In the absence of U.S. leadership, others want to direct the Middle East. The battle is becoming a competition of radicals to run the region. That’s what happened in the 1950s and 1960s and it isn’t good. Then, the competition was between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Today, the contestants are Turkey, Iran, and a radical Egypt, with Iraq and Syria sidelined due to internal issues. Meanwhile, the Saudis have been forced to take over leadership of the remaining moderate Arab states (the Gulf sheikdoms, plus Morocco and Jordan) since they can no longer depend on America for protection.
The Egyptian foreign minister has warned Iran not to try to intervene too much in the Gulf, posing as protector of Saudi Arabia and the smaller states. This is a hint that Egypt wants to resume its pre-Sadat role as leader of the Arab world. Cairo will see itself as protector of the Muslim, Sunni, and Arab world against Persian, Shia Muslim Iran; Turkish Turkey; and Jewish Israel. With Iraq turned inward and Syria turned upside down, Egypt is the only remaining Arab state that can make a play for region-wide power.
That Egypt wants to stop Iranian expansion is a good thing, but that the next government — a radical, possibly Islamist one, will have its own ambitions isn’t. I predict that Egypt and Iran will tussle over who will be the patron of Hamas and that Egypt will win. It also seems likely that a radical, Islamist-influenced Egypt would be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jordan, too.
The Saudis are also reaching out. Their leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in sending troops to Bahrain and tightening the security links among the members is another sign that they aren’t depending on the United States anymore. Equally impressive is the GCC’s invitation to Jordan to join, a total break with past policy. This is a good thing since the Jordanians need help (particularly money) to stay stable and fend off Iranian influence and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.
Iran’s ambitions are well-known but the statement of parliament speaker Ali Larijani (generally regarded as a “moderate” on the Islamic republic’s political spectrum) is still an escalation. He said that Tehran will “protect” Muslim states from U.S. and Israeli aggression. Clearly, this doesn’t include Libya, where the Iranians hope that the United States and NATO will overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi and open the way for a radical Islamist dictatorship.
Of course, Iranian protection implies that regime’s hands around the neck of other countries. The regime now has Lebanon as a satellite, tremendous influence in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, patronage over Hamas, and an alliance with Turkey and Syria. That’s a pretty good situation. And once it has nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime believes it can do whatever it wants and nobody will complain too much.
Then there’s Turkey. It is foolish and certainly outdated to see Turkey as somehow on the “West’s” side against Iran. First, Turkey is allied with Iran to a large extent. Second, if and when the two countries differ it is about how to carve up others. Kemal Ataturk’s wise injunction — the equivalent of George Washington’s avoiding “foreign entanglements” — of “peace at home, peace abroad” is being thrown on the garbage heap with all of his other hard-earned wisdom.
In effect, as the Islamist wildfires rage throughout the Middle East-and beyond-western leaders and pundits haven’t a clue.They haven’t a clue as to what the dictators are fighting over, and what its outcome ultimately means for the west/freedom.
So, at one of the most dangerous junctures in decades, we are saddled with a clueless, often times mendacious POTUS, who lights fuses under these fires instead of tamping them down or reordering them in a less lethal fashion.
As usual, Israel is the sacrificial lamb, from a hostile Washington leadership and from its usual mortal foes in the neighborhood.
God help us…..and when called to do so, may Bibi have the spine to unleash the full scope of our arsenal, resulting in our tormentors knowing who the victor is-Israel.
Adina – This is what happens when the electorate get suckered by the LSM: It elects a community organizer who is incompetent and incoherent. We can only hope he’ll have to find another place to live come Jan 20, 2013.
Adina;
The US has to worry about the US right now.
Yes, nuke the middle east, that’ll solve all Israel’s problems and guarantee they won’t be hated throughout all eternity and that at some future point someone won’t return the favor.
Well done.
