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have little capability for sending troops to Iraq. Second, there is cause for concern about the so-called blowback
scenario in which jihadis returning from Iraq destabilize their home countries, plunging the region into conflict. Middle Eastern
leaders are preparing for this possibility. Unlike in the 1990s, when Arab fighters in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union
returned to Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and became a source of instability, Arab security services are being vigilant about
who is coming in and going from their countries. In the last month, the Saudi government has arrested approximately 200
people suspected of ties with militants. Riyadh is also building a 700 kilometer wall along part of its frontier with Iraq in order to
keep militants out of the kingdom. Finally, there is no precedent for Arab leaders to commit forces to
conflicts in which they are not directly involved. The Iraqis and the Saudis did send small contingents to fight
the Israelis in 1948 and 1967, but they were either ineffective or never made it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries
other than Syria, which had a compelling interest in establishing its hegemony over Lebanon,
never committed forces either to protect the Lebanese from the Israelis or from other
Lebanese. The civil war in Lebanon was regarded as someone else's fight. Indeed, this is the
way many leaders view the current situation in Iraq. To Cairo, Amman and Riyadh, the situation in Iraq is
worrisome, but in the end it is an Iraqi and American fight. As far as Iranian mullahs are concerned, they
have long preferred to press their interests through proxies as opposed to direct engagement. At a time when Tehran has access
and influence over powerful Shiite militias, a massive cross-border incursion is both unlikely and unnecessary. So Iraqis will
remain locked in a sectarian and ethnic struggle that outside powers may abet, but will remain within the borders of Iraq. The
Middle East is a region both prone and accustomed to civil wars. But given its experience
with ambiguous conflicts, the region has also developed an intuitive ability to contain its civil
strife and prevent local conflicts from enveloping the entire Middle East.
No impact to middle east war – can only sustain insurgencies bt NOT war –
numerous historical examples proves this true
Edward Luttwak (senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies)
May 2007 “The middle of nowhere”, Prospect
The second repeated mistake is the Mussolini syndrome. Contemporary documents prove beyond any doubt what is now
hard to credit: serious people, including British and French military chiefs, accepted Mussolini’s claims to great power
status because they believed that he had serious armed forces at his command. His army divisions, battleships and air
squadrons were dutifully counted to assess Italian military power, making some allowance for their lack of the most
modern weapons but not for their more fundamental refusal to fight in earnest. Having conceded Ethiopia to win over
Mussolini, only to lose him to Hitler as soon as the fighting started, the British discovered that the Italian forces quickly
crumbled in combat. It could not be otherwise, because most Italian soldiers were unwilling conscripts from the one-mule
peasantry of the south or the almost equally miserable sharecropping villages of the north. Exactly the
same
mistake keeps being made by the fraternity of middle east experts. They
persistently attribute real military strength to backward societies whose
populations can sustain excellent insurgencies but not modern military
forces. In the 1960s, it was Nasser’s Egypt that was mistaken for a real military power just
because it had received many aircraft, tanks and guns from the Soviet Union, and had many army divisions and air
squadrons. In May 1967, on the eve of war, many agreed with the prediction of Field Marshal Montgomery, then revisiting
the El Alamein battlefield, that the Egyptians would defeat the Israelis forthwith; even the more cautious never anticipated
that the former would be utterly defeated by the latter in just a few days. In 1973, with much more drama, it still took only
three weeks to reach the same outcome. In 1990 it was the turn of Iraq to be hugely
overestimated as a military power. Saddam Hussein had more equipment than Nasser ever
accumulated, and could boast of having defeated much more populous Iran after eight years of war. In the months before
the Gulf war, there was much anxious speculation about the size of the Iraqi army—again, the divisions and regiments
were dutifully counted as if they were German divisions on the eve of D-day, with a separate count of the “elite”
Republican Guards, not to mention the “super-elite” Special Republican Guards—and it was feared that
Iraq’s bombproof aircraft shelters and deep bunkers would survive any air
attack. That much of this was believed at some level we know from the magnitude of the coalition armies that were
laboriously assembled, including 575,000 US troops, 43,000 British, 14,663 French and 4,500 Canadian, and which
incidentally constituted the sacrilegious infidel presence on Arabian soil that set off Osama bin Laden on his quest for
revenge. In the event, two weeks of precision bombing were enough to paralyse
Saddam’s entire war machine, which scarcely tried to resist the ponderous
ground offensive when it came. At no point did the Iraqi air force try to fight,
and all those tanks that were painstakingly counted served mostly for target
practice. A real army would have continued to resist for weeks or months in the dug-in positions in Kuwait, even
without air cover, but Saddam’s army was the usual middle eastern façade without
fighting substance. Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including
tabulated lists of Iran’s warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s,
Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in
name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as “elite,” who do indeed
strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one—against Iraq, which they lost. As for
Iran’s claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year’s affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance
went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and
immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire.
