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أميركا لا تزال قوة لا يمكن الاستغناء عنها

Jun 1, 2021 Joschka Fischer

برلين ــ كان هذا العقد مبتلى بالفعل بعودة التنافس بين القوى العظمى حتى قبل اندلاع الجائحة. الواقع أن قِـلة من التطورات كانت لتشكل تهديدا أكبر للسلام العالمي. ساعدت ثلاث حروب عالمية ــ حربان ساخنتان وواحدة باردة ــ شهدها القرن العشرين في تسليط الضوء على المخاطر المترتبة على المنافسة الجيوسياسية العالية المخاطر.

يرى العديد من المراقبين أن عصر التنافس بين القوى العظمى بدا وكأنه انتهى إلى الأبد بتفكك الاتحاد السوفييتي. ولكن تبين أن هذا الافتراض كان أحد أشد الأخطاء خطورة في فترة ما بعد الحرب الباردة (الحقبة التي كانت حافلة بالأخطاء الجسيمة والمفاهيم الخاطئة). لم يكن من الممكن دعم ادعاء الإمبراطورية العالمية ــ لحظة أحادية القطبية حقا في تاريخ العالم ــ الذي خرجت به علينا النخب السياسية الأميركية. كما لم يكن من الممكن تقديم البرهان على "السلام الأبدي" الذي توقعه الأوروبيون في أعقاب "نهاية التاريخ" في عام 1989، عندما حققت الديمقراطية الليبرالية الغربية واقتصاد السوق انتصارهما المزعوم على كل البدائل.

على العكس من كل هذا، اتسمت العقود التي تلت نهاية الحرب الباردة بخسارة النظام الدولي. وباعتبارها آخر قوة عالمية متبقية، استنزفت الولايات المتحدة نفسها في حروب لا طائل منها في بلاد ما بين النهرين (العراق) ومنطقة الهندوكوش (أفغانستان وشمال غرب باكستان)، وأصبحت منذ ذلك الحين منغمسة في ذاتها على نحو متزايد.

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j. von Hettlingen Jun 3, 2021

