An
Arrested Middle East – The ‘New Strategy for
Securing the Realm’ Dissipates
By
Alastair Crooke
June
01, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
-
Some eight years
ago, I
wrote about the
outbreak of popular stirring in the Middle East,
then labelled the ‘Arab Awakening’. Multiple
popular discontents were welling: demands for
radical change proliferated, but above all,
there was anger – anger at mountainous
inequalities in wealth; blatant injustices and
political marginalisation; and at a corrupt and
rapacious élite. The moment had seemed potent,
but no change resulted. Why? And what are the
portents, as the Corona era covers the region
once again with dark clouds of economic gloom
and renewed discontent?
The
U.S. was conflicted, as these earlier rumblings
of thunder spread from hilltop to hilltop. Some
in the CIA, had perceived popular movements –
such as the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) (although
Islamist) as the useful solvent that could wash
away lingering stale Ottoman residues, to usher
in a shiny westernised modernity. Many over
excited Europeans imagined (wrongly), that the
popular Awakenings were made in their own image.
They weren’t.
The
facile interpretation of the Awakening as a
liberal democratic ‘impulse’ was at best, an
exaggeration, if not a pure fantasy. I wrote
then (in 2012): “What genuine popular impulse
there was at the outset … has now been subsumed,
and absorbed into three major political projects
associated, rather with a push to reassert
[Sunni] primacy across the region: a Muslim
Brotherhood project, a Saudi-Salafist project,
and a militant Salafist project [which
subsequently was to evolve into ISIS]”.
The key early player was the Muslim Brotherhood.
I
wrote:
“No one
really knows the nature of the Brotherhood
project: whether it is that of a sect, or if it
is truly mainstream; and this opacity is giving
rise to real fears. At times, the Brotherhood
presents a pragmatic, even an uncomfortably
accommodationist, face to the world, but other
voices from the movement, more discretely evoke
the air of something akin to the rhetoric of
literal, intolerant and hegemonic Salafism. What
is clear, however, is that the Brotherhood tone
everywhere, is increasingly one of militant
sectarian [i.e. Sunni] grievance.”
This
was the common thread: All these supposedly
popular dynamics had become tools in the
“fervour for the restitution of a Sunni regional
primacy – even, perhaps, of hegemony – to be
attained through fanning rising Sunni militancy
and Salafist acculturation”. Containing Iran, of
course was a primary aim (encouraged, of course,
by Washington). But these forces collectively
comprised a project in which Gulf leaders
managed and pulled the levers – and paid the
bills too.
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And for
an early instant, those in the U.S. who had bet
on the Muslim Brotherhood, glimpsed victory.
Egypt fell to the MB; Syria was subject to a
full-spectrum ‘war’, and the Muslim Brotherhood
openly expressed its objective to ‘take’ the
Gulf, where it had long established covert cells
and networks.
But it
was overreach. The Muslim Brotherhood was, it
seemed to interested parties, about to steal
(like Prometheus), the fire which belonged
exclusively to ‘the gods’. Plus, the MB were
revealing obvious flaws: Its leadership in Cairo
was deeply unconvincing. In Syria, where the
movement never had significant penetration
(single digit percent support), it was being
quickly displaced by war-experienced Salafists
coming in from the war in Iraq.
The
American, European and Gulf leaders (i.e. the
gods) turned sharply away from the Muslim
Brotherhood (Qatar was the exception) – and
turned instead to ISIS and Al-Qaida. The ‘gods’
were set on making an example of a non-compliant
Assad and increasingly, they looked to the
latter – ISIS – to inject the required savagery
to claw down Assad – in the face of the latter’s
tenacious fight-back.
In any
event, sentiment turned violently against the MB
from many quarters. Secular Arab nationalists
had always heartily detested the MB, and the
al-Saud and Emirate leaderships similarly
detested the Muslim Brotherhood (albeit for
different reasons).
But
there was always a fundamental contradiction in
the American flirtation with the Muslim
Brotherhood: it was that Washington’s objective
was never regional reform – whether secular or
Islamist; the aim always was to preserve a
malleable status quo in the Middle East.
U.S.
neo-cons were then at the peak of their
influence. Since 1996, they had insisted on
unqualified U.S. support for the region’s Kings
and Emirs versus the Ba’athists and Islamists.
It was they who won out easily – against CIA
officers such as Graham Fuller – in the debate
on whether or not to support any sort of ‘Arab
Awakening’.
The U.S. sided with Saudi Arabia and UAE in
mounting the coup
against the Muslim Brotherhood President in
Cairo. And still today, the U.S. and its
European protégés support the UAE’s Crown Prince
in
his vendetta war
against Islamists everywhere, from the Horn of
Africa to the Magreb – and against Turkey too,
as the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘mother-ship’.
