Once he clinched a second term as U.S. President, the world expected Barack Obama to appear in the Middle East. Instead, he popped up in the Far East.
Obama's impression, the doyen of Arab commentators Samir Atallah writes in his daily column for Asharq Alawsat, is that democracy has taken hold in the Middle East – end of story.
Proof is that Hillary Clinton, who witnessed the birth of democracy at Tahrir Square, is not staying on. She is bowing out after fitting the exploit and a fragrance of the Arab Spring into her bag.
Hillary Clinton’s predecessor at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice, thinks otherwise. She believes the war in Syria “may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it” (see below Rice’s think piece for the Washington Post titled “Syria is central to holding together the Mideast”).
Atallah says Clinton cut short her trip with Obama to Myanmar – formerly known as Burma, as in George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days – and flew to Egypt for Israel’s sake. Such a move would not have been made for Syria’s sake. Otherwise, she would have called for arming the Syrian opposition months ago. Or when Obama said the regime in Damascus is in its last days.
Instead of Obama locking horns with China at the UN Security Council to stop the bloodbath in Syria, he chose to hassle Beijing on its turf in Asia and try to pinch allies from China’s “back garden” in Burma and Cambodia.
Chances are señor Solana and Obama are both jumping the gun and simplifying matters much too soon. As Condoleezza Rice wrote, allowing the Middle East to fall to pieces is unwise. This is not a matter of oil.
In today’s Global Village, the Middle East is a pivotal strategic spot more than at any time. Confessional and sectarian wars threaten not only the region but security far and wide. If America can dispense with Arab oil as señor Solana suggests, Europe cannot – not for the coming 50 years, at least.
Burma won’t make America the world’s sole superpower. No would Cambodia or Thailand.
Obama didn’t convince his voters of his Asian tour days after reelection. When he escaped to Burma, Gaza blew up in his face.
Every other important state is a modern construct, created by the British and the French, who drew borders like lines on the back of an envelope, often without regard for ethnic and sectarian differences. The results: A Bahrain that is 70 percent Shiite, governed by a Sunni monarch. Saudi Arabia was created with a 10 percent Shiite population in its richest provinces to the east. Iraq is 65 percent Shiite, 20 percent Sunni Arab, and a mix of Kurds and others, all ruled until 2003 by an iron-fisted Sunni dictator. Jordan’s population is almost 70 percent Palestinian. Lebanon is roughly divided among Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. And then there is Syria: a conglomerate of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and others, ruled by the Alawite minority.
In Iraq, after overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the United States hoped that a fledging multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy could do what authoritarians could not: give all of these groups a stake in a common future. To an extent it has, with elections repeatedly producing inclusive governments. But the institutions are young and fragile, and they are groaning under the weight of the region’s broader sectarian explosion. The conflict in Syria is pushing Iraq and others to the breaking point. At the same time, U.S. disengagement has tempted Iraqi politicians to move toward sectarian allies for survival. If Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot count on the Americans, he will take no risks with Tehran.
Today’s Karl Marx is Iran. It envisions the spread of its influence among Shiites, uniting them under the theocratic flag of Tehran — destroying the integrity of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran uses terrorist groups, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in southern Iraq to do its bidding. Syria is the linchpin, the bridge into the Arab Middle East. Tehran no longer hides the fact that its security forces are working in Syria to prop up Assad. In this context, Tehran’s sprint toward a nuclear weapon is a problem not just for Israel but the region as a whole.
In response, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other neighboring powers arm and support Sunni factions. The Turks are being drawn into the conflict, desperately fearful that the Kurds will break away in Syria and push their brethren in Turkey to do the same. Missile and mortar strikes are increasingly common across the borders of Israel and Turkey. Ankara’s cries to NATO for help last month should have gotten our attention.
But where is the United States? America has spent months trying to get the Russians and the Chinese to agree to toothless U.N. resolutions to “end the bloodshed,” as though Moscow will abandon Assad and Beijing really cares about chaos in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is not a sentimental man. But if he believes that Assad can survive, he will do nothing to undermine him.
In recent days, France, Britain and Turkey have stepped into the diplomatic vacuum to recognize a newly formed opposition that is broadly representative of all Syrians. The United States should follow their lead and then vet and arm the unified group with defensive weapons on the condition that it pursues an inclusive post-Assad framework. The United States and its allies should also consider establishing a no-fly zone to protect the innocent. America’s weight and influence are needed. Leaving this to regional powers, whose interests are not identical to ours, will only exacerbate the deepening sectarianism.
War is not receding in the Middle East. It is building to a crescendo. Our elections are over. Now, America must act.