Peters library program addresses ‘confusing’ Middle East
Ross Harrison speaks at Peters Township Public Lirary.
Ross Harrison speaks at Peters Township Public Lirary.
The Middle East has become almost synonymous with conflict, and in the eyes of most Americans, the conflict boils down to one nation in that part of the world pitted against a whole bunch of others.
In 2017, that’s not necessarily the case.
“The Israeli-Arab conflict is kind of on the back burner at this time,” Ross Harrison explained during a July 19 program at Peters Township Public Library. “The agenda that is prevailing today is the collapse of the Arab order and how the major powers of the region – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – are kind of managing that.”
As someone who has lectured on matters related to Middle East strategy and politics at the U.S. Department of State and the National War College, among many other such institutions, Harrison is exceedingly qualified to address the program’s topic, The Middle East: Understanding the Region and Its Key Players.
Yet he admits that the “understanding” component is more than a bit of a challenge.
“If the Middle East is confusing and confounding to someone like myself – who studies and follows it on a daily basis, and lives and breathes it – I can imagine how confounding and confusing it must be to someone who doesn’t focus on the Middle East on a daily basis,” he told audience members.
Part of his presentation, brought to the library through its partnership with the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and supported financially by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 764, examined the history of the region and some common misconceptions about it.
”One of the things you hear about the Middle East is, well, these are insoluble problems. They can’t be resolved, because they go back thousands of years,” Harrison said. “In reality, most of the dynamics that we’re dealing with today are byproducts of political dynamics that have occurred in the last 100 years, and maybe even the last 50 years.”
After World War I, for example, the victors carved up the vestiges of the old Ottoman Empire to establish borders for nations and colonies that never before existed. And the Middle East of the post-World War II era, featuring the establishment of the State of Israel along with 22 newly-independent Arab countries, ended up serving as essentially a battleground for the two Cold War superpowers.
The landscape, though, has changed dramatically in a relatively short period, spurred in no small part by the Arab Spring movement, which started challenging the region’s authoritarian regimes in 2010 and led to a series of civil wars, including the especially contentious one raging in Syria.
“The Arab world that we talked about in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s no longer exists. It’s hollowed out,” Harrison said.
One result is that Iran, the nation bordering Iraq and Turkey to the east, is working on furthering its own interests with such measures as sending the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
“They say that they’re trying to create some form of order and that they’re trying with the problems that were created by the West,” Harrison said about Iranian leaders. “They claim that when we went through Iraq in 2003, yes, we took down their biggest nemesis, Saddam Hussein, but we also created chaos.”
Led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey also has stepped up its involvement in what occurs just to the south, while Saudi Arabia, with newly promoted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, takes the lead in defending Arab interests.
“This is the new Middle East,” Harrison explained. “They’re all caught in this conflict trap, and they can’t really see around that. They’re basically all groping in the dark.”
The situation has led to instances of what he refers to as “strange bedfellows with the lights off,” such as the situation that spurred the recent headline: “Israel develops new ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.”
“Saudi Arabia is more worried about Iran projecting power into its backyard than it is about Israel, even though Israel is a problem for them long-term,” he said. “I do still believe that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is going to have to be resolved, in order for Israel to be strong and survive, but also it’s going to be necessary because it will come back as an agenda item.”
Ross Harrison is on the faculty of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. He also teaches a course in Middle East politics at the University of Pittsburgh. Harrison authored “Strategic Thinking in 3D: A Guide for National Security, Foreign policy and Business Professionals” and co-edited a book with Paul Salem, “From Chaos to Cooperation: Toward Regional Order in the Middle East.”