Poverty, ethnic and secretarian competition, and territorial make Middle East
instability inevitable – outweighs US policy
Burgos 14
Ross, “The Myth of Middle East Stability” [http://www.alan.com/2014/07/28/the-
myth-of-middle-east-stability/#] July 28 //
Here’s the news: there’s nothing – nothing – “we” can do to “stabilize” the Middle East,
and the more we try to do the lower the probability we’ll achieve anything noteworthy.
Stability in the Middle East is a shibboleth, a myth , a fantasy concocted by those who
view the planet as a kind of three-dimensional version of Stratego®, one in
which the United States holds the highly collectible, limited-edition American
Exceptionalism™ Super Awesome Powers piece.¶ With just a cursory glimpse at the
region’s history, even a blind man could see there’s no such thing as Middle East
stability. The region is defined by instability, and the best we can do, as Hunter S.
Thompson used to say, is buy the ticket and take the ride.¶ I like to call it the Crème
Brûlée Theory of Middle East Politics: for 200 years, there has been a thin, brittle
layer of seeming regional stability created mostly by the domestic repression of
illiberal regimes – a layer that, once cracked (as it was by the Arab Spring), was
unable to restrain the seething, gooey mass bubbling just below the surface — a
manifestly unstable mass of resentment, poverty, rival and competing identity
claims, territorial conflicts, and sectarian competition for control of the
state.¶ Little wonder that neocons yearn so for a return to the strategic clarity of the Cold
War: one of the ironies of our “victory” over the Soviet Union is that it cost us the
semblance of a Middle East regional balance of power. For good or for ill, the
oppositional tugging of the two superpowers managed to contain a great deal of the
latent instability that, since 1991, has come to define the region – though that reciprocal
tugging is also very much to blame for today’s manifest instability, inasmuch as it
preserved the artificially “stable” layer on top, the layer we saw from 30,000-feet. It
looked plenty stable to us.¶ There’s a reason why the Ottoman Empire was known as the
“Sick Man of Europe” – even the Ottoman sultans couldn’t contain the pressures
lingering below the surface and at the geographic margins of their Empire.¶ Defeated in
the 1827 Battle of Navarino, the Ottomans were forced to cede control of the
Mediterranean to the British and the French; defeated in the 1829 Russo-Ottoman War,
they were forced to cede control of the eastern Black Sea, Georgia, Moldavia, Serbia, and
Wallachia to Russia; undermined by sectarian conflict in Lebanon from 1860-61, they
were forced to cede autonomy to Lebanon as a Christian-ruled entity under French
suzerainty; defeated by the Cretans from 1866-69, they were forced to cede autonomy to
Crete as a Christian-ruled entity. Everywhere, the latent instability of Ottoman rule was
revealed: in 1878, the British annexed Cyprus; in 1861, the French invaded Tunisia; in
1882, the British invaded Egypt; in 1905, Yemen was split in two; in 1907, Iran was
divided into spheres of British and Russian influence; in 1911, Italy invaded Libya; and in
1912, the French occupied Morocco.¶ The Sykes-Picot Agreement, which so many
commentators are fond of blaming for the allegedly “artificial” borders of the Middle
East, could hardly have made the region’s manifest instability worse. Short of complete
self-determination, which none of the Great Powers was prepared to risk, whatever the
political outcome in the post-World War I Middle East it was not going to do much to
alleviate the root causes of today’s instability. (For the record, I find the Sykes-Picot
blame-game unpersuasive: sure, the region’s borders are artificial — but all borders are
artificial, as every American school student who had to learn “Fifty-four Forty or Fight!”