Of course you could try putting your Nobel Prize winning genius to figuring out how to get along with your neighbors but I guess being an Arab animal is immune to cleverness.
Anyway, why bother when it’s so much more fun applying those smarts to how to NOT get along with your neighbors? You have to admit, you’re fantastically clever in that regard what with all the explanations and… explanations.
If the the Open Letter is any indication, they won’t. A lot of former high-ranking American officials still view the problem as an intransigent Israel, not the danger posed by Islamism throughout the Middle East. Its not just the Obama Administration that is living in denial. Western elites do. Look for things to become worse rather than better.
I expect things to get worse BEFORE they get better. Israel’s challenge is to survive the period in between, our Czechoslovakia moment. The similarities to the period prior to WWII are quite striking, with Israel playing both the the role of the Jews and the role of Czechoslovakia. The West finally had to recognize that Hitler won’t be appeased by only devouring Czechoslovakia, but that was only after they sacrificed Czechoslovakia for the illusion of peace in our time. Israel’s challenge is to survive the period until such recognition arises about Islamism without being sacrificed first.
Such recognition won’t come until it’s unavoidable because it requires a profound paradigm change, not just regarding Israel, but regarding the entire direction Western culture has taken in the last several decades, and because this reality is so undesirable the elites are doing everything in their power to deny it. The common wisdom now is that Israel is the source of most the problems in the world, and that is relatively easy to solve – force Israel to make more and more concessions, no matter the cost to it, or help the Muslims wipe it off all together. What’s the fate of 6 million evil Jews compared with world peace? Recognizing that Israel isn’t the cause for all problems, that Islamism is aggressive and that it’s taking over in the Middle East and other parts of the globe means there is no quick fix and there won’t be peace in our time, a reality too frightening to contemplate, so denial will be the preferred choice until it becomes impossible.
The American leadership is crucial. I have no idea what Obama might do in the remaining year and a half of his term. If he’s reelected we’re in even bigger trouble. I also don’t know if the Republicans will elect a candidate who is up to the challenges.
I believe Allen West will be elected president in 2016 or 2020, but that’s a long time from now. By 2020 the situation will be quite clear. The world will be plagued with economic crises, food and water shortages, Islamic terrorism and wars, and energy crises. Then West will be the right man in the right place at the right time.
Of course, many problems can be prevented or diminished if they’re treated early on when they’re still small, but human nature is to first deny serious problems altogether, like people who won’t see a doctor because they’re afraid of being diagnosed with cancer. With time the symptoms become too apparent to deny and they do go see a doctor, but by then a tumor that could have been easily operated on or destroyed in the early stages has become large and metastasized.
If, for example, one recognizes the Iranian regime is imperialist, aggressive and insane, the prospect of it having nuclear weapons is too frightening to contemplate. The idea of confronting Iran to prevent it is also too frightening. So people prefer to believe Iran can be appeased, or that it’s all just Israeli obsession or Zionist propaganda. By the time they’ll have no choice left but to recognize the true nature of the Iranian regime it’ll already posses nuclear weapons, control several countries by proxy and have more allies.
By denying today the true nature of things they consign the world to confront tomorrow an Islamist superpower and a bellicose global front made of anti-American, anti Western Muslim, (Latin American) socialist and (Eastern) communist or ex-communist regimes who together control the majority of natural resources, have significant military power, and will have Iranian and perhaps other nuclear missiles pointing at Europe and the US (from Venezuela).
They’re riding donkeys in the suburbs of Cairo and have an army they cannot use with a free hand.
The old money in Egypt is jockeying to retain power without looking like it and they have no use for foreign adventures. That rhetoric comes from those who cannot act on it.
Forget Egypt – they are sidelined. They are being wooed with money, not doing the wooing.
Obama is an isolationist who believes that the United States has done more harm than good by it’s involvement in international affairs, a point he made abundantly clear in his Afghan withdrawal speech last night.
