There are unmistakable signs that, after two years of non-stop skirmishing with media liberals, sections of the Trump administration are trying to make nice with purveyors of geopolitical spin instead of reaching out to America's genuine friends and partners for advice on vital foreign-policy issues.
For sure, the US president still relishes crossing swords with combative critics, gives as good as he gets, whether via Twitter or live television, and doesn't worry too much about the potential damage to his approval ratings by the daily tongue-lashing from New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN editorialists.
Still, after a while, the relentless fire from the elite liberal media was bound to shake the self-confidence of even the most thick-skinned administration officials, who have to cope with their boss's erratic leadership style in addition to pressure from Washington lobbies, not to mention politically motivated leaks by nameless "US intelligence officials."
Otherwise how to explain the decision by the US administration to offer bounties running into million dollars for information leading to the arrest of three PKK-linked commanders wanted by Turkey?
Were the names Murat Karayilan, Cemil Bayik, and Duran Kalkan included in the State Department's Rewards for Justice program only because US officials were fully confident they posed no threat to Americans or civilians anywhere?
As David Romano argued in his Rudaw column of November 8, the "decision to add PKK leaders to the Rewards for Terrorism list probably came from some misguided State Department official's idea to try and mollify the Turks, who are angry about American cooperation with PKK-linked Syrian Kurdish groups."
Whatever the real explanation, the State Department's decision invites another obvious question: Has the bonhomie between fawning US media outlets and the Turkish government sparked by the October 2 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi played a catalytic role in the inexplicable warming of relations between the two governments as well?
Granted, to a large extent Trump probably views international relations in transactional terms and is quick to recognise a fellow transactional politician, whether American or Turk, when he sees one.
Even then, the curious coincidence of the release last month of an American pastor by Turkey and a number of other developments – Turkish shelling with impunity of Kurdish positions across the border in Syria, east of the Euphrates River; joint Turkish-US patrols in the northern Syrian area of Manbij, where leftwing Kurdish fighters have bravely battled ISIS; a slow recovery of the Turkish lira – does hint at wheels within wheels within wheels.
The Kurds of course are a soft target, condemned by geography to be always within range of Erdogan's artillery. The real target is Saudi Arabia and the anti-Islamist bloc it unofficially heads. The killing of Khashoggi inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, coupled with the implication of Saudi nationals in the crime, has created an unprecedented opening for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rally his base as it were within the Western media fraternity.
The rare admission of guilt (a "heinous crime that cannot be justified") by a Middle Eastern regime, followed by the arrest of 18 Saudi nationals and dismissal of two senior officials, including a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is being interpreted rightly or wrongly by Saudi Arabia's not-so well-wishers as a sign of weakness that ought to be fully exploited before international interest in the Khashoggi case wanes.
Small wonder then, the cry for "justice for Khashoggi" has been appropriated by the Islamist bloc (despite his tenuous Muslim Brotherhood connection and advocacy of peaceful reforms), which is using its extensive propaganda machinery to amplify and supplement the voices of supportive Western reporters, columnists, political pundits, and left-leaning Democratic legislators.
From the viewpoint of Riyadh, the objectives of what Prince Turki Al Faisal calls an "onslaught and demonisation of Saudi Arabia" are threefold: to create a permanent rift between the US and its conservative Arab Gulf allies; to foment unrest in Saudi Arabia leading to erosion of support for Mohammed bin Salman; and to put pressure on the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen to reverse course and, afterwards, face debilitating blowback from a failed state in the Arabian Peninsula.
Against this backdrop, the invitations by American editors to a leader of Yemen's Houthi rebel group to inveigh at the Saudi-led offensive or a University of California academic to parse the passages of a Mecca Grand Mosque sermon for hidden praise for Mohammed bin Salman, should be seen not as hostile acts per se but of a piece with a concerted push by liberals to prise Trump away from his fellow conservative Middle East leaders, who are collectively seen as the biggest hurdle to a political comeback by the region's Islamists.
In response to the outrage provoked by the Khashoggi murder, the Pentagon predictably took the token step of halting refueling of coalition warplanes taking part in air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
However, calls by left-leaning American legislators and defence experts to cut off arms supplies and end the sharing of targeting information are likely to grow louder if the Pentagon fails to strenuously defend continued military collaboration in the interest of reducing civilian casualties and easing human suffering, and, for good measure, to delink the issue from the optics of some Democrats' position on the Khashoggi affair.
