Terror Defense No Al Qaida Terror
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- Alt Cause- Multitude of factors imperil Saudi stability
- US counterterrorism strategies make Middle East violence inevitable
- Impact non-unique- Foundations of human progression make violence inevitable, especially in the Middle East
- New developments preclude any effective US policy in the Middle East
Middle East DefenseMiddle EastGenericAlt Cause- US alliance with Saudi Arabia fuels instabilityAxworthy 15— (Michael, “Is it time to make Iran our friend and Saudi Arabia our enemy?,” The guardian, 28 January 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/iran-saudi-arabia-middle-east-stability-peace). WM Many years ago, a Foreign Office grandee of an older generation, Sir Julian Bullard, used to tell aspiring new diplomats that the best reason for learning German was to read Nietzsche’s epigrams. I’m not sure many of them took his advice to heart, but I did at least read the one that says Wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein, which translates as: if you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Another word for abyss is, of course, Gulf. Things are changing in the Persian Gulf region. An elderly, ailing Saudi king dies and is replaced by his elderly, ailing half-brother – just as Houthi rebels appear to achieve a major success in Yemen. Meanwhile, representatives of more than 20 countries – including Britain, the US and Iraq – agonise over how to tackle Islamic State (Isis), with Baghdad seeking more support from its western allies for the fight. Faced with so much change in the Middle East, western governments seem to be at a crossroads. Not so long ago, we were intent upon a bombing campaign to remove the Assad regime in Syria. Now, only 18 months or so later, the continuation of that regime appears to be a necessity – if a rather distasteful one – for western policy in the region, if the much more dangerous threat from Isis is to be contained or removed. At the same time our attitudes to Iran have also shifted, as the process of negotiation over the Iranian nuclear question has ground slowly forward. I was surprised last week to hear a colleague suggest that the idea that Iran was a force for stability in the Persian Gulf region was now conventional wisdom. But our attitudes have not shifted enough for us fully to embrace the Iranians as allies in Iraq and Syria. That’s a perverse situation. And there are still influential voices in the US and elsewhere who, like the Saudis, warn of Iranian expansionism. Those same voices have tended to laud the alleged reforming zeal of King Abdullah (nothing I have heard leads me to think his successor will be any more zealous), ignoring the uncomfortable fact that most of the worst Islamic extremism and terrorism of the past two decades has tracked back, through funding and religious influence, ultimately, to Saudi Arabia. In this situation, the state we have been accustomed to seeing as our enemy (Iran) is starting to look more like a potential friend, and the state we treat as an ally looks more and more, if not like an enemy, like the sort of friend that renders it unnecessary to have enemies. It would almost certainly be unwise to expect too much of a possible alliance with the Iranians in fighting Isis. We should be fully alive to the range of opportunities opened up by the developing rapprochement with Iran; it is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dark picture. But the Iranian armed forces are not powerful as others in the region in terms of big battalions; their Revolutionary Guard Corps is experienced and highly competent, but they could probably not do much more than they are doing already in Iraq and Syria. Even if they could help, it would probably not be in the interests of long-term stability, because heavy intervention by Shia Iran in Iraq and Syria would probably only incite further resistance from Sunni Arab groups. The key to success against Isis has to involve encouraging Sunni Arabs themselves to reject Isis, as they rejected and fought al-Qaida in Iraq in coordination with the so-called US surge from 2007 onwards. Unfortunately, western support for, and relationships with, those Sunni Arab elements dwindled after the success of that policy, and that is partly why we have Isis. Rebuilding those relationships now is going to be difficult because the Sunnis feel the west betrayed them. In articulating our policy in the region, in circumstances of sharpening sectarian divisions, it is all the more important that our commitment to stability is clear and unequivocal – particularly our commitment to the extirpation not just of Isis and al-Qaida but also, as far as possible, of the causes that brought them about. This is where I come back to Bullard, and to Nietzsche: the Persian Gulf looks also into you – in other words, the tensions of the region require us to re-examine our own policies. Stability in the Persian Gulf region is what we say we want, and much analysis and commentary takes that as a given. But do we really? How much do we want it? Do we want it enough, for example, to risk alienating our ostensible allies along the Gulf’s southern shore, and changing their disposition toward lucrative weapons purchases? Because that is what would happen if we were to tackle head on the role some of the countries play in funding the most radically destabilising Sunni extremist