab guilt and the West’s contribution

Yes, it’s true that Islam, like every other religion, is loaded with hatred, perhaps even more than other religions. But whether this originates from within and turns into Islamism or even Islamistic terror, depends largely on the circumstances. And, therefore, on us.

Yes, it’s true that the divisions between Sunnis and Shiites had deadly potential from the outset but there have also been times when the two large Islamic communities lived peacefully side by side.

Yes, there were constant tribal wars in Arabia long before the West haphazardly drew its lines in the sand. There is, therefore, no guarantee that everything will get better in the highly volatile Middle East as soon as the West makes things better. You could also argue over who should take a greater share of the blame for the misery, the Muslims or the West – 60/40 or 40/60? But what good would it do?

Two things are beyond doubt: firstly, it’s easier for us to change our own behaviour than that of others. Secondly, if such a toxic situation already exists in the Arab and Persian states, we won’t achieve anything if we continue to contaminate the situation further with our own toxic policies. And this is what we’ve been doing for the last 100, 50, 20 and two years.

It’s without question that there have also been positive approaches. There was the development aid, attempts to build fountains and schools in Afghanistan, a humanitarian-intended intervention in Libya, the attempt to solve the problems in Sudan by dividing the country and many more. But all of this has mostly been half-hearted, imprecise, impatient; behind closed doors we might admit that the good deeds served more to satisfy our own fleeting consciences as opposed to really helping the Arab people.

None of this could really improve the image that the people there have of the West. Others have already spoken out quite clearly on our behalf via extensive interventions and the message is all too clear: the life of a Muslim is not worth much to us, words, treaties and friendships mean nothing. Millions of deaths cannot be forgotten by building a fountain. Clearly the Arab and Iranian people do not trust the West and even its positive rhetoric and good deeds are seen as just another stage in its history of racism and imperialism. And what’s the worst part of it all: they’re not completely wrong. Even the occasional freedom we exported (when it was convenient) felt more like a missile than an invitation for the Arab people. The West which enjoys its democracy at home, often behaves more like an autocrat in the rest of the world.

The big question is perhaps no longer whether the West has to find a fundamentally new policy when dealing with Muslims, but rather: why should they even believe us?

The Willkommenskultur (positive message of welcoming migrants) is the most effective enemy of terror

The dignity, safety and humanity of the Muslim people have been of little interest to the West up until now, at most they were just added extras and most of the time not even that. This changed in the historic year of 2015 when millions of refugees gave us the options: either we help them in a virtually never-before-seen way to improve the living conditions in their own countries – or they’ll come to us to stay. A “share and share alike” policy has started and the flow of history between the European and Arab people has been reversed.

It has understandably got many people in Europe worried as they dream of days gone by living in isolation with us at the top and them down there. But those days are gone as the pyramid scheme has ended and the patience of many Arab people has been exhausted.

The Willkommenskultur is a chance for reconciliation

It’s now time to take this massive opportunity to reconcile the Muslim people and the West. Finally, the Arab people are being treated better by large numbers of Europeans and Christians than their own people. Herein lies the political core of the Willkommenskultur: how we deal with the Arab people here, will have an impact on their image of us in the Middle East. It’s a delicate task and a huge opportunity. And it needs time by the way. Three European nations greeting refugees with friendly faces and warm clothes for the past three months will not change the world. It’s a start, a fragile one at that.

Given these historic opportunities it would be extremely short-sighted to try to now transform the fairly friendly welcome back into a deterrent. If we squander this opportunity for reconciliation, so much more new anger will arise that we’ll never be able to drive back either militarily or with the help of the secret service.

Our Muslims and the fall of East Germany

One of the biggest dilemmas for the West has recently been that dictators are no longer able to stabilise the situation and toppling will only lead to chaos and therefore, the situation doesn’t really improve. From this there is only one lesson to be learned: we should leave both well alone: toppling and stabilising.

It is, however, possible to exert some influence as shown by East-West German history. In the eighties the number of East German citizens visiting West Germany increased to 6 million a year. Their positive experience in the West continued to contribute to the erosion of the SED regime in East Germany until it finally collapsed in 1989.

The millions of people from the Arab states who have come over could play a similar role. They’ll tell their friends and relatives back home what life can be like, how to obtain documents without the need for bribes, the difference a free press makes, how good the medical care is and how little the image they have of the non-believers tallies with the reality. What’s more, what tolerant Islam can look like or how a robust community moves past problems even if not everyone is on board at first. At the same time those who stayed at home will have access to information on politics as well as money, shared out in a decentralised and organic way.

Finally, the fear that refugees will islamise our culture is unfounded. It’s far more likely that the Arab world will be humanised at its roots, detoxified and politically reformed in the long term.

An apology from the West and the Middle East’s self-empowerment

Have France, Germany, Britain, Italy and America ever actually apologised to the people in North Africa? For colonialism? For the racism? No? And why not?

In doing so you might clear away some of the resentment, which is felt (and cultivated) by the Arab people towards us. This anger is exploited by those in power who, incidentally, themselves have a racist relationship with their own people. The Western arrogance, however, is what binds the rulers and the ruled. Also, the West’s continual interventions with such force and imprecision keeps the Arab “excuse wheel” turning. If the West removes its toxic practices, then the system which continues to create a culture of terror and fleeing will collapse sooner or later. In order to combat Islamistic terror we have to reconcile ourselves with the Muslims. It is therefore time for a new and genuine Realpolitik.

Realpolitik but a real one – a new deal with the Muslims

As soon as a change in the West’s Middle East policy is accepted, announced and put into practice, we will once again be able to talk about the unpleasant things. Or simply having a policy that clearly serves the people and is produced based on respect and interests and where limits imposed on our principles, dialogues with murderers in power and businesses run by criminal tribal chiefs are occasional deviations as opposed to being par for the course.

Admittedly we’ll have to continue dealing with uniformed Egyptian dictators as well as Islamists from Riyadh and Tehran. Only in the future it should occur with an egalitarian coolness. You can’t treat one Islamist like the devil (Iran) and embrace the other (Saudi Arabia) as a brother. Even supplying arms has to be drastically cut back. There are hardly any friendly and good-natured regimes in the region.

At the same time the West can’t appear to be too trusting in their new strategy. In view of the terror attacks Europeans need a stronger state, the military must be more effective and, in all likelihood, more expensive.

If a new Realpolitik is supposed to be more closely linked to our values, then we have to keep an eye on Vladimir Putin for he will try once again to draw the West into his usual web of menacing power politics.

Above all, however, it needs a positive agenda: development aid in a new form, conditioned and where possible distributed without the ruling parties. Perhaps you could introduce a Marshall Plan for the region and open up the European markets.

The end of the old Realpolitik will inspire us to develop new ideas and start a new chapter in the history of West and East relations. And we’ll be able to say we were there.

SOURCE: http://www.zeit.de/2015/47/muslims-islam-west-terrorism/komplettansicht