The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  Six years later, in October 1973, there was another war between Israel and its immediate neighbors, known by many as the Yom Kippur War, because it began on that holiday, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Initiated by Israel’s Arab neighbors, the war was an attempt on their part to undo the post-1967 status quo or at least demonstrate to the superpowers that it was too dangerous to be allowed to persist. Israel prevailed, but only after some initial setbacks. The war was also an occasion for U.S. and Soviet involvement, both diplomatic and through the provision of military assistance to their respective friends and allies. More positively, the conflict set the stage for diplomacy initiated by the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, who in 1977 broke precedent and visited Israel, addressing the Israeli parliament and calling for peace. Sadat’s visit set in motion negotiations that ultimately brought about formal peace between Israel and Egypt as well as the return to Egypt of land taken by Israel in the 1967 war. Subsequent talks established peace between Israel and Jordan along with a degree of stability (although not formal peace) between Israel and Syria.

  What the 1973 war did not do, however, was alter the Palestinian predicament. The Palestinians remained stateless and divided, with some living on land Israel gained from Jordan in the 1967 war (variously called the West Bank, the occupied territories, or, by many Israelis, Judea and Samaria), others living in Gaza (which Egypt had administered before 1967), and still others who were forced out or voluntarily left during the 1948 war and decades later remained as refugees in neighboring countries, especially Lebanon and Jordan.

  Multiple diplomatic efforts, mostly led by the United States, as well as one notable undertaking in Oslo in the early 1990s that was spearheaded by Israelis and Palestinians themselves, have failed to produce a comprehensive outcome acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis. All such efforts have been premised on UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it gained in the 1967 war, a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem, and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every state in the area along with their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

  What this and subsequent resolutions did not do was offer specifics as to how these objectives should be realized. So-called final status issues, including the borders of Israel and any future Palestinian state, security arrangements, the fate of Palestinian refugees living outside Israel as well as Israelis living in settlements in the occupied territories, and the status of Jerusalem, were left for negotiators to hammer out. Deep divisions emerged in Israel over how much to compromise and what to require in exchange. Prospects for diplomacy have receded as Israelis created settlements in significant parts of the occupied territories, making it more difficult to give them back—because hundreds of thousands of Israelis had come to live on them—and more difficult to create the territorial basis of a viable Palestinian state. The fact that Palestinians were and are divided not just geographically but politically has also made it difficult to reach any agreement because Palestinian leaders have shown themselves to be unwilling to accept American and Israeli proposals that offered the Palestinians much even if not all that many wanted. Violent resistance in the form of terrorism or broad-based intifadas (literally, “casting off” in Arabic, but essentially sustained protests that involved both civil disobedience and violence) have likewise failed to alter the fundamentals.

  Some observers believe the time for a two-state solution has passed and that the Palestinians should have embraced previous Israeli offers that are no longer on the table. Others believe the prospects are poorer than they were for a two-state outcome but still exist. Still others are looking at additional alternatives, including a plan under which Jordan would gain control over certain Palestinian areas. Other ideas include separate Palestinian states in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel (a three-state approach) or a one-state solution in which Palestinians would become permanent residents or even citizens of Israel, an outcome that some fear would threaten either Israel’s Jewish identity or its democracy. All alternatives have drawbacks; the most likely reality for the foreseeable future is a continuation of the occupation that now exists, or a version of it where Israel annexes certain territories where settlements are concentrated while Palestinians have a degree of self-rule in remaining parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

  IRAN AND IRAQ

  It is impossible to tell the story of the modern Middle East without noting the significance of Iran and Iraq. Unlike most of the other countries in the region, Iran is neither Arab nor of the Sunni branch of Islam. Instead, it is Persian and predominantly Shia, a branch of Islam that stemmed from a dispute over the proper succession to the Prophet Muhammad but over time came to reflect different practices and traditions.

  For more than three decades following the end of World War II, Iran was a stable, relatively secular, and pro-Western, pro-American country, in part because many Iranians feared (with good reason) Soviet ambitions. Like most other countries in the region, it was led by an authoritarian figure, Shah Reza Pahlavi, who ruled for nearly forty years. The Shah, as he was commonly known, was supported by the U.S. and U.K. governments, which covertly came to his aid and helped to overthrow a nationalist prime minister who was voted into power in the early 1950s and moved to weaken the Shah’s role and distance Iran from the West.

  Iran’s political stability and orientation proved to be temporary, however, and in 1979 a revolution overthrew the Shah. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a senior religious figure, led this revolution and instituted a unique theocratic system that fused religious and political authority and insisted on building a society that conformed to a strict interpretation of the Koran. There are some democratic elements to the Iranian system such as parliamentary and presidential elections, but it is not a democracy given the outsized role of religious and military authorities in the political realm and their willingness to use force to crush dissent.

