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I used to work in Middle East affairs. There is a tendency for Westerners to overstate their own importance in the Middle East, which are also informed by inte

I used to work in Middle East affairs. There is a tendency for Westerners to overstate their own importance in the Middle East, which are also informed by inter-state, intra-state and extra-regional groups and actors that are neither European nor American. The real regional meta-story that is playing out right now, in my opinion, is the inevitable collapse of the post-imperial order. It was caused not by any grand state actors (or by Twitter) but by a single Tunisian street vendor. He upended the unsustainable patterns of rule that have characterized the region since the withdrawal of the European powers after World War II. Nobody knows what comes next, and there is no good model, yet, of American statecraft to inform a regional posture. The story made me shake my head, but not because of anything to do with of any sinister implications that it raised about the military-industrial complex, but because it looks like Keystone Kops. The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter. It takes the form of members of ISIS killing Quds Force commanders, and it ignited without much help from the West. Which side would you pick?

simonh 11y ago
All good points. 'The West' didn't instigate the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it. For goodness sake, we'd been trying to topple Gaddafi and the Syrian regime for half a century and getting exactly nowhere, then as you say one Tunisian street vendor makes a desperate gesture and in the chain reaction from that the whole region falls into chaos. That's history for you. As for IS, the reason they're such a nuisance isn't so much due to the invasion of Iraq, it's due to the power vacuum in north western Iraq caused by the withdrawal of US forces in 2011. The fact is the surge worked, but all of that was willingly thrown away.
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  I agree with much of this, but history should look more closely at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Fo...
- gotchange 11y ago
  Thanks for correcting the GP's point in which he overestimated the role of Western powers in most uprisings in the MENA region (2011 - ). I don't recall any major role for the US in the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt except just saving their interests whether in the Presidency or the military but saying that the West orchestrated the whole thing is just blatantly false and totally dismisses the sweat and blood we Egyptians scarified to get rid of dictatorship and take all the credit for themselves. Now to ISIS, we could argue that ISIS was a byproduct of the Iraq invasion in 2003. ISIS was born out of the Iraqi Insurgency and the Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia under the leadership of Abu Mosab Azzarqawi. So yeah the US invasion of Iraq contributed indirectly to the rise of ISIS in Iraq first and then to expand in the neighboring Syria and eclipsing Al-Qaeda as the "hottest" Islamic terrorist organization in the world.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  >They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it. "A bit of air support" is a strange characterization for destroying the Libyan government's entire tank fleet in the middle of an Islamist uprising. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a strange characterization for supporting a coup in Egypt that toppled a democratically elected government. Also, we never, ever, ever, ever talk about Bahrain, where the US supplied arms through Saudi Arabia against the uprisings and: >By 2014, 5,000 Saudi and Emirati forces and almost 7000 American forces were positioned "less than 10 miles from the Pearl Roundabout, the center of the country’s protest movement." We have surrounded the middle east with armies for more than a generation and armed the worst governments in the area. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a gross mischaracterization of what we do there.
  - jacobush 11y ago
    Only occasionally carpet bombing capitals in the area?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
nl 11y ago
The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter. It takes the form of members of ISIS killing Quds Force commanders, and it ignited without much help from the West. Which side would you pick? You forgot the weird Turkey vs the Kurds almost war thing. And the weirder thing of the Israelis almost protecting ISIS forces from Assard/Hezbollah. Or the bizarre Iraqi Mosal campaign where Iraqi backed Iranian militias almost had (or sometimes did have?) US Airforce backing. Anything is possible in this war.
- gotchange 11y ago
  Just a minor correction: The Turkish state seems to have only a problem with the militant Kurds in Turkey and Syria but not the ones in Iraq as it seems that they get along very well and the Kurds in Iraq even allow Turkish forces to launch airstrikes in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and for their troops to hunt down PKK members over there with the help of Peshmerga, the de facto Kurdish armed forces in Northern Iraq. So, saying that the Turks are at complete odds with Kurdish militias all over the region is not entirely correct.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    I would have sworn that I've heard reports of Iraqi Kurds complaining about those airstrikes and vowing to shoot down the next Turkish plane? Especially now that the Turks have more to worry about from Syria, why would Kurds in Iraq accommodate the Turks in any way?
    - gotchange 11y ago
      It's becoming a ritual with Erdogan's govt recently to launch airstrikes against PKK positions in Qandil, Northern Iraq following every terrorist attack in Turkey that's blamed on militant Kurdish nationalists and they even sent troops to Iraqi Kurdistan last December with the tacit approval of the Kurdish authorities to neutralize PKK militants there. There's always been tension between Kurdish nationalist factions and they even had a brief civil war[1] between Iraqi Kurds in the 90s (Talabani vs Barzani) and there's rivalry between the Peshmerga and the PKK esp. in the area where the Peshmerga deems its territories in Iraq where some PKK members challenge their authority there but despite all of this, some Kurdish nationalist love to portray the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds as an ethnic and not a political one as it garners more support and sympathy for their cause and make Turkey look like the bad guy in this conflict. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdish_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdish_Civil_War
RobertoG 11y ago
Is not this sentence: "a tendency for Westerners to overstate their own importance in the Middle East" and this sentence: "the inevitable collapse of the post-imperial order", a little in contradiction? or are you talking about the Ottoman empire? "The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter." Would be appropriated to say "with the Americans alongside the Sunni"? Is this, then, a kind of proxy-proxy war? Because it seems to me that we always heard how bad are the Iranians but very little about how bad are the Saudis and company.
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  Good points. I think that it's probably more complete to say that "Western nations (and Russia and China and India...) cast a long, but declining, shadow across the history of the Middle East." The collapse of the post-imperial order was probably inevitable and is a demonstration of exactly the fragility of Western regional influence. And the purpose of this article seems to be to demonstrate that the Americans don't have any clue which side they are on. The Iranian government has literally been chanting "Death to America" every week since 1979. Our relationship with Saudi is much, much more complex.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    If the chanting bothers us, we shouldn't have deposed Mosaddegh.
    - foxhedgehog 11y ago
      The history of US-Iranian relations is more complex than this, and Mosaddegh was also a controversial figure in Iranian history.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        Oh, complexity! I'll shut up now... Fuck that. If anything had happened in Iran before Mosaddegh was overthrown by USA that would constitute a defensible justification for that action, I'm sure you would have told us already. Instead, here's some innuendo. Gosh that chanting is bad.
astazangasta 11y ago
We HAVE picked a side, it's Saudi Arabia. We sell them billions of dollars in arms every year, support them in every conflict they undertake (we are currently helping them bomb the shit out of Yemen), we have contained Iran behind sanctions for a generation. The idea that the US is a neutral actor in this fight and not a huge source of military power dictating events is, frankly, a horrific lie.

