Shifting sands

Uncertainty is breaking out all over the Greater Middle East.

With Crown Prince Nayef’s death in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud will soon have to look past its octogenarian leadership to the next generation, with all the uncertainties that implies.  Will the next generation be as attached to religious and social Wahhabi conservatism as the current one?  Will it open an era of serious reform?

The suspension of the UN monitoring effort in Syria presages an increase in violent conflict with a highly uncertain outcome. Russia seems determined to keep Bashar al Assad in power, though its Foreign Minister denies it.  Iran will certainly exert itself in that direction.  I doubt the armed rebellion can beat the Syrian security forces any time soon, but we could see a lengthy insurgency fed by Saudi and Qatari arms shipments through Turkey.

The only real certainty in Egypt is that the military is trying to hold on to power.  Whether it can and what the consequences will be is highly uncertain, as are the results of today’s presidential election.  The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has arrogated to itself legislative power, which means it now has to deal with Egypt’s economy and social problems along security and law and order.  I don’t know any military establishments equal to that task, but the risk of new parliamentary elections may be greater than the SCAF wants to run.  It could end up forced to rule Egypt, likely badly, for some time to come.

Iraq‘s Prime Minister Maliki has faced down a parliamentary rebellion but Al Qaeda has renewed its murderous attacks against the country’s Shia. If they succeed in reigniting Iraq’s sectarian warfare, the promise of a relatively democratic society that produces a lot of oil will evaporate, leaving a bitter residue.

Iran‘s Supreme Leader Khamenei has concentrated power as rarely before in the Islamic republic’s history, but American and Israeli threats of military attack against it nuclear program make prediction even a year out difficult.

After ten years of rule by Hamid Karzai, even Afghanistan faces the uncertainty of an election (to be held no one knows when in 2013 or 2014) in which he will not be running and an end to the NATO combat role shortly thereafter.

I needn’t mention next month’s elections in Libya or the aging leadership in Algeria, where military success in repressing Al Qaeda in the Maghreb seems to have pushed the militants into the Sahel, where they are destabilizing several other countries.

A region that enjoyed decades of stability–some would say stagnation, much of it autocratically imposed–now registers high volatility.  Of course volatility can move in either direction:  there are possible positive developments as well as negative ones.  Tunisia has pushed the envelope in the positive direction.  Yemen seems to be making progress against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and affiliates, though some think the government offensive and U.S. drone attacks are creating more extremists than they are killing.  Morocco and Jordan have attempted some modest reforms that seem unlikely to suffice, but they may stave off open rebellion.

It is not easy to deal with uncertainty.  Most experts would recommend triage and prioritization.  Triage happens naturally.  There are only a few Middle East problems that will make it to the President’s desk:  Iran and Egypt most frequently, Afghanistan because of the American troops, and we can hope Syria when Obama meets with Putin this week at the G-20 in Moscow.

Prioritization of issues is harder.  Even those who recommend it muddle exactly what they mean.  Colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment recommend in a recent overview of the situation in the Middle East:

international actors should focus on a few, very specific issues for special emphasis, such as international human rights standards, the maintenance of existing treaty relationships, and the principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes.

But then they go on to recommend economic cooperation aimed at job creation, a non sequitur virtually guaranteed to disappoint expectations given limited U.S. resources and a track record of failure.  Not to mention the difficulty of meeting human rights standards, since these require equal gender treatment not readily available in the workplace in many of the countries in question.

Shifting sands will make navigation in the Middle East difficult for a long time to come.  I recommend to all my international affairs students that they learn Arabic, or another of the regional languages (Farsi most of all).  Even if American oil production continues to reduce already low U.S. dependence on the Middle East, the global oil market and the extremist movements the region has spawned will ensure we remain engaged there for a long time to come, triage and prioritization notwithstanding.