Last week, alone, there occurred two developments pertaining to US policy in the Middle East. The first has to do with Qatar's relationship with the four countries that have imposed an embargo on it (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt). The second concerns US aid to Egypt. At the heart of the first development is the war against terrorism and the question as to who helps terrorists by means of incitement, funding, arms and shelter. At the heart of the second resides US interests and the countries that share these interests in the Middle East. In both cases, it seemed as though the US spoke in two and sometimes even three languages: the language of the White House, which is adamant on the war against terrorism and the need to uproot the phenomenon entirely; the language of the State Department, which urges “diplomatic” concord among its allies, namely the countries that are fighting terrorism in Syria, Yemen or the Sinai and the countries that fund, shelter and promote terrorists; and the language of the US Congress that forces the American image of governance, how countries should operate and how they should apply human rights as perceived by rights agencies such as Human Rights Watch on the concept of international relations between sovereign states with independent political systems and interests. The three different languages inevitably cause confusion and anxiety. They confuse because countries that speak in a single language do not know who to respond to. They cause worry because it is impossible to tell which language Washington will speak in any given situation and which part of Washington will make the decisions at critical moments. Will it be the White House? The “establishment”, meaning the ministries concerned? Or Congress, which speaks with its eyes set on the next elections? As I mentioned in a previous article, it seems that President Trump has become most influenced by the establishment when it comes to decisions with regard to continuing the war in Afghanistan and prolonging the US presence there. Nevertheless, with all the fog that envelops US political and diplomatic activity, it is hard to discern anything smooth in the way it functions or any adherence to the long-held traditions of the American establishment from the various ministries and agencies to such institutions as the National Security Council and within the White House itself. What seems clear is that the US political system is in such a state of disarray and disequilibrium that a New York Times columnist, last week, suggested that the president had characteristics in common with the mad Roman Emperor Caligula and with an even madder successor, Emperor Nero who set fire to Rome. To complicate the picture further, the Charlottesville incident involving the confrontation between fascist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and liberal, secularist and progressive groups over the removal of symbols of the South and the US Civil War reflects a phenomenon common to almost all southern states and not just Virginia. The US media is suddenly filled with stories about societies and leagues that want to preserve the history of the South, the flag and other symbols of the confederate states, and the statues of the confederate heroes from the Civil War. While much of the din is on the surface in what appears to be a war between Trump and the press and between and within the Republican and Democratic parties, another war is seething below, at the grassroots strata of US politics. Does this concern the US alone? Or is there some fragmentation and partition syndrome that has gone endemic around the entire world, dating, perhaps, from the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001? Because with that collapse a whole world of ideas and ideals began to crumble, including the quest for peaceful coexistence between faiths, cultures and civilisations. Or at least this was the goal that the world's nations had set for themselves, regardless of their varying degrees of success or failure in realising the pure liberal ideal, the values and principles of which set the moral parameters for the international treaties and conventions that emerged since World War II. Even when socialist countries squabbled with capitalist ones, they took care to resort to what they called “people's democracies” to justify the application of their creed, one way or another, and to drive home the point that theirs was the closer path to equality and recognition of the other. With the universalisation of “globalisation” which occurred as a result of the breakdown of economic, technological and ideological walls and barriers between nations, “freedom” became the universal frame-of-reference in the market and in opinions and beliefs. So, too, did the notion of basic human rights. And, this notion gave rise to a range of concepts and institutions, such as “humanitarian intervention”, democratic transformation, universal human rights and the International Criminal Court, etc. When the World Trade Centre toppled, not only did a plethora of ideas fall with it, the hypothesis of the inevitable “clash of civilisations” loomed to the fore. This generated a growing breach between a world that had already had begun to change in the direction of human coexistence, as was evidenced in the movement of goods, ideas and people, and another world dominated by fear and suspicion of the other. The world had begun to experience an acute contradiction between economic and technological mechanisms that were pushing for closer interaction, contact and communication between peoples and a wearying state of revulsion and rejection against the cultural and civilisational consequences of those mechanisms. One day, back in the 19th century, Karl Marx and a number of other philosophers said that the rise of a contradiction between the evolution of the forces of production and the state of relationships of production could precipitate a conflict of one sort or another. While the conflict he saw was quintessentially a class struggle, in the context of the world we are living in today, it is a cultural, civilisational and ethical conflict with “the other” who differs in some way or another, even if that other happens to live next door. So, the problem is not particular to the US. It appears to affect the entire world. We are seeing a conflict between the trend towards globalisation and global assimilation and integration, on the one hand, and the trend towards chauvinism, discrimination and insularism, on the other. This is a feature of the current stage of world history. In light of this, dealing with the US requires a multidimensional approach. By the US, I mean not just the White House, the government ministries and Congress, but also America's various states, communities and groups. As long as the US is important — and it will remain so for some time to come — different approaches will need to be brought to bear in the ways we interact with it. This, in turn, requires new types of diplomatic and political skills. But, perhaps more importantly, our definition of our interests will have to be both more precise and stricter, and the Arabs' views on what these mean to each of the Arab parties concerned will have to be more harmonious. Such prerequisites will be essential to gird ourselves for the coming phase with the deafening racket of the cracks, pops and screeches of rupture and fragmentation in our region and elsewhere in the world. It will probably be particularly delicate and volatile phase, because the nothing in the US and the rest of the world will remain the same. The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