should recognize).¶ The region’s history after World War II hardly validates the
rosy-hued notion of a stable past, as even an incomplete list of 2oth-century
regional conflicts clearly demonstrates:¶ 1948 War 1948 Imamate War (Yemen)
1954-62: Algerian War of Independence 1953-55 Moroccan Rebellion 1952-54
Tunisian Insurgency 1954-60 Jebel Akhdar War (Oman) 1956 Sinai War 1958
Lebanese Crisis 1961-70 Kurdish-Iraqi War 1962-70 North Yemen Civil War
1962-76 Dhofar Rebellion (Oman) 1963-67 Aden Emergency (South Yemen) 1967
Six-Day War 1969-70 War of Attrition (Egypt, Israel) 1970-71 Black September civil
war (Jordan) 1971 Iranian seizure of Abu Musa, Lesser & Greater Tunb islands (UAE)
1973 Yom Kippur War 1973-91 Western Sahara conflict 1974 Turkish invasion
of Cyprus 1974-75 Second Kurdish-Iraqi War 1974-2012 Kurdish insurgency
(Turkey) 1976-82 Muslim Brotherhood uprising (Syria) 1975-90 Lebanese Civil
War 1978-87 Chad-Libya War 1979-88 Soviet-Afghan War 1980-88 Iran-Iraq
War 1982-85 Israeli invasion, occupation of Lebanon 1986 South Yemen Civil
War 1989-96 Iranian Kurdish insurgency 1989-96 Afghanistan Civil War 1990-
91 Second Gulf War 1994 Yemen civil war¶ So where’s this “stability” we keep
hearing so much about?¶ To the extent there’s been regional stability, it’s been an
incomplete, artificial stability imposed by the constraints of the U.S.-Soviet strategic
competition. And for a United States unable and unwilling to engage in the kinds of
direct colonial and neo-colonial control associated with European Great Powers,
“stabilizing” the region historically entailed a kind of strategic subcontracting, first to
Turkey, described by the Los Angeles Times in 1957 as the “key to the Levant” and in
1964 as the “eastern anchor” of the Middle East, then in the early 1970s under the Nixon
Doctrine to the “Twin Pillars” of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and in 1985 to Iraq, described as
the “eastern flank of the Arab world,” holding the Persian hordes at bay.¶ Throughout the
post-WWII era, commentators fretted, as Tomasky does, about regional instability.
Would the Communists gain the upper hand in what former National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski famously described as the region’s “arc of crisis?” Replace
“Communists” with “Islamists,” and American foreign policy in the Middle East neatly
transitions from the 20th-century Red Scare to a 21st-century Green Scare. Hey, another
arc of crisis! Hooray, we know how to do that!¶ The Green Scare is why today’s Christian
Zionists and those associated with what the International Relations theorists John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt called “the Israel Lobby” so aggressively promote
clinging to Israel. Israel is the Not-the-Muslims actor in regional politics today, just as it
was the Not-the-Commies actor 40 years ago, and that’s what makes Israel so attractive
to the nutters of the Bible-thumping Far Right — Christians United for Israel and their
ilk. They waged a holy war against godless Communism in the 20th-century, and they’re
hell-bent on waging holy war against godless Islamism in the 21st.¶ As a result, we’re
forced to start any strategic evaluation of the region — as if by assumption — from the
conclusion they want us to reach: namely, that American and Israeli interests are
identical. That assumption — and conclusion — is then vigorously enforced by a steadfast
refusal to permit a legitimate public debate over whether, and to what extent, Israel fits
in the definition of American national interests.¶ This is why one constantly sees vicious,
knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism directed at anyone who dares question the U.S.-
Israeli foreign relationship, as if questioning Israeli politics is synonymous with hating
Jews on the basis of their religious identity. Indeed, Lindsey Graham recently accused
the United Nations of “anti-Semitism” for having the temerity to disapprove of Israel’s
war in Gaza. It’s the atomic bomb of Middle East policy debates: Have you stopped
hating Jews?¶ Look, I’m from Chicago. To me, politics boils down to a simple question:
what have you done for me lately?¶ No matter which way I cut it, I don’t see that Israel
has done a lot for me lately. Does Israel have a right to national survival? Absolutely.
Should ordinary Israelis have to go about their daily lives in fear of terrorist attacks?