The unfavourable attention to Saudi Arabia contrasts with the same media's kid-gloves treatment of Iran, despite its long catalogue of self-inflicted wounds and known propensity for bluff and bluster.
Indeed, there seems to be a plethora of voices in America's elite media outlets demanding an easing of US pressure on Iran on humanitarian grounds and condemning the administration's hard line that, in all likelihood, is seen by Iran's powerless silent majority (including possibly the mealy-mouthed reformists) as the only language their "deep state" understands.
Simultaneous gung-ho claims by op-eds writers in liberal US newspapers – viz. "the ability of Saudi Arabia to help Israel contain Iran and provide cover for a final deal with the Palestinians now looks far-fetched" and "the ruling circles in Tehran already seem confident that the economy has absorbed much of the shock of American sanctions" – are clearly intended more to influence the policies of the Trump administration than to mirror the ground realities.
Finally, even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not been spared unkind barbs in the ideologically polarized post-Khashoggi environment.
For instance, in its report on the deal to allow Qatar to transfer diesel fuel and millions of dollars in cash to the Gaza Strip to enable the Hamas government pay the salaries of civil servants and police officers, the New York Times said: "Watching unhappily is the Palestinian Authority, which regards any hint of cooperation between Israel and Hamas as virtually an existential crisis and, many in Israel believe, would welcome a new Gaza war."
While the secular Fatah party of Abbas probably considers the de-escalation effort as a potential lifeline for its Islamist rival Hamas, whose leaders are close to Qatar and Turkey, the generous use of hyperbole by the newspaper to describe how the veteran leader stands to "suffer the greatest loss of face from efforts to loosen his economic stranglehold on Gaza" may very well be unrelated to his actual sins of omission and commission.
In any event, the latest violent escalation in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel has swiftly reduced the Egyptian-mediated deal to ease the blockade into just another footnote in current Palestinian history, partly vindicating Abbas' cynical – some would say realistic – view of the initiative.
It is tempting to blame a "vast left-wing conspiracy" (to paraphrase a Hillary Clinton phrase) or Trump's polarizing personality for American media liberals' monochromatic view of the Middle East. What is for certain, however, is that there are no good excuses for the US administration to compromise on principles and strategic imperatives – unless the president himself is succumbing to what he would describe as liberal media bias.
Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
For sure, the US president still relishes crossing swords with combative critics, gives as good as he gets, whether via Twitter or live television, and doesn't worry too much about the potential damage to his approval ratings by the daily tongue-lashing from New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN editorialists.
Still, after a while, the relentless fire from the elite liberal media was bound to shake the self-confidence of even the most thick-skinned administration officials, who have to cope with their boss's erratic leadership style in addition to pressure from Washington lobbies, not to mention politically motivated leaks by nameless "US intelligence officials."
Otherwise how to explain the decision by the US administration to offer bounties running into million dollars for information leading to the arrest of three PKK-linked commanders wanted by Turkey?
Were the names Murat Karayilan, Cemil Bayik, and Duran Kalkan included in the State Department's Rewards for Justice program only because US officials were fully confident they posed no threat to Americans or civilians anywhere?
As David Romano argued in his Rudaw column of November 8, the "decision to add PKK leaders to the Rewards for Terrorism list probably came from some misguided State Department official's idea to try and mollify the Turks, who are angry about American cooperation with PKK-linked Syrian Kurdish groups."
Whatever the real explanation, the State Department's decision invites another obvious question: Has the bonhomie between fawning US media outlets and the Turkish government sparked by the October 2 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi played a catalytic role in the inexplicable warming of relations between the two governments as well?
Granted, to a large extent Trump probably views international relations in transactional terms and is quick to recognise a fellow transactional politician, whether American or Turk, when he sees one.
Even then, the curious coincidence of the release last month of an American pastor by Turkey and a number of other developments – Turkish shelling with impunity of Kurdish positions across the border in Syria, east of the Euphrates River; joint Turkish-US patrols in the northern Syrian area of Manbij, where leftwing Kurdish fighters have bravely battled ISIS; a slow recovery of the Turkish lira – does hint at wheels within wheels within wheels.
The Kurds of course are a soft target, condemned by geography to be always within range of Erdogan's artillery. The real target is Saudi Arabia and the anti-Islamist bloc it unofficially heads. The killing of Khashoggi inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, coupled with the implication of Saudi nationals in the crime, has created an unprecedented opening for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rally his base as it were within the Western media fraternity.