Obama is also at best ambivalent about America’s role as the powerful leader in international diplomacy, for example Obama’s wishy washy statements about Libya and Syria, and that is when he is not plainly opposed to American leadership in the global community.
Thus as a result of Obama’s isolationist world view, America’s role in international affairs, and as the guardian of a sort of Pax Americana, is rapidly diminishing, and America’s vassal states and allies are now looking for other protectors and allies. And of greater concern is the fact that states like Turkey, Egypt, and Iran now see themselves as powerful and irresistable replacements for the US.
America already regrets the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, sooner rather than later, the rest of the world will have even greater reason to regret his lack of leadership.
Ken Besig;
It isn’t the job of the US to parent the middle-east. If Americans are regretting Obama’s election it’s because they don’t have jobs, not because the middle-east is on fire again. The average American sees the region as a horribly dysfunctional backwater filled with horribly bigoted people.
True. America should concentrate on their own. Stop supporting the enemies of Israel, and stop training and arming the regional powers for a “final solution” to the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
I read all of the above, and my heart can only cry, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.” That will be our only solution to everything that is happening on our planet in this day and age. I am in my middle 70′s and have seen many things, but never has it been clearer than it is today. We are certainly living in precarious days.
I suspect that the main reason the new (and still in flux)Egyptian government is joining Iran in rooting for Qaddafi to be toppled is more geographic than anything else. An Islamist-dominated Libya could be expected to ally itself with Egypt against the West, the U.S., Israel, and possibly even Turkey and Iran.
Add in friendly (or at least neutral) regimes’ in Algeria and Sudan, and the potential exists for another “United Arab Republic”- the Ba’athist dream come true.
Well, the near-term version. The long-term version has always been the expulsion of all “western influences” from Islamic lands, the reconquest of those areas that were formerly Islamicized “by the sword” (think Spain), and of course the destruction of Israel.
In this respect, since Islamism is based on “strong man rule’ by definition, we should be watching for the emergence of a charismatic (or at least brutally direct) leader along the lines of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Such a leader would likely be a necessary element of such an Islamist “super-state”.
If such a leader, ans state, comes along, I expect another war to begin shortly thereafter. And it could very well be a “two-pronged” affair, aimed at not only Israel, but Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, as well.
Quite aside from the strategic and geopolitical reasons, there is another very big prize for such an invasion of the Arabian peninsula, other than oil- Mecca. Whoever holds it could proclaim himself the “true leader” of the Muslim world, and at least expect to be taken reasonably seriously.
If Mecca were to become the property of a new “UAR”, I’d say all bets were off in the region.
clear ether
eon
If I proposed the opposite of everything you just wrote it would seem more likely.
Thank you very much.
Unclog jets.
It is actually just the Hezbollahis in Iran and their arm in Lebanon who are the trouble makers.
Whoever has the combination of large population PLUS nuclear weapons will rule that part of the world. And that will probably mean Iran will come out on top. That will also de-stabilize the entire Middle East once that happens. The reason Pakistan isn’t more powerful than it is probably stems from the fact that it has so much internal corruption and turmoil, with the Taliban and al Qaeda trying to overthrow the “pro-Western” government there. Well, after the bin Laden mess, Pakistan may actually unite and become a radical Islamic state after all. It will be interesting to see what will happen once Iran gets a nuclear weapon and has to deal with Pakistan, another nuclear state. Now THAT should keep people in the State Department up at nights. But, as it stands now, I think Iran is poised to take over as big dog in that area once it finally has its nuclear weapons. And Obama and Clinton aren’t doing anything to stop it.
America should pull out of the region and use military force when necessary, or if necessary, to cripple our enemies – should and when we have any. There is no doubt that our current policies missed the boat entirely – No “mature” Middle Eastern Government favored the radicals of Islam. But the opportunity to forge alliances on that basis and cause a massive withdrawal of the Islamists to the point of their surrender/collapse has long passed. That at the present time the left is strong enough to implement policies in favor of the Islamic radicals, with whom they are allied, is further evidence of this.