Absolutely not.¶ But the Palestinians have that right, too. That’s the trick, you see. We
Americans haven’t done a very good job recognizing the right to stable, secure borders on
both sides of the equation.¶ Yes, we have a long relationship with Israel. Yes, we were the
first to recognize Israeli independence. But that was then; this is now. Politics is about
return-on-investment, and I think it’s fair to ask whether the U.S. is getting any return at
all on that $242 billion. Even a passbook savings account pays off at about 0.10% per
year — that’s something.¶ America’s Israel investment is running deficits today. Maybe
there was some ROI back in the Cold War, when we could point to Israel and harrumph
that it was the “only democracy” in a region of Soviet client states — which was
apparently some kind of “victory” over the Bolsheviks.¶ But the Cold War is over. Heck,
even John McCain said so.¶ Israel is going to pursue its national interests, and that’s as it
should be. Tel Aviv clearly thinks that attempting to destroy Hamas and undermine the
political influence of the Palestinian Authority is in its interest. Maybe they’re right.
Somehow I doubt it.¶ But it’s just as clear that further enraging the Sunni Arab world is
hardly in America’s interest — and when Israel attacks, its victims see “Made in the
U.S.A.” stamped on the munitions.¶ In 2014, the U.S. is confronting the same problem it
confronted in 1944, when the issue of a Jewish homeland in Palestine took on renewed
significance: should the U.S. side with a regional minority, especially one that — at that
time — had no energy resources America needed. Recognizing the state of Israel’s
independence was an act of mercy — not an act of sound national policy.¶ American and
Israeli national interests are hardly synonymous; in fact, there’s hardly any overlap
between them at all. What has Israel done for me lately?¶ As the great British statesman
Lord Palmerston famously said, there are no permanent friends, and there are no
permanent enemies. There are only permanent interests.¶ The United States has an
interest in a stable Middle East, to the extent such a thing will exist. Yes, because of oil.
And because of terrorism. There’s nothing wrong with having an interest in oil and an
interest in anti-terrorism. What matters is how you go about protecting that interest. The
Peace Process, much as I hate to admit it, is not the be-all, end-all for American national
interests in the region.¶ The plain fact is that we are not viewed as a fair broker between
the two sides — and rightfully so. We haven’t been a fair broker. Given the distribution of
public opinion in this country, historically it has been much easier to twist the Arabs’
arms than the Israelis’. Even given that there’s a growing partisan split between
Democrats and Republicans over support for Israel, the fact remains that American
public opinion is disproportionately pro-Israel.¶ Why do Americans have such negative
affect towards the Palestinian side? Blame it on the PLO. Blame it on the mainstream
media’s lack of balance reporting on the region. Blame it on the portrayal of Arabs in
popular culture. There’s plenty of blame to go around.¶ And the blame doesn’t really
matter. For a politician rationally responding to public opinion, taking sides against the
Palestinians is largely cost-free.¶ What matters is that we’re setting the wrong goal —
“establishing stability” — and in so doing are simply setting ourselves up for more
foreign policy failure.¶ Tomasky asked the wrong question: “Is it just me or is the world
exploding?”¶ Yes, it’s just you. And yes, the world is exploding. So what?¶ What if there’s
no such thing as “stability” in the Middle East — at least not in the way we commonly
define and understand stability?¶ The better question is this: does perpetually bearing the
costs — direct and indirect — of the U.S.-Israeli relationship promote American national
interests or does it stand in the way of American national interests, like an albatross
around our foreign policy neck? In other words, does the kind of unstinting, unreserved,
unquestioning support — indeed, affirmative endorsement — of Israel’s war against the
Palestinians more or less likely to produce the kind of stability Americans seem to think
they want in the region?¶ From my point of view, the answer is clearly, “no.”¶ If the
region’s history teaches us anything, it teaches us that stability can’t be imposed
from outside. For example, Britain thought it created a monarchy in Iraq’s Hashemite
dynasty in Iraq; instead, it simply created a target, a focal point for resentment. The
many underlying social, economic, and political grievances that were so
long repressed by that thin layer of “stability” have combined into a perfect
storm, a typhoon-strength centripetal force well beyond our ability to
control or even influence, and it is reshaping the strategic map.¶ The Blame-Sykes-Picot
hypothesis does make a good point: there’s no reason to assume the map of the Middle
East circa 1950 is the map of the Middle East. We Americans are wedded to a vision of
national statehood that has worked out pretty well for us — but which has in many
respects been a catastrophe for Arab civil society.¶ For 20 years, scholars interested in
globalization have argued that the acceleration, concentration, and expansion of global
flows weakens the nation-state. Comparatively stable, democratic, economically
prosperous countries in the developed world could probably do with a little reshaping
thanks to globalization — it won’t change them much, except at the margins. There will
always be an England.¶ But the fragile, incomplete polities of the Middle East haven’t had
the time or the opportunity to consolidate — to become democratic, prosperous, and
stable. We haven’t let them. Whether it was Iran in 1952 or Iraq in 1958 or Libya in 1969,
Washington was spring-loaded to see the hand of Moscow behind every indigenous Arab
uprising and did everything in its power to undermine — to destabilize — the new
regime. As a result, Arab polities are much less able to withstand the pressures of global
changes. Thus, the Arab Spring.¶ Here’s the news: whether we like it or not, the folks who
are going to stabilize the Middle East — if it is to be stable — are the folks of the Middle
East. Whether they stabilize it in a way we Americans like, of course, remains to be seen.
