Nikki Haley Should Never Be President
Spreading foreign policy ignorance for votes must be disqualifying
Nikki Haley’s problem as a presidential candidate is more than just that she has no shot of winning the nomination. Worse, she just proved she is unfit for the office.
Her attempts to become a mini-Trump won’t work, because anyone who has followed her career knows that’s not her. But on Sunday, she said something so reckless that she made clear she would say anything - regardless of how dangerous it is - to appeal to the uninformed for votes.
The intentionally ignorant statements came, of course, on a Fox News channel. Appearing on with Maria Bartiromo’s program on Fox Business, the host asked, reasonably, about what the former United Nation’s ambassador brought to the table that should convince voters to side with her rather than other Republican candidates.
My reaction as she laid out her multi-part answer went from, “Yah, ok” to “Ok, that’s ridiculous” to “Yah, standard Republican talking point” to “Is she crazy? She knows better. She’ll say anything to win!”
So, let’s take her answer one step at a time. She began, “One of the main things I did at the United Nations…” Yah, ok, she was UN Ambassador; as I said, that was important. But the sentence wasn’t over. She continued, “…that I think is so important is I did a book that focused on the 193 countries, the percentage of time they voted with us, and how much foreign aid we give them."
She wrote a book? That’s why she thinks she should be president? And she thinks that makes her qualified because she included a bunch of facts that could be looked up on Wikipedia? So that’s when I thought, “Ok, that’s ridiculous.”
Next: "The number one thing I would do is stop giving foreign aid to our enemies. We give $46 billion in foreign aid.” That was the standard Republican talking point, something that is red meat for the GOP base that thinks more than 25% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid; the real number is less than 1%, usually in the range of 0.7%.
And then Haley dropped the bomb. “You're basically talking about a billion dollars going to Iraq, who's basically dealing with the Iranians, who are saying, ‘Death to America.’”
And my thought hit wondering if she was crazy. But I know she’s not, and I know she’s smarter than this. She was just spinning ignorance, all so she could say the words about, "Iranians, who are saying, ‘Death to America.’”
The magnitude of the recklessness here is hard to overstate. Two neighboring Shiite countries, both struck by the same Sunni terrorist group that has been a major threat to the United States, both financially dependent on each other, both that had engaged in a bloody war when Iraq was led by the Sunni minority of Saddam Hussein, both that have had close relations since 2003 when we demolished the infrastructure of Iraq and the Saddam government in a proclaimed intent to force democracy there - of course they deal with each other. Plus, Iraq is our ally and our responsibly - we broke it, we bought it. Suggesting that they are our enemy because they have relations with the country that shares the largest border of any other is just nuts.
Anyone with even the slightest background in the Middle East knew, when we invaded Iraq and overthrew the minority Sunni government, that Shias would gain enormous power and reach out to Iran. And almost immediately after our invasion, as expected, two strong pro-Iranian factions, the Islamic Dawa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, popped up in the country, pushing for stronger relations with their neighbor that shared religious history and culture. And George W. Bush did nothing about it. Same with Barack Obama. And with Donald Trump. And with Joe Biden. Because undermining Iraq in some sort of tantrum because it has a relationship we expected would have been presidential incompetence.
As Shia nations, Iraq, Iran, and the United States have shared some of the same dangerous enemies. The most aggressive terrorist groups emerged out of Wahhabism, a Sunni sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia (our big, lots of oil ally.) Al Qaeda is Sunni, and violently attacks Shia nations. Same with the terrorist group that was first known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later became much better known as ISIS.
A primary reason for the Iraqi/Iranian alliance is because both united to protect themselves from and take on ISIS. And ISIS succeeded in bloody attacks against both. On June 7, 2017, ISIS launched simultaneous attacks against the Iranian Parliament and the Mausoleum of Ruhalla Khomeini. Seventeen civilians were killed and 43 were injured. Then, on 22 September 2018, gunmen attacked a military parade in the city of Ahvaz, killing 25 people; ISIS claimed responsibility.
These types of attacks - with others also occurring in 2010, 2022, 2023, and other years - also hit Iraq. (No, Trump didn’t end ISIS as he claimed repeatedly.) ISIS struck Iraq almost every year since 2013, with the sole exception of 2020 when COVID began and last year. The joint security efforts between Iran and Iraq against ISIS have solidified their relationship. They are each other’s largest trading partners - something that began under George W. Bush - plus Iran played a multi-billion-dollar role in reconstructing Iraq after we destroyed it, and the two nations maintain high-level diplomatic relations. Iraq, our ally, is a major entree for the United States as a third party in negotiating with Iran - a county with which we have no diplomatic relations.