simonh 11y ago

All good points. 'The West' didn't instigate the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it. For goodness sake, we'd been trying to topple Gaddafi and the Syrian regime for half a century and getting exactly nowhere, then as you say one Tunisian street vendor makes a desperate gesture and in the chain reaction from that the whole region falls into chaos. That's history for you. As for IS, the reason they're such a nuisance isn't so much due to the invasion of Iraq, it's due to the power vacuum in north western Iraq caused by the withdrawal of US forces in 2011. The fact is the surge worked, but all of that was willingly thrown away.

foxhedgehog 11y ago
I agree with much of this, but history should look more closely at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Fo...
gotchange 11y ago
Thanks for correcting the GP's point in which he overestimated the role of Western powers in most uprisings in the MENA region (2011 - ). I don't recall any major role for the US in the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt except just saving their interests whether in the Presidency or the military but saying that the West orchestrated the whole thing is just blatantly false and totally dismisses the sweat and blood we Egyptians scarified to get rid of dictatorship and take all the credit for themselves. Now to ISIS, we could argue that ISIS was a byproduct of the Iraq invasion in 2003. ISIS was born out of the Iraqi Insurgency and the Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia under the leadership of Abu Mosab Azzarqawi. So yeah the US invasion of Iraq contributed indirectly to the rise of ISIS in Iraq first and then to expand in the neighboring Syria and eclipsing Al-Qaeda as the "hottest" Islamic terrorist organization in the world.
astazangasta 11y ago
>They were started by local people for local reasons, often with westerners cheering on from the side lines or occasionally providing a bit of air support as in Libya, but mainly keeping out of it. "A bit of air support" is a strange characterization for destroying the Libyan government's entire tank fleet in the middle of an Islamist uprising. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a strange characterization for supporting a coup in Egypt that toppled a democratically elected government. Also, we never, ever, ever, ever talk about Bahrain, where the US supplied arms through Saudi Arabia against the uprisings and: >By 2014, 5,000 Saudi and Emirati forces and almost 7000 American forces were positioned "less than 10 miles from the Pearl Roundabout, the center of the country’s protest movement." We have surrounded the middle east with armies for more than a generation and armed the worst governments in the area. "Mainly keeping out of it" is a gross mischaracterization of what we do there.
- jacobush 11y ago
  Only occasionally carpet bombing capitals in the area?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