groups, such as Isis and al-Qaida. Many would agree that the extremist Sunni ideology of Isis is merely a step on from, or the application of, the Wahhabi Islam that is the basis of Saudi Arabia. It is this extremism that is driving the burgeoning sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia, potentially disastrous on a hitherto undreamed-of scale. Or do we instead, whatever the window dressing, calculate that our national interests, in the narrowest sense, are entirely about arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states? Do we turn a blind eye to the extremist sympathies and funding that flows from them, and in effect allow these states to buy our foreign policy along with our weapons? Buy one, get one free. Julian Bullard would not, I think, have recommended the latter course. It should be plain enough that to throw in our lot on one side of a sectarian conflict in the Middle East could have catastrophic consequences both for regional stability and for our own interests. But it seems as though that is the drift of the policy thinking of at least some elements of the present government. If the UK, in particular, is to have any credibility in the future in this region, they must be restrained. Alt Cause- Multitude of factors imperil Saudi stabilityCafiero and Wagner 7/6—research analyst with and CEO of Country Risk Solutions, a cross-border risk advisory (Giorgio and Daniel, “While Saudi Arabia Goes to War Abroad, It's Simmering at Home,” Huffington Post, July 6, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/giorgio-cafiero/while-saudi-arabia-goes-t_b_7724490.html). WM To hear Saudi leaders tell it, the primary threat to the kingdom’s stability is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Worried over Washington and Tehran’s slowly improving relationship, Riyadh has projected an increasingly militarized and sectarian foreign policy aimed at countering Iran’s alleged hegemonic aims in the Middle East. Yet tension with Iran is only one element of an increasingly complicated mosaic of threats to Saudi Arabia. In fact, the gravest dangers to the kingdom come from within. Saudi Arabia is a classic rentier state. In exchange for the absolute acquiescence of its 29 million subjects, the ruling al-Saud family provides services such as housing, health care, education, and a variety of subsidies – all funded by the country’s substantial oil wealth. Combined with intolerance for dissent, control over these resources has historically served as the ruling family’s hedge against instability of all varieties. In 2011, for example, the Saudi leadership responded to the Arab Spring revolts across the region by injecting $130 billion in the form of salary increases, public-sector job creation, and housing subsidies to minimize the potential for an uprising. Meanwhile, the kingdom’s appalling human rights record has deteriorated. Over the past four years, beheadings have skyrocketed and torture has flourished. However, this authoritarian rentier state model is unsustainable. Oil revenues are down, local unrest is simmering, and extremists are taking aim at the kingdom from without and within. The roots of all these problems come not from Iran but from inside Saudi Arabia itself. Feeling the Pinch The global slide in oil prices has taken a toll on Saudi Arabia’s fossil-fueled economy. Foreign reserves dropped by $36 billion this spring, and are projected to fall another$300 billion within two years. The kingdom’s 2015 budget deficit – the first in seven years – is projected to reach $40 billion. With the kingdom waging a costly military campaign in Yemen, and the recently installed King Salman granting salary bonuses to public employees and military families, Saudi Arabia’s coffers are being drained at a rapid pace. Demographic realities exacerbate these fiscal pressures. Unlike many Arab states that have declining or stable birth rates, Saudi Arabia’s population is growing. More half of the kingdom’s population is under the age of 25 and two-thirds are under 29. With a high youth unemployment rate and an estimated 25 percent of Saudis living in poverty, the economic grievances that drove Arabs in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria to revolt could spark similar forms of resistance among Saudi Arabians, constituting a major worry for the royal family. The kingdom’s educational system is in dire need of reform. While many young Saudis are well-versed in the Koran as a result of their religious education, they often lack skills that are more practical and applicable to the global economy. The human capital of the country’s women is especially underdeveloped. Sixty percent of Saudis enrolled in higher education are women, yet the country’s female unemployment rate is 32.5percent. King Salman’s predecessor, King Abdullah, pursued progressive reforms (by Saudi Arabian standards) on gender issues, but the kingdom’s conservative elements prevented much progress. The reality is that Saudi law still recognizes women as property of their male relatives. In Saudi Arabia, which remains the only country that bans female drivers, if a woman falls in public it’s even illegal for an ambulance to pick her up. Militant Jihadism Since the 18th century, the Saudi ruling family has relied on an alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Yet Saudi Arabia’s leadership has increasingly found this arrangement problematic, with several Wahhabi militant groups accusing the ruling al-Saud family of corruption and dedicating themselves to overthrowing it. Scores of jihadist terrorist attacks in the kingdom, which peaked during the al-Qaedainsurgency of the mid-2000s, highlight the failure of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to maintain the loyalty of certain Wahhabi hardliners. Even as Saudi Arabia contributes to the U.S.