Table Of Contents:
(Source: Needpix.com)
Evaluating the Importance of Recent Events: George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures, Jan.14, 2020
Libya’s Endless War Is What Happens If the U.S. Won’t Lead: Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, Jan. 14, 2020
The Ever-Elusive Idea of Freedom in the Middle East: Sam Sweeney, National Review, Jan. 16, 2020
As Oman Enters a New Era, Economic and Political Challenges Persist: Yasmina Abouzzohour, Brookings, Jan. 15, 2020
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Evaluating the Importance of Recent Events
George Friedman
Geopolitical Futures, Jan.14, 2020
There are moments when the entire world seems to be coming apart, as if Armageddon itself were upon us. Public attention tends to be able to handle just one Armageddon at a time, and even though the end of the world would probably entail more than one calamity, newspapers have room for only one alarmed headline a day, and Twitter seems confined to one overwhelming rage attack at a time. I am of course referring to the high-profile confrontation between the U.S. and Iran and the much lower profile Turkish deployment to Libya.
Catastrophic though they may seem, it is prudent to consider their current state, just a week or two after the panic, and to consider other panic-ridden global processes. What, after all, happened to China and Brexit?
The pattern of informational flow and emotional intensity does not derive from the underlying issue – the issues are still there. History grubs its way forward ineluctably, but we only sometimes notice it, usually when something happens that is both unexpected and noisy. Since humanity tends to expect tomorrow not to be any different than yesterday, and since its attention is drawn by noise, it assumes what was once unnoticed is now catastrophic.
Consider the unexpected and noisy events in Turkey and between the United States and Iran. They are significant but the frantic noise drowns out their importance, which unfolds over years, decades and generations.
Iran’s struggle to create a sphere of influence, the Shiite crescent as it is sometimes called, is challenged by its opponents. On one side are Iranian non-state proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. On the other side are Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Iranians have tried to focus the struggle on Iraq, using substantial but far from overwhelming support among Iraqi Shiites. The United States has focused its efforts on Iran itself, using economic sanctions to undermine the regime and to block it in Iraq. Neither side has been successful. The sanctions have created unhappiness, reflected in the university-based demonstrations over the downing of a Ukrainian plane. But student uprisings rarely bring about regime change. Others must join, and to this point, the regime is under pressure but not falling.
Turkey, meanwhile, made a significant move to exert its control over the Eastern Mediterranean and in Libya, the goal of which is strategic. The chaos of the Middle East increasingly impinges on Turkey, yet Turkey is, second to Israel, the major power in the region. The assertion of power to the east changes the perception and reality and gives Ankara access to major oil supplies, which it needs to control for national security reasons. The expectation was that its move into Libya might create conflict with Russia. The move into the Mediterranean might create tensions with Israel and Greece, both backed by the United States. Such tensions have not surfaced thus far, and indeed Turkey’s control of the Eastern Mediterranean is still in the concept development phase. What is interesting is there seems to be something of an entente with Russia over Libya. Russia does not want to alienate Turkey, nor does Turkey want to alienate Russia. What happens later will happen. For now, a mistrustful bargain will do. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Libya’s Endless War Is What Happens If the U.S. Won’t Lead
Leonid Bershidsky
Bloomberg, Jan. 14, 2020
A solution to the civil conflict in Libya is the ultimate hot potato. A series of global and regional powers have tried to bring the warring sides together; Turkey and Russia were the latest to try and fail in Moscow on Monday. Now it’s Germany’s turn, and if it fails as well, the standoff is likely to go on until the collapse of one faction or both. The complex, multi-sided game playing out in Libya provides a window on how things work in a new, post-Pax Americana world. The assertive U.S., missing from the Libya deliberations as well as the action on the ground, is difficult to replace.
The Moscow talks were meant to consolidate a shaky ceasefire around the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Since last April, General Khalifa Haftar’s forces have been trying to take the city from the United Nations-supported Government of National Accord led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey unequivocally backs Sarraj, in large part because they’ve signed a controversial pact demarcating their maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean, bolstering their claims to undersea natural gas deposits that Cyprus, Greece and Egypt also consider their own. Erdogan has also sent a small number of troops to Libya to train Sarraj’s forces.
