The one solace about dealing with problems arising from the Middle East is that it has been a collective headache for thousands of leaders over the entire history of humanity, so we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if we can’t solve some of these things, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try with all of our might and talents.
The main issue in the Middle East is not the war on terror, the Israeli/Palestinian issue, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia. Nor is it a religious battle between Sunnis & Shiites, or Islam & Judaism, or Islam & Christianity.
The main issue in the Middle East is abject poverty and lack of education.
In the modern times that we live in, no rational human being that has something to lose in terms of a good life, free to live in peace, would intentionally throw that all away to go to war over religion or try to use religion in a perverse way to incite war (see ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc).
But when people have been left in ignorance and poverty for decades, if not centuries, by their rulers and ruling classes, all that they have to hold onto is religion, and when they feel that is under threat and have nothing else to lose, radicals are born and must be dealt with on the battlefield, because by then it is too late to help.
We, the United States of America, and our allies around the globe, will continue to fight the horrible symptoms of this abject poverty and lack of education in the form of terrorist attacks, civil wars, and humanitarian crises until we deal with the root causes of all of the unrest.
We must do everything we can to promote democracy in every country in the Middle East, whether they are friend or foe. We must stay engaged with each nation, fostering economic trade and cultural exchanges between each other and the rest of the globe. We must help to improve the living standards and educational resources in even the most impoverished, war torn, and anti-American countries, because as any teacher knows, the kid that needs help the most isn’t the C student trying to get A’s and B’s, it is the kid that isn’t even showing up for class or spends all of their time in the principal’s office or at detention. And as Abraham Lincoln once said, “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends”.
Is there a time and a place to isolate enemies and turn our backs on them? Of course. Is there a time to go to war to stop atrocities and armed conflict? Of course there is. And as long as our enemies know that we are 100% willing and able to do that, then anything short of war is not appeasement.
Right now Iran is our biggest issue in the Middle East because it supports militant groups hostile to Israel’s existence and has been working diligently for years on nuclear technology that they’ve claimed is for peaceful power producing purposes even though they have huge oil reserves.
How do we counter that? The Iran nuclear agreement was a great first step, but there’s still the issue of the militant groups. The militant groups would be out of a job if we solved the root problems that give them an opening to appeal to people with. So let’s solve those root problems….poverty, education, and the Palestinian issue. After that I’ll cover the nuclear issue, Syria, the Kurds, and Yemen.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict—I want you to imagine for a minute that someone comes to visit earth from another planet and you’re getting them up to speed on the history of the planet. You start talking about the Middle East and how 3 of the world’s major religions all started there, and all 3 have controlled the Holy Land and Jerusalem at different times throughout history, and all 3 have places to this day that are sacred and holy to them there, and that many wars have been fought over control of these lands between the followers of each religion, and you ask them based on that little bit of knowledge, who should rule the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem. What would you imagine they would say?
Wouldn’t it be likely they would say something like, ‘wow that sounds like a hot mess, I don’t think any of them should be in charge of it and everyone should have equal access to it’. Guess what, that’s exactly what the United Nations proposed and the Israelis agreed to in 1948….that Jerusalem should be an open city independently administered by a neutral third party (i.e. the UN).
Anyone with a shred of objectivity has to be able to admit that the British really screwed up when they left the Middle East after World War II and partitioned Palestine, because all it did in the end was exchange one perpetual refugee group (the Jews) with another refugee group (the Palestinians). Something about ‘an eye for an eye making the whole world blind’ comes to mind right about now.
So as a result of that fateful decision, the world since 1948 has been forced to pick a side between supporting Israeli independence or the Palestinian refugees. Here is where my pesky Centrist Independent streak comes into play….why can’t we support both?
