The New Middle-East UPDATED

Since the Iraq War and the Arab Spring, the Arab world has undergone its largest geopolitical shifts since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the state of Israel.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a Shi'ite government in Iraq swung the balance decisively away from the Arab Sunni world and gave Iran a new ally. For the first time in almost 25 years, the United States was once again allied to a Shi'ite Muslim government. The forces unleashed during the Iraq War still haunt the region to this day.

The Obama-endorsed Arab Spring did much to inflame terrorism across the region, particularly in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. While withdrawal from Iraq was endorsed at the time, Obama's Syria policy fueled Iraq's worst enemy, the Islamic State of Iraq, turning it into ISIS, a group so brutal that Al-Qaeda disavowed it. Had Obama supported a ceasefire in Syria, it is unlikely ISIS would have grown as large as it did.

Obama's Syrian policy inflamed the instability which spilled over from Iraq. Thankfully, Russia has had a pragmatic approach to Syria. Their Syrian campaign (2015 to present) has seen an historic reduction in violence and terrorism across the entire region. Russia is currently playing the lead role in ending the conflict in Libya, while also strengthening already strong ties with the autocratic government of Egypt and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All 3 Arab countries which suffered from the Obama-era interventions - Egypt, Libya and Syria - are now closer to Russia than ever. President Trump has been unable or unwilling to stop this, given his focus on Afghanistan and Iraq with a war-weary America.

For Libya, President Trump is quoted as saying he would only commit to destroying ISIS there, not to a political settlement. For Syria, the State Department has released a statement that the US will be leaving Syria after they are certain ISIS has been defeated there. Though President Trump has extended his hand in alliance to Egypt, the damage of the last 3 years of the Obama Administration has meant that Egypt has looked on the US with the question: will this alliance outlast President Trump?

President Trump's largest challenges remain the same as those of Presidents Bush and Obama: Iraq and Afghanistan. While the US is engaged militarily in those two countries and initiating its pivot towards Asia, this leaves other regional forces - such as Russia, Iran and Turkey - more space to intervene in other areas of the Middle-East.

These developments have left Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia increasingly vulnerable to instability and chaos. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the son of the current king, is increasingly being used by Al-Qaeda and ISIS as the figure head of everything wrong with the kingdom. Even the less radical side of Saudi Arabia is appalled at Bin Salman's handling of the Yemeni crisis. Should he descend to the throne, civil war will likely follow him.

With Russia strongly backing autocratic regimes in Egypt, Syria and Libya and strengthening ties with Islamist countries Iran and Turkey, the US is left on the back foot. Their own hold on Turkey is slipping; Iraq and Afghanistan are still unstable after years of intervention and, worst of all, the Arabian Peninsula is creeping towards chaos as terrorism is uprooted from other regions.

This will leave Russia dominating much of the Middle-East, while America will be forced to continue their strategic withdrawal and focus on stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the new Middle-East: a Middle-East divided between US and Russian influence; divided between Russian-supported autocratic regimes, US-supported democratic institutions and sponsors of terrorism threatened by terrorists returning home disillusioned and beaten.

This New Middle-East heralds the dawn of a new, even more uncertain era.

4 Predictions for Saudi Arabia

In this article I will be outlying a series of predictions for Saudi Arabia over the next 5 years:

1) Mohammed Bin Salman will be forced to abdicate from ruling Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is next in line for the throne after his father, King Salman. However, unlike his father, Mohammed Bin Salman is reforming the country at too fast a rate for the kingdom to cope with.

Not to mention: Bin Salman's foreign policy blunders have been exceptional: from Yemen, to Qatar, to Lebanon - he has shown himself to be too reckless and not measured enough to rule a kingdom as dynamic and conservative as Saudi Arabia.

2) Mohammed Bin Nayef will be made king of Saudi Arabia.

Unlike Mohammed Bin Salman, Mohammed Bin Nayef is the Al Saud family favourite for the throne. Though he has been currently forced to abdicate by his cousin and uncle, the Saudi establishment will look to him to lead the country after the folly of bin Salman's policies has been fully revealed.

3) ISIS will come to Saudi Arabia.

Scarily, Mohammed Bin Salman's push for modernization makes ISIS coming to Saudi Arabia all the more likely. What is even worse is his desire to push for public ties with Israel.

This has happened before: in the 1970's the Shah of Iran pushed for public ties with Israel. That, along with economic instability, led to his downfall in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini took over the country in the Iranian revolution.

