Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Let the Middle East govern itself

It is time for the United States and other powers to let the Middle East govern itself in line with national sovereignty and the United Nations Charter. As the US contemplates yet another round of military action in Iraq and intervention in Syria, it should recognise two basic truths.

Supporters of Mr Nouri Maliki, who stepped down as Iraqi Prime Minister last month,
after pressure from the US to do so. America has repeatedly tried to install a government in Iraq and elsewhere in the region that it considers acceptable. Photo: Reuters

Supporters of Mr Nouri Maliki, who stepped down as Iraqi Prime Minister last month,
after pressure from the US to do so. America has repeatedly tried to install a government in Iraq and elsewhere in the region that it considers acceptable. Photo: Reuters

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

It is time for the United States and other powers to let the Middle East govern itself in line with national sovereignty and the United Nations Charter. As the US contemplates yet another round of military action in Iraq and intervention in Syria, it should recognise two basic truths.

First, American interventions, which have cost the country trillions of dollars and thousands of lives over the past decade, have consistently destabilised the Middle East, while causing massive suffering in affected countries.

Second, the region’s governments in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere have both the incentive and means to reach mutual accommodation. What is stopping them is the belief that the US or some other external power (such as Russia) will deliver a decisive victory on their behalf.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the great powers of the day — Britain and France — carved out successor states to ensure their control over the Middle East’s oil, geopolitics and transit routes to Asia.

Their cynicism — reflected, for example, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement — formed a lasting pattern of destructive outside meddling. With America’s subsequent emergence as a global power, it treated the Middle East in the same way, relentlessly installing, toppling, bribing or manipulating the region’s governments, all the while mouthing democratic rhetoric.

For example, less than two years after Iran’s democratically elected parliament and Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, the US and Britain used secret services to topple Mossadegh and install the incompetent, violent and authoritarian Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Not surprisingly, the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979 brought a wave of virulent anti-Americanism in its wake. Instead of seeking rapprochement, however, the US supported Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s.

Iraq fared no better with the British and Americans. Britain ruthlessly created a subservient Iraqi state after World War I, backing Sunni elites to control the majority Shia population.

After oil was discovered in the 1920s, Britain assumed control over the new oil fields, using military force as needed. The US supported the 1968 coup that brought the Ba’ath Party — and Saddam — to power.

With Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, America turned on him and has been entwined in Iraq’s politics since — including two wars, sanction regimes, the toppling of Saddam in 2003 and repeated attempts, as recently as this month, to install a government that it considered acceptable.

The result has been an unmitigatedcatastrophe: The destruction of Iraq as a functioning society in an ongoing civil war, fuelled by outside powers, that has caused economic ruin and collapsing living standards. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died in the violence since 1990.

Syria endured decades of French dominance after World War I, then alternatingly hot and cold relations with the US and Europe since the 1960s.

In the past decade, America and its allies have tried to weaken and, starting in 2011, topple President Bashar Assad’s regime, mainly in a proxy war to undermine Iranian influence in Syria.

The results have been devastating for the Syrian people. Mr Assad remains in power, but more than 190,000 Syrians are dead and millions have been displaced as a result of an insurrection supported by the US and its allies (with Mr Assad backed by Russia and Iran).

Some US officials are now reportedly considering an alliance with Mr Assad to fight the militant Islamic State, whose rise was enabled by the American-backed insurrection.

PULLING BACK OF MAJOR POWERS

After decades of cynical and often secret interventions by the US, Britain, France, Russia and other external powers, the Middle East’s political institutions are based largely on graft, sectarian politics and brute force.

Yet, whenever a new crisis in theregion erupts, the latest being triggered by the Islamic State’s recent gains, America intervenes again, perhaps to change a government (as it has just orchestrated in Iraq) or launch a new bombing assault. Backroom dealings and violence continue to rule the day.

Pundits claim Arabs cannot manage democracy. In fact, the US and its allies simply do not like the results of Arab democracy, which all too often produces governments that are nationalist, anti-Israel, Islamist and dangerous to America’s oil interests.

When the ballots go in that direction, the US simply ignores the election results (as it did, for example, in 2006, when Hamas won a large majority of the popular vote in Gaza).

America cannot stop the spiral of violence in the Middle East. The damage in Libya, Gaza, Syria and Iraq demands that a political solution be found in the region — not imposed from the outside.

The UN Security Council should provide an international framework in which major powers pull back, lift crippling economic sanctions and abide by political agreements reached by the region’s governments and factions.

Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other neighbours know one another well enough — thanks to more than 2,000 years of trade and war — to sort out the pieces themselves, without interference from the US, Russia and former European colonial powers.

The countries of the Middle East have a common interest in starving hyper-violent groups such as the Islamic State of arms, money and media attention. They also share an interest in keeping oil flowing to world markets — and in capturing the bulk of the revenues.

I am not claiming that all will be well if America and other powers pull back. There is enough hatred, corruption and arms in the region to keep it in crisis for years to come. And nobody should expect stable democracies any time soon.

However, lasting solutions will not be found as long as the US and other foreign powers continue to meddle in the region. One hundred years after the start of World War I, colonial practices must finally come to an end.

The Middle East needs the opportunity to govern itself, protected and supported by the UN Charter — not by any individual great power.

PROJECT SYNDICATE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jeffrey Sachs is professor of Sustainable Development, Health Policy and Management, as well as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on Millennium Development Goals.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.