Camp David paves the way for a stronger future

It is incumbent on the US to clarify its intentions in the region, writes Muath Al Wari

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, joined US president barack Obama and GCC delegates at Camp David. (Ryan Carter / Crown Prince Show more

Last week Camp David was a place of two tales. One of a superpower unsure of its place in a world order it had created and sustained for 70 years. The other of a collection of countries surrounded by a disintegrating region, hoping to return to a balance of power that seemed stable and secure. The summit occurred against a backdrop of extremely low expectations. The allies needed to find a language they each can speak and understand, and in an unintended reset it seems they have.

Once the place of the beginning and end of the peace process between Arabs and Israelis, this time around Camp David shed its polarising past. It conditioned itself to the true colour of the region’s politics: a grey of many shades.

Each side came with different expectations of the other’s role. There was a fundamental lack of clarity at the heart of the problem. To the Americans, the Gulf asks for too much. Before the summit, the president’s top Middle East official Rob Malley said that his sense from recent meetings between John Kerry and his Gulf counterparts was that what they sought were assurances that “we’re there and we care”.

To some extent, he is correct. However, more to the point is that the Gulf needs the US to acknowledge the gravity of the regional situation. For the last several years, the GCC states have seen fire all around them. In Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq – each threatening to consume all that is before it. The UAE’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, perfectly distilled this view last month when he said “the whole region around us is falling apart”.

Yet, the Gulf’s alarm did not seem to be shared by Washington. For countries that consider the US, in the words of Madeleine Albright, the “indispensable nation”, that needed to be addressed urgently.

For decades, America has ensured the Gulf’s security in return for cooperation over counterterrorism, energy flows, Israel-Palestine and, ironically, Iran. Yet that very calculus was altered by several recent factors.

First, a North American energy revolution. Second, terrorists no longer just targeted the US but also its allies in the region, necessitating effective native counterterrorism, which in turn lessened America’s need to get involved. Third, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict receded from the focus of leaders and their people in light of the Arab Spring. And finally, the impending Iran nuclear deal was to fundamentally change the nature of how Washington viewed Tehran.

Consequently, a generation of foreign policy hands in America was determined to revisit their country’s preoccupation with the Middle East. It did not help that the US’s last intervention in the region was an unmitigated disaster. These men and women and those who employed them were determined to scale down, not up, America’s involvement in the region.

Yet this has occurred precisely against the backdrop of Gulf states looking to America for solid backing as they confront the surrounding inferno. Plenty of minor and major disagreements paved the path to the summit. The Iraq elections in 2010, Egypt, the Syrian red line and of course the Iran nuclear deal. Throughout it all, the lenses through which each side analysed its options necessarily clashed. Whereas the US looked for ways to extricate itself from the Middle Eastern morass, the Gulf saw threats requiring a robust partnership with America.

It is then incumbent on the US, as the senior partner in the relationship, to clarify its regional strategy. This will require that it defines its role for itself, and not just in the region but also around the world. For decades, the US reaped the benefits of a world order it had created and sustained. The world too benefited from that liberal order. Yet today, the order is being challenged by rising powers and new threats. But it is primarily challenged by an America unsure of its footing. The topic of the conversation today may be the Middle East, but echoes of this question ring true elsewhere in Asia and Europe.

It may be unrealistic to expect this administration to establish the role America intends to play in this new global security environment. Crises, however, will not wait until that exercise is concluded. The Yemen intervention demonstrated that America’s allies are willing to “go it alone” if necessary. Washington views these policy interventions warily, fearing a scenario in which its reluctant involvement becomes necessary.

In light of all of this then, the summit should be considered a success. It reset the relationship between the US and the Gulf, perhaps unintentionally. The sides agreed to a follow-up summit next year, and some informal mechanisms for mutual defence. One delegate described to me Mr Obama’s commitment to a future summit as a “substantially positive step”, one that “could lead to making these summits a regular occurrence with future administrations, which is something we very much welcome”.

The summit may have not resolved long-standing disagreements or even formally upgraded the alliance. It did however lay the ground work for a stronger multilateral relationship; it sent a message to Iran, and it will be very interesting to see how Tehran reacts and it ensured that the organising principle of US-Gulf relations in the remaining Obama years will be “no surprises”.

Last week, Camp David was not a place of transformative achievements or grand failures, but small wins and circumspect successes which is, all things considered, good enough.

Muath Al Wari is a Middle East analyst in Washington DC

On Twitter: @MuathAlWari