Revisiting the Middle East Situation and Obama's Shift of Strategic Axis

In the middle of May, I published a commentary on the most difficult issue faced by Obama’s external policies titled “The Great Change in the Middle East Situation and Obama’s Shift of Strategic Axis.” Such a strategic shift occurred right in the middle of the historic moment of the Middle East’s “great turbulence, great divide and great reorganization,” which made it difficult for Washington to shift military and economic resources from the Muslim world to the Asia-Pacific region.

Reuters reported that the next defense cruise area of the USS John C. Stennis, currently berthed in Seattle, was originally the Pacific Ocean to serve Obama’s shift of strategic axis. However, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Aug. 22 that, in response to the request of the Central Command, USS Stennis would return to the Persian Gulf early to counter the “Iranian threat” as well as handle the worsening situation in Syria.

With rumors rife regarding the Israeli government’s alleged intention to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before the U.S. presidential election, clouds of war are suddenly hanging over the Persian Gulf. In addition to the challenges of foreign diplomacy, the Middle East situation has become a difficult internal affairs issue for Obama. Currently he faces attacks for his “betrayal” of Israel by Mitt Romney and the right wing of the Republican Party.

The latest development of the Middle East situation is becoming increasingly unfavorable for Obama’s strategic shift.

First is the spread and deepening of Syria’s civil war. Even though it is besieged from all sides, the Assad administration maintains a rather strong cohesion. This is mainly because the Alawite sect, which makes up the main body of the administration, becomes even more united in the face of threats. Next is that Assad has shrewdly reached a deal with the Kurds to allow the Kurdish region to become autonomous. This has put the Turkish government, who supports the Syrian opposition party, in a position of landing itself in trouble while trying to help others. It is worried that once Syria collapses and is torn apart, a “Great Kurdistan” would be born, which would threaten Turkey’s own territorial integrity. This has evidently decreased Turkey’s enthusiasm in doing the dirty work for Washington or Saudi Arabia.

The civil war in Syria is rapidly becoming internationalized; the ethnic conflicts have begun to extend to Lebanon and Iraq. If the current stable situation that the two countries are barely maintaining were to be destroyed, it would make it even harder for the U.S. to extricate itself from the Middle East even though it suits the interest of Israel. In addition, the rise of al-Qaida’s (base) role in Syria’s opposition party has attracted the attention of the New York Times and the Washington Post. This has caused both the American government and its public to once again taste the bitter fruit of supporting Afghanistan in its holy war against the USSR all those years ago, thereby deepening the complexity and doubts as to Washington’s policy towards Syria.

At the moment, the situation that would have a more far-reaching impact is the development in Egypt. When I published my commentary discussing the result of the Egyptian presidential election, I had pointed out that although Washington was able to control much of the country’s power through their full support of the Egyptian military, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political power should not be underestimated. Recent developments have proven this assertion.

It is impossible for the U.S. to extricate itself from the Middle East.

The exact details of the terrorism act carried out in the Sinai Peninsula at the beginning of August were shrouded in mystery. Many pundits have pointed out that shadow of Israeli intelligence, Mossad, is continuously lurking behind the scenes. Mossad’s objective was to stop the new Egyptian government from opening up the borders of the Gaza Strip. However, the new Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, used the incident’s blow to the reputation of the Egyptian military as well as the generation gap within the army to remove and replace the overlord Hussein Tantawi, who had acted as chairman of the highest committee in the armed forces since the Egyptian revolution. He was thereby able to change the power balance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military in an instant. This development, which has been generally described as a soft coup, was completely unexpected by the U.S. and Israel and has greatly reduced the influence of the two countries on Cairo.

I had also pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and the Saudi royal family were political rivals, and predicted that the former would retaliate against the latter on the international stage. The attitude Morsi displayed regarding the Syrian crisis has completely proven this prediction. Morsi first stepped over the divide among different sects and resolved the crisis by appealing to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran to cooperate. He then took the initiative to get close to and cooperate with Iran, which Egypt had broken ties with several decades ago. Morsi followed this with a visit to Beijing, as well as a trip to Tehran to participate in the Non-Allied Movement summit. This clearly illustrated that Egypt’s approach to foreign diplomacy is different from that of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

The Egyptian government’s reconciliation with Shiite Iran reflects the steady maturation of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in politics. This contrasts strongly with the Saudi Arabian royal family, a group which follows the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement and cares only for protecting the narrow interests of the religious group and the conservative autocratic monarchy. The Egyptian government is also unlike al-Qaida’s zealots who participated actively in the Syrian civil war and see all religious groups outside of Sunni Islam as irreconcilable heretics. The turning of the Muslim Brotherhood into the mainstream of political Islam has allowed people to hope that the Arab democratic movement will transcend religious group conflicts and allow the Arab Spring to gradually affect Washington’s troubled times.

From the Iranian nuclear crisis to Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Palestine, there is one key at the root of the Middle East’s problem: the sin of the Judeo-Christian West’s use of world order and influence to create system which forces the innocent Arabs to bear the burden of the European Christian countries’ anti-Semitic history. Historical developments such as the rise of the BRIC nations, the deepening economic and political crises in Europe and the Arab democratic movement all indicate that the world order championed by the West is coming to an end. Not only has such a prospect added to the high instability of the Middle East situation, especially the possibility of risky operations by the Israeli military, it has also made the U.S.’ attempt to extricate itself from the Middle East in order to focus on managing the Asia-Pacific seem like “Mission Impossible.”