Either way, we’ll just have to adapt.¶ So blame it on the Sykes-Picot. Blame it on
America’s Cold War tolerance of illiberalism. Blame it on six centuries of Ottoman
imperium. Blame it on the bogey-du-jour, the “Islamists” or “jihadists” or “radicals.”
Blame it on Obama’s “lack of will.” Blame it on what or whom you like.¶ But when we’re
done blaming, as the Right is so busy doing, perhaps we could stop deluding ourselves
into thinking there’s “something” we can do about it. Let John McCain and Lindsey
Graham call for “something” to be done on every Sunday talk show there is. They like the
air time. And they both very likely know they’re on a fool’s errand, anyway. The latent
and manifest instability of the Middle East is beyond American power. You
simply can’t bomb your way to stability, and having squandered the good will we once
enjoyed among Arab civil society, bombs are about all we have left.¶ In policymaking
terms, the most the U nited S tates can do is ride it out . Let’s focus on assessing, defining,
and redefining our national interests in the region. Let’s have an open, public debate
over just what it is we’re getting from our relationship with Israel instead of instinctively
drawing closer to Tel Aviv because an over-loud, over-influential commentariat tells us
to.
No ME instability
Mardini, Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East
non resident fellow, 9-12-14 (Ramzy, “The Islamic State threat is overstated”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-islamic-state-threat-is-overstated/2014/09/12/acbbebb2-33ad-11e4-
8f02-03c644b2d7d0_story.html, ldg)
A more accurate assessment would be that U.S. military intervention has tremendous
propaganda value for the Islamic State, helping it to rally other jihadists to
its cause, possibly even Salafists who have so far rejected its legitimacy. Moreover, to the extent that the group
poses any threat to the United States, that threat is magnified by a visible U.S. military role.
Obama’s restraint in the use of military power in recent years has helped keep the Islamic
State’s focus regional — on its efforts to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East rather than on
launching attacks against the United States. It’s only with the U.S. military’s return to Iraq
and the prospect of U.S. intervention in Syria that the group’s focus has
begun to shift. The barbaric beheadings of American journalists James
Foley and Steven Sotloff were intended as retaliation for U.S. airstrikes in
Iraq. Instead, Washington has interpreted those events, along with the fall of Iraq’s
second-largest city, Mosul, to Islamic State militants in June, and the siege of Yazidis in northern Iraq last month, as
evidence that the group poses a threat of terrifying proportions to U.S.
interests. It has become the consensus view in Washington that the militants are
poised to bulldoze through America’s Middle East allies, destabilize global
oil supplies and attack the U.S. homeland. The Islamic State represents “a clear and present
danger” to the United States, wrote Gen. John Allen, a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, one that affects
“the region and potentially the world as we know it.” Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
described the group as having “an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision.” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel characterized
it as “an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else.” According to a new Washington
Post-ABC News poll, 90 percent of Americans view the Islamic State as a serious threat to vital U.S. interests. But
Americans are misreading the recent Islamic State successes , which speak less to the
group’s invincibility and inevitability than they do to external factors beyond
its control. Despite its territorial gains and mastery of propaganda, the
Islamic State’s fundamentals are weak, and it does not have a sustainable
endgame. In short, we’re giving it too much credit. Consider the fall of
Mosul, which catapulted the impression that the group is a formidable force able to engage on multiple fronts
simultaneously and overpower a U.S.-trained army that dwarfs its size. In reality, it was able to gain such
vast territory because it faced an impotent opponent and had the help of the
broader Sunni insurgency. The Iraqi army, lacking professionalism and
insufficiently motivated to fight and die for Sunni-dominated Mosul, self-
destructed and deserted. The militants can be credited with fearlessness and
offensive mobility, but they can hardly be said to have defeated the Iraqi
army in combat. At the time, Islamic State militants represented less than 10 percent of the
overall Sunni insurgency . Many other Sunni groups helped to hold territory and
fight off Iraq’s Shiite government and Iranian-backed militia forces. The Islamic
State’s capture of Sinjar in the northern province of Nineveh further added to perceptions of its dominance and helped
precipitate Washington’s decision to carry out airstrikes in Iraq. But that episode was also misinterpreted.