-led military campaign against Daesh – another name for the self-styled “Islamic State” – thousands of Saudis have fled the kingdom to join Daesh’s ranks on the Iraqi and Syrian battlefields. Meanwhile, its supporters have launched a spate of “lone wolf” attacks against foreigners and Shiites in the kingdom. The caliphate’s leaders have openly targeted Saudi Arabia’s leadership. In a statement last November, Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced his intention to expand Daesh to the “lands of al-Haramein” – a reference to Mecca and Medina. He referred to the ruling family as “the serpent’s head” and the “stronghold of the disease,” likening them to the pre-Islamic pagan rulers of Mecca and calling on supporters in the kingdom to rise up against them. A few months later, when King Abdullah died, the group’s supporters took to social media to celebrate the death of the “thief of the two holy mosques,” further demonstrating Daesh’s vitriol for the monarchy. Although Riyadh has made combatting Daesh a lower priority than fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the kingdom is extremely vulnerable to the group and its quest to foment chaos in the Gulf region. Given Daesh’s rapid rise to power in large portions of Iraq and Syria, and the mushrooming of its affiliated groups from Libya to Pakistan, Riyadh has every reason to be concerned about implications for the kingdom’s security. Rising Sectarian Temperatures Ever since the Wahhabi conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, the Shiites of modern-day Saudi Arabia – roughly 15 percent of the total population – have endured state-sponsored discrimination, social marginalization, and campaigns of violence waged by anti-Shiite hardliners. Particularly since the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province – home to virtually the entire Shiite minority and all of the kingdom’s oil reserves – has experienced growing sectarian unrest and heightened political tension. In response to increasingly vocal demands for political, economic, and social reforms from their Shiite subjects, Saudi authorities have waged a harsh crackdown in the Eastern Province, maintaining that Shiite dissent is a product of Iranian meddling. Saudi Arabia’s actions in neighboring countries have further raised sectarian temperatures. Riyadh’s decision in 2011 to deploy security forces to neighboring Bahrain to help the Sunni rulers in Manama suppress a democratic revolt from Bahraini Shiites intensified tensions between Saudi Arabia’s Sunni rulers and their own Shiite subjects. Furthermore, while Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious establishment has called Riyadh’s military campaign in Yemen a “holy war,” Shiites in the Eastern Province have vocally condemned the kingdom’s war against the Houthis. In early April, clashes erupted in Awamiyah between security forces and Shiite protestors demanding an end to Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen. Last year, Sheik Nimr al-Nimr – a revered Shiite cleric in the Eastern Province – was sentenced to death for allegedly inciting violence against the kingdom. Saudi Arabian Shiites see his sentence as a political maneuver aimed at quelling dissent in the Eastern Province. If Nimr is actually executed, sectarian tensions in the kingdom, as well as in other Middle Eastern countries, can only rise. Documented attacks against security forces by armed Shiite factions in the Eastern Province represent a growing potential for militancy and violent unrest. Some hardline Wahhabis complain that Saudi authorities are too soft on Shiite dissent. Daesh has exploited this tension by demanding that Gulf Arab backers of the group carry out violence directed at all Shiites of the Arabian Peninsula. Daesh claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings targeting Shiite mosques in the Eastern Province this May, following a shooting of Shiites in the district of al-Ahsa on November 3, which marked the Shiite holy day of Ashura. The threat of more Daesh-orchestrated and inspired terrorism in the Eastern Province poses a difficult dilemma for Saudi Arabia’s leadership. Following May’s violence, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud immediately visited the Eastern Province in an effort to convince locals that their rulers are committed to the security of all Saudi Arabians. However, many Shiites hold the kingdom’s religious establishment responsible for the attacks and maintain that officials in Riyadh turn a blind eye to Daesh’s sectarian agenda in the kingdom. Ultimately, it will be difficult for Riyadh to maintain a lid on Shiite dissent while Daesh openly inflames sectarian tensions. Daesh’s recent suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City, which killed 27 and injured 227, along with its calls for violence against Bahrain’s Shiites, underscores its commitment to exploiting the Gulf’s sectarian tensions as a means of spreading its violent campaign to the region’s monarchies – with Saudi Arabia