After all of these years, both sides have to be willing to accept some basic facts….Israel will continue to exist, the Palestinians deserve their own country on the West Bank and in Gaza, Jerusalem must be an open city administered by the United Nations, the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees must be handled through reparations instead of actually coming back to Israel, all of the settlements the Israelis have built on the West Bank in an attempt to claim squatters rights must be given up as well, and citizens of both countries should be issued dual citizenship to allow for freedom of movement for work and leisure.
One way or another, these two peoples must learn to peacefully co-exist with each other in close proximity. Once they do, the United States and the global community must be willing to step up to the plate financially to help get the Palestinian state on its feet and as prosperous as it can be as quickly as it can be. The world simply cannot afford another generation of wasted youth sitting around all day with 70% unemployment and poor education, resenting the rest of the world around it and not having a place in it for them.
Iran & Nuclear Technology—If any country in the world wishes to develop nuclear technology for peaceful energy creating purposes and is willing to completely submit to transparent processes with the International Atomic Energy Agency, then that is their right as an independent nation, regardless of whether the other nations of the world view it as a waste of time because that country has other sources of energy.
The world has been dubious about Iran’s nuclear quest because in theory it doesn’t need nuclear power when it has so much oil. But put yourself in Iran’s shoes for a minute….doesn’t it make great business sense to develop nuclear power for domestic consumption and keep the oil as selling inventory for export purposes? It would lengthen considerably the amount of time that they could sell their oil. So from that standpoint I don’t have a problem with Iran pursuing nuclear energy.
The problems arise when you consider that:
a) they are at least rhetorically against the very existence of the state of Israel and have promised in prior years to wipe it from the map,
b) are state sponsors of terrorist organizations…..so how can we be sure they wouldn’t transfer the technology to them at all,
c) the types of reactors that they were trying to build are based on Russian designs that use plutonium instead of uranium and which naturally create the byproduct to make nuclear weapons, and
d) have been so secretive about their efforts and obstructing the ability of international organizations to monitor what they are doing.
The US and our allies that helped to negotiate and bring about the Iran Nuclear Agreement must be working harder now more than ever to engage with Iran, similar to how I described engaging with North Korea and the détente between Taiwan & China.
We must make the ties that bind the Iranian people to the rest of the world’s economy and society so great that it brings about real desire for changes in their government from within to the point that it abandons any potential thoughts about nuclear weapons and if they ever do resume a path towards nuclear technology, that it is purely for peaceful means.
One way or another, the world cannot tolerate a nuclear power in the Middle East, particularly one that is anti-Israel when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unresolved, and when it has a major regional rival in Saudi Arabia that would then insist on pursuing its own nuclear weapons to ensure their own survival as well.
I know that all of these things I’ve proposed, especially as they relate to Iran and North Korea can seem like a slippery slope leading towards appeasement, but it really isn’t. It’s more similar to our position of strength vis a vis Vietnam in the 1960’s than anything else.
We wield so much overwhelming power that we are worried about a loss of prestige by yielding to weaker countries, but we are a magnanimous people and an ingenuous people, and each situation is different, and just because we engage and try to “defeat” North Korea and Iran through kindness and trade and opening does not mean it is a pattern that will be continued in the future with any other nations that wish to cause trouble on the world stage, that they will somehow be “rewarded” for causing problems in destructive and destabilizing ways.
Syria—Far more worrisome to me than us ever potentially being accused of appeasing bad actors on the world stage is us making decisions based out of fear, particularly fear of failure. Indecision, and inaction, is still an act that has the ability to cause real consequences. I strongly encourage anyone to read about the history of Syria as a nation, particularly since the end of World War II. We in America tend to think of countries as how we see them on a map, and assume it is homogenous and harmonious on the inside. Syria is such an interesting country with its minorities and how it was ruled and held together by its Alawite minority in the form of the Assads and their military dictatorship.
