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| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 |
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ABSTRACT
Whither Regional Security in a World Turned Upside Down?
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| James A. Russell |
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Mr. Russell is a senior lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. The views expressed here are his own.
Veteran Middle Eastern analyst and former Clinton administration official Martin Indyk recently characterized the Middle East as having been turned “upside down” in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is hard to argue with his assessment. The Iraq invasion has unleashed wide-ranging forces that are re-ordering the internal and external dynamics of regional security and could plunge the region into a prolonged period of strategic insecurity.
The regional balance of power is being profoundly altered by the political empowerment of the Shia majority in Iraq, the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, and the accompanying loss of influence by Iraq’s Sunni community. Iraq no longer serves as the Sunni bulwark against Shia and Iranian expansion, and the Sunni Gulf monarchies (and Jordan) now find themselves front-line states against an emerging Iranian-dominated alliance comprising Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran’s seemingly inexorable march towards achieving a nuclear-weapons capability makes this alliance particularly disturbing to the Gulf states. In confronting these adversaries, the Sunni states also disturbingly find the region’s guarantor of security, the United States, in a weakened position. The limits of American military power on display in Iraq are combined with reduced political influence. This loss of influence is the cumulative result of policy choices made by the United States over the last six years.
Confronted by a series of conflicting messages from Washington that at various times emphasized democracy, transparency and human rights, and at other times demanded cooperation in the so-called war on terrorism, the region’s elites are now looking at alternative arrangements to deal with the regional insecurity emerging from the Iraq debacle and the rising power of Iran. Framed by the invasion of Iraq and the U.S. abandonment of constructive involvement in the Arab-Israeli dispute, these contradictory policies have combined to decimate public support for the United States throughout the region. The growth in anti-U.S. sentiment is an important underlying structural force pushing the region’s elites away from what had been a comfortable embrace with Washington.
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