{"id":12742,"date":"2017-11-04T11:22:31","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T16:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=12742"},"modified":"2017-11-04T11:22:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T16:22:31","slug":"the-deal-maker-is-being-left-in-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/11\/04\/the-deal-maker-is-being-left-in-the-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deal Maker Is Being Left In The Dust?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading\u00a0AL Monitor<\/b><\/i>‘s\u00a0Week In Review<\/b><\/i><\/a>, it appears President Trump is being completely outmaneuvered in Iraq by Russian President Putin:<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin repositioned himself as a key broker of Iraqi energy politics last week, while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was scolded by the Iraqi government for his comments about Iraq\u2019s Popular Mobilization Units\u00a0(PMU).<\/p>\n

Given America\u2019s history and assets in Iraq, it seems a reach that Russia could be\u00a0outflanking the United States<\/a>\u00a0in Iraq, as we suggested last week.\u00a0But while Putin choreographs each move with a wary and calculating eye on Iran\u00a0and the ever-shifting regional landscape, the United States\u00a0limits its options by seeing every Iranian move as adversarial\u00a0and in zero-sum terms, which only serves to frustrate Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who prefers that the United States\u00a0and Iran not play out their hostility in Iraq.<\/p>\n

So in the same week that Tillerson earned a rebuke from Abadi\u2019s office for saying\u00a0\u201cIranian militias in Iraq\u201d should \u201cgo home<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the prime minister\u2019s statement termed the PMU\u00a0\u201cIraqi patriots\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iraq and Russia signed an expansive energy and economic protocol.\u00a0The agreement opened discussions of more favorable terms for Russian companies and contractors in Iraq involving electricity and hydropower plants, oil and gas fields, equipment and supplies.\u00a0The protocol touched on Russian soft loans in support of these projects as long as Russia\u00a0has\u00a0the lead in building and running these plants and operations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Particularly striking is the description of how the United States sees the landscape. While this is not nearly enough information to go on – and I’m not an expert in this sort of thing – it smells like the triumph of false preconception over realism in the State Department. Our preoccupation with Iran can be very injurious if we permit that to limit how we think about the Middle East, and let our inevitable provincialism rule us.<\/p>\n

That’s the danger of despising the experts, many of whom have spent their lives learning and evaluating their particular areas of expertise; “down home wisdom,” out of its context, has no application and, in fact, a negative potentiality.<\/p>\n

If this bears out as a negative outcome for the United States, we should then consider how Secretary of State’s Tillerson’s management has brought about this result, whether it’s his lack of experience, or his diligent approach to reducing the ranks in the State Department.<\/p>\n

I’d rather not hope for this, but this may turn out to be one in a long series of failures for the United States. However, this may be mitigated as most of the energy landscape in Iraq is, of course, oil, and the world is slowly moving away from fossil fuels. If this accelerates, whether through government incentives or a populace that realizes this energy source is not scaling properly, then this failure may not be important as some might assume, except, of course, symbolically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading\u00a0AL Monitor‘s\u00a0Week In Review, it appears President Trump is being completely outmaneuvered in Iraq by Russian President Putin: Russian President Vladimir Putin repositioned himself as a key broker of Iraqi energy politics last week, while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was scolded by the Iraqi government for his comments \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12743,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742\/revisions\/12743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}