Kurdish forces were not only taken by surprise, but since they had only
recently filled the vacuum in Sinjar left by Iraq’s fleeing army, they were
stretched too thin and poorly equipped to sustain a battle outside their
home territory. Lacking ammunition and other supplies, they conceded the
territorial outpost and retreated within their borders in Iraqi Kurdistan.
This hardly means the Islamic State is in a position to topple the next city in
its sights. Rather, the borders of its territory have, more or less, reached
their outer potential. It’s no coincidence that the militants’ gains have been
limited to areas populated by disenfranchised Sunnis eager for protection
from Shiite forces. It would require far greater power to hold territory
populated by a sect that didn’t support their presence. The group’s rapid growth has
occurred in its most compatible regions — as a species proliferates within its natural habitat. It is thriving in
the midst of sectarian cleavages, established insurgencies, and weak or
nonexistent state institutions. Hence, its support in Iraq and Syria is not the
rule, it is the exception. The combination of these conditions does not exist in
much of the greater Middle East. Despite being in its infancy as a declared caliphate, the Islamic
State’s extreme ideology, spirit of subjugation and acts of barbarism prevent
it from becoming a political venue for the masses. It has foolhardily
managed to instill fear in everyone, thus limiting its opportunities for
alliances and making itself vulnerable to popular backlash. For example,
between late last year and early this year, its militants lost territory in the Syrian provinces
of Aleppo and Idlib because of grass-roots resistance and insurgent
competition. The key for a group like the Islamic State to survive and
flourish is a deep connection with local populations. The Islamic State’s core
fighters are certainly devoted and willing to die for the cause, but its potential support across the
region ranges from limited to nonexistent . This is one of the differences
between superficial weeds such as the Islamic State and deeply rooted
forests such as Lebanese Hezbollah. The irony is that the Islamic State’s
greatest achievement — the capture of Mosul — may also be its greatest liability .
Indeed, the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army catapulted the group far beyond its capacity to absorb and sustain its gains.
Its meteoric rise in Iraq helped it consolidate the insurgent landscape in
Syria but also made the group too visible a threat for regional powers. And while
the seizure of U.S.-made weapons and modern equipment has increased the group’s capabilities and prestige, it has
also made it more vulnerable to conventional adversaries. For some time,
regional power politics made Middle Eastern states reluctant to confront the
Islamic State directly. Turkey appreciated that the influx of jihadists into Syria helped counterbalance
Kurdish guerrilla forces there while undermining the Syrian regime’s quest to reconquer lost territory. Syria and Iran
recognized that the militants diminished the threat to Bashar al-Assad by radicalizing the opposition and making the West
more hesitant to support it. Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab gulf states understood that the Islamic State served to
counter Iran’s Shiite proxies in the region. And even for Israel, there was little incentive to confront a group that served to
perpetuate the Sunni-Shiite divide. After the capture of Mosul, the calculus began to
change. All the regional powers are now in consensus that the Islamic State
must be contained. The group is completely isolated, encircled by enemies.