This ‘war on Islamists’ has provided cover for
the counter-revolutionary repression of any
reform of the ‘Arab System’ – a rearguard Gulf
action initially triggered by fears that any
‘Awakening’ might sweep away Gulf ruling
families. Today, the UAE continues to try to
seed compliant strongmen, General Sisi
lookalikes, in states such as Libya and now
Tunisia.
So,
here we are. But, where are we going? And, above
all, why no reform? Can this continue, or will
the region explode under the effects of the
Covid-triggered, recession?
No reform at all, for a full decade? What’s the
block? Well, in the first place, the background
lies with those two key neo-con policy papers:
the
1996
Clean Break,
and David Wurmser’s follow-on, Coping with
Crumbling States. These two documents laid the
basis for the U.S. (and Israeli) endorsement of
Gulf States acting as ‘policeman’ and regional
strongmen (a role that the UAE has taken to a
new peak), managing any rumblings of dissent
(such as in Libya).
These
‘policy papers’ may have been the precursors,
but in the final analysis, the ‘block’ simply
is, and has been, Israel – both indirectly and
directly. The Clean Break’s full title was a New
Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e. Israel).
It was a blueprint for underpinning Israel’s
security. Ditto for Wurmser’s paper.
In sum,
either U.S. or Israeli fears, or U.S. concerns
to appease domestic U.S. constituencies, lie at
the bottom of this stasis: Israeli and the U.S.
élites are wholly comfortable with this
malleable status quo – and fear it changing in
any way that they cannot control. No reform for
the Middle East – only disruption.
Here is
the point: There has been no reform, but there
is a new dynamic at work. Power is an attribute
that is based in deference and powerful
illusion. So long as people are willing to defer
to a leader; so long as people are persuaded by
the illusion of power; so long as people fear –
the leader leads. But should the illusion become
evident as illusion, nothing easily can prop it
up. Power is ephemeral; it dissipates like
mountain mist. And the U.S. is losing it.
The
western response to the Coronavirus spoke
loudly: The U.S. and Europe have appeared
powerful because they projected the illusion of
competence; of being able to act effectively; of
being strategic in their actions. On
Coronavirus, the U.S. has shown itself
incompetent, dysfunctional, and indifferent to
human affliction.
Trump
is fighting an existential war: on the one hand,
the coming Election is not merely the most
important in the U.S.’ history. It will be
existential. No more is Blue/Red a contrived
theatre for the electorate – this is deadly
serious.
For an
important segment of the population (no longer
the majority), to lose in this coming election
would signify their ejection from power and
politics, and their substitution by a culturally
different class of Americans, with different
cosmopolitan and diversity values. It is the
tipping point – two irreconcilable visions of
American life believe that they can continue
only if they own the whole order, and the other
side be utterly crushed.
And on
the other hand, Trump sees the U.S. fighting a
similarly existential war, albeit at a global
plane. He is fighting a hidden ‘war’ to retain
America’s present dominance over global money
(the dollar) – the source of its true power. For
Americans to lose this parallel competition to
the EU’s and China’s multilateral values of
global co-operation and financial governance,
would imply Americans’ (i.e. white Anglo
Saxon’s) ejection from control over the global
financial system, and (again) their substitution
by a quite different vision (i.e. a
Soros-Gates-Pelosi vision), advocating the
‘progressive’ values of ecological and
financial, global governance.
Again –
two irreconcilable visions of the global order,
with each party believing that it must own the
whole order to survive.
Hence Trump’s full-spectrum disruption of China
(and the whole multilateral ideology) to
maintain dollar hegemony. Europe, on one side,
exemplifies the shift towards a transnational
regulatory and monetary super-state. And
China, on the
other, is not only Europe’s willing partner, but
the only power capable of sitting atop this
globalist ambition, giving it the (required)
financial weight and substance. This constitutes
the existential threat to the U.S.’ exceptional
control of the global financial system – and
therefore over global political power.
A
sovereignty-ist Russia may not be as drawn to
this cosmopolitan vision as China, but really it
has little choice. Because, as President Putin
repeatedly points out, the dollar constitutes
the toxic problem plaguing the world trading
system. And in this, Russia cannot stand aloof.
The dollar is the problem for the Middle East
too, with its noxious corollaries of oil,
currency, trade and sanctions wars. The region
will not long be able to sit on the fence,
keeping distant from this struggle for the
global financial order.
The
Middle East, as deference to the U.S. illusion
of power wanes, has as little choice as has
Russia: It will be pushed to view the U.S. as
its past, and to ‘Look East’ for its future.
And
Israel will cease to be the pivot around which
the Middle East revolves.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat,
founder and director of the Beirut-based
Conflicts Forum. - "Source"