distribution network fuelled by corruption - who can
really blame the Iranians or Israel for taking advantage
of weakness?
As the geopolitics entangle, the real issue in the region is the weakness of Arab governments, or of Arab
political culture. Either the strongman or chaos is not
a good formula, for the strongman breeds the chaos by
annihilating the moderates and social trust, by ensuring a dependent and cowed population that can only
see extremes as answers.
the region’s future. The shadow of WMD haunts the
Middle East. If and when the day comes that WMDs
are introduced by non-state actors, or become the key
ingredients of a balance of power between states, then
the current era will seem like child’s play. Today’s petty
manoeuvres combined with the world’s most dangerous weapons will make for a terrible mix.
The Middle East is a very old region. It is full of daily
drama, excitement, and high emotional levels, often positively so. People exhibit enormous care for each other,
but they also resort quickly to violence to resolve differences. In politics, high emotions («drama») can lead
to a «with me or against» me world that is not conducive to stability and development. In a vicous cycle, they
also lead to impetuious decision or cycles of revenge,
leading to further cycles of failure, further anxiety, and
so on, possibly ad infinitum, or «ad collapse».
In the Middle East, these old political reflexes cannot deliver stable structures. They increase the distrust
between people in the region as they fail to manage in a
holistic fashion, and end up in conflict. Resort to group
belonging, the ‘tribe’ is the sole known reliable defence
against threat, creating a vicious cycle of revenge and
violence that we see today.
Unfortunately, creating new economies or developing
sensible integration or new inclusive social paradigms
will not happen as long as the old habits are locked onto
revenge, and drama played out in every form of media
or in parliaments. The answers lie elsewhere and the
basic question is whether this old region can indeed develop the requisite new habits of political culture and
not be damned to live, and relive, the old ones until collapse overcomes it.
The irony is that Turkey, Iran and Israel suffer from
the same ailment. They are all as ‘old’ as the Arabs,
and despite temporary advantage often due to Arab
weakness, will also succumb to their own excesses and
blindness - they will make their own errors, geopolitical
and domestic. The distrust and drama that brought the
Arabs down is infectious. Turkey is already in trouble,
Iran is overstretched, and Israel is far from secure in a
dangerous region. The mud is deep.
The only way out is extreme cooperation, a taming
of national, sectarian or personal interest in the name
of a larger cause, and a change in geopolitics until all
attempts at gain are limited to a sensible degree. Learning this will not be easy but regional security cooperation, economic integration, or even just stabilization,
will remain just talk and chatter until that shift is fully
absorbed, and a new paradigm is born from this very
old world.
This is where geopolitics and domestic politics meet,
where aggressive nations take advantage. Iran, Turkey,
Israel may find some comfort in the great Arab disintegration but the majority of the Middle East is Sunni
and Arab, and it is the sea in which the others live. This
is where, one day, today’s victors may find themselves
mired in the mud.
The real issue in the Arab world is developing a politics of trust, between state and citizen, between sects
and identities, between rich and poor. There is no
formula for doing so today. Any suggestion of one is
challenged by the gun, threatened by terror, or simply
ignored. Tunisia may be the exception worth studying,
but it also may be that which simply proves the rule.
The Future
The sum of the above is confusion. The region suggests no clear outcomes, and mixed, even contradictory, purposes by all. The competition between all these
parties leaves nothing little behind after the fighting but
scorched earth - and damaged minds. The battles do
not add up to a new strategic order, even a precarious
one. Instead, the desire for revenge and future pre-eminence remains.
The losses are, for the time being, in one direction:
the battlefields in the region today are all Arab. Yemen,
Syria, Iraq, even Lebanon, though not a military struggle, suffers political fragmentation from the regional
pressures. Whether simply due to the implosion of the
state, or outside interference, or the deadly mixture of
both, the Arabs lose house and home in the great geopolitical game.
The trade-offs are all there in theory. Yemen returns
to the Saudi fold, Iraq is Iran’s neck of the woods, and
Syria requires a profound compromise, one not even
close to becoming real anytime soon, and in the meantime and after a deal, there and elsewhere, scorched
earth.
The Iran nuclear deal may point more poignantly to
82
Terre écorchée: le paysage géopolitique du
Moyen-Orient, par John Bell
Le Moyen-Orient actuel est marqué par un monde
arabe affaibli et un rôle renforcé des pays non arabes,
tels que l’Iran, la Turquie et Israël. Généralement, ils
fixent l’agenda auquel les arabes réagissent. Un monde
arabe affaibli n’est cependant pas une bonne nouvelle
pour le Moyen-Orient. Le risque d’un naufrage collectif n’est pas faible.
En juin 1967, le monde arabe s’est effondré. Cela
peut sembler une accusation sévère étant donné qu’il
continue à exister un monde arabophone, plein de
convulsions politiques et d’individus luttant pour le
meilleur. Cependant, à partir de cette date, le monde
arabe a cessé d’être une entité confiante en elle-même,
pleine d’espoir et en lutte. Lentement mais sûrement, il
a commencé à perdre du terrain par rapport à d’autres
nations de la région.
Au fil du temps, la Turquie, l’Iran ainsi que - la cause
de la débâcle de 1967 - Israël, sont devenus plus forts
que les Etats arabes, créant la géopolitique désespérée d’aujourd’hui. Malgré quelques succès relatifs à la
marge, dans certain