Joschka Fischer says the US must rethink its role in the Middle East following the latest outbreak of violence in the decades-long conflict between Palesstinians and Israelis. The US had already scaled down its engagement in the Middle East during Obama’s presidency. While Trump had vowed to get the US out of “endless” wars there, his reckless policy also escalated tension in the region. Meanwhile Biden wants to stick to the September deadline in Afghanistan.
The author is right about the long-anticipated departure from the Middle East ending a fragile status quo for all the players in the region. As a result of exhausting itself in expensive and senseless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans have been turning increasingly inward. In recent years, the US has become energy self-sufficient, tapping into domestic shale oil and gas. This had enabled the country to “set its sights on a fuller military withdrawal from the region.”
Nevertheless, “nowhere was the resulting power vacuum more palpable than in the Middle East.” After defeating ISIS in Syria, Trump had created a vacuum “that other powers - Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia - sought to fill.” As Iran harbours nuclear ambition, the 2015 deal that world powers signed with Tehran aimed to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, preventing “smaller regional powers" from pursuing "arsenals of their own.”
A few days ago, Iran's foreign ministry said that its country is continuing talks with regional rival Saudi Arabia in a “good atmosphere.” Unless the two antagonists can resolve their ideological and geopolitical differences, the US departure might be exploited by both sides to step up their power struggle in the region. With the Gulf emirates and Israel coming on board, the battle for regional hegemony would only fuel another “horrific proxy” like the ones we have seen in Syria and Yemen.
The author deplores the “loss of international order” in the decades since the end of the Cold War. The international system that secured global peace overseen by the US after World War II “began to disintegrate.” In the past decade, a rising China “capable of challenging the incumbent hegemon, aspires to change the status quo. The “new rivalry materialized fully following…Trump’s election….in 2016.” In the pursuit of “a narrowly nationalist agenda,” the US became the global “source of chaos.”
While withdrawing the US from the region, the Trump administration also "abandoned America’s traditional role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For decades, successive US administrations had pushed for a two-state solution and a fair compromise between Israel and the Palestinians, even while remaining wholly committed to protecting Israel." But Trump’s “blank-check” support for Israel had added more fuel to an already combustible situation in the region, sidelining the Palestinians.
Although Trump helped normalise relations between Israel and four Arab states, including two - the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - in the Gulf, the latest intensive exchange of fire between Hamas and Israel had hardly dispelled “the fantasy” that the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian is dead. Unlike “previous episodes,” the violent clashes on the Temple Mount around the al-Aqsa mosque, had pitted Jewish and Arab citizens in mixed cities against one another across the Israel.
The author calls for “four lessons” to be learned, amid the ongoing cease-fire. “First, even if a two-state solution hardly seems realistic anymore,” its burial will “lead more or less directly to a highly charged confrontation. Second, Palestinians and Arab Israelis will not simply stand by and allow themselves to be ignored in regional political settlements. Third, the Israeli occupation cannot be continued indefinitely. And, lastly, the US cannot simply abandon the region out of a lack of interest, at least not if it wants to maintain its role as the leading global power.”
Due to evolving security landscape of the past decades, the world needs to face the geopolitical reality in the region. The author believes that despite all the changes, “the fact remains that stability depends on the US. Though America no longer wishes to engage with the region, it has no choice but to keep doing so, lest a regional brushfire escalate into a global conflagration with nuclear risks.” Whether American voters agree to this engagement is another matter.
Could the Middle East become “this century’s Balkans?” While Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, the US was the “only global or regional power capable of guaranteeing regional peace – or at least of suppressing all-out war.” Can the US do so in our multipolar world today?
“Russia would like to assume this role, but it cannot. (It was able to intervene in Syria to the extent that it did only because the US refused to do so.) China has no interest in assuming America’s Middle East role, nor could it do so if it wanted to.” Beijing simply does not have the stature “to become a guarantor of a global order far beyond its borders.”
Turkey under Erdogan is just a regional spoiler, obsessed with suppressing the Kurds.
The EU is “no longer a force to be reckoned with,” and would be “one of the main victims” of a destabilised Middle East. Nevertheless it could play a role by providing “financial resources in response to the latest crisis.
This leaves the US as the only global player to police the region, not least due to its military supremacy. Once again, it is up to the American voters to decide over their country's foreign policy.
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Henk Crop Jun 2, 2021

The World is full of chaos. Major factors are: The exploding world population, which often translates into conflicts , The increasing influence of Islam, which does not translate into prosperous democracies, The increasing expansionist influence of China.
An impossible challenge to control all that.
All the military inter-fences have led to mixed results.
Yes, it has led to 70 million displaced persons ( according to the UNHCR ).
However if it is very questionable if this has been caused by warfare or just by overpopulation.
Overall I rather have the US in a domineering political role in the World than some autocratic, religious, expansion driven, nation.
- Bernhard Kopp Jun 2, 2021
  
  These are all valid points. But, the chaos is man-made, and we have got to find ways to mess up less that already is a mess. Take Iran since about 1980. Take the Balkans since 1992, and think about what contributed to the mess since 9/11 Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, to name just the long-term heavyweights. Since the bombing of Serbia in 1999 we have been messing up the relationship with Russia with stubborn self-righteousness. We do not even a clear understanding what is in our real, medium- and longer term interest. We shoot first, think later. Just as a good number of police men do in the streets of America. We can do better.
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Bernhard Kopp Jun 1, 2021

The Indispensable Nation of Mrs. Albright, which Mr. Fischer seems to rehash in this article is superseded by real events, not academic chimeras. Brown University / Watson Institute / Costs of War / Creating Refugees / Displacement Caused by the USA post 9/11. The paper arrives at 37 million people displaced. Wars are not just death, destruction and financial cost. There is a lot more in collateral damage, which is not a cynical, technocratic term. If one attempts to add everything up, including the devastating effects on the US society itself, one can only raise the question : could it really have been worse without the US ???
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أميركا لا تزال قوة لا يمكن الاستغناء عنها

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