Russia plays a more equivocal role. On the one hand, Libyan and U.S. officials have reported the involvement Russian mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group on Haftar’s side. According to some sources, there are more than 1,000 of these private soldiers, who usually operate in close coordination with the regular Russian military. (Russia, as usual, officially denies any military involvement.) Russia also has printed banknotes for a parallel central bank established by Haftar in eastern Libya, and Russian-made weapons have filtered down to his rebel troops through the United Arab Emirates. On the other hand, the Russian oil company Tatneft last month resumed exploration in Libya under a deal with the country’s National Oil Corporation, which is aligned with the Sarraj government.
Russia’s attempts to work with both sides are part of President Vladimir Putin’s interest-based policy in the Middle East and Africa. Whatever works for the Russian oil and weapons industries works for Russia, too. Ultimately, Putin wants a stable government in Libya with which Russia can build a relationship. The heavier bet the Kremlin appears to have placed on Haftar is explained only by the greater territory he controls. But a lack of clear commitment on Putin’s part, and his good relationship with Erdogan, mean a lack of control over Haftar, who left Moscow Monday night without signing the cease-fire deal already signed by Sarraj.
Erdogan and Putin were not the first parties who tried to bring the sides to a compromise. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Haftar and Sarraj near Paris, and even got them to agree to a cease-fire — which didn’t hold. His neutrality has also been called into question: Last year, antitank missiles the U.S. had sold to France were discovered by Sarraj’s troops at a base formerly used by Haftar’s forces, and Macron blocked a European Union statement calling on Haftar to stop his Tripoli offensive. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Ever-Elusive Idea of Freedom in the Middle East
Sam Sweeney
National Review, Jan. 16, 2020
The past decade of conflict in the Middle East has exposed a gap in the understanding of freedom and of what the idea means in the varying communities, societies, and countries of the region. This misunderstanding has been between the Middle East and the rest of the world (primarily the West), between countries within the region, and within countries themselves, as the concept of freedom has continued to develop over the past century in the region. As layers of “non-freedom” have been peeled back, new barriers to freedom emerge. While this misunderstanding of an idea is not uniquely the cause of the region’s turmoil, it is indeed in the background of most conflicts there, particularly those defined as an oppressed people against a dictatorial regime or aggressive enemy.
Early in the 20th century, freedom in the Middle East was primarily thought of as freedom from colonization — e.g. the freedom of the Turkish people from being divided up by Greece, Russia, France, etc., and the freedom of the Arabs from the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and then from European colonialism, and so on and so forth. The success in gaining freedom from colonialism led directly to the nationalist era in Middle Eastern politics, which in many ways has lasted to today, though it is arguably weaker than it has been since its inception, at least in the Arab countries of the region. Nationalism in its modern form is mostly a foreign concept to the Middle East, existing seriously only since the mid-19th century or so. It is an attempt to import a model that worked in Europe — the nation-state — into a region with a fundamentally different national and social history.
More so than Europe, the Middle East is a patchwork of ethnicities (nations) living on top of, rather than next to, one another. While the European nation-state often subjected those at the periphery to adopt the national identity of the center — as the culture and language of Paris and Madrid, for example, were imposed on Basques and Catalans — in the Middle East such various groups often live within the same city and overlap in ways that make it impossible to draw a map separating people along ethnic lines. The creation of the nation-state in the Middle East led to a zero-sum game of winners and losers, with competing groups fighting for absolute control over the same territory. After a successful military campaign against Greece, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, Turkey won its independence and created a state of, by, and for the Turkish people. Through genocide, they eliminated other populations living in the same geographical space — the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christian communities that formed a demographic threat to the Turkishness of Turkey. The Kurdish population, which became demographically dominant over areas once mixed with Christians, has been suffering the same fate as Turkey’s attempt to Turkify every corner of the country continues.