  Iraq for its part is, at least on paper, the Arab country that has it all: oil, water, arable land, and a large and educated population. Emerging from decades of Ottoman and British rule, it should have evolved into a Middle Eastern “tiger,” one resembling similar medium-sized countries in Asia that boomed economically and transitioned, at least in part, from authoritarianism to democracy.

  Things did not work out that way. The leadership shares a good deal of the blame, above all Saddam Hussein, who for a quarter century (from 1979 until 2003) ruled violently on behalf of a Sunni minority to the detriment of the Shia majority, the large Kurdish population, and Iraq’s neighbors. Iraq’s political culture and traditions could also explain its plight, because even before Saddam Iraq was characterized by repressive governments and frequent conflicts between and among its many factions.

  The histories of both Iran and Iraq are inextricably tied to each other and to another conflict that took place during the Cold War but had little to do with it. The Iran-Iraq War began in 1980 with an Iraqi invasion of Iran; even in retrospect, it is difficult to be sure of Iraq’s motive, although it might well have been to reduce the appeal and reach of the new radical Islamic regime in Iran that had come to power just months before and was calling for revolution throughout the region. Saddam Hussein viewed such a call as inflammatory, fearing his own sizable Shia population might rise up against him and his fellow Sunnis. Whatever Iraq’s motives, the war lasted for eight years, claimed nearly one million lives, and took a terrible toll on both countries, in part due to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The war ended in stalemate but helped sow the seeds of Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait because he felt the Arab countries never did enough to compensate Iraq for taking on Iran. The war also left many Iranians embittered over the lack of international outcry over Iraqi aggression and more supportive of their leadership that had defended the country.

  The end of the Cold War brought about anothe
r era in the region, one dominated initially by the sole remaining superpower, the United States. The era opened with Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990. Led by President George H. W. Bush, the United States and almost the entire world resisted the Iraqi action so as to deny Iraq Kuwait’s energy resources and avoid establishing the precedent that armed force could be used to change borders. After diplomacy backed by economic sanctions failed to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops, a U.S.-led international coalition of several dozen countries and as many as 750,000 soldiers turned to military action and liberated Kuwait after just seven weeks of war. Saddam, however, managed to maintain power, setting the stage for additional showdowns in years to come.

  There are many analyses as to what led the U.S. administration of George W. Bush to initiate the 2003 war with Iraq, including concern that Iraq had a secret nuclear weapons program and a belief that if it were to become democratic it would set an example the rest of the region would be compelled to follow. I was serving as a senior official in the State Department during the lead-up to the Iraq War, and argued against going to war with Iraq. I tried to make the case that the United States had better options to protect its core interests and that transforming Iraq into a democracy would be both extraordinarily difficult and costly.

  Those advocating for war won out, and the result was a conflict that proved expensive by every measure. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives, and more than four thousand Americans perished in what I described in a previous book as a “war of choice that was ill-advised.” Ousting a government was one thing; putting something better in its place that could endure is something altogether different and more difficult. In this instance, regime change proved possible but nation-building, defined as an effort to build functioning political, economic, security, and social institutions in another country, proved elusive. The high human and financial cost of the war, along with the simultaneous war in Afghanistan—where the results in no way justified the costs—soured many Americans not just on military intervention but on an active U.S. role in the world more generally. Ironically, Iran emerged as a major beneficiary of the war because its archrival Iraq was left too weak and divided to continue to counter it. Iraq, meanwhile, was consumed by civil strife among its Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia populations that emerged in the absence of a strong central government and due to a lack of consensus regarding how power in a post-Saddam Iraq ought to be shared.

  THE ARAB SPRING

  When citizens rose up in protest against their authoritarian leaders in much of the Arab world beginning in the final days of 2010, hopes were high in many quarters that the region would improve markedly. Dubbed the Arab Spring, what these protests had in common was popular frustration with governments that were often corrupt, autocratic, and unable to deliver a decent standard of living to most of their people. A good many commentators as well as activists in the region hoped this wave of popular protests that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere would at long last usher in political reform to societies that had known little in the way of freedom or democratic participation. Many thought new technologies, in particular cell phones, the internet, and social media, would tip the balance of power away from authoritarian governments and toward individuals by facilitating communication and the flow of information.