Its advance southward toward Baghdad compelled Iran and Syria to throw
their military support behind Iraq’s government; it also led to the mass
recruitment and remobilization of Shiite militias as a sectarian
counterweight. Meanwhile, the group’s march northward toward Irbil led to a
pan-Kurdish response, mobilizing Kurdish guerrilla fighters from Turkey,
Syria and Iran to support the defense of Iraqi Kurds and Yazidis. On the
Islamic State’s western frontier, Jordan’s border is impenetrable to militant
invasion. And even should the group find a way to conduct a terrorist attack
inside the Hashemite Kingdom, the population (and the region’s Sunni Arab
states) would rally to support the Jordanian monarchy, while its highly capable
intelligence directorate and armed forces would go on the offensive against the perpetrators. The fear that the
militants somehow threaten the stability of Israel’s eastern front is far
removed from reality. After Mosul, the Islamic State has also been more
prone to resistance from within . As its acquisition of new territory has slowed,
much of the group’s focus has shifted toward consolidating power inside
territory already acquired. Hence, before the United States intervened with airstrikes last month, the
insurgency in Iraq had already begun fragmenting over power, prestige and
resources. This doesn’t suggest that the Islamic State poses no problem, nor that the United States should ignore it.
However, any strategy that involves U.S. airstrikes to contain the group is like
searching for a beehive to swat, then assuming that the threat of being stung
is somehow mitigated. While some military action is necessary to defeat the
Islamic State, that effort should be driven by regional actors, not a Western
power. The United States is far better positioned to assume an active
diplomatic role, facilitating consensus and cooperation among local and
regional players. If the common threat could compel these actors toward
local collaboration, national compromise and regional rapprochement,
there may emerge an opportunity to bring them together to finally settle the
civil wars plaguing the Middle East.
Won’t go nuclear
Dyer, 2002 (Gwynne, Ph.D. in War Studies – University of London and Board of
Governors – Canada’s Royal Military College, The Coming War, Queen’s Quarterly,
December, Lexis)
All of this indicates an extremely dangerous situation, with many
variables that are impossible to assess fully. But there is one comforting
reality here: this will not become World War III. Not long ago,
wars in the Middle East always went to the brink very quickly,
with the Americans and Soviets deeply involved on opposite sides, bristling their nuclear
weapons at one another. And for quite some time we lived on the brink of oblivion. But
that is over. World War III has been cancelled, and I don't think
we could pump it up again no matter how hard we tried. The
connections that once tied Middle Eastern confrontations to a
global confrontation involving tens of thousands of nuclear weapons
have all been undone. The East-West Cold War is finished. The truly
dangerous powers in the world today are the industrialized
countries in general. We are the ones with the resources and the technology to churn
out weapons of mass destruction like sausages. But the good news is: we are out of the
business.
Empirics prove –
and loathe to violate them .¶ Regional evolution. The region's historic military rivalries
have receded and the security rationale for WMD is receding with them. Iraq,
which was once Iran's bitterest enemy and in US crosshairs for its WMD programs (real and imagined), now closely coordinates its policies
with both Tehran and Washington. Tension in the Saudi-Iranian relationship requires the
attention of leaders in Riyadh and Tehran, but in no way resembles the military rivalry that once
existed between Iran and Iraq.¶ Inter-Arab animosity has also moderated. In April, when demonstrations
erupted outside its embassy in Cairo, Saudi Arabia quickly withdrew its ambassador, Ahmed Qattan. But within a week, Riyadh reinstated
Qattan and promised a major aid package to Egypt. Contrast that incident with Saudi-Egyptian relations in the 1960s, when Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser deployed his country's troops in Yemen to defeat Saudi proxies and used poison gas to do the job. Times
have changed¶ The Arab-Israeli conflict, the original driver of Israel's nuclear
weapons program, has been reduced to two issues: the core question of Israeli-Palestinian relations and the
future of the Golan Heights. Although each problem is vexing, neither is any longer the spark that can
ignite region-wide conflict and threaten Israel's very existence . Israel's peace with Egypt may cool even
further, but neither of Egypt's presidential candidates calls for abrogating the treaty because the treaty is as much an anchor of Egypt's
national security as it is of Israel's.¶ Israeli and Iranian calculations. As Israel considers how best to secure its future, it must choose among
three strategic options.¶ Israel
can try to extend its nuclear monopoly by attacking or
sabotaging the nuclear projects of Iran and perhaps other states down the
road. This option, Israel's policy for the past several decades, is becoming increasingly
untenable. In the short- to medium-term, bombing carries the risk of retaliation, and the unintended consequence of fueling the
