Israel rejoiced at the international resolution to strip Syria of its chemical weapons arsenal and to destroy that arsenal to render it unusable. But the jubilation did not last long. Within a few days of the resolution, during which Israel and its friends in the US Congress exchanged congratulations and almost forgave President Barack Obama for his sudden about-face on the decision to launch an aerial strike against Syria together with France, Israel and its congressional friends were hit by a second shock. Their gleeful faces turned grim as it began to emerge from a series of international meetings between the major powers concerned with resolving the Iranian nuclear issue that these powers were on the verge of reaching an agreement over easing up the sanctions imposed on Iran and acknowledging its right to development nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The two developments have riveted the attention of diverse political and strategic centres monitoring developments in international relations. Conjectures and predictions were rife, as the diplomatic breakthroughs on the Syrian and Iranian questions clearly precipitated a spurt of activity in quite a few foreign ministries and national security agencies. The concern was at its most intense in Israel, but it was also considerable in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and to varying degrees in the countries of the Gulf, as well as in France and other Western nations. All attempted to probe the deeper significance of these developments in the hope of discerning what the forthcoming weeks, rather than months or years, held in store for the Middle East and the ruling regimes and political maps of the region. The opinions aired addressed numerous ramifications of the diplomatic breakthroughs. For example, these two developments could not have occurred had not Russia been proactively and constructively involved and had not the US been responsive and prepared to entertain the Russian initiatives with good intent and a willingness to understand their motives. Russia's diplomatic achievements will go down in the history of diplomacy. However, I do not believe that history's recognition of these achievements will be complete without a deeper understanding of the surrounding circumstances and causes. It is not sufficient to maintain that Russia's diplomatic acumen was so strong and dynamic that it forced the US administration to halt its plans to attack Syria and to contemplate lifting sanctions on Iran in spite of the certainty that this would incur Israel's wrath and its extensions in the US Congress and the corridors of Capitol Hill, the conferences of the Tea Party and the other organisations of the new American right. Secondly, the claim regarding Russia's diplomatic superiority would be incomplete if it did not address a complementary claim that has begun to gain ground, modestly in most cases and quite openly in others, in academic circles in the US. This claim, or theory, holds that the US has begun to enter its period of decline. I fear that many political analysts and theorists around the world have begun to explain the many fluctuations in US foreign policy on the basis of this claim or theory. How often we hear or read, these days, remarks by officials, commentators and opinion pundits who contend that Moscow has seized the opportunity presented by the US's current weakness to step into some of the most strategically important places in the Middle East. Many would frame this as follows: Russia is making its return to this region from which it had been driven out by an international and regional conspiracy led by the US, Egypt and Israel. These countries were scheming to establish a new Middle East in which the role of the Arab regional order would gradually shrivel until it could be eliminated, in which the Palestinian cause would be reduced to the minimum demands of the Palestinian people and the performance of the Palestinian revolutionary elites would diminish to the point where the Palestinian cause, in its entirety as a project for state, self-determination and reclaimed rights, would be eliminated, and in which Soviet imperial ambitions would be driven back and confined to the borders of Russia preparatory to the declaration of a unipolar order. Thirdly, the US has changed. Few would dispute that. The differences of opinion emerge when we begin to take a closer look at the nature of that change. Recently, someone asked me whether I had noticed that the US had returned to a policy of aligning with its adversary and whether I agreed that this reflected a sense in Washington that its existing alliances had failed and, perhaps too, that this constituted a tacit acknowledgement of its declining international status. I reminded my interlocutor that when Washington sided with Egypt and against its allies Britain and France during the Suez War of 1956, the US was at the height of its prestige and power. I further reminded him that this stance, even if it lasted only a few weeks, was sufficient for Britain to understand that its role in international leadership had come to an end and that it was time for it to withdraw from Asia and the Middle East. This is precisely what happened. Britain recoiled into itself for a while before venturing out of its isles again to merge with Europe as an ordinary member of its continental organisation as opposed to a dominant weight in the balance of powers. Also, as a consequence of the US's great, albeit short-lived alignment during the Suez War, France also awoke to the futility of remaining a colonial power in North Africa and Southeast Asia. It is also useful to recall that following that brief alignment with the adversary (Egypt), Washington turned to Turkey in 1957 for help in taming the emergent revolutionary forces in the Arab region. Then, at a later stage, it turned to the Shah of Iran to whom it assigned security and political tasks in Arab states, especially those neighbouring Iran. Fourthly, it is no exaggeration to state that Europe in recent months did not merit the attribute as a trustworthy or reliable ally. Britain did not stand with the US in its battle against Syria, almost as though to pay Washington back for its stance during the 1956 war. Even France, which wanted to outbid the UK and Germany, has come to be seen through American eyes as a country led by socialist political amateurs, good at one-upmanship but notoriously poor in their understanding of the developing world and the serious Third World leaderships. The behaviour of the French political leadership, as the US wavered over the decision to intervene militarily in Syria, reflected an inability to grasp the realities of the domestic situation in the US and, simultaneously, the motives and sources of strength of Russian diplomacy. Or perhaps that leadership merely wanted to outshine Obama, which appears to be what it is up to now through its equivocal stances on the question of easing sanctions on Iran and its grovelling towards Israel in the hope of securing Jewish support at home and an introduction into the Kremlin on Binyamin Netanyahu's coattails. Fifthly, I do not have the shadow of a doubt that both Turkey and Iran have a role carved out for themselves, or are seeking to carve out a role for themselves, in the forthcoming phase. Ankara's current efforts regarding the Kurdish question require close consideration. Once a taboo subject during all the eras of Western hegemony over the Middle East, this question is now open for discussion, sometimes very heated discussion, especially now that the Kurds in Syria have had the audacity to mention the forbidden word: “secession”. Meanwhile, the Iranian leadership is poising itself for rapprochement with the West. More significantly, the Western response to the Iranian initiative would not have come so quickly and positively had not Tehran prepared the way through other initiatives related to the “peaceful” role it envisions for itself in the Middle East in general, and with respect to its Arab neighbours in particular. Finally, the leadership in Egypt would not have moved so energetically and with such fanfare to welcome Russian arms salesmen and their colleagues, who were searching for another location in the Middle East that is hunkering down for a long war against extremists and terrorists, had it not grown fed up with unfulfilled US and Israeli promises and needless remarks that only served to exacerbate the situation in Egypt. In light of the complexities of the situation at all levels, not just in Egypt alone but in the Middle East in general, Egypt's interim leadership is likely to resolve a number of issues as developments unfold. One of its decisions will inevitably pertain to one or more of the dimensions of the Camp David Accords as the human and economic costs and the toll from the damage to the reputation of the Egyptian army that accrue from Egypt's ongoing commitment to certain provisions, under current domestic, regional and international conditions, combine to jeopardise the Egyptian state and Egypt's place in a changing region.
The writer is a political analyst and director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