being the group’s top prize. This balancing act is further complicated by Saudi Arabia’s efforts to topple the Iranian-backed regime in Syria and the kingdom’s ongoing war against the Zaydi Shiite Houthis in Yemen, which will continue to fuel tension between Saudi Arabia’s Sunni leadership and Shiite subjects. While the Saudi government relies on its petro-wealth to buy loyalty and crush all dissent, a plethora of domestic and regional developments make the need for genuine and serious reforms in the kingdom increasingly urgent. Failure to implement them can only result in the deepening of these grievances. The prospects for political and social stability in the kingdom will depend on the new leadership’s ability to address these internal issues in a truly meaningful way. Changes in Saudi Arabia’s reactionary society and political system cannot be expected in a short period of time. But they won’t get underway at all until Saudi leaders stop blaming Iran for their problems and start looking within. US counterterrorism strategies make Middle East violence inevitableFryklund 15— JD, PhD, has spent the last decade in the middle east with US programs (Inge Fryklund, “America’s Hydra Problem in the Middle East,” Foreign Policy in Focus, May 7, 2015, http://fpif.org/americas-hydra-problem-in-the-middle-east/). WM Striking Without Asking Our current approach to the Islamic State and the greater Middle East tracks the Greeks’ pre-Heracles whack-a-mole approach to the Hydra. We attack one manifestation of violence at a time, without a thought about the likely consequences of our own violence. We’re surprised when the threat morphs, metastasizes, or appears in a new place. We note that the terrorists are resilient or adaptive or flexible, but do not ask why or whether our own actions contributed to their resilience. Describing the problem as “hydra-headed” conveys puzzlement and frustration, but it’s merely descriptive — there’s no further analysis. Even our language fits the Hydra myth pattern. We seek to “decapitate” the leadership of terrorist organizations. Take out Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the problem will be solved. However, cutting off these heads has made no appreciable dent in the threat posed by the groups they led. When a movement arises out of frustration and grievance, emergent leadership is more likely a consequence of the movement than a cause of it. The term “counter-terrorism” itself evokes a classic Hydra strategy. As President Obama stated last September, “Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, [the Islamic State] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.” That is, we expect to prevail by attacking the attacker, rather than figuring out why the threat keeps multiplying, or why Islamist insurgencies have enjoyed at least passive support from populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and throughout the Middle East. Unintended Consequences The Hydra myth also symbolizes the dangers of taking action without considering predictable collateral consequences. Again, our language is suggestive. We take pride in our “surgical” strikes, for example. Following a medical analogy, we pretend we can excise the tumor or repair the heart valve with precision, not affecting surrounding tissue — like lopping off a Hydra head. Implicitly, we assume that the “removal” of a drone strike target has no effect on the human environment in which the alleged insurgent was embedded. “Hey! No collateral damage,” we cry. “We didn’t kill any civilians.” These strikes do, in fact, kill plenty of civilians. But more to the point, enraging and humiliating them can be similarly detrimental. Every time we kick in a door in search of insurgents, or attack a convoy or wedding party with drones, the typical result is the creation of more angry and disaffected people ready to take revenge. A “surgical strike” is a Hydra tactic. Impact non-unique- Foundations of human progression make violence inevitable, especially in the Middle EastBeres 14— (Louis René Beres, “Tribal Warfare, the World Over,” US News, Aug. 14, 2014, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/14/societys-violent-habit-in-iraq-syria-and-the-middle-east). WM Seeing requires distance. Looked at from afar, there is nothing really new or unique about current patterns of war and terror on planet Earth. Rather, from time immemorial, such frenzied turmoil as we now see generated most conspicuously by the Islamic State militants in Iraq has been a recurring theme. For the most part, in the always-corrosively self-limiting life of civilizations, there is nothing new under the sun. Still, watching the latest news of the Islamic State's slaughter and enslavement, a final query can no longer be stifled: Just how much more suffering can our tormented species endure? This is not a gratuitous question. In our universities, especially where prevailing intellectual fashion is determined by magazine ratings, advertisements and “branding,” students deserve exposure to far more genuinely refined forms of learning. In essence, they will soon need to study something more enlightening than the grimly intersecting rudiments of commercial success and corporate conformance. At a minimum, university students require an awareness that each single individual's personal and professional accomplishments can make sense only if the planet, as a whole, has a correspondingly decent and durable