The current period of flux and transformation in the global and regional order presents an opportunity to work towards a new security framework for the Middle East, but one that could easily slip out of reach.
There is a pressing need for a security framework in the Middle East. It is clear – however it is presented, and notwithstanding the change of administration in Washington – that the US is in the process of disengaging from the region, or at the very least reconfiguring how it engages with partners and adversaries there. The causes of US disengagement are well documented, and boil down to a combination of fatigue from participation in so many never-ending wars, and a departure from ‘lower-order’ issues to enable greater focus on confronting the rising challenge from China more directly in the Indo-Pacific.
At the same time, the consequences of US disengagement are clear to see, in the form of an outsourcing, with little due diligence, of security provision to regional actors. So far, this particular approach to burden-sharing has not worked in favour of peace and stability. It seems to have exacerbated conflicts, further polarized the region, and brought even more pain and misery for the people of the countries affected. Moreover, there appears to be no discernible mechanism – let alone motivation, will or effort – to stem the region’s multiple ongoing conflicts, all of which will come to challenge the very basis of the existing state system. The wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen have drawn in international and regional actors, seemingly making the prospect of reaching resolutions difficult to imagine at present, and there is a very real threat that state collapse in each of these countries will profoundly impact neighbouring states and regions. In other words, there will be an even greater cost to pay not only in the region, but much further afield too, unless global and regional powers – right now – work towards developing a security framework for the Middle East.
There are plentiful voices on the US right that argue that disengaging carries few real costs, especially as the Middle East region will diminish in importance as the world moves towards a post-hydrocarbon era and the struggle for power between the US and China shifts towards the Indo-Pacific. In other words, the Middle East region will be left behind to manage its own affairs, with its ability to influence the global economy diminished, even though its sovereign wealth funds will continue to play a significant role. This perspective, shared by a number of people interviewed as part of the research for this paper, holds that the level of conflict and violence in the region will neither increase nor decrease dramatically, and conflict management will be left to regional states, as the US effectively withdraws and European states simply lend bilateral support to their partners. We consider this to be an unduly benign prognosis, and one that does not take into account the ensuing arms races among Middle East states, including not only the acquisition of advanced materiel, but also the pursuit of new missile technologies and capabilities, as well as a quest for nuclear capabilities. In this scenario, the cost of indifference far outweighs that of engagement, which in the case of the US in the region amounts to at least $3 trillion since the 2003 war in Iraq.
Failing to act decisively carries high costs for everyone. It will serve to exacerbate conflict, accelerate state failure and the breakdown of governance, and undermine all previous efforts at development in both resource-rich and resource-poor states. As the war in Syria has shown, the impact of major conflicts does not stop at borders, and the spread of hostilities across the region poses a major threat to neighbouring regions, including Europe and the Caucasus. Wars often lead to migrations – both forced and unforced – and that has certainly been the case in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Vietnam, among many others. The war in Syria has demonstrated just how sensitive European states are to the arrival of migrants on their soil, even though the greatest burden of displacement has been shouldered in neighbouring countries, including Jordan and Turkey. In fact, inward migration has long been a chief obsession of right-wing parties across Europe. It was evidently a contentious issue in the UK’s Brexit referendum, and the population flows stemming from the Syrian war have brought to the fore strongly nationalist sentiments in many European states. The cost of doing nothing in the Middle East region, therefore, carries risks for Europe, and for the institution of the European Union (EU), as it could lead to a further increase in the number of people seeking to cross into European countries – whether legally or illegally – and further stoke destabilizing nationalism.
The prognosis for the Middle East region is grim. There is little hope that regional players will come together without international pressure and support to shepherd them towards reaching agreements on some of the fundamental issues that separate adversaries. The US approach of partially outsourcing security to regional actors such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has in practice incentivized those states to be more bullish in their foreign policies and military actions. The US has outsourced security to Israel on occasion, although the latter’s quest for independence of action has often run counter to Washington’s interests. Now, the alignment of interests between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel in wanting to push back against Iran – and latterly also Turkey – is likely to further heighten the risk of conflict. Instead of pressing for the resolution of conflicts, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will most likely follow Israel’s lead in living with chaos, but always being willing to intervene to manage conflict. Saudi Arabia’s experience in Yemen will certainly temper its appetite to get involved substantively elsewhere in the region. As this paper makes clear, there is no love lost between these three states and Iran, and trust – in any form – is at an all-time low. As such, there is no appetite among them to reach an understanding with Tehran or with any of its allies, and the prospect of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi or Tel Aviv seeking a resolution of sorts is very unlikely.
