"The Middle East - Things Could Get Worse"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“The Middle East – Things Could Get Worse”

February 17, 2011

At the end of World War I, the Allies partitioned the Ottoman Empire, drawing boundaries and creating countries where none existed – the result being the eastern part of the Middle East. Ever since (and probably before) the region has been a simmering pot, which periodically boils over. Following World War II, a section of Palestine was carved out as an Israeli homeland, in part to assuage the guilty feelings of Europeans who had let Germany rearm, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and a consequence of which was the murder of seven million Jews. Between 1948 and 1982, a hot war erupted five times between Israel and their Arab neighbors. Thirty years in this region without a hot war is a long time. A friend of mine who is Turkish-American and who spent some of his formative years in Turkey got me thinking on this subject. Thirty years of this fragile peace can be seen as a victory for the policy of Realpolitik, a concept that these revolutions are undermining. How long will this anxiety-riddled peace last?

Stability in the Middle East has been the result of an uneasy cooperation between the democratic West, dependent on the region’s oil, and the autocratic rulers of the individual countries, whose security depends on their Western friends. That duplicitous, but symbiotic world appears to be falling apart. Aging tyrants have fallen in Tunisia and Egypt and are under siege in Bahrain, Yemen and possibly even in Saudi Arabia. Further east, in Pakistan, the odd case of Raymond Davis is indicative of a troubling deterioration in the relationship between that country and the U.S. Pakistan, a nuclear power, has been an important ally in the War on Terror, as their mountainous northwest border with Afghanistan harbors Taliban and remnants of Al Qaeda. However, residents in the area in which the fighting is taking place are beginning to resent Americans who they feel have made their personal lives difficult.

Raymond Davis purportedly was working as a “consultant” to the U.S. Consul in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city. A former member of America’s Special Forces, Mr. Davis apparently was there on a diplomatic passport, but unlike most diplomats he was carrying a Glock. When two men on motorcycles attempted to rob him he shot and killed them. His passport supposedly gives him immunity, but tensions in the region were already high and this acted as a catalyst. The situation has put the government of Pakistan – functioning today with a President, Asif Ali Zardari, who is considered weak – in the uncomfortable position of being pilloried by its citizens if they let him go, yet being deprived of millions of dollars in U.S. aid if they do not.

Blood has already been spilt on the streets of most of these countries. The New York Times estimates that, excluding military or police, 365 have been killed in Egypt. Members of Iran’s Parliament, according to yesterday’s Times “clamored on Tuesday for two leaders of the opposition movement…to be hanged.” They have two war ships in the Red Sea, apparently headed for the Suez Canal. In Bahrain, where the American Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based, two men were killed on Tuesday and three last night. The kindling has been laid; it lacks only the spark.

Curiously, the country that could be most at risk is Israel. John Steinbeck once wrote (Travels with Charlie) that we all must have someone to blame or to hate – to serve as a distraction for our own weaknesses. When Steinbeck wrote those words, during the Cold War, the target for Americans was the Soviet Union. Israel makes a perfect foil to nations in the Middle East. Iran and Syria have called publically for its destruction; it is despised by most of the rest. Leaders who have been targeted by the student and young workers’ unrest movement may try to channel the frustration of those protestors toward a perceived common enemy – Israel. Such an eventuality would present the U.S. with a Hobson’s choice – only one possibility, to come to Israel’s defense – but with the risk that the resulting instability, bloodshed and disruption of oil would wreck havoc on economies in Europe as well as America.