nl 11y ago

The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter. It takes the form of members of ISIS killing Quds Force commanders, and it ignited without much help from the West. Which side would you pick? You forgot the weird Turkey vs the Kurds almost war thing. And the weirder thing of the Israelis almost protecting ISIS forces from Assard/Hezbollah. Or the bizarre Iraqi Mosal campaign where Iraqi backed Iranian militias almost had (or sometimes did have?) US Airforce backing. Anything is possible in this war.

gotchange 11y ago
Just a minor correction: The Turkish state seems to have only a problem with the militant Kurds in Turkey and Syria but not the ones in Iraq as it seems that they get along very well and the Kurds in Iraq even allow Turkish forces to launch airstrikes in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and for their troops to hunt down PKK members over there with the help of Peshmerga, the de facto Kurdish armed forces in Northern Iraq. So, saying that the Turks are at complete odds with Kurdish militias all over the region is not entirely correct.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I would have sworn that I've heard reports of Iraqi Kurds complaining about those airstrikes and vowing to shoot down the next Turkish plane? Especially now that the Turks have more to worry about from Syria, why would Kurds in Iraq accommodate the Turks in any way?
  - gotchange 11y ago
    It's becoming a ritual with Erdogan's govt recently to launch airstrikes against PKK positions in Qandil, Northern Iraq following every terrorist attack in Turkey that's blamed on militant Kurdish nationalists and they even sent troops to Iraqi Kurdistan last December with the tacit approval of the Kurdish authorities to neutralize PKK militants there. There's always been tension between Kurdish nationalist factions and they even had a brief civil war[1] between Iraqi Kurds in the 90s (Talabani vs Barzani) and there's rivalry between the Peshmerga and the PKK esp. in the area where the Peshmerga deems its territories in Iraq where some PKK members challenge their authority there but despite all of this, some Kurdish nationalist love to portray the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds as an ethnic and not a political one as it garners more support and sympathy for their cause and make Turkey look like the bad guy in this conflict. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdish_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdish_Civil_War

RobertoG 11y ago

Is not this sentence: "a tendency for Westerners to overstate their own importance in the Middle East" and this sentence: "the inevitable collapse of the post-imperial order", a little in contradiction? or are you talking about the Ottoman empire? "The Syrian civil war is a proxy conflict between the (Sunni) Gulf States and (Shia) Iranians with the Russians alongside the latter." Would be appropriated to say "with the Americans alongside the Sunni"? Is this, then, a kind of proxy-proxy war? Because it seems to me that we always heard how bad are the Iranians but very little about how bad are the Saudis and company.

foxhedgehog 11y ago
Good points. I think that it's probably more complete to say that "Western nations (and Russia and China and India...) cast a long, but declining, shadow across the history of the Middle East." The collapse of the post-imperial order was probably inevitable and is a demonstration of exactly the fragility of Western regional influence. And the purpose of this article seems to be to demonstrate that the Americans don't have any clue which side they are on. The Iranian government has literally been chanting "Death to America" every week since 1979. Our relationship with Saudi is much, much more complex.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  If the chanting bothers us, we shouldn't have deposed Mosaddegh.
  - foxhedgehog 11y ago
    The history of US-Iranian relations is more complex than this, and Mosaddegh was also a controversial figure in Iranian history.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      Oh, complexity! I'll shut up now... Fuck that. If anything had happened in Iran before Mosaddegh was overthrown by USA that would constitute a defensible justification for that action, I'm sure you would have told us already. Instead, here's some innuendo. Gosh that chanting is bad.

astazangasta 11y ago

We HAVE picked a side, it's Saudi Arabia. We sell them billions of dollars in arms every year, support them in every conflict they undertake (we are currently helping them bomb the shit out of Yemen), we have contained Iran behind sanctions for a generation. The idea that the US is a neutral actor in this fight and not a huge source of military power dictating events is, frankly, a horrific lie.