Dr. Gadi Hitman – Senior lecturer Middle East Department Ariel University
History can be sometimes misleading and elusive. For scholars all over the globe, a temporal perspective is priceless when evaluating leaders’ intentions. In 2007, a US candidate for the presidency repeated “yes, we can” over and over as his slogan. Political analysts tried to figure out Barack Obama’s message and realized its full meaning as soon as he became president, particularly regarding US foreign policy. Obama pulled the US Army out of Iraq, thereby allowing radical Islamic forces to enter territories in northern Iraq and, later, Syria. Obama used to call Arab leaders to expand human and political rights. His speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009 paved the way to a poignant debate within the Arab world about human minorities, women, and political rights. Less than two years after his speech, the Middle East region entered a new era, which went by the name “Arab Spring”.
The regional turmoil in the Middle East is not yet over for some Arab countries such as Syria, Libya, or Yemen. It has also had significant ramifications on the Sunni-Sh’ia rivalry, the refugees’ problem (more than 8 million Syrians, for instance), and there are no doubts that it also affected Israel’s regional status. Having said that, perhaps the most important development was Obama’s foreign policy of “leading from behind”. This simply meant that the US remained the global superpower but would not automatically interfere in regional conflicts or crises. If anyone doubted the statements of the former American president, then the time has made clear what he meant. The Middle East has been (and is part of) a bloody arena of thousands of people who have died in conflicts on religious, ethnic, or ideological grounds. This was the case in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries. Alongside all this, the area saw a new Islamic Caliphate (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]) for the first time in the modern era. And despite all this, the US stuck with its policy of leading from behind. Russia, compared to the United States, intervened in the Syrian arena and led the campaign to dismantle ISIS (although the idea of global jihad did not go away). These developments in the Middle East had an impact on the regional order as far as the balance of power between the states was concerned: new ad-hoc alliances were formed with a view to achieving short-term interests. This was the case with the Russia-Iran-US alliance against ISIS, and yet, at the same time, Washington – under Obama and later the Donald Trump administration – remained passive elsewhere compared to other countries (such as the French-Italian military intervention in Libya).
The doctrine of leading from behind continued during Trump’s presidency. It is true that the Gulf states were very pleased with the Trump administration’s warm embrace of the incumbent Sunni regimes in those countries. For example, Trump signed a huge weaponry deal with the Saudis, cultivated close relations with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and refused to issue sanctions against him after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and American citizen. For Riyadh and the other Sunni regimes, it is very important, even critical, to have the US’ support against the Iranian threat. What the Gulf states probably missed was Trump’s vision – “make America great again”. That meant, for a businessman like Trump, that US foreign policy primarily aimed to serve US interests. Other rulers could benefit from it as long as their actions did not damage the US.
The first year of Joe Biden’s presidency was quite problematic for the Middle East region. The current US administration does not place the Middle East high on its foreign policy agenda, and, as a result, its involvement in the region is quite limited and focuses on preserving existing ties. This is not enough for the Arab states (and possibly not for Israel, which traditionally relies on a strategic alliance with Washington). The war between Russia and Ukraine has sharpened the dilemma of the region’s leaders: whether to continue to lean on the US or seek new advice, say from Russia, and make new alliances. To make the issue more clear, the dilemma is between security and a diplomatic alliance with Washington and economic agreements – and possibly more than that – with Russia. Mohammed bin Rashid, the Prime Minister of the UAE, tweeted on March 8, 2022 that it is time for Arabs to move forward, cooperate with everybody, and belong to the advanced world. If the Arab world does it, the Arabs will be able to create a new balance of power in the Middle East region and maybe in the international arena. This tweet came just as some of the Arab world was watching closely for a possible ad-hoc engagement between the US and Iran. Furthermore, the social discourse in Arab networks has in recent days painted the West in a negative light on the passivity it has been exhibiting toward the situation in Ukraine and mentioned that Western countries (except Germany and Sweden) have not helped Arab refugees in the last decade. Given this situation, there are already voices calling for a reassessment of the Arab states’ relations with the US alongside the need to examine alliances with another player in the international or regional arena who can help them.
Add to that the fact that Turkey and Israel are now on track for a rapprochement after years of low-profile relations, and a new formula for analyzing the Middle East arises. The possibility of a new regional order is a real and tangible option: no more analyses will be based just on the traditional hostility between Shi’ites and Sunnis, or on an automatic boycott of Israel, or on the reliance of this or that country on only one power. In such a scenario, everything would be fluid, subject to change, and convey a clear message: interests in, values out.