A Saudi revolution benefits ISIS, and ISIS only. ISIS is a neo-Ikhwani expansionist project in the tradition of Ibn Abdul Wahhab and, according to Alistair Crooke, after invading Iraq, ISIS inserted a time bomb into the heart of the Middle-East, into Saudi Arabia. Alistair Crooke maintains that the kingdom is more vulnerable to ISIS under a modernizing ruler like Mohammed Bin Salman than under a more conservative ruler like Mohammed Bin Nayef.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-aim-saudi-arabia_b_5748744.html

4) With ISIS will come war to Saudi Arabia

Whether the Al-Saud royal family will be eventually forced out by ISIS is difficult to assess, but what is likely is that, like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen in recent years, different Arab tribes will pick different sides. Some will remain loyal to the Saud royal family - some will join with ISIS.

Unlike the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Saudi revolution will quickly turn into a civil war, one in which millions of Muslims will fight, either for or against ISIS. What the Trump Administration does in such a scenario is difficult to assess - American airstrikes on Islamic holy land will further exacerbate such a conflict.

the new Middle-East

Since the Iraq War and the Arab Spring, the Arab world has undergone the largest geopolitical shifts since the Ottoman Empire.

Though responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden, President Obama's Middle-East strategy has been misguided. The Obama-endorsed Arab Spring did much to inflame terrorism across the Middle-East, particularly in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. While withdrawal from Iraq was endorsed at the time, Obama's Syria policy fueled Iraq's worst enemy, the Islamic State of Iraq, turning it into ISIS, a group so brutal that Al-Qaeda disavowed it. Had Obama supported a ceasefire in Syria, it is unlikely ISIS would have grown as large as they did.

Unlike President Obama, Russia has had a pragmatic approach regarding the Middle-East. Their Syrian campaign (2015 to present) has seen an historic reduction in violence and terrorism across the entire region. Russia is currently playing the lead role in ending the conflict in Libya, while also strengthening already strong ties with the autocratic government of Egypt and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Obama's push for democracy across the Middle-East backfired badly. Not only has Russia been consolidating alliances in many Middle-East countries not wanting Obama-doctrine democracy, but President Trump has been, implicitly, welcoming Russian intervention in such countries. The reason for this is that President Trump does not wish to have as large a US footprint internationally as under the Obama or Bush Administrations and wants to focus more on domestic issues.

Not only so, but President Trump has made sure that President Obama's Arab Spring interventions - such as those Libya and Syria - are not engaged militarily by the US in the future and left instead to the Russian sphere of influence. For Libya, President Trump is quoted as saying he would only commit to destroying ISIS there, not to a political settlement. For Syria, the State Department has released a statement that the US will be leaving Syria after ISIS is defeated there.

In spite of this, there is growing tension between Russia and the US in the Middle-East. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been asking for the removal of Bashar Al-Assad, something Russia is highly unlikely to do, while Russia has also been linked to supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and attempting to gain influence over Iraq. While the war on terror is being won by both President Putin and President Trump, both are doing so in competition - not in harmony - with each other.

President Trump's largest challenges are the same as those of Presidents Bush and Obama: Iraq and Afghanistan. Because Iraq is allied with Iran, it is easier for Russia to try and wrest control of it from the US. However it is more likely that the US will prioritize relations with Iraq and Afghanistan over any other Middle-East nation (with Israel as an exception), to keep them out of Russian hands.

Enter Saudi Arabia. Under the Obama Administration, relations deteriorated badly between the US and the conservative kingdom, due in no small part to the Iran Nuclear Deal and Obama's endorsement of the Arab Spring. Though relations between the Trump Administration and Saudi Arabia are strong currently, there is every reason to suspect that, as Salafi terrorism continues to be funded worldwide by the Saudis, relations between President Trump and Saudi Arabia will sour, and sour quickly.

This will leave Russia dominating much of the Middle-East - Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen - while America will continue make their strategic withdrawal and focus on solidifying relations with Iraq and Afghanistan. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan will likely suffer the most from the American withdrawal, and may end up plagued by instability.

This is the new Middle-East: a Middle-East divided between US and Russian influence; divided between Russian-supported autocratic regimes, US-supported democratic institutions and sponsors of Salafi terrorism under sanctions.

In a Middle-East like this, terrorism may actually be defeated.

Trump's Saudi comment may signal end of long alliance

Earlier today, Donald Trump called on Saudi Arabia to end the Yemeni blockade immediately. Saudi Arabia is currently blocking many food stuffs from entering Yemen, driving the country to famine on an industrial scale.

Added to this strain has been Saudi Arabia slamming Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. That aside, Trump's comments about Yemen have come at a particularly hard time for Saudi Arabia, having just lost Ali Abdullah Saleh as leverage over the Houthis.

It is entirely possible that this is the beginning of the end of the Saudi-US alliance, an alliance which began with the intention of frustrating Soviet ambitions in the Middle-East and curbing their influence. The reason why this may come to an end is two-fold: either Saudi Arabia will cut their losses and become more anti-American, or they will remain pro-American and suffer from plaguing instability.

