In politics and international affairs time does not work like it does in commerce where a “financial year” comes with a “before” and an “after,” an “inventory” and a “projection”, and a budget that makes it possible to calculate expenditure and revenue for the year ahead. Elections can be important markers, but on the whole a new year is simply the continuation of the old with only New Year's Eve celebrations to serve as a line between the two and bequeathing some pleasant memories and maybe also a hangover for revellers. The question we should ask ourselves is thus how the new year will follow through and develop on pending questions left over from the old. In the Middle East, the political and diplomatic drives concerning the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya have all carried over into 2019, and there are few signs that they will bring about solutions soon. However, while we have no guarantees of progress, failure is not inevitable, as in all three cases the parties concerned are keen to achieve at the negotiating table what they have been unable to achieve on the battlefield. This means that a time must come when they will wake up to the fact that perpetuating the status quo is not in anybody's interest. When that moment of awakening will arrive is impossible to predict, but time will grant an improvement over the conditions that have prevailed in the region over recent years. The days in which the deaths in these conflicts reached the tens of thousands have ended, and refugees are now returning to their homes in the hundreds even if the transition from displacement to return is likely to take more than a year to bring about. There are also permanent dilemmas in the Middle East such as the Palestinian reconciliation process. This will occasion a round or two of talks (probably complete with stays in five-stay hotels) for those concerned thanks to the good graces of a mediator who will try to bring about a breakthrough and whom the Palestinian parties will have to try to please. The main problem with the Palestinian reconciliation process is that it is obstructing the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza have spent a great deal of time and effort denouncing the “deal of the century” offered by the US before they or any of us know what it consists of in substance. Opposition to this “deal” has gained an unusual degree of unanimity among the Palestinians. The main vantage point from which to observe developments in the Middle East this year is not so much from the afore-mentioned processes but from the perspective of the actions the US takes towards the region. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not bring a grand message with him on his recent Middle East tour, unlike former US president Barack Obama on his first visit to the region in 2009 when he spoke of reviving understanding between the Islamic and Western worlds in the framework of respect for democracy and human rights. Pompeo did not express a message similar to that of one of his predecessors, former US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, either, since when she spoke at the AUC in Cairo she voiced the US neoconservatives' belief in the need for regime change in the Middle East and added that this had already begun in Iraq and that it would come in other countries in the region without direct US intervention. Pompeo and current US President Donald Trump think differently about the region. Despite Washington's promises that it continues to attach strategic value to the Middle East, the only practical issue of concern during Pompeo's tour was the imminent US troop withdrawals from the region and the appeal to regional partners to work together to assume their functions. A common saying in Washington these days is that the problem in Syria is not Trump's problem but Syria's problem. As we move further into 2019, it would be well to keep a close eye on how the US troop withdrawal proceeds and a closer eye on how the other parties, such as Turkey, Iran and the Syrian government, behave on the ground. At the same time, it would also be well to watch the repercussions of their actions on other crises. To a large extent, what happens in Syria will determine what happens in Yemen, Libya, Lebanon and Iraq in 2019 and probably in 2020 as well. Observing US behaviour in the Middle East involves keeping an eye on how it acts elsewhere in the world. If, as it appears, we now have a tri-polar world order, with the US, China and Russia competing among themselves, the relationships between the US and the other two poles of this order are of global strategic importance to Washington. Among the most important concerns carried over into the new year at this level are the trade war with China and the armaments controversies with Russia. But there are also other crucial concerns that these two sets of bilateral relations will continue to address. In the case of Washington and Beijing, these include US negotiations with North Korea, security in the South China Sea, and, more importantly, the future of Taiwan. Observers of these might adopt two approaches. One is to look for signs of a “comprehensive deal” that covers all differences between the two sides and seeks an accommodation that they both can live with. In 1972, then US president Richard Nixon agreed with Chinese leader Mao Zedong that there was one China in principle, but that practically speaking the existence of Taiwan was neither harmful nor threatening. That formula lasted for more than four decades, but both China and Taiwan have changed a lot since then. The second approach is to watch how each of these issues evolves. Perhaps the question of trade is the critical link between them: if the two sides can reach an agreement on that, this could give an impetus to their cooperation on other issues, and they might be able to de-prioritise their trade differences enough to set them aside for another time. The US-Russian situation is no less delicate. The crux of the problem is that it has a major domestic dimension in the US in the Department of Justice's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential elections in 2016 and the extent of Trump's knowledge and complicity. So far, the investigators have confirmed the Russian interference, but they have not yet been able to establish that the president himself was implicated in it. The investigation will almost certainly conclude this year. Either it will culminate in charges brought against Trump and impeachment procedures against him, or it will end in another way so as not to affect the 2020 US presidential elections. In the latter case, Trump will have considerable chances of winning a second term. Trump's Washington is not worked up on other issues of concern to both the US and Russia, such as the situations in Syria and Ukraine. If things were left to Trump alone, his imagination would likely stretch no further than a wall between the US and Mexico and, if possible, also between the US and the rest of the world. Trump sees the latter as a kind of a morass that is of no concern to the US anyway. Washington now wants to withdraw from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and multilateral international organisations. However, not everything the president hopes for is attainable. History, US institutions, and the next elections in the US will all hem him in in many ways. As a result, 2019 is unlikely to accommodate all Trump's wishes. 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The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
