By Paul Bonicelli
Monday, September 14, 2015
As thousands of Syrians continue streaming into Europe,
some Western powers are scrambling to accommodate them. German Chancellor
Angela Merkel is boasting about her plan to bring in 800,000 immediately and up
to 500,000 annually for several years, although the warm welcome brought such a
crush over the weekend that her government has had to actually close its
borders temporarily. The government acknowledges the influx will “change our
country.”
Sweden’s prime minister is welcoming immigrants, too.
Canada and the United Kingdom will help, although they plan to bring in
considerably fewer. Now the Obama administration has announced it wants the
United States to accept the “ambitious goal” of 10,000.
But others are not celebrating this hasty decision-making
in the face of a humanitarian crisis (whether they are refugees or migrants, as
I wrote about recently here). Southern European countries are balking because
they have to process all these people and endure their trek through their
countries. Denmark’s new right-wing government is so exercised it has taken out
ads in Lebanese papers warning would-be migrants that they are not welcome.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Then there are the localities and communities in various
countries who have to accept immigrants whether or not they are prepared or
willing—such as the people of Michigan and California. Small wonder that
parties and activists in both Europe and the United States that demand policy
reforms are gaining followers. The influx will go on for years, as will the
political and policy fights.
Yet we are treated to admissions of surprise by people
who should have known better. Julie Smith, former deputy national security
advisor for Vice President Biden, as well as Ambassador Robert Ford, who served
in Syria under Obama, have said recently that no one expected so many refugees
to come out of Syria, even as the administration was focused on
national-security policy for the region. How could anyone not appreciate that
what was happening in Syria and Iraq (and Libya and Yemen) could well lead to a
mass exodus? Years of violence and economic devastation don’t have
consequences?
After all, the Obama administration includes Susan Rice
and Samantha Power. The former has had plenty of experience at State, and the
White House had to have informed her well enough. Power is a noted expert on
refugees and the “responsibility to protect.” She is all about prevention of
just this kind of disaster. When you combine this foreign-policy failure with
unwise immigration policies in the West, you get a human wave.
Naïve Immigration Policies
As to those immigration policies, suffice to say that
Western countries in general have been both generous to a fault and naïve.
Germany opens its doors wider than any other country, apparently out of a
desire to improve its image (Merkel has gone from being compared to Hitler over
the specter of a Grexit to “Mama Merkel”) and definitely to overcome a birth
dearth. Other countries have similar attitudes that have intensified as this
crisis heats up.
But the whole of European Union policy on immigration is
causing a problem, too. It is chaotic, but what is causing the immediate
problem is that the EU essentially has open borders among member states, so
immigrants who make it to one country and get asylum can travel to other
countries. Would-be immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East have a
great incentive to make the trek if countries like Germany and Sweden are
waving them on to partake of their generous welfare and labor policies.
But this is also naïve, some say: immigration at these
levels of people with a history of not assimilating and not being asked to
assimilate courts social and political disaster and sometimes security
incidents, as much of Europe has been experiencing (the Charlie Hebdo example
being just one of many). These countries appear to believe that masses of
immigrants who are useful for fixing their image and population problems will
not simultaneously cause other problems by being difficult to assimilate.
Merkel’s intelligence services appear to hold the contrary view and some in her
government are wary of how much change they can handle.
Weakness Increases Conflict
As to the foreign policy of Western countries, there is
much blame to go around. The West prioritized rapprochement with Iran above all
else—with the Obama administration leading from the front, for a change.
Whether one examines our withdrawal policy in Iraq, our dithering in Syria, or
our absence from the chaos in Yemen, every national-security interest has been
subordinated to the holy grail of making a deal that Iran would accept. If that
means Iran has a free hand to coopt Iraq, promote terrorism, save Assad’s
bloody regime, and support its Shia allies in Yemen, so be it.
The logic of the deal Obama made with Iran over its
nuclear ambitions fails at every turn, including the administration’s naïve
hope that the key to peace in the Middle East is to bring Iran in from the cold
and make it a partner for stability. (NB: Stability—if that’s all you want—can
often be achieved if you acquiesce to aggressors.)
What has this gotten us? More conflicts, not fewer, with
the resulting mass exodus of people fleeing violence and unending poverty and
economic stagnation. The Syrian dictator and the civil war he launched is the
root of the problem in the region. More than a quarter of a million dead, more
than four million displaced, all straining the resources of states in the
region and now Europe and soon the United States. Iraq is in almost as bad a
shape because one of our worst terrorist enemies, the Islamic State, is
thriving and actually controls territory.
Blame ISIS and Assad, But Not Just Them
In short, all the bad guys have been emboldened and
unimpeded so the region is on fire. What is the worst strategic outcome that
likely will lead to years of death and destruction? Russia is back in the
Middle East offering diplomatic support, selling weapons, and is actually in
Syria now, setting up an air base. The Obama White House is divided over what
to do about it, having boxed themselves in with their Iran-focused foreign
policy. They are at the mercy of the ayatollah and Putin now, and those two
have as their goal safeguarding the Assad regime, with all the attendant havoc
that creates.
This was not supposed to be the outcome of the Nobel
Peace Prize winner’s enlightened foreign policy with which Europe’s leaders
wholeheartedly agreed. His team represented the hope for peace because they
didn’t “do stupid stuff.” But it is hard to label anything other than stupid a
foreign policy that increases conflicts and their intensities, which in turn
produces a historic humanitarian crisis for which leaders were not prepared.
In sum, this crisis should have been expected, and blame
falls on both the forces of evil in the Middle East as well as Western
policymakers. We are in for a long season of reaping what we have sown. We
should blame the aggressors and bloodthirsty dictators plenty; but we must also
hold accountable Western leaders who have so botched foreign and immigration
policies.
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