Election 2020: Don't Make Campaign Promises About the Middle East

Olivia Giles

Politics, Americas

Donald Trump compromised U.S. security in order to fulfill his campaign promise—just like Barack Obama. What will the next U.S. president compromise?

The history of U.S. presidential elections has long been characterized by campaign promises. Whether it be to lower taxes, create jobs, or even build a wall. The public loves campaign promises because they make it easy to measure a candidate’s success once that person is in office. However, campaign promises concerning Middle East policy have proven highly problematic.

Both former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump promised to “bring troops home” from the conflicts in the Middle East. As the number of American casualties increased, these promises appealed to the American people and won their votes. Since most Americans have little to no experience with foreign-policy issues, they did not consider the many important factors attached to such a promise. For example, religious, ethnic, tribal, and political issues, in addition to who officially holds power, factor into regional instability. Therefore, Obama and Trump, by catering to the American people through their grand campaign promises, caused harmful power vacuums that compromised the future of security in the Middle East.

When Obama ran for office in 2008, he promised to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. The 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) created under former President George W. Bush authorized U.S. troops in Iraq to mitigate sectarian-based violence. However, when the Iraqi National Movement won a majority of seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections, Obama knew that political reshuffling during a transitional period of governance, especially in a post-sectarian war environment, would undermine the stability he needed in order to withdraw U.S. troops.

Some people have speculated that the Obama administration attempted to influence the situation. In fact, some U.S. officials claimed that former Vice President Joe Biden encouraged the leader of the newly elected coalition, Ayad Allawi, to refuse the position of prime minister. Regardless of whether or not the United States did apply pressure, Obama still developed a power-sharing agreement with the incumbent Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister and not the democratically elected winner.