Similarly, there are powerful groups in Iran that have no incentive to pursue peaceful resolutions for the conflicts it is engaged in across the region, as the price it would want to recover both from host states, such as Syria and Lebanon, and from other regional actors would be too high. It has put forward proposals of its own – such as the HOPE initiative, discussed in Chapter 5 – but these have been dismissed by regional actors as they do not address core grievances, notably those of Saudi Arabia. At most, Iran will wait for the US to re-engage with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and make every effort to keep all negotiations focused on the nuclear dossier, and far away from regional issues.
We argue that, while counterintuitive, the current period of flux and transformation in the global and regional order presents an opportunity to work towards a new security framework, given the underlying vulnerabilities shared by all states in the region.
Multipolar conflicts
The unipolar moment in global affairs is well and truly over. Although the US-led war against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 could be considered as the point at which it started to crumble, for the Middle East region it was the onset of war in Syria that ushered in the new era best described as multipolar. There can be little doubt that the US remains the world’s most dominant military power, but its willingness to project this power has been tempered by experiences in punishing wars from Korea to Vietnam, and, over the past two decades, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since former president Barack Obama made his pivot to Asia, and made plain that Saudi Arabia must now ‘share’ its neighbourhood with Iran, the US has drawn down its troop presence in the region and embarked on a process of diplomatic disengagement too. There is still considerable debate within the policy research community as to whether the US is actually committed to an exit from the region. Academics such as David DesRoches argue persuasively that the US’s military footprint has in reality increased, not receded, and that it has redeployed rather than drawn down. There is insufficient space here to consider the technical aspects of this argument, but what is clear is that Gulf Arab leaders perceive the US to be withdrawing from the region, and they believe that China and Russia are now more deeply involved than before. In fact, interviewees from Gulf Arab states argued that the US has left a vacuum that has been quickly filled by other powers, principally Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. While Russia is a regional rather than a global power, it has acted like a major player, and has asserted itself militarily in a number of conflicts – notably in Syria and Libya. It has aligned itself closely with Turkey, too, and has increased arms sales not only to Ankara, but also to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt. Furthermore, Moscow has driven forward the OPEC+ agenda, and after Saudi Arabia first crashed the price of oil in early 2020 has worked closely with Riyadh to keep the OPEC+ grouping compliant with production cuts, even though Russia itself has consistently cheated on its undertakings.
Interviewees from Gulf Arab states argued that the US has left a vacuum that has been quickly filled by other powers, principally Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.
China remains reluctant to expend too much political capital in the Middle East, and is happy to continue to leave it to the US to provide regional security. It has started to show an appetite for some diplomatic engagement in line with its overriding economic interests, but this effort remains lodged within international organizations, particularly the UN. Nevertheless, China is evidently already a major economic player in the region, and it is only a matter of time before it will either need to help secure its economic interests, or opt to focus elsewhere. In relative terms, however, the MENA region is not a priority for Beijing. Karen Young, of the American Enterprise Institute, has made a cogent case that China’s investment in the region is neither significant when compared with its deployment of capital elsewhere, nor transformative in terms of its relations with Middle East states. Furthermore, Beijing has taken critical steps to ensure that it is not reliant on energy from the Gulf, and its own drive towards developing new sources of energy means that long bets on ever-increasing dependency between China and the Gulf are unlikely to pay off. For the time being, though, China does stand to benefit from US disengagement, as this opens up new avenues and diplomatic channels that Beijing is happy to explore. The 25-year China–Iran economic and security cooperation agreement signed in March 2021 is one such example, whereby Beijing intends to invest in Iran in exchange for access to oil. Like Russia, China is able to partially fill the vacuum left by the US. This might not come in the form of security guarantees, but it is already evident in major construction projects, port development, arms sales and the alignment of major investment opportunities in China.
One greatly significant consequence of the emergence of this multipolar order is that major powers are either directly engaged or otherwise invested in the Middle East region’s conflicts. In Syria, for example, Russia has backed the Assad regime, and has deployed significant military force since September 2015, while the US has supported the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in their fight against ISIS and to recover territory across the northeast of the country. Although China’s military footprint in Syria is far less visible, it has taken the initiative in advancing efforts at reconstruction, arguing strongly that rebuilding the country can come ahead of reaching an inclusive political settlement. Accordingly, these three external powers are essentially at odds not just in how they have approached the conflict in Syria, but also over how they envision a resolution of the conflict. This in itself has served to prolong the war. Of course, a host of other factors have done that too, including the presence of regional actors such as Iran and Turkey. However, the misaligned interests of the US, Russia and China have meant that there has been no concerted effort to compel or enforce a settlement, or to hold warring parties to account when ceasefires are agreed and hostilities temporarily stop.
