Foreign interventionism’s quagmires and disasters are certainly not confined to the US. It hasn’t worked out too well for Saudi Arabia or Turkey. From Stephen Kinzer at bostonglobe.com:
VIOLENTLY INTERVENING IN the affairs of other countries has brought the United States much grief over the last century. We are hardly the only ones who do it. The club of interventionist nations has a shifting membership. During the current round of Middle East conflict, two new countries have joined: Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Both have succumbed to the imperial temptation. Both are paying a high price. They are learning a lesson that Americans struggle to accept: Interventions have unexpected consequences and often end up weakening rather than strengthening the countries that carry them out.
Turkey’s long intervention in Syria has failed to bring about its intended result, the fall of President Bashar Assad. Instead it has intensified the Syrian conflict, fed a regional refugee crisis, set off terrorist backlash, and deeply strained relations between Turkey and its NATO allies. As this blunder has unfolded, Saudi Arabia has also been waging war outside its territory. Its bombing of neighboring Yemen was supposed to be a way of asserting regional hegemony, but it has aroused indignant condemnation. The bombing campaign has placed Saudi Arabia under new scrutiny, including more intense focus on its role in promoting global terror, which the Saudi royal family has managed to keep half-hidden for years.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia intervened in foreign conflicts hoping to establish themselves as regional kingmakers. Both miscalculated. They overestimated their ability to secure quick victory and failed to weigh the strategic costs of failure or stalemate. If the Turks and Saudis had studied the history of American interventions, they would have been more prudent. We know the sorrows of empire. From Iran to Cuba to Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, the legacy of our interventions continues to haunt us. Ambitious powers, however, continue to ignore the stark lesson that American history teaches. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the latest to repeat our mistake. It is the same mistake that has undermined many nations and empires. They overestimated their ability to shape events in foreign lands. Now they are paying for their delusional overreach.
When protests in Syria turned violent in 2011, Turkey might have supported the Assad government or adopted a hands-off policy. Instead it wholeheartedly embraced the rebel cause. Turkey shipped weapons to militant groups, helped foreign fighters travel to battle fronts, and allowed wounded jihadists to be treated at clinics in border towns. Turkish leaders calculated that this semi-clandestine operation would quickly topple Assad’s government. Instead the war dragged on for years. Turkey’s intervention in Syria failed. Worse, it brought the war into parts of southern Turkey. Syrians began killing each other on the streets of Turkish towns.
Turkey has finally begun accepting the reality that partnership with jihadist groups does not pay off. Under intense pressure from Washington, it is turning on its former friends, even sending its regular army into northern Syria to fight them. Turkey is also fighting Kurdish nationalists. Its shifting, multifront war has outraged both Kurdish and Islamist militants. They are taking revenge by launching terror attacks inside Turkey. Intervention in Syria was supposed to pacify the region and increase Turkey’s strategic power. It has done the opposite.
To continue reading: The kingmaker club