future. Such an awareness is already evident in the writings of the great Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard De Chardin: "The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of 'everyone for himself' is false and against nature. No element can move and grow except with and by all the others with itself." It also means, reciprocally, that our wider planetary civilization can be promising only when its billions of constituent residents are encouraged to live and strive meaningfully. The dual-level message is rather simple. No one's private success can ever be sustainable, if the world, as a whole, has no sustainable future. No conceivably gainful configuration of planet Earth can be sustainable if the great human legions and states who comprise it are themselves morally, spiritually and intellectually adrift. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed," observed William Butler Yeats. But, just as it was for Yeats, and for countless others long before the celebrated Irish poet, today’s expanding global chaos is merely a symptom. It is not the underlying "disease." All world politics still expresses an unchanging and deeply misplaced human habit. This is the near-universal incapacity of individuals and societies to discover authentic self-worth and esteem within themselves. Somehow, we humans always manage to miss what is most important. Seemingly indecipherable, there is a critical inner horizon to world politics. In literature, this horizon, which so desperately needs to be understood, can be more readily encountered in Soren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung and de Chardin, than in Adam Smith, Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes. Its persistent rejection, in real life, reflects the most elemental failure of planetary social and political life. This failure is the steadfast refusal, of individuals, all over the world, to seek their irreducibly core identity as persons, inside themselves. Today, in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Kenya and myriad other places facing sudden or incremental dissolution, we will find ritualized adherence to the all-consuming tribal claims of state, class and faith. In American cities, too, we may observe the unabashedly tribal demands of assorted criminal syndicates and organized street gangs. Here, while obviously very different in their particular group's various motives, the animating conformance dynamic of "belonging" or "fitting in" is largely the same. The tribe is microcosm. From the beginning, from the muddled primal promiscuity of our early global politics, all vital behavior in world affairs has been driven by some kind of "tribal" conflict, by an incessantly virulent and polarizing struggle between "us" and "them." Literally, from the unhidden human origins of our so-called "civilizations," from the pitiably aggregated totals of individual human souls seeking some palpable form of redemption, most people have felt lost, or alone or abandoned outside a tribe. Drawing virtually all sense of self worth from a falsely-consoling membership in the state or the faith or the race or the gang – from what Freud had called the "primal horde," Nietzsche, more simply, the "herd," and Kierkegaard, perhaps most insightfully, the "crowd" – we humans still cannot satisfy even the most patently minimal requirements of social coexistence. To be sure, as humans, our technical and scientific intelligence, not to mention our all-consuming social networking, is enviable and remarkable. But this more or less commendable progress still has no recognizable counterpart in human relations. Yes, we can certainly manufacture complex jet aircraft, and send impressively heroic astronauts deep into space, but before we are allowed to board commercial airline flights, we must first take off our shoes. The point, ironically, is not to make us more comfortable, but only to ensure that we don't blow up our fellow passengers. What is wrong with us? We do all want to be upbeat about the world. We are immediately turned off by anyone who should speak of any personal or collective misfortune. When a friend is asked mechanically "How are you?" both the expected and received answer are always the same: "I'm great." This is a push-button response, a viscerally disingenuous but superficially reassuring reply. It is born, of course, not of any authentic sense of contentment, but of an almost irrepressible need to appear successful. With this compulsive need in command, countless lemming-like individuals will drive themselves and their families into debilitating financial debt, solely because they have failed to look beyond the seductive tribal chimera of shiny new gadgets, designer drugs and colorfully appointed automobiles. Despite all of our evident technical progress, the veneer of human civilization remains razor thin. Oddly, perhaps, whole swaths of humankind remain dedicated to various ancient and atavistic sacrificial practices, a self-destructive allegiance that we may witness, more or less, worldwide. Here, ritualistic murders are reassuringly described as "holy war" or as "freedom fighting." Typically, however, this de facto dedication to conflict, terrorism and genocide is not an expression of immorality, or even foolishness. How can this be? The best answer lies in context. Our entire system of institutionalized international relations is itself rooted in a basic