The bottom line is that once the Syrian people got swept up in the Arab Spring of 2011 and were unable to finish the revolution, the West failed out of fear and fatigue from war in Iraq & Afghanistan to help free their country when it looked to the outside world and asked for help. And what happened, since they did not get the help they so desperately needed in terms of military intervention, a long bloody civil war has continued on ever since, with an incalculable human tragedy in terms of death and destruction and mass exodus of refugees, many of whom became a burden on the West anyway.
If you remember nothing else, please remember that problems within other countries, if not dealt with in those countries, will eventually arrive on the doorstep of other countries, including our own.
It is far better to be accused of being too active on occasion in the eyes of history than it is to have been found on the sidelines when history came knocking. We, meaning the West, had a golden opportunity to completely free a nation that has historically played an enormous and critical part in the Middle East and still will. Beyond the long term benefits in terms of how a free and prosperous Syria would hopefully be grateful to its liberators, our fear and inaction helped lead to the tragedies and horrors of the last 6 years and counting.
Furthermore, by not acting as swiftly and boldly as we could have and should have, it has become a morass of a situation, drawing in Russia, Iran & its proxies, ISIS, and other terrorist and parasitic organizations. I know it would have been politically hard at the time, and the American people would have been up in arms about it, but some sort of ‘coalition of the willing’ should have been formed in the spring of 2011 to invade Syria and liberate it from the Assad regime and occupy it until such time as free and fair elections could be held.
As for the current situation, we have allowed it to become complicated with Russians in the theater of operations, and we need them to either lead, follow, or get out of the way in terms of putting together that coalition and finally finish the job so that the Syrian people can begin to rebuild their country and their lost lives.
Kurds & Kurdistan—There has never been an actual country called “Kurdistan” in any time period, including modern times, yet there are 30 to 45 million people self-identifying as Kurds in the world, most of them in the autonomous region of Greater Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, as well as in eastern Turkey, western Iran, and eastern Syria.
For much of the 20th century, when other nations and peoples were getting their countries established after World War I & II as colonial powers left the region, the Kurds were left out in the cold at the expense of the surrounding nations. This was not right, and as a result there are many Kurds and Kurdish organizations who have been fighting for their independence and/or greater autonomy within the regions they occupy within those countries mentioned above.
If one takes a detached, unemotional, long view of this, the autonomous region of northern Iraq should be declared an independent nation, and the majority Kurdish areas of Syria, Turkey, & Iran should be allowed to vote to either join it or be given more autonomy within their own nations. Continued persecution and repression by supposed allies like Turkey and the other nations must stop.
Yemen—It is the poorest country in the Middle East and has always had a troubled history. In modern times it just became a unified country in 1990 when north and south were joined into one country with a currently estimated population of 27 million. Its current situation of civil war was started during the Arab Spring of 2011 in response to the kleptocratic dictatorship of “President” Saleh and has become a total mess of a situation, drawing in Saudi and Iranian support for competing sides, with no clear end in sight. This is precisely the kind of situation that the United Nations was created for. The United Nations should be working towards putting pressure on all parties to cease the bloodshed and war with the impending threat of a multinational invasion force comprised of any nations willing to help that are not from the region to invade and occupy the nation, rebuild its institutions, and prepare it for democratic elections.
If we (meaning the world at large) fail to help resolve this conflict now, it will become Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Vietnam and potentially set off a larger regional war between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Iran.
Iraq—We (meaning the world at large) need to continue supporting this fledgling nation in every way possible to continue positive growth both societally and economically to cement their future as a democracy and productive member of the world community. Sooo much was sacrificed in terms of our soldiers and national treasure, not to mention their own sacrifices to achieve their liberation from Saddam Hussein, that we all must guard against letting these hard fought and hard won victories slip away.
Afghanistan—While I disagreed with pulling out of Afghanistan in 2021 at the time, the speed with how quickly the country fell apart and into the Taliban’s hands shows that we were wasting our efforts, blood, sweat, and treasure. First and foremost, a people has to want to be free. Freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved. I hope we will resume engagement with Afghanistan for the sake of the people there, especially the women and children.
Perry Waag 