Saudi Arabia is losing every proxy war they have been engaged in. From Syria, to Iraq, to Yemen, to Afghanistan - their proxies are being defeated and replaced with either pro-American or pro-Iranian forces in the region. As it becomes clearer that Saudi Arabia will not detract itself from Salafi terrorism, the US look to other Middle-East allies as better alternatives, such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

If Saudi Arabia end the blockade in Yemen and stop funding for radical Islamic terrorism, it is very likely the Houthis will win the war and Saudi Arabia will be faced with Iranian proxies everywhere. This will cause a geo-political shift unlike any we have seen since the Iranian Revolution in 1979: Saudi Arabia will likely suffer both revolution and civil war, with the clear benefactor being ISIS.

How America respond to such instability in yet another Middle-East country is unclear. What is clear is that the Al-Saud government's rule has never been shakier, and could easily be swept away by instability and chaos.

If John Waver had been Donald J. Trump (2016 - 2017)

This article will focus on where John Waver would have deviated from Donald Trump's own foreign policy of the last twelve months, particularly in how it relates to the Middle-East.

For the most part, Donald Trump has done well in the Middle-East. He has certainly done better than Barrack Obama, though it is contestable as to whether he has done a better job than George W. Bush. This is because like W. Bush, Donald Trump is fighting in a war that cannot be won. George W. Bush fought the Iraq War. Donald Trump is supporting the Saudis in their war on Yemen.

1) John Waver would have withdrawn from Syria as soon as possible.

The American people are war-weary. Like Donald Trump, John Waver would have wanted to minimize the Obama legacy as much as was possible, and one way to do this would be to withdraw from the conflict the US had the least to lose by leaving: Syria.

Syria is complicated. With Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war, regime change in Syria is all but impossible without an exacerbated conflict between Russia and the United States. Simultaneously, John Waver would have pulled all troops and aviation out of Syria, to stop the war on ISIS in Syria, while also withdrawing all funds for the Syrian rebels. That way Russia would have been under further economic and military strain to end the conflict in Syria, keeping them occupied in Syria so the United States could have more breathing space to fix up other problems it has in other areas of the Middle-East.

Temporarily this would have given ISIS a firmer safe haven in Syria, but it would have meant that relations between the US and Turkey would not have deteriorated as rapidly as they have this year. Relations between the two NATO allies have deteriorated largely because the Kurds in Syria have been funded by the US to fight ISIS. Withdrawing all support for the Syrian Kurds would have meant that Turkey would have felt more at ease on its large southern border, and would instead have been able to work out with Russia and Iran how to deal with the ISIS threat in Syria.

2) John Waver would have pushed Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to fly sorties against ISIS exclusively in Iraq.

While ISIS in Syria could be dealt with by Russia, Turkey and Iran, ISIS in Iraq would have remained the responsibility of the US. But rather than the US fighting ISIS alone in the air, encouraging allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to fly sorties over Iraq would have been a positive step for the region. While Iraq and Saudi Arabia have been expanding their ties recently, these have largely been after the war against ISIS has been won, and not before then.

Iraq being welcomed earlier into the Arab world would have given Iraq more time to wrest itself free of Iranian control. Such ambition will undoubtedly take years, but Sunni Arab help in Iraq against ISIS would not have gone astray to ending the sectarian bloodletting there.

3) John Waver would have held the same course as Trump in Afghanistan - with one ISIS exception.

One of the things underestimated by the US is the ability to manipulate an intra-jihad war between Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In the case of Afghanistan, while Trump's policy is sound, further pressure could be put on the Taliban if it were hammered by not only the US-backed government in Kabul, but also by ISIS militants.

ISIS is small in Afghanistan. Turning a blind eye to it growing in size at the expense of the Taliban would have made it easier for certain tribes within Afghanistan to reconcile themselves with Ashraf Ghani's government. Provided ISIS received no weapons, training, or finance from the US, it could still be used to weaken the Taliban and provide the Afghan Army with further relief.

The Taliban, not ISIS, is the major threat to stability in Afghanistan. Until the Taliban is destroyed, the world will not be safe from the powers that enabled 9-11.

4) John Waver would have divided Yemen into two parts - north and south

The bloodletting in Yemen is beyond a catastrophe. It has happened because Saudi Arabia has felt surrounded by Iranian proxies - across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and now Yemen. President Donald Trump's support of the Yemeni civil war is reprehensible.

