King Abdullah II of Jordan leaves a meeting with members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 12, 2016. The White House said President Barack Obama would not meet with close ally King Abdullah of Jordan because of scheduling problems but that have plans to see each other in the coming months.NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP / Getty Images
Jordan, the small but steadfast U.S. ally in the Middle East, took it on the chin in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address this week.
The impoverished desert kingdom is on the front line in the war against Islamic State forces, is host to hundreds of thousands of refugees from the five-year-old Syrian civil war next door, and has been home to millions of displaced Palestinians who await a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that began in 1948.
Jordan's King Abdullah II was among the first to enlist in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, and, when one of Jordan's fighter pilots was shot down and burned alive in a cage last January by his IS captors, the King's response was to increase his country's bombing runs, not to try to reduce the risks to his people.
Yet Mr. Obama's 59-minute speech on Wednesday night either played down or ignored the life-and-death issues that matter most to his loyal Jordanian friend.
The President made absolutely no mention of the Palestinians and Israelis among his future interests – perhaps out of spite for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he sees as having scuppered U.S. efforts to foster a two-state solution. He minimized the severity of the Syrian conflict, suggesting that the do-little-and-wait approach by the United States was the right course of action, and he went so far as to belittle King Abdullah's view of the battle against Islamic State as a kind of "third world war" to which countries "must respond with equal intensity."
"As we focus on destroying [Islamic State]," Mr. Obama said, "over-the-top claims that this is world war three just play into their hands."
To add insult to injury, President Obama could find less than five minutes to meet with the King, who was in Washington this week to co-ordinate military strategy against Islamic State. The two men held a last-minute meeting in the passenger lounge at Joint Base Andrews outside the capital while the President was transferring from his helicopter to Air Force One bound for Nebraska.
Yet the King took it well, telling reporters he did not feel in the least snubbed by the shortness and informal nature of the meeting, and even announcing that his planes would be accelerating their campaign against IS forces.
In his speech to the nation on Wednesday, Mr. Obama appeared satisfied with U.S. policy toward the fighting in Syria that has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced millions. Meanwhile, Syrian refugees continue to stream into northern Jordan at the rate of about 100 per day after they are carefully screened by Jordanian troops on the border.
To establish a buffer on their northern frontier, Jordan has developed a relationship with the Southern Front rebels who are fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The Front includes members of the secular Free Syrian Army and some from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. It does not include members of Islamic State.
But to cover his bet, and perhaps because of reservations about the willingness of his U.S. ally to fight the good fight, the King also has cultivated Russian support.
At a Nov. 25 meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin – lasting a good deal more than five minutes – Jordanian commentators reported that the King reached a "gentlemen's agreement" with Mr. Putin that any advance in the south by Assad forces (backed now by Russian fighter jets and bombers) will not affect the safe zone Jordan seeks inside Syria against hardline Islamist groups.
In the past three weeks, Syrian troops with Russian support have pushed rebel forces back in the south apparently to increase Damascus's bargaining power for peace talks scheduled to begin on Jan. 25. To some people's surprise, well-connected Jordanian commentators say Jordan has no problem with the return of the Syrian regime to the south since it too opposes Islamic State.
Fahd al-Khitan, a leading political analyst, wrote that Amman and Moscow are in agreement over the future of southern Syria. Each wants the area rid of IS forces and each is looking ahead to "reconciliation between Amman and Damascus under Russian auspices."
Ironically, the ultimate beneficiary of Jordan's efforts is the state of Israel to the west, the source of many of Jordan's troubles. It sees the Hashemite kingdom as a buffer of its own that helps protect it from Arab foes and radical Islam.