The rare admission of guilt (a "heinous crime that cannot be justified") by a Middle Eastern regime, followed by the arrest of 18 Saudi nationals and dismissal of two senior officials, including a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is being interpreted rightly or wrongly by Saudi Arabia's not-so well-wishers as a sign of weakness that ought to be fully exploited before international interest in the Khashoggi case wanes.
Small wonder then, the cry for "justice for Khashoggi" has been appropriated by the Islamist bloc (despite his tenuous Muslim Brotherhood connection and advocacy of peaceful reforms), which is using its extensive propaganda machinery to amplify and supplement the voices of supportive Western reporters, columnists, political pundits, and left-leaning Democratic legislators.
From the viewpoint of Riyadh, the objectives of what Prince Turki Al Faisal calls an "onslaught and demonisation of Saudi Arabia" are threefold: to create a permanent rift between the US and its conservative Arab Gulf allies; to foment unrest in Saudi Arabia leading to erosion of support for Mohammed bin Salman; and to put pressure on the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen to reverse course and, afterwards, face debilitating blowback from a failed state in the Arabian Peninsula.
Against this backdrop, the invitations by American editors to a leader of Yemen's Houthi rebel group to inveigh at the Saudi-led offensive or a University of California academic to parse the passages of a Mecca Grand Mosque sermon for hidden praise for Mohammed bin Salman, should be seen not as hostile acts per se but of a piece with a concerted push by liberals to prise Trump away from his fellow conservative Middle East leaders, who are collectively seen as the biggest hurdle to a political comeback by the region's Islamists.
In response to the outrage provoked by the Khashoggi murder, the Pentagon predictably took the token step of halting refueling of coalition warplanes taking part in air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
However, calls by left-leaning American legislators and defence experts to cut off arms supplies and end the sharing of targeting information are likely to grow louder if the Pentagon fails to strenuously defend continued military collaboration in the interest of reducing civilian casualties and easing human suffering, and, for good measure, to delink the issue from the optics of some Democrats' position on the Khashoggi affair.
The unfavourable attention to Saudi Arabia contrasts with the same media's kid-gloves treatment of Iran, despite its long catalogue of self-inflicted wounds and known propensity for bluff and bluster.
Indeed, there seems to be a plethora of voices in America's elite media outlets demanding an easing of US pressure on Iran on humanitarian grounds and condemning the administration's hard line that, in all likelihood, is seen by Iran's powerless silent majority (including possibly the mealy-mouthed reformists) as the only language their "deep state" understands.
Simultaneous gung-ho claims by op-eds writers in liberal US newspapers – viz. "the ability of Saudi Arabia to help Israel contain Iran and provide cover for a final deal with the Palestinians now looks far-fetched" and "the ruling circles in Tehran already seem confident that the economy has absorbed much of the shock of American sanctions" – are clearly intended more to influence the policies of the Trump administration than to mirror the ground realities.
Finally, even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not been spared unkind barbs in the ideologically polarized post-Khashoggi environment.
For instance, in its report on the deal to allow Qatar to transfer diesel fuel and millions of dollars in cash to the Gaza Strip to enable the Hamas government pay the salaries of civil servants and police officers, the New York Times said: "Watching unhappily is the Palestinian Authority, which regards any hint of cooperation between Israel and Hamas as virtually an existential crisis and, many in Israel believe, would welcome a new Gaza war."
While the secular Fatah party of Abbas probably considers the de-escalation effort as a potential lifeline for its Islamist rival Hamas, whose leaders are close to Qatar and Turkey, the generous use of hyperbole by the newspaper to describe how the veteran leader stands to "suffer the greatest loss of face from efforts to loosen his economic stranglehold on Gaza" may very well be unrelated to his actual sins of omission and commission.
In any event, the latest violent escalation in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel has swiftly reduced the Egyptian-mediated deal to ease the blockade into just another footnote in current Palestinian history, partly vindicating Abbas' cynical – some would say realistic – view of the initiative.
It is tempting to blame a "vast left-wing conspiracy" (to paraphrase a Hillary Clinton phrase) or Trump's polarizing personality for American media liberals' monochromatic view of the Middle East. What is for certain, however, is that there are no good excuses for the US administration to compromise on principles and strategic imperatives – unless the president himself is succumbing to what he would describe as liberal media bias.
Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment