The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  Two of the formative episodes in Afghanistan’s modern era are the overthrow of its monarch in 1973 and the Soviet Union’s military campaign in 1979, when it intervened on behalf of a left-wing, relatively secular government that had come to power in a coup d’état a year earlier. The Soviet decision to deploy troops against a radical Islamic guerrilla movement turned out to be an expensive one; Soviet military and financial sacrifices along with the unpopularity of the war effort back home contributed to the demise of the Communist government and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

  The United States played its own role in the Soviet-Afghan War, one that also would prove to be an expensive policy over the long run, in this case for Americans. Together with Pakistan, the United States funneled arms and money to the Afghan resistance, the so-called mujahideen, which fought the Soviets. It was a textbook example of covert action, where the United States provided arms and intelligence in a manner designed to cloak its involvement and limit its direct role. Many of these “freedom fighters” supported by the United States came to embrace a radical vision of Islam. The defeat of the Soviets led not to their disbanding but rather to an effort to take over and remake Afghanistan in their radical image.

  The last Soviet troops departed Afghanistan in February 1989. The Soviet-supported regime managed to hang on to power for several years but ultimately gave way to an alliance of Afghan tribes affiliated with the United States. These tribes proved unable to work together and in 1996, after some four years of civil war, were defeated by the Taliban, the word for “students” in Pashto (the dominant language of southern Afghanistan). The Taliban were and are Sunni fundamentalists who adhere to an extreme orthodox version of Islam and believe that society should be organized according to a literal interpretation of Sharia, the Islamic legal code. Such views are incompatible with human rights, gender equality, or democracy. In addition, the Taliban provided safe haven to terrorists, putting them at odds with much of the world.

  Years later, on September 11, 2001, terrorists affiliated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda (literally “the base,” a network of Sunni fundamentalists animated by an antimodernist, anti-Western creed who received sanctuary in Afghanistan) hijacked four airplanes, flying two of them into both towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth plane was reportedly bound for the White House but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers resisted the hijackers. Three thousand innocent people lost their lives. I was working at the State Department at the time, as head of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary of State Colin Powell. But I was also the U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process and as a result found myself in Dublin at the time of the attacks. With flights back to the United States temporarily halted, I continued with my mission, which seemed odd because it was Northern Ireland and not the United States that for so long was associated with terrorism. I took time out from my diplomatic efforts to write a lengthy message to the secretary of state, arguing among other things that the time had come to put Pakistan on notice that the United States would no longer tolerate it providing a sanctuary to the Taliban. This was done, but over time the United States shifted its focus, and Pakistan went back to its ways. What was lasting, though, was American vulnerability, the power of modern-day terrorists, and the radicalization of a significant number of young Arabs who embraced a view of Islam that made them enemies of much of the West and modernity itself.

  The Taliban government that controlled Afghanistan provided a home to the terrorist group al-Qaeda that carried out the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. administration at the time, that of George W. Bush, demanded the Taliban hand over al-Qaeda members who were operating out of Afghanistan, and when it refused to do so, the United States joined forces with many of the same tribes that had run Afghanistan following the fall of the former king. This coalition succeeded in removing the Taliban from power in 2002. President Bush asked me to coordinate U.S. policy toward the future of Afghanistan from my perch at the State Department. We managed to help the Afghans form a new unity government, but it proved unable to govern the entire country or to end the fighting.

  In the ensuing decade, civil war raged, because the government, supported by forces from the United States and other NATO countries, could not secure the country against Taliban fighters who continued to enjoy great support in the south of Afghanistan (where they had ethnic and tribal ties) and sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, which opposed the establishment of a government in Kabul with close ties to the United States and India. In subsequent years, the civil war continued, with the Taliban gradually coming to control a larger percentage of this country of thirty-five million people, the poorest nation in this part of the world. It is too soon to know what if any impact peace talks might have on the country, even if there were to be an agreement.

  LOOKING AHEAD

  South Asia is also increasingly an important region in the context of China. The United States, Japan, Australia, and France are building stronger relationships with India partly to balance China. India is modernizing its military and has the world’s fourth-largest military budget, strengthening itself so that it can project power into the Indian Ocean, where China is also deploying its forces. China, for its part, is growing closer to Pakistan and is making inroads by investing in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives as part of its Belt and Road Initiative that promotes infrastructure and development projects to increase Chinese influence abroad and support high levels of economic activity at home.

  For all these reasons, South Asia has been and remains an uneasy and uncertain part of the world. The region’s two most powerful countries are locked in a cold and sometimes hot conflict against the backdrop of their respective nuclear arsenals, a contested border, and Pakistani support for terrorism against India. India is a democracy with a relatively healthy economy but is held back more than anything by its large and still growing population, one that includes a vast number of poor people. Also casting a cloud over its future is India’s increasingly discriminatory treatment of its large Muslim minority, something that poses questions for India’s secular democracy and social cohesion. For its part, Pakistan has a large and growing population but also a weak civilian leadership under the sway of the military. The country’s long-term stability cannot be assumed, and if it were to come undone it could easily trigger regional or even broader conflict.