This lack of foresight has always hampered our policies in the region. You know, there has always been historically a black eye for Chamberlain at Munich. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He did. But, had Chamberlain actually secured the concessions from Hitler that Hitler had to make to avoid war, Chamberlain could have (not saying would have) made things better. Churchill was much more realistic about what was going to happen.
We have not been more realistic about what was going to happen, and we appeased (actually) the mature Arab states and did not require of them to crush the Islamists.
We must understand that the Islamists will always be with us, as they always have been. It is their mobilization that is the problem. It is now our problem, and has been for enough years that we can say we, perhaps inevitably, botched our Middle East policies.
Time to pull out and rethink this.
All the writers here, including me, are very Israel-centric. So, what tends to be left out of the conversation are the larger geo-strategic considerations of the entire super-power structure of the world. That is, who gets to be the world’s pre-eminent “what-I-say-goes” power.
1. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, et al are not “separate wars.” They are fronts of the war which no American president, or so-called Western leader, dare name. Fighting this war, especially without clarity about what it is, is expensive beyond what we can imagine.
2. Pakistan already has nukes, and plenty of them. This is the Sunni bomb. Iran is about to get the Shia bomb. Saudi Arabia will have one up and running one day after Iran successfully tests it bomb.
3. Israel may or may not resort, or need to resort, to its Samson option. It’s easier to imagine Israeli leaders allowing a new unavenged nuclear Holocaust than it is Israeli leaders, burdened (so to speak) with Jewish morality, destroying Islamic capitals. But that said, even at great cost, Israel can (and probably will sooner rather than later) decimate Hizbollah and Hamas, and if it comes to it, Syria and Egypt. I would not bet against an Israel whose back was against a wall.
4. The “West” includes only America, Israel, Canada and Australia… at least as far as military capability is concerned…which is all that counts. And Australia is very far away.
5. But America is destroying itself as evidenced both by its institutional ambivalence re: who we are, our place in the world, the justice/rightness/value of the our cause, and by our destroyed and probably unfixable (short of inventing a new cheap form of energy — fat chance!) economy.
6. The war will continue. Nothing can stop it… because their young men have been made passionate about their cause, and because they are so damn angry and because of their certainty that they are destined to win. “Social media” notwithstanding, Facebook is no match for the Koran imbibed with mother’s milk. Our kids, on the other hand, are not passionate, and are ignorant and fat.
6. Just as FDR sat in DC, and watched Hitler and Stalin slug it out until we could waltz in and inherit the Earth, so too is China in that seat right now.
7. I think we will see all the dances that Mr Rubin astutely describes here. But they are not the central issue. The central issue is that the Israel and the USA will do battle with Islam itself, from Pakistan to Islamic Africa, and China will ultimately pick up the pieces from the dissolute, corrupt Islamic world and the exhausted, value-less Western world.
8. One strategy that worked for ten years, i.e., Iran/Iraq War, but which seems to be losing its power, is for the West to foment the Sunni-Shia hatred. If they can be, uh, persuaded (?) to shoot their respective wads murdering each other, which they are so good at anyway, that puts off the big war…unless, of course, the Sunni-Shia war becomes nuclear. If that happens…. all bets are off.
9. Note: Europe doesn’t matter anymore. The most idiotic sequela of the Libyan adventure was to demonstrate to Islamic strategists that NATO can not even defeat 1/2 of Libya, and they actually ran out of bullets after a couple of weeks. Wow! What a nice gift to them.
10. Last: Thare are three plausible outcomes of all this:
A. War in which we seize Saudi oil fields, and just take the oil.
B. War in which we use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. (We can never put soldiers there.)
C. Continuing the war in which we are now engaged, and over a generation or so lose to the growing and more and more confident Umma.
