Dual containment

Dual containment was an official United States foreign policy aimed at containing Iraq and Iran, Israel's and America's two most important strategic adversaries in the Middle East. It was first outlined in May 1993 by Martin Indyk at WINEP and officially announced on February 24, 1994 at a symposium of the Middle East Policy Council by Martin Indyk, then the senior director for Middle East Affairs of the National Security Council (NSC).^[1][2]

Resemblance to Kennan's containment of the Soviet Union

The idea was inspired by George F. Kennan's ideas of containment of the USSR during the Cold War; critics have argued^[1], however, that it did not respect Kennan's key demand for containment to succeed: the principle of power-balancing. Kennan argued that the Soviet Union and the United States, as both were superpowers, had everything to lose and nothing to gain by going to war with each other. On the other hand, both states had global interests which they clearly felt they had to maintain.

According to Kennan, the United States and Russia should respect the other's spheres of interest. That way the two could get along, building themselves up and developing their societies. However, they must, under no circumstances, go to war with each other. To be sure, with two such diametrically opposed systems, relations would never be warm, or even cooperative. However, as long as the two did not try to destroy each other, catastrophe could be avoided. What Kennan was expressing was the concept of balancing - the idea that, in the world of international politics, a proper balance could be struck between potential adversaries and this would produce a stable situation which could be prolonged for an indefinite period.

In the case of Iraq and Iran in the 1990s, U.S. policymakers confronted them with what amounted to a dictat - the two either remade themselves according to U.S. desires, or the government would simply keep up the sanctions until they did.

Consequences

As a consequence of the policy, the U.S. had to station large number of troops nearby. Troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, an area that many in the region regard as "holy soil," which offended many locals and is cited by Osama bin Laden as one reason for his hatred against the United States policies and part of his motivation for the September 11 attacks.

Traditional American policies had been not to engage with troops on the ground in the Middle East, but to stay "over the horizon", ready to move in at short notice. The only time the U.S. had deviated from this policy was during its intervention in the civil war in Lebanon, and that led to the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.

By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel forces,^[3] Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more.^[3] The result was the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, which imposed sanctions on any foreign company investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya.

End

By the late 1990s, however, neo-conservatives were arguing that dual containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. By toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant democracy, they argued, the US would trigger a far-reaching process of change throughout the Middle East. The same line of thinking was evident in the ‘Clean Break’ study the neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Landpower and dual containment - rethinking America's policy in the gulf. - by Stephen C. Pelletiere, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 1999
2. ^ America's Misguided Policy of Dual Containment in the Persian Gulf - Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 33, by Barbara Convay, Cato Institute, November 10, 1994
3. ^ ^{a b c} The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy - by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, 23. march, 2006

External links

• America's Misguided Policy of Dual Containment in the Persian Gulf - Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 33, by Barbara Convay, Cato Institute, November 10, 1994