Pressure

• U.S. presidents often leave the White House expressing “strategic regret” over perceived foreign policy failures.
• Lyndon Johnson was haunted by the Vietnam War.
• Bill Clinton regretted the failed intervention in Somalia and how the “Black Hawk Down” incident contributed to his administration’s inaction over the Rwandan genocide.
• Barack Obama said the Libyan intervention was “the worst mistake” of his presidency.

Another Beirut?

• The Middle East has entered a volatile period.
• The threat to U.S. personnel in the region takes the form of both the Islamic State group, which is intent on hitting Western targets, and the increased risk from a network of Iran-linked militants seeking to avenge what they see as U.S. complicity in Israel’s siege of Gaza.
• If any mass-casualty attack on U.S. forces were to occur, the occupant of the White House would face two conditions that have left departing presidents experiencing strategic regret: the loss of American lives on their watch and the prospect of being drawn into a widening war.

• Today’s situation in Iraq and Syria is eerily similar in many ways to the circumstances Reagan faced in Beirut, but potentially far more dangerous.
• Like Lebanon then, U.S. troops are in Iraq and Syria for secondary, as opposed to primary, security objectives.
• According to a recent Pentagon report, that threat remains exceedingly weak today for the United States.
• While Reagan was unaware of the high exposure of U.S. Marines in 1983, the danger U.S. troops face today in Iraq and Syria is abundantly clear.
• The Jordan attack aside, U.S. service members have already suffered significant injuries from missiles, including dozens of traumatic brain injuries.

Fueling hubris

Some might consider this concern about “another Beirut” overblown. After all, proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have dropped since the attack in Jordan in late January, giving the impression that deterrence is now working after big U.S. retaliatory strikes in February.

• The 1983 Marine Corps barracks bombing was preceded a few months earlier by a smaller, yet still deadly, bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
• In the lull that followed the embassy attack, Reagan officials didn’t pursue a strategically smart rethink of U.S. policy or consider troop reductions.
• In short, lulls in violence like today in Iraq and Syria can fuel hubris and provide a dangerous sense of false security and a determination to stay the course.
• As research shows, “see, I told you so” is a powerful rhetorical tool in circumstances like this.

The ghosts of history

• But anything too large risks inviting the kind of response that could lead to lasting and devastating outcomes.
• Imagine, for example, a scenario in which a U.S. president is provoked into striking Iran following repeated attacks by Tehran’s proxies on U.S. troops.
• The result would be an expansion of – and further U.S. involvement in – the Middle East conflict.
• Their experiences and the ghosts of history serve as a warning when it comes to U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq now.

Charles Walldorf received funding from Charles Koch Foundation.

Charles Walldorf is a Visiting Fellow, Defense Priorities

• Such a phase-out requires international cooperation to restrict the supply of fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas.
• If such cooperative efforts are pursued alongside ambitious action to tackle the demand for fossil fuels, it could lead to environmental and economic benefits.
• Some countries are already taking unilateral action to restrict fossil fuels, by, for instance, banning new oil and gas exploration or extraction.
• While no international agreement on limiting the supply of fossil fuels yet exists, there are precursors which have tended to take two different forms.

Who’s in? Who’s out?

• They would be followed by countries that have low reserves and low profits from fossil fuels, such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Turkey.
• Our data suggests that petrostates such as Russia and Saudi Arabia would be the most reluctant to join because fossil fuel production is so central to their economies.

• We acknowledge that our scenarios for international efforts to phase out fossil fuels are not necessarily aligned with geopolitical realities.
• For one, there is the shaky relationship between key countries such as the US and China to consider.
• A club of like-minded countries could pave the way for a wider coalition, but major fossil fuel producers would need to join eventually for it to succeed.

Economic consequences

• Fossil fuel prices will inevitably rise as their supply is squeezed by a phase-out.
• Only phasing out oil may result in higher economic costs, due to its ubiquity in global supply chains and production processes.
• International cooperation will be crucial, especially to lessen the economic impact on developing countries that are heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels.

• Lauri Peterson received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no.
• Panagiotis Fragkos received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no.

• The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published its final Guidelines on the resubmission of historical data under the EBA reporting framework.
• The Guidelines provide a common approach to the resubmission of historical data by the financial institutions to the competent and resolution authorities in case of errors, inaccuracies or other changes in the data reported, in accordance with the supervisory and resolution reporting framework developed by the EBA.

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