It is easy to be skeptical when the alarms start going off about a pending Israeli attack on Iran. They seem to come with the seasons, a geopolitical biorhythm that reminds us never to be too comfortable with one of the world's most volatile relationships. But it is worth remembering that the punch line of the story about the little boy who cried wolf is that, ultimately, the wolf shows up.
For all the good reasons Israel might want to show forbearance, the reasons to attack are also clearly growing more compelling for Israeli leaders, uniting them on this issue to a greater degree than at any time in the recent past. Diplomacy doesn't seem to be working. The Iranian nuclear program continues moving closer to weapons capability. And the Iranians have matched their rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel with direct support for attacks on its people, like the suicide-bomb murder of five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, which U.S. officials have linked to Iran.
It is often hard for Americans to grasp the idea of an existential threat to a nation. While one existed for Americans during the Cold War, since then the notion that any single actor with any single act could effectively obliterate Americans or their lifestyle is very hard for many people to get their brains around.
But that is exactly the threat that Israelis face from even a "limited" Iranian nuclear attack. And though it is reasonable to debate whether the Iranians would use such a weapon against Israel given the likely consequences for them, from the Israeli perspective, given Iranian threats and actions, the risks of guessing wrong about the intent of the leaders in Tehran are so high that inaction could easily be seen to be the imprudent path.
This summarizes the carefully worded case made last week in the Wall Street Journal by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. His article was nothing less than a case for war, and, over lunch last week, he underscored to me how much thought and care was put into its drafting. (Mr. Oren is, for the record, a longtime friend.)
The response to the article included its unlikely endorsement by Khalid al-Khalifa, the foreign minister of Bahrain, who tweeted it with the words "Time Is Short For Iran Diplomacy."
What has triggered this recent ramping-up of concern? Mr. Oren asserts no factor is more important than the sense that neither diplomacy nor sanctions is working. Iran's nuclear program is accelerating, and its leaders continue to call for Israel's destruction. In addition, the broader shifts buffeting the Middle East must be seen as adding complexity and risk to the calculus.
Mr. Oren, a respected historian, frames the discussion by going back to the early 19th century: "The Congress of Vienna worked. It worked for 100 years. It provided for a framework -- balance of power -- that worked for Europe until the original ideas behind it were forgotten by subsequent generations. Its principles were abandoned by key players, and the result was World War I."
Mr. Oren sees a similar dynamic at work in the Middle East: "There was a certain stability that was brought to the region as a whole -- which had been greatly fragmented -- by the Sykes-Picot treaty in 1916. But here we are almost a hundred years later, and the memories and ideas behind it too have started to fade. That's good in some ways. But the consequence is not localized but regionwide instability."
Sykes-Picot divvied up the Middle East into spheres of influence -- British, French and, based on parallel conversations, Russian. Russia was to control the area around Turkey. France was to influence what is today Lebanon, Syria and northern Iraq. Britain was to have sway over what is today Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and areas south.
While the relative influence of these countries over their spheres has ebbed and flowed, a couple of core principles have endured. One was that in a largely tribal region there would be support for the development of states -- or what might bluntly be called families with armies. An elite group was identified to rule and then would be supported in developing the means necessary to maintain control over the people within its borders. The other key principle was that those elites would be backed by outside powers, who were committed to remaining engaged and helping to preserve order (while advancing their own interests).
Now we are seeing the centrifugal forces of tribal or religious or ethnically divided societies coming apart because the old guard has lost influence and credibility due to the passage of time, grassroots forces empowered by new technologies and the deep frustrations and disengagement of outside powers. This process began with the decline of European powers after World War II and accelerated with the end of the Cold War. But even after the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States remained engaged in Iraq and then, post-9/11, U.S. engagement in parts of the region grew deeper.
But, as Mr. Oren warned in the early days of the Iraq conflict, years before he was appointed ambassador, the United States may not have the stomach for the endlessly brutal and bloody process of state-making in the Middle East.
Following that logic, one might point to the American invasion of Iraq as the beginning of the end for the old order. The war upset the balance in the region, inflamed old divisions and led the United States to want to pull back. Gradually, a host of factors -- America's constrained resources, similar economic challenges for the Europeans, the rise of domestic energy resources, the shift away from the "war on terror" and the greater engagement in the region of less hands-on powers like China and India -- led to the weakening of historical spheres of influence and thus to the lid they helped keep on regional disputes.
The result was a series of upheavals that have left no country or relationship in the region unscathed. Throw into that the old tensions associated with some of the artificiality of some of the "nations" created by Sykes-Picot and agreements like it -- some exacerbated by the rise of minorities or individual clans to assume the "families with armies" leadership roles -- and the result is ferment that does not look like it is going to settle down for a while. In fact, it may well be that the absence of a central organizing principle for the region is a greater threat to many countries in the Middle East, including Israel, than any specific threat currently in the headlines, including Iran's nuclear program.
Protracted institutional decay, violence, spillage of conflicts across borders, withdrawal of investors, economic decline, collapse of the few stable regimes that remain and similar problems could produce just the kind of void that came with the collapse of the Congress of Vienna. And as we know, new institutions did not emerge in Europe until two massive conflicts later. Indeed, almost a century after that collapse began, we're still not sure of the shape those institutions will ultimately take.
David Rothkopf is CEO and editor at large of Foreign Policy.
First Published August 17, 2012 12:00 am
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