habitat of unrelenting violence. Shall we somehow expect to banish suffering from a system that was spawned in an endlessly-steaming cauldron of protracted conflict, a fearfully repetitive resort to force fittingly called by the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes "a war of all against all?" But every outrage can have a patina. The pleasingly cleansing name that we assign to this bellum omnes contra omnes is “history.” In all current world politics, structural anarchy springs from the Peace of Westphalia, the canonical treaty of 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War, the last of Europe's major religious wars sparked by the Reformation. From Westphalia to the present still-precarious moment, international relations have been fashioned and determined by a changing "balance of power" (in the nuclear age, sometimes called a "balance of terror"), and by certain unavoidably associated conventions of war, terror, and genocide. Seeing requires distance. Up close and personal with statistics and calculations, entire civilizations now glance disinterestedly over mountains of fresh corpses and announce, usually without any apology, that "life is good." Set in motion by regularly shifting hordes that seem almost programmed to flee their own inwardness, our competing mass societies, both within nations and between them, greedily suck out the last residual marrows of human wisdom, reverence and compassion. Hope still exists, but, as we may see so often, it must sing softly, with circumspection, inconspicuously, almost sotto voce. Although counter-intuitive, the time for celebrating science, modernization, globalization and even new information technologies is already partially over. To survive together on an imperiled planet, all of us must energetically seek to rediscover an individual life that is detached from patterned conformance, cheap entertainments, crude commerce, shallow optimism and a "normally" contrived visage of happiness. With such a refreshingly candid expression of an awakened human spirit, we may yet learn something urgently useful and redemptive. We may learn, more precisely, that a common agony is far more important than astronomy; that a common despair is more serious than any financial “success”; and that common tears will inevitably have much deeper meanings than robotic smiles. In his landmark work, "The Decline of the West," first published during World War I, Oswald Spengler had inquired, "Can a desperate faith in knowledge free us from the nightmare of the grand questions?" It remains a noteworthy inquiry. Significantly, we may learn something about these critically "grand questions," and certain aptly corollary answers, from studying the ongoing chaos in world politics. We may finally learn that the most suffocating insecurities of life on earth can never be undone by improving global economics, by building larger missiles, by fashioning new international treaties, by encouraging "self-determination," by replacing one sordid regime with another, or even by "spreading democracy." We might learn, as well, that planet Earth and its residents still lack a tolerable future, not because we humans have been too slow to learn what has been taught, but because what we have been taught is altogether beside the point. New developments preclude any effective US policy in the Middle EastMcLaughlin 15— (John, “The Middle East conflict with 5 dimensions,” USA Today, April 6, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/06/ozy-middle-east-conflict/25354585/). WM But it's the entrée of Iran and Saudi Arabia — each of these two geopolitical behemoths facing off on opposing sides — that is the newest wrinkle. And when these countries, the leaders of the two religious factions — Shia and Sunni, respectively — are battling each other, the risk of escalation grows exponentially. All this is adding up to a conflict with five dimensions, at least: Arabs vs. Persians, terrorists vs. regimes, terrorists vs. each other, Sunnis vs. Shias, democracy vs. authoritarian. Not to mention Russia, the United States, China and Europe, often pursuing conflicting aims. Anyone who confidently says they know where all of this ends is delusional. But here are a few tentative signposts: Iraq will be — already is — broken. Haider al-Abadi's government has tried valiantly to reunite Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, but to little avail, as Sunnis witness the growing influence of Shiite militia groups and Iran, as the Islamic State hangs on, and as the Kurds take on more of the fighting burden. It is very hard to imagine Iraq ever being whole again. The U.S. will not be in control. The problem is now too large and complex to be resolved by some big negotiation that settles all the conflicts and brings the region into some new alignment. What we now see is what we can expect — shifting and odd alliances of convenience geared to specific interests. So get used to odd couplings like the U.S. having a shared goal with Iran — that of destroying the Islamic State; this shared interest stands alongside continued disagreements, as the U.S. will continue to oppose Iran in Yemen and Syria and, of course, persist in negotiating nuclear matters. These seeming contradictions are the realities of the "new normal." Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 2.62 Mb. Share with your friends:
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