Next, the easy question: Really? Is Haley suggesting that every country that maintains close relations with Iran is our enemy, and that we should provide them with no financial support. Well, get ready, because Haley’s position is about to upend all the Middle East as well as our military strategy there.
Oman is one of Iran’s closes allies; it’s also one of the closet allies of the United States. We have had close ties to that nation for two centuries. In 1980, Qatar and the United States formalized a treaty that allowed American forces to have access to Qatari military facilities; that was the same time when we struck a foreign aid relationship with Qatar. So, will we be tossing our Qatari ally on the pile of “enemies” because they, like Iraq, maintain close security and commercial relations with Iran?
What about Qatar? Same story - close relations with Iran. Qatar also considers its relationship with Iran to be essential to its own economic and security interests. Those ties are not likely to be severed anytime soon, because they are critical in protecting their natural resources, as the countries share the largest gas field in the world, North Dome/South Pars. And Qatar is also a key ally to the United States (although Trump tried to wreck that relationship when he tweeted attacks against Qatar on behalf of his financial buddies in Saudi Arabia.) The rest of the national security establishment was horrified by Trump’s tweet, given how much damage it could inflict on our military influence in the Middle East: Qatar hosts 10,000 of our troops at Al Udeid Air Base, the forward operating base of U.S. Central Command that plays perhaps the most significant role in allowing for American airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Will we be cutting off relations with Qatar, too?
But now, let’s bring it all back to Iraq, and Haley’s stated plan to cut the nation off from foreign aid. First, our relationship: Iraq is now a key partner for us in the Middle East, and we consider them to be “a voice of moderation and democracy in the Middle East.” (So said the State Department under both the Trump and Biden Administrations.) We consider its role in helping us maintain influence in the region because of its movement toward stronger democracy as well as our engagement on diplomatic, political, economic, and security issues in accordance with the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement, signed by Bush in 2008.
Then, why do we have the support? What good does that bring us? Here is where the foolishness of Haley’s comments most come into focus. Think back to the Marshall Plan in post-World War II; the whole point was to help European nations recover from the war in hopes of encouraging democracy and thwarting communism. With Iraq, our assistance is a variant of that: We went to war there to promote democracy, and our aid is intended to promote that - thus keeping Iraq as a strong ally of the United States so that we can keep it as a key nation in our national security policy in the Middle East.
Our aid promotes economic reform, democracy, governance, and human rights. The money strengthens Iraq’s civil society organizations. Our bilateral assistance also helps build a military to fight off terrorist groups like ISIS by paying for fiscally sustainable and professional armed forces; it also promotes civilian oversight of the military, key to avoiding the assumption of another military strongman like Saddam into leading the nation.
We are also using the aid to promote our own financial interests. The Iraqi government has stated its intention to transition from a centrally run economy to market oriented one - the kind of thing that America has waged war to accomplish for decades. We are one of its largest trading partners, with two-way trade in goods in 2021 totaled $4.6 billion, with $0.8 billion in U.S. exports to Iraq and $3.8 billion of Iraqi exports to the United States, most consisting of crude oil. American companies have also become significant investors in Iraq over the last decade, pouring money and building businesses in the energy, defense, information technology, automotive, and transportation sectors.
And how much does all this cost us? In fiscal 2020, $451.6 million. That’s less than 0.1% of the federal budget - all for to guild our key security, financial, economic, and diplomatic interests throughout the Middle East. This is the cheapest investment in the American national interest imaginable.
But Nikki Haley wants to throw it all away, to push Iraq into a necessary and unavoidable pure alliance with Iran, to inflame possible military confrontations with Saudi Arabia, to minimize our influence throughout the region. Why? Because Iraq works with Iran against a common enemy - one that is our enemy, too - and has established strong economic and diplomatic relationships with a neighbor that waged war against it just a few decades ago. And all because Iranians chant slogans against America - largely because it engaged in a secret effort to overthrow its government post World War II and impose the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a strong American ally whose hatred among domestic Sunnis paved the way for the 1979 Iranian revolution that led to chants against us.
So, bottom line: Anyone who would throw out a talking point to appeal to people who know nothing about the region by calling for actions that would undermine our strategic and economic interests throughout the Middle East is simply too dangerous, too unfit to be president. To claim foreign policy expertise while pushing foreign policy foolishness will help slaughter you in a general election and will do nothing to get MAGA past their distrust of you. So, Nikki, your time is up. Pack it in.