nuclear ambitions it is trying to stamp out. And Israel can only bomb what it knows about. But the long-term problem is more profound:
Can Israel sustain a policy of militarily preventing nuclear development in a neighborhood of growing interest in nuclear power and a
progressive diffusion of technology?¶ Israel's
second option -- deterrence -- carries the price
of eventually abandoning nuclear ambiguity, since maintaining an active deterrent through periods of
crisis and change in Iranian capabilities will require explicit statements and even demonstrations of Israeli capability. Such demonstrations
will threaten and provoke Arab states in a way that Israel's nuclear weapons now do not, further raising the costs and risks of deterrence.¶
In light of the above choices, Israel
may come to see the third option as the least
unpalatable: Entering into negotiations with its neighbors to establish rules
for limiting the possession of WMD across the region, eventually putting its
own capabilities on the negotiating table. Discussing a WMD-free zone would allow Israel to prolong its
nuclear weapons monopoly with the fewest challenges for an interim period, while negotiating the terms of a transition to a nuclear and
WMD free Middle East. It can also use a forum on regional arms control as a venue to raise its concerns about proliferation elsewhere in the
region.¶ Iran has important security interests in pursuing a WMD-free zone. Tehran
has a long-term strategic interest in denuclearizing Israel, and, odious as it might seem to Iran's leaders, direct negotiations with Israel on
regional security and a WMD ban are the only way to do that. Iran would find other security benefits from engaging diplomatically on the
issue: Regional
security discussions can help Iran break out of its isolation. In
WMD-free zone discussions, Iran
can split the US-Arab coalition against it and focus
attention on Israel's nuclear weapons. The creation of a zone -- if it were to
occur in the next several years -- would leave Iran far ahead of its Arab
neighbors in its nuclear knowledge and experience, preserving an important
security hedge, while reducing the incentives for its neighbors to attempt to
match its expensive fuel-cycle investment.¶ Wild cards. If the current P5+1 negotiations with Tehran
collapse and Israel or the United States attack Iran, then both the political and security justifications for proliferation will be reinforced
across the region. Voices within Iran calling for an operational deterrent will gain traction. And similar arguments will reverberate in
Riyadh, Cairo, and possibly elsewhere. Failure of the proposal to hold a conference in 2012 on a Middle East WMD-free zone will be the
least of concerns.¶ Syria also presents potential problems. In the short-term, having suspended its membership in the Arab League for its
violent crackdown on protesters, many Arab states would prefer not to reward the Assad regime with a platform at a conference to discuss
weapons of mass destruction. In the long-term, competitive external intervention in a Syrian civil war could help reverse the trends
supporting the move toward WMD disarmament. Syrian behavior, together with its chemical
weapons stocks, should remind everyone why the discussion of a WMD-free
zone and regional security more broadly in the Middle East is urgent. The short-
term political costs of Syrian participation are trivial by comparison. ¶ Predictions. In capitals across the Middle East, policy
makers will soon be pressed for their responses to a proposal to meet in
Finland to discuss a regional WMD ban, possibly in December. Though
Tehran and Jerusalem will grasp at old arguments to insist that the idea is foolish or unnecessary,
a cold, hard look at emerging security interests in the new Middle East will take a bite out of old dogmas. Invitations to Helsinki will bring
Israel and Iran to the negotiation table. Undoubtedly, the process will be long and frustrating. But the
conventional wisdom will be overturned .
to remain a key player in the coming period . It has not lost its leverage despite the demise of
its main Egyptian and Tunisian allies , and has expressed support for protests after realizing they were not dominated by
radical groups and that they echoed Western values. ¶ ¶ Emerging global powers such as Russia,
China, India and Brazil have had mixed reactions to the "Arab Spring." All were
reluctant to approve Western-led military intervention in Libya, expressing concerns ranging from the risk of higher oil prices to a potential
spillover effect on their shores. ¶ ¶ As
for Israel, even though its peace treaty with Egypt will
remain in place, it no longer has any friends in the region after the departure of Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, its declining relations with Turkey and growing unrest in Jordan. The recent Fatah-Hamas accord underlines
Israel's predicament. Two difficult challenges lie ahead: The Palestinian Authority's unilateral move to declare Palestinian statehood by the
end of the year and a potential Palestinian popular uprising encouraged by the success of neighboring populations. ¶ ¶ Although
the Arab Spring has been largely about internal democracy and reform, it
has affected all of the major regional and international actors. However , so far
there has been no major shift in the balance of power or the basic pattern of regional
relations .