  Things did not work out that way. In Egypt and Libya, rulers were forced from office, but in Egypt authoritarianism was restored after a one-year interval in which the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that sought to dramatically increase the role of religion in the political sphere and decrease individual freedom, was first voted into office and then removed by the military amid great popular unrest. Egypt faces a difficult future given a population that is increasing by more than one million per year, an economy that cannot support them, and a political system that relies as much on repression as on support for its survival. In Libya, the removal of the longtime ruler Muammar al-Qaddafi led to prolonged chaos and the effective division of the country into three regions. In both countries, no viable alternative to either repression or chaos emerged. Meanwhile, in non-Arab Iran, the government used force to quickly crush demonstrations.

  Protests in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad turned violent, and the government cracked down against the opposition. Tens of thousands of radical Sunnis came from around the region and beyond to fight the government, which was and is dominated by an Alawite minority associated with the Shia branch of Islam. Full-fledged civil war ensued, with the government gradually prevailing owing to the support of Iran and Russia and the reluctance of the United States and others to intervene meaningfully on behalf of the opposition. Some 500,000 Syrians have lost their lives, and more than half the population has been forced from their homes. The costs of rebuilding the country are immense, but international help is unlikely to be forthcoming absent meaningful political compromise, which shows little sign of happening.

  The United States did intervene militarily in Syria, not to overthrow the regime, but to attack the Islamic State (or ISIS), a terrorist organization that had moved into Syria in force. American policy is open to criticism, however, for what it failed to do. In 2012, President Barack Obama publicly warned Bashar al-Assad that using chemical weapons would cross an American “red line.” A year later, it was clear Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people, but President Obama was unwilling to act militarily. This had implications not just for Syria, where Russia soon intervened militarily, all but guaranteeing the Assad regime’s survival, but for the entire region and the world. Doubts had been raised among America’s friends and allies about U.S. reliability and its willingness to act. These doubts would lead allies as well as adversaries to pay less heed to U.S. interests. If there is a date to choose to pinpoint the end of American primacy in the Middle East, 2013 is as good as any. The token military strikes used by Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, in the wake of additional chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, did nothing to change this impression. The perception of a United States in retreat was then reinforced by the decisions of the Trump administration not to respond with military force to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities in September 2019 and to withdraw its support of Kurdish forces who had done so much to weaken ISIS in northern Syria. President Trump’s subsequent decision to authorize the targeted killing of Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps overseas forces, temporarily reversed this impression, but the scope of the U.S. commitment to the region remains in question.

  One issue that has recently reasserted itself, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the implosion of Syria more recently, is the fate of the Kurds. The Kurds, a group of mostly Sunni Muslims with roots in Persia (Iran) who have their own traditions and language, never received their hoped-for country in the aftermath of World War I. It was something of a diplomatic game of musical chairs, and when the music stopped, there were not enough chairs to go around and the Kurds were left standing. The Kurds, now numbering more than thirty million overall, find themselves mostly in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. All four governments are determined to frustrate Kurdish independence because it would pose a threat to the cohesion of their countries. One alternative to self-determination and a separate country is greater autonomy for a particular people living within one or more existing countries. Increased autonomy, including elements of self-rule, provisions for the use of the Kurdish language, and respect for Kurdish culture, could and should be achievable without redrawing existing borders. Even this, however, might be too much for some or all of the countries where Kurds live in large numbers to accept.

  The monarchies, including Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have fared better than most other regimes in the region, in part because their leaders tend to be viewed as more legitimate by a majority of their people. The question is whether this will
continue to be the case, especially in Saudi Arabia, which matters a great deal given its significant energy resources, responsibility for Islam’s holiest sites, wealth, and relatively large population. Its leaders are now looking for a way to maintain stability at home while at the same time introducing a limited degree of needed political and social reform resented by the most conservative elements of the population. Saudi Arabia’s leaders are also seeking to diversify the country’s economy away from its near-complete dependence on oil and gas, manage a political transition to a new generation representing mostly one faction of the royal family, and wind down what many see as an ill-advised and unwinnable war in Yemen. The Saudi government has further complicated its task by repressing and in some cases killing its critics, a practice that has stained its reputation. It is highly unlikely the emerging generation of Saudi leadership can accomplish all that it seeks; the question is what will happen when it does not.

  Iran, no longer balanced by a hostile and strong Iraq, has emerged as a regional power. It is an ambitious country that seeks to spread its influence throughout the region, using not just its own armed forces but also militias and paramilitary groups such as Hezbollah (a Shia-based militia and political party that dominates Lebanon) and support for local Shia populations, as it does in Yemen and Iraq. It has intervened directly and indirectly in Syria. In the process, it has turned itself into the largest regional concern for Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Sunni states, Israel, and the United States. How this competition—one that in many ways has superseded the Israeli-Arab dynamic that for decades dominated the Middle East—plays out will have an enormous impact on the future of the Middle East.