The wars in Syria and Yemen along with the continuing battle in Iraq between the government and ISIS have no end in sight. Attention to Russian intervention in Syria tends to obscure the tumult everywhere else. Charles Freeman, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the George H.W. Bush administration, offers a broad survey of the region, its history since the Gulf War, and U.S. ME policy since 1991. Here are the concluding paragraphs of his talk to the U.S.-Arab Policymakers Conference on October 15.
As refugees overwhelm Europe and both Asad and Da’esh continue to hold their own against the forces arrayed against them, the world is moving toward the conclusion that any outcome in Syria – any outcome at all – that can stop the carnage is better than its continuation. The ongoing disintegration of the Fertile Crescent fuels extremism; empowers Iran; drives Iran, Iraq, Russia and Syria together; weakens the strategic position of the GCC; vexes Turkey; and leaves the United States on a strategic treadmill. The region seems headed, after still more tragedy and bloodshed, toward an unwelcome inevitability – the eventual acknowledgment of Iran’s hegemony in Iraq and Syria and political influence in Bahrain, Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. That is not where Americans and our Gulf Arab friends imagined we would end up twenty-five years after liberating Kuwait from Iraqi aggression. But it is where protracted strategic incoherence has brought us. We can no longer avoid considering whether an opening to Iran is not the key to peace and stability in the Middle East.
Whatever our answer to that question, the seventy-year-old partnership between Americans and Gulf Arabs has never faced more or greater challenges than at present. We will not surmount these challenges if we do not both learn from our mistakes and work together to cope with the unpalatable realities they have created. Doing so will require intensified dialogue between us, imagination, and openness to novel strategic partnerships and alignments. There are new realities in the Middle East. It does no good to deny or rail against them. We must now adjust to them and strive to turn them to our advantage.
Previous efforts to discuss the ME here at dotCommonweal have not been very productive or, at points, even rational. I will open comments on Monday evening hoping that those interested will actually read Freeman's talk, "America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East," and speak to the points he makes and the issues he raises. And, of course, it can be read without any need to make comments.
10/19: Comments open. No bullies, no trolls, no hysterics. You will be deleted.