  Meanwhile, the struggle for Afghanistan’s future continues. Bangladesh has its own unique struggles as it faces the realities of climate change because flooded coastal areas may turn millions into refugees. South Asia is likely to be a part of the world that continues to struggle to maintain peace and provide its large and still growing population with a decent standard of living.

  The Middle East

  The Middle East has been, is, and quite likely will remain the most tumultuous of the world’s regions. Its history since World War II (when most of its countries gained their independence) is more often described in terms of various wars than anything else. Even a partial list would include the 1948 war between the Arab countries and the newly created state of Israel, the 1956 war in which Israel, the United Kingdom, and France joined forces against Egypt following its nationalization of the Suez Canal, the 1967 (Six-Day) and October 1973 wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the war between Israel and Lebanon that began in 1982, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the 1990–1991 Gulf War between an international coalition led by the United States against Iraq following its invasion and subsequent absorption of Kuwait, and the 2003 Iraq War initiated by the United States. Today there are numerous conflicts within and between countries, some of which have been raging for the better part of a decade at terrible human cost. There is as well the all-too-real potential for additional conflict.

  Even the region’s name is not universally agreed on; for some it remains the Near East (given its proximity to Europe as compared with the Far East or Asia), and for others it is Southwest A
sia, which again is not all that surprising if one looks at a map. In reality, the region is made of three geographic elements. There is Egypt and the four countries of North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, sometimes referred to as the Maghreb), the four countries of the Levant (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as the Palestinian territories), and the nine countries of the Persian Gulf or, if you prefer, the Arabian Peninsula or Arabian Gulf (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen). Some refer to it as the Greater Middle East to underscore the inclusion of all three subregions. It is, however, most often called the Middle East, which we shall call it here.

  The total population of the region today is around 450 million, approximately one-third the population of either China or India. The distribution of people is uneven; Egypt has a population on the order of 100 million, while Bahrain numbers under 2 million. Most are Arab, an ethnic designation for those people descended from the region’s tribal peoples. Almost all are Muslim, although it should be noted that more than three-fourths of the 1.8 billion Muslims in the world are not Arab. The Middle East’s Muslims are predominantly Sunnis, defined in terms of what they understand to be the rightful succession to the Prophet Muhammad and increasingly differentiated by separate traditions and identity from Shia Muslims, who are mostly in Iran, which is neither Arab nor Arabic-speaking. There are also Kurds, as well as many other Muslim minorities, including the Alawites who have ruled Syria for decades, and small communities of Christians. Israel is notably distinct, because it is predominantly Jewish and Hebrew-speaking.

  The region’s GDP is modest, at around $3.5 trillion approximately 4 percent of the world’s total. Germany, with less than one-fifth of the people, has a larger economy than the entire Middle East. Manufacturing of goods desired beyond the region is negligible. Innovation outside Israel is rare or nonexistent. Many of the governments, especially those in the Persian Gulf, are overwhelmingly dependent on revenues from the sale of oil and gas. For the region as a whole, oil exports account for more than half of total merchandise exports. Governments dominate the economies. Corruption is widespread. Most of the farming, with Israel again the exception, is neither modern nor large scale.

  The human statistics are little better. The vast majority of the region’s young people has access to education until the age of sixteen, but the education they receive is poor and does little to prepare them to compete in the modern world. Not surprisingly, youth unemployment is far above the global average, as is participation by girls and women in the economy.

  The overwhelming majority of the governments are to one degree or another autocratic. Several are ruled by hereditary monarchies. Most others are ruled by individuals with close ties to the military or the dominant political party. National identities and loyalty to country in many cases compete with other loyalties, be they to a tribe or a sect or a religion.

  Just why so much of the region’s modern history is characterized by a lack of democracy and a prevalence of violence within and between countries is a matter of more than a little conjecture and controversy. Some blame it on the legacy of colonial powers, who often drew borders that ignored local identities and did not do enough to develop what functioning democracies and markets require. This is true, but as an explanation for what accounts for the region’s ills, it is wearing thin now that half a century or more has passed since the colonial powers departed the scene. Countries in Asia that were also colonies at the same time are thriving. It is also the case that the United States, fearing the instability that could ensue, has not made the promotion of democracy a priority of its foreign policy in the region. Others, however, attribute the region’s trajectory more to its people and culture, particularly the absence of a line between the political and the religious in Islam, as well as Arab reactions to the challenges posed by modernity and globalization. But whatever the cause or causes, what cannot be disputed is that the Middle East has largely failed to produce conditions of freedom, stability, and prosperity.

