US hosts Gulf allies in vain Camp David meeting

"The Camp David summit last week among the United States and the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states ended with a fluffy communiqué whose mutual courtesies revealed no significant changes in either side’s positions. The troubling and ironic aspect of this event is that both sides were fixated on new security and military measures to address insecurities in the region — many of which exacerbated and some created by their own military policies and distorted threat perceptions.

Threats to regional stability emanating from the Palestinian territories and Israel and from Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) can be linked to, among other factors, policies that the U.S. and GCC states have jointly pursued in the last quarter-century, starting from the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s. In that eight-year conflict, which Iraq unleashed against Iran in September 1980, the U.S. and the GCC actively assisted Iraq’s war effort. That and other incidents set the stage for the ensuing decades of mistrust and enmity. That Iran was virtually present at Camp David as the common villain to be confronted was a culmination of that history.

Militarism cannot resolve political disputes; it only exacerbates threats. The mighty United States, perhaps the greatest military power in world history, finally recognized the futility of military means as the main tool of its interaction with Iran. So two years ago President Barack Obama wisely stopped threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, ended talk of regime change in Tehran, accepted Iran’s right to enrich uranium for verifiably peaceful purposes and entered into serious negotiations that seem likely to succeed..."

Read the full article originally posted on AlJazeera America here.