{"id":1682,"date":"2014-11-16T11:24:47","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T16:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2014-11-16T11:24:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T16:24:47","slug":"will-islamic-state-cripple-the-pivot-the-diplomat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1682","title":{"rendered":"Will Islamic State Cripple the Pivot? | The Diplomat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2014\/11\/will-islamic-state-cripple-the-pivot\/\">Will Islamic State Cripple the Pivot? | The Diplomat<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">The \u201c<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2013\/05\/americas-pivot-to-asia-a-report-card\/\" target=\"_blank\">pivot to Asia<\/a>,\u201d also known as the \u201c<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2012\/05\/pivot-out-rebalance-in\/\" target=\"_blank\">rebalance<\/a>,\u201d is the most important geopolitical shift in U.S. strategy since the declaration of the \u201clong war\u201d (against terrorism) after September 11, 2001. Yet try as it might, the U.S. seems permanently bogged down in the Middle East. As Fred Kaplan has\u00a0<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/war_stories\/2014\/10\/president_obama_s_campaign_against_isis_lacks_a_strategy_the_united_states.html\" target=\"_blank\">noted<\/a>, the campaign against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has \u201calready lost its way.\u201d After just a month, the U.S. already seems adrift; it is becoming painfully clear that America is once again fighting a war in the Middle East with no clear goal, strategy, or exit pathway. There is growing talk of a ground intervention that would suck the U.S. much more deeply into Iraqi, Syrian, and regional affairs. If this all seems familiar,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/142205\/richard-k-betts\/pick-your-battles?cid=nlc-foreign_affairs_this_week-110614-pick_your_battles_5-110614&amp;sp_mid=47357876&amp;sp_rid=cm9iZXJ0a2VsbHkyNjBAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1\" target=\"_blank\">it should<\/a>. This has been the U.S. way of war in the region for more than two decades.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">Why is this relevant to the pivot? Because it illustrates a major U.S. foreign policy trend I think will permanently hobble America\u2019s ability to rebalance toward Asia: the post-9\/11 U.S. seems simply incapable of abstaining from Middle East conflicts. The U.S. foreign policy establish is deeply committed to the Middle East (for\u00a0<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2014\/10\/why-the-middle-east-still-doesnt-matter-111747.html#.VFsNinkcTcs\" target=\"_blank\">questionable reasons<\/a>\u00a0at best) and to the regular use of force there. As Martin Indyk\u00a0<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2012\/11\/20\/re_pivot_to_the_middle_east\" target=\"_blank\">put it<\/a>\u00a0in an article baldly titled \u201cThe Re-Pivot\u201d (just a year after the \u201crebalance\u201d was announced): \u201cForget Asia. It\u2019s time for Obama to put his focus back on the Middle East\u2026 Thank goodness President Barack Obama overcame his pivot penchant to Asia.\u201d Even wars as obviously paranoia-driven, thrown-together, and only dimly related to U.S. security as this anti-ISIS struggle, seem all but unavoidable. William Kristol\u00a0<a style=\"color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/bill-kristol-what-could-go-wrong-bombing-isis\" target=\"_blank\">captured<\/a>\u00a0this blas\u00e9, \u201cof course we\u2019ll be fighting in the Middle East indefinitely\u201d attitude perfectly when he famously said \u201cwe should just bomb ISIS for a while and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Islamic State Cripple the Pivot? | The Diplomat. The \u201cpivot to Asia,\u201d also known as the \u201crebalance,\u201d is the most important geopolitical shift in U.S. strategy since the declaration of the \u201clong war\u201d (against terrorism) after September 11, 2001. Yet try as it might, the U.S. seems permanently bogged down in the Middle East. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[130,522,834,1174],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-middle-east","tag-us","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1683,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}