  So why does a region that accounts for only a small percentage of the world’s people, land, and economy figure so prominently in the news? Why does the Middle East matter as much as it appears to? One reason is energy. Middle Eastern oil and gas literally fuel a good part of the global economy. The Middle East is home to just over half the world’s proven oil reserves; Saudi Arabia has the second-largest oil reserves (after Venezuela), is second to the United States in oil production, and is the world’s largest oil exporter. The region is also the source of just under half of the world’s known natural gas reserves, with three countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran) that rank among the world’s top four. Many of the most powerful members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, the cartel that has so influenced world oil supply and prices for nearly sixty years, are to be found in the Middle East.

  A second explanation of the region’s importance is religion. Jerusalem is central to three of the world’s faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Billions of people of these faiths live all over the world and care passionately about what happens here. International relations is not just about statecraft and national interests; it is also about ideas and ideals and what motivates people, and religion surely qualifies.

  A third set of reasons is decidedly negative. The Middle East is riven by violence. Terrorists are in abundance. In recent years, the region has accounted for almost half of all terrorist attacks worldwide. In 2014 alone, these attacks claimed the lives of more than twenty thousand people. Additionally, there are a number of large paramilitary organizations and militias that governments cannot control. There is as well the proliferation danger, in that Iran under certain scenarios might acquire a nuclear capability, which could trigger a conflict, cause other countries to follow suit and develop nuclear weapons of their own, or both.

  Last but not least is Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel was created in 1948, the culmination of the Zionist movement that gained traction in the first half of the twentieth century and came to fruition in the aftermath of the Holocaust, which saw six million Jews murdered at the hands of Nazi Germany. Jews came to believe that the only way to ensure such a tragedy did not happen again would be to have a country of their own. Many governments in the world agreed, and a vote at the UN established the state of Israel. At the same time, most in the Arab world resent or reject Israel as a Western creation imposed on them and paid for by the Palestinians, who remain without a country of their own. It is a conflict that has been waged for seventy years and has captured the world’s attention to a degree that at times seems to transcend the immediate stakes.

  MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA AND GLOBAL ENERGY RESERVES

  Note: Data as of 2017 or most recent available for each country.

  Source: CIA World Factbook.

  HISTORY

  As is almost always the case, it is useful to review the history to better understand the present. The modern Middle East dates back to the late eighteenth century. There was the long, slow decline of the Ottoman Empire, with its base for much of its existence in present-day Istanbul and which over some five centuries stretched over a good deal of what today constitutes the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Europe, and parts of Asia. The second trend was the emergence of a more assertive Europe that sought colonies. These two trends intersected during World War I, which heralded the demise of the Ottoman Empire (replaced in part by the rise of the modern, secular Turkish republic with its capital in Ankara) and the division of a large part of the former Ottoman Empire into European colonies.

  The transition from Ottoman to European colonial rule was embodied in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, reached secretly in 1916 while World War I was still being fought, in which a British and a French diplomat essentially divided what had been the Ottoman-controlled Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. This European era lasted barely four decades,
ending with the exhaustion of the European powers following two world wars. Arab nationalism was on the rise and with it a desire for countries of their own.

  The emergence of the Cold War and the Suez Crisis of 1956 were pivotal in ushering in a new era for the Middle East. Egypt’s nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, seized control of the Suez Canal, an economically and strategically vital waterway. In response, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel conspired politically and collaborated militarily to weaken Nasser, whom the Europeans saw as a threat to their interests in the region and Israel saw as a dangerous rallying point for the Arab world. The U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, however, saw the U.K., French, and Israeli seizure of the Canal as misguided, believing it could push the Arab world closer to the Soviet Union and turn international attention away from the Soviet Union’s brutal use of force to crush dissent in Hungary. It was American economic and diplomatic pressure that forced the three countries to return control of the Canal to Egypt. It was a classic use of economic tools to advance political ends, sometimes referred to as geoeconomics. From this moment forward, the Europeans would play at most a supporting role in a region dominated by locals and their superpower backers.

  The next few decades were punctuated by conflicts that shaped the region’s trajectory in lasting ways. The 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors (triggered by Egypt’s blockading of the Straits of Tiran used by Israeli vessels going to and from the Red Sea but begun by Israeli air strikes on Egyptian military airfields) was one such conflict. After six days of fighting, Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip (both controlled by Egypt), the Golan Heights (controlled by Syria), and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (then under Jordanian authority). More than any other conflict with the possible exception of the 1948 war between the Arab countries and Israel that followed Israel’s creation, the 1967 war defined the parameters of Middle Eastern diplomacy for the next half a century, with the focus of the dispute shifting away from Israel’s existence to its territorial reach.