Sorry for rambling…When I read Barry Rubin and comments, I can’t help but speculate…
you get it..
So long and good riddens to the middle east. In a few hundred years when they decide to join the rest of the planet then perhaps we can establish relations.
Why is it America’s job to control the Middle East?
Hasn’t this caused us enough pain and misery already?
As long as they sell us the oil, who cares?
US need not be Iraq or in Afghanistan to secure energy and energy corridors. It can more closely ally with Turkey and Saudi Arabia to achieve these strategic imperatives. Israel is a liability but one that can be managed. The rest is just story.
Barry
Your analysis just on target except the U.S bumbling part. The mistake U.S is making over and over again is continuing the failed policies of post WWI England. The rivalry/hate among The Turks, Arabs and Persians is deeper than a ocean. Sooner rather than latter all those forces will collide and it will be ugly and bloody. Anyone remembers Iran Iraq war? that was just a child play
compare with what is coming.
The only thing U.S can do is stand back and watch the fireworks. As for Israel, she better be prepared because she will be dragged into it, she likes it or not.
The point you are making about Erdogan. It is true he is an Islamist at the core, but his pro Islamic rhetoric and anti Israeli vitriol are mostly to divert Turks attentions away from Turkey’s Kurdish problem. Turkey will not be able to ignore the desires and aspirations of the 20 million Kurdish citizens any longer. The Turks know that if Iraq disintegrate they are in trouble.
What’s happening in Syria is just the tip of the iceberg. The outcome of Syrian uprising may be the leading indicators of future Middle east.
God help Israel and the rest of us.
Why Are the Mullahs Dancing in the Streets of Tehran?
The thesis of this piece is an uncanny complementation of what they argue in
the most comprehensive and strategic rebuttal of the troop withdrawal plan of the Administration which is found in the piece “There Is No War In Afghanistan.”
It is the explanation of “why the Mullahs are dancing”.
It also disagrees with some Republican wets and it expresses very similar worries as the WSJ.
Between all three – Pajama, the WSJ, and the RA Analysis – there is a geo-political lesson well closer to reality.
http://robbingamerica.blogspot.com/2011/06/there-is-no-war-in-afghanistan.html
Interesting piece you linked to. The only questions I might have be: why does the author take for certainty that Iraq is “won”? I am afraid that the situation there has deteriorated rapidly even in the past 9 months, and that the internal collapse is further progressed than what many in America believe at this time. If this is so, then Iran is likely to have cultivated cooperation within the Iraqi government to a greater extent than people already fear, and is in the process of consolidating that cooperation (I’m not so sure that Turkey hasn’t done the same, in spite of their recent amicability with Tehran; Syria definitely did — it it remains to be seen what happens with that front). It has not escaped my attention that China and Russia have actively sought out relations with both Iran and Turkey as of late — and the competition for influence there bears some notice as well.
Is it a tenuous cooperation? Of course; most such deals are, especially in the shifting realities of the ME, and to be very blunt, Maliki is not above courting every available bidder in a vast spider’s web of backroom deals and double dipping (it should never be thought that he cares more for Iraq much less any notion of “democracy” than for his own personal fortunes, and that is part of the mistake we made with him and which we may live to regret). This is the reality which I fear may be evolving as I type. The trouble will very much be getting sucked into a ME power struggle, as no side is really a staunch ally to be backing, and which we truly cannot well afford.
By the by, I do not consider Israel to be “of the ME”; they hold a very unique position in their part of the world, for obvious and not so obvious reasons — so while in a sense this does not really concern them in particular, they very much must be concerned with the events as they unfold, as they have to live with them unwillingly or not — and times are indeed very precarious for them even if they manage to dodge the multiple exterminationist bullets being, rhetorically for the most part now, aimed at them — they are simply too close to the main operational areas, and their neighbors simply are far too interested in them to merely sit on the sidelines and watch things unfold.
There won’t be any reversal. You need a different man in the white house.