The Arab states drift into irrelevance

[oberliner]

Of the many transformations taking place throughout the Middle East, the most striking is that the new regional security architecture gradually emerging in the Arab world seems to be managed almost totally by non-Arab parties: Iran, Turkey, Israel, the United States, and now Ethiopia.

It is possible that the Arabs could write themselves out of their own history, ending up as mere consumers of foreign goods, proxies for foreign powers, and spectators in the game of defining their own identity, security and destiny. This is not certain, but the current trend points in that direction, which would be a demeaning cap after a century of repeated incompetence in the field of Arab security and statehood.

The United States is clearly looking to withdraw from Iraq in the coming few years, signaling the end of the short-lived neoconservative era in Washington leadership and foreign policy. The US will continue to protect its national security interests and friends in the Middle East, but by using more sensible methods than the diplomatic and military methods it has deployed in recent years, including its Rottweiler-like approach of intimidation and overkill in Iraq. A new security system will have to emerge to ensure stability and order, thus sparing the Middle East the ignominy of becoming a failed region of the world.

This occurs while two other major trends define the region. Traditional major Arab powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as lesser ones like Syria, Jordan, Libya, Algeria and Morocco, are less influential and interventionist regionally than they used to be. In many cases they also suffer greater dissent and even some stressed legitimacy at home. At the same time, powerful new non-state actors in the Arab world now challenge, work alongside, or even replace long-serving regimes; the most noteworthy examples are Hizbullah, Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Badr and Mehdi militias in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

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