Since the de facto elimination of Turkey’s Christian population, the Turkish state has made token gestures of outreach to the remaining minuscule communities, because they no longer represent a serious threat to the Turkishness of Turkey. Promoting the small remaining minorities allows Turkey to maintain its standing in the international community, even as it continues its campaign to Turkify public and private life. Last year, for example, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a big show of announcing the construction of a new Syriac Orthodox church in Istanbul. Erdogan is unlikely to make the same gesture to the Kurdish community in the near future, although Kurds had a lot of hope in Erdogan and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) when they first took power. As the situation stands today, however, Kurdish nationalism and Turkish nationalism are competing forces that cannot exist side by side, and Turkish nationalism is one and the same as the state of Turkey. And so the Kurdish struggle for freedom in Turkey, as in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, remains a national (ethnic) struggle for collective freedom. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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As Oman Enters a New Era, Economic and Political Challenges Persist
Yasmina Abouzzohour
Brookings, Jan. 15, 2020
Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said died at age 79 on January 10. The sultan, who ruled Oman since he deposed his father with British support in 1970, had no children or siblings, and therefore no heir apparent. The absence of a clear line of succession has long worried Omanis and allies as Qaboos’ health deteriorated over the last decade.
However, the succession took place smoothly, with the Royal Family Council appointing Qaboos’ cousin — Haitham bin Tariq Al Said — within 24 hours of Qaboos’ death, on the late sultan’s recommendation. Haitham bin Tariq, 65, was the minister of heritage and culture from 2002 until his ascension to the throne. Under Qaboos, he had also served as secretary general for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1994-2002) and as undersecretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in political affairs (1986-1994).
Qaboos’ illness and death shook Omanis: He was modern Oman’s founding father and held an overpowering role in Omani domestic and foreign affairs. He headed the state, government, and military, and directed a foreign policy focused on deft diplomacy in a fraught region.
Notwithstanding his robust rule, Oman under Qaboos was plagued with economic hardship and a closed political scene that led to various episodes of dissidence. The economy’s limitations and the expectations of a changing population will likely cause protests to multiply in the near future. The new sultan must therefore focus on job creation, diversifying Oman’s economy away from natural resources, and introducing controlled political reforms.
BUILDING MODERN OMAN
Qaboos deposed his father Said bin Taimur on July 23, 1970. He took over an impoverished country with a weak state and a Britain-focused isolationist foreign policy, lacking in infrastructure, hospitals, and schools.
Significant evidence shows that the British had engineered the coup because of massive opposition to Said’s rule and his reticence to modernize Oman. By that point, Said — who had contained important tribal dissidence during the Jabal Akhdar wars — was facing a region-wide rebellion in Dhofar and feared that modernizing the country would incite further dissidence. By contrast, Qaboos, who was educated in Sandhurst in the United Kingdom and who had been placed under house arrest in Salalah on Said’s orders, presented a safe choice as a sultan who would likely embrace modernization. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Saudi Arabia has paid $500M toward the cost of US troops in the country: Barbara Starr, CNN, Jan. 16, 2020-– Saudi Arabia has paid the US approximately $500 million to begin to cover the cost of US troops operating in the country, according to a US official.
Iranian and American Strategies After Soleimani: George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures, Jan. 6, 2020 — Iran has expressed outrage at the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, and has announced a resumption of its nuclear enrichment program, but little in the way of reprisals has actually taken place.
Influential Iranians Break Ranks with State after Ukrainian Jet Downing: Saphora Smith, Michelle Gooden-Jones and Dan De Luce, NBC News, Jan. 19, 2020 — A slew of influential Iranian artists, television personalities and sports stars have publicly broken with Tehran after the government denied for days that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane this month.
Lebanon’s Protests Spiral: Audrey Wilson, FP, Jan. 20, 2020 — Over the weekend Beirut saw some of the most violent unrest since anti-government protests began in October, with security forces using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets to disperse crowds on both Saturday and Sunday.
Four Protesters, Two Policemen Killed as Iraq Unrest Resumes: Reuters, Jan. 20, 2020 — Six Iraqis including two police officers were killed and scores were wounded in Baghdad and other cities on
