The Middle East has been the arena of empire-builders for millennia, and so it is in our time. The latest twist pits the West, led by the United States, and its Arab allies against Russia, Iran and, lately—though not clearly—one independent-minded Arab state, Qatar.
The test of wills on Qatar and its Saudi-led Arab neighbors isolating it by land, sea and air looks set to drag on, with Doha all but rejecting the latter’s conditions for restoring transport and trade links.
This state of affairs would have been unthinkable a decade ago, with Washington sure to bang heads or broker compromises to keep its friends in harmony, and its hegemony over the Middle East largely unchallenged.
But with the United States now producing most of its oil and far less dependent on the Middle East, there is less reason for strong American arms holding the region together. And that spurred geopolitical players big and small to try their luck in the power game.
Russia has made a comeback as a regional power broker, siding with longtime player Iran. Turkey, too, is asserting itself, looking beyond its border troubles with Kurdish tribes straddling its border with Syria. And now, the Saudi-led Arab monarchies are trying to pressure Qatar over its ties with Iran and its support of popular Islamist groups, including those with terrorist links.
The neighbors’ demands on Doha include closing a Turkish army base and Doha’s Al-Jazeera TV news network, and ending contacts and funding for blacklisted Islamist entities —the avowed reason for turning the screws on Qatar.
But food deliveries from Turkey and backing from Iran have stiffened Qatar’s resolve; so has Kuwait’s explicit statement the regime change in Doha was not the goal of isolation (Arab monarchies don’t want that kind of thing started anywhere).
Also keeping Qatar from caving in is US ambivalence in the dispute. When the crisis erupted weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump allowed that his antiterrorism speech to the Gulf Cooperation Council of Arab nations precipitated the Qatar boycott.
Yet, last week, Washington signed a $12-billion deal to sell F-15 fighter jets to Doha, which hosts the sprawling US Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, America’s largest military facility in the Middle East, with 11,000 personnel, 120 aircraft, the region’s longest runways, and control of air operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and 17 other nations.
All that looks set to keep Qatar standing up to its neighbors, and give the Islamist entities across the region, many with extremist links, more reason to assert themselves against conservative, pro-Western sheikhdoms. And that animosity, if not aggressiveness toward the region’s royals, means even more friction or confrontation.
That intensifying tussle between age-old, repressive monarchies and populist Islamists will likely ignite more agitation, if not full-blown uprisings like those tearing Iraq, Syria and Yemen apart. And that would, in turn, prod increasingly insecure Arab nations to bulk up with arms and repression, while also fueling extremist terrorism, including the savage depradations of Islamic State (IS).
Just in case one needed a reminder of IS’s destructive madness, it was on full display as Iraqi government forces closed in on the terrorists’ main base in Mosul, where it declared its caliphate in July 2014.
Last week IS blew up the landmark leaning minaret of the city’s 835-year-old Grand Mosque al-Nuri, then falsely accused Western forces of bombing it.
IS was also the suspect in a plot against Mecca’s Grand Mosque, which Saudi police said they had thwarted. The foiled attack on
Islam’s holiest shrine drew condemnation from Arab and other Muslim leaders and nations.
And where’s Uncle Sam in all this? In fact, apart from waging an air war against Islamic State and, occasionally, Syria’s dictatorship, Washington has dialed down its engagement in the Middle East as dependence on the region’s oil dwindled with the fracking-fuel surge in American petroleum output.
Speaking of oil, the abundance of the stuff in America has kept crude prices down, despite the best efforts of Saudi and other major oil producers to cut exports. And that downturn in Arab petrodollars will further squeeze economies and public spending, with predictable effects on popular discontent.
In sum, with the West less involved in overall Middle East security and geopolitics, focusing more on fighting Islamic State, Arab monarchies and other outside powers like Iran, Turkey and Russia are stirring the pot, intensifying unrest and frictions, even as falling oil revenues make despots less able to please or repress their subjects or the Islamist extremists battling for control of the Muslim masses.
Many in the Middle East have long hated America’s heavy-handed and often pro-Israel policing of the region. Now, the cop is taking a break, and the gangs are in play. Get ready for a lot more rumbles.