Although each theatre is different, and involves various other actors, this pattern of divergent interests among the major powers is repeated across the region. As a result, conflicts have been exacerbated, and/or there has been no real mechanism in place to bring about their end. In Libya, for instance, a combination of US disinterest and heightened Russian military engagement, albeit in the form of well-resourced mercenaries, has created space for Moscow to pursue its own direct interests. At the same time, it has allowed regional players such as the UAE and Turkey to act with impunity – in defiance of international sanctions – and engage directly in military confrontation in support of their allies.
Yemen, meanwhile, has been emblematic of the recent US approach to the region. On the one hand, Washington disengaged diplomatically during the Trump years; on the other, to varying degrees, it advised, supported and armed the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis. Although the conflict has been driven primarily by local factors, US disinterest arguably encouraged a more assertive and robust engagement on the part of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This, in turn, created an opportunity for Iran to join the fray, not only through its support for the Houthis and their allies, but also through the direct threat now posed to Saudi Arabia from a neighbouring country. Since taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration has re-engaged diplomatically on Yemen, appointing Tim Lenderking as special envoy, ending Trump’s last-minute proscription of the Houthis, and calling for a review of US–Saudi relations. Neither Russia nor China is involved substantively in the Yemen war, having no direct or indirect interests at stake there.
Yemen has been emblematic of the recent US approach to the region. On the one hand, Washington disengaged diplomatically during the Trump years; on the other, it advised, supported and armed the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis.
The complex nature of the region’s conflicts – which play out not just in armed combat, but also through instruments such as economic rivalry and cyberattacks, and include an overlapping array of regional and international actors – means that each is intimately connected with the others. All of this is symptomatic of an emerging regional order that is still in flux, and the overlay of an international order that is equally still playing out. Given this context, separating out the various conflicts and addressing each as a discrete project will prove particularly challenging. This is especially so at a time when two of the major powers – the US and China – are wary of investing too much diplomatic and political capital, in contrast to Russia, which is intent on deploying its military resources in ways that secure its interests at relatively low cost.
Even so, there is a clear and pressing need for a security framework for the region that addresses the range of issues in which the US, Russia and China are involved in their varying ways. While these three external powers may not share an interest in the same kind of regional security system, we make the case that pursuing an incremental approach presents an opportunity to better capture and align their interests – even where they diverge presently – and a means to work towards establishing a security framework for the region.
After the costly and turbulent Trump years, the arrival of a new US administration under President Joe Biden represents a pivotal moment, in that Washington and Beijing have an opportunity to pause and reappraise relations. While the two powers are undoubtedly locked in competition, they each, for their specific reasons, share an interest in helping stabilize the Middle East. As already identified, over the longer term the US looks intent on leaving regional security in the hands of regional actors. At best, that will result in pockets of stability and instability, which will have the effect of undermining the economic landscape of the region and thus threatening the integrity of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The change of US administration can thus serve both countries well, if they choose to work together with the common goal of developing a regional security framework. And with Biden now in the White House, there are further critical factors that could help lead to a security framework for the region, including: reviving the JCPOA, with ‘plus’ elements; curtailing or making use of Russian influence to pressure the Assad regime into reaching a settlement in Syria; pressing the Gulf Arab states to resolve their outstanding differences after signing the Al Ula security and stability pact in January 2021; and pushing Saudi Arabia and the UAE to end their military intervention altogether in Yemen. However, these factors could easily slip out of reach, and the Biden administration will need to act quickly to be able to deploy a well-thought-out approach. This will be extremely challenging in the early part of Biden’s presidency, as he first prioritizes domestic issues – in particular the response to the COVID-19 crisis – and rebuilds relations with Europe, NATO and other key allies.
About this paper
This paper draws on interview-based research to examine how international and regional actors might arrive at a regional security framework for the Middle East. Based on our analysis of 210 confidential interviews with experts and current and former policymakers from 15 countries, we make the case that the point at which a regional security process can be mapped out can only be arrived at through discussion, de-escalation and conflict resolution involving all regional actors, enabled by critical external partners.
The paper outlines pathways to a point where the pursuit of regional security can become viable. The foundational step lies in the US administration’s re-engagement with the JCPOA and Iran’s return to compliance. Recommitting to the JCPOA cannot be an end in itself, however. A broader ‘JCPOA plus’ process is needed to lengthen and strengthen the deal. Regional challenges relating to Iran’s interventions beyond its borders can best be managed through multilateral negotiating tracks. Alongside this lie crisis-resolution tracks – focusing on the wars in Yemen and Syria, building greater solidarity among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and the Israel–Palestine conflict – and the creation of meaningful confidence-building measures.