Understanding such concerns, but also realizing the limitations of Saudi air power, John Waver would have dissolved the Hadi Government and replaced it with a government headed by the Southern Movement. The Southern Movement, under a UAE-friendly dictatorship, would then be able to drive Al-Qaeda militants out of Southern Yemen and into the north, forcing Al-Qaeda to fight the Houthis until the Houthis accepted Yemen would no longer be two states.

It would be crucially important that food, water and sanitation be allowed into northern Yemen, while the Houthis' own supplies of weapons and military bases would be targeted. This would have helped avoid famine and the current Cholera outbreak in Yemen while also avoiding the current Al-Qaeda safe haven in the south of the country.


Perhaps this would have been more effective than President Trump's foreign policy - perhaps it would have been less effective. It is open for discussion, and overall I am happier with Trump's progress in the Middle-East than with Presidents' Obama and Bush.

With Assad victory certain, Israel's anxieties are growing

For the world, peace in Syria is desirable. For Israel, Syrian peace is a nightmare turned reality.

Like much of the world, Israel was anticipating the fall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad early in the Syrian civil war. As the conflict continued, Israel continued to condemn the Assad Government and called for rebels to take control of the country. At times Syrian rebels have been treated in Israeli hospitals. At other times, ISIS had been advocated by Israelis as a more desirable neighbour than the Syrian Government.

Like Saudi Arabia, Israel is threatened by the rise of Iran in the region. The war on ISIS has largely benefit the Iran-allied Iraqi government and the Syrian Government, though for both Israel and Saudi Arabia, the recovery of the Syrian Government is the worse predicament. The revival of Bashar Al-Assad means that Hezbollah will continue to be funded, Hamas will continue having dominant support from Iran and Syria and, unlike Iraq, Syria will remain staunchly anti-Israel and anti-American at any cost.

Yet as the Syrian rebels continue to be weakened, both Israel and Saudi Arabia are turning to the Kurds as new proxies. The Kurds remain largely autonomous in both Iraq and Syria, and thus could, theoretically, offer a counterbalance to Iran in the Middle-East. However, all of the Kurds' neighbours are anti-Kurdistan: Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. In Syria, extensive financial aid would be needed for the Kurds to defend themselves from Assad's Government. In Iraq, the chances are better for the Kurds to break off, as the Iraqi government is the weaker link.

Though Benyamin Netanyahu and other Israelis are anxious about the coming end of the Syrian civil war, perspective is needed here. While the Kurds might succeed in breaking off from Iraq and Syria to provide Israel with a new ally, there are other gains for Israel in recent years which should not go unnoticed. Jordan, an Israeli ally, remains stable in spite of neighbouring conflict; Sisi, the President of Egypt, is working with Israel to fight ISIS; Haftar Al-Khalifa, strongman of Libya, is also strengthening ties with Israel. And the Gulf states, set to be plagued by instability, are deepening their ties with Israel as a buffer to the threat of Iran.

But where Israel should look for expansion in ties with Middle-East countries is in Iraq. Iraq is a shadow of its former strength, but it can still act as a front line in the war against Iran. Many Iraqis are sick and tired of Iranian influence in their country, and the country is on the edge of an intra-Shi'ite conflict. Like Saudi Arabia, Israel would do well to work at - very secretly - pursuing closer ties with Iraq to quash an Iranian presence there.

Israel should, however, stop endorsing terror organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda as a better alternative to Iran. Such Israeli policy is most unwise and has alienated parts of the civilized world from them.

How Australia should have handled Iraq and Afghanistan

The following is a post about the course the Australian government should have held in their role in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003.

The dilemma faced by then Australian Prime Minister John Howard was how to stick by the United States through thick and thin, to be a most treasured ally. Unfortunately, engaging in the Iraq War was not an intelligent way to do that.

The Iraq War was a complete disaster. Any gains made in the Afghan War were quickly undone by a war that failed so spectacularly a new terror organization has since emerged, and one more brutal than Al-Qaeda. ISIS was forged in the furnace of the Iraq War.

Australian commitment to Iraq greatly undermined Australia's standing internationally, as it did to Britain and the US. Another approach could have been taken other than destabilizing Iraq.

Instead of committing troops to the Iraq War, Australia should have committed thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, to free up US military to go into Iraq.

By shouldering more burden in Afghanistan, Australia would have been able maintain its international reputation while also not leaving the US entirely isolated. Afghanistan was a cause worth fighting for - Iraq was not. However, if the US wanted to send more troops to Iraq, Australia could have supported the US by sending more Australian troops to Afghanistan, to ease the US burden as they fought in Iraq.

Such policy is worth considering for the Australian Government, next time a partner makes a foolish decision like President George Bush did in Iraq. Such a decision would show independence, integrity and solidarity, while not engaging in blunders as erroneous as the one Prime Minister John Howard led Australia into.