From the transcript of America and Islam After Bush, a symposium sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:
George W. Bush has been, objectively speaking, the most pro-Shia president in American history. Granted, it’s not a title most American presidents have traditionally competed for, but by any measure, he has done more for Shia empowerment, and Shia religious empowerment in particular, just by the invasion, which opened up Najaf and Karbala, the pilgrimage cities, than any other American president. I know he didn’t set out to be the pro-Shia president.
That’s just one small piece from a very long transcript. The key points relate to huge shift in the Middle East. The conflict and the issues once thought of as important, i.e., Israel, now matter very little. The key area of conflict, brought about by the power shift enabled by the American intervention in Iraq, is the emergence of Shia power and the reaction of the Sunni power centers, now on the decline. Vali Nasr states:
The world has changed significantly since 2003, as we know. The Middle East has changed in a very significant way. Part of the problem is we have never really understood we are dealing, post-Iraq, with Middle East 2.0: that there are some fundamental, and in my opinion irreversible, shifts in the balance of power of the region.
First, there is a palpable, significant, and, I think for the time being, irreversible shift of power and importance from the Levant —“ the area of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Syria —“ to the Persian Gulf and the Afghanistan/Pakistan corridor. The region that for 50 years was the basis of our foreign policy —“ we thought its conflicts mattered most, our alliances there mattered most —“ does not matter as much to peace and security anymore. When the Lebanon war happened in 2006, the country that had most to do with it was not in the neighborhood. It was Iran. The countries in that neighborhood could do nothing to stop the war, and this was attested to by Israel, the United States and the regional powers themselves.
Everybody today thinks the Palestinian issue has to be solved because it is a surrogate to solving a bigger problem, which is somewhere else in the region. Once upon a time we used to think —“ and some people still do —“ that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the key to solving all the problem of the regions: terrorism, al-Qaeda, Iran or Iraq. I don’t believe so. I think the Persian Gulf is the key to solving the Arab-Israeli issue. All the powers that matter —“ Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even the good news of the region: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, et cetera —“ are all in the Gulf. And all the conflicts that matter to us —“ Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran —“ are in the Gulf and then to the east.
So the Arab-centeredness of the Muslim Middle East is gone. We haven’t caught up to that in our foreign policy. The Middle East now is far more Iranian and Pakistani and Afghani in terms of the strategic mental map we have to deal with. Trying to deal with the Middle East as if we’re in 2002, before the Iraq war, is one of the main reasons why we haven’t been able to bring the right force to bear on the problems in the region.
The second shift, connected to this, is a palpable movement from the Arab world toward Iran. The Arab world has declined very clearly in its stature and power; Iran is a rising force. …you don’t hear a single Iranian leader express any kind of anxiety; in fact, in a very patronizing way they constantly say to Arab countries, —Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You don’t need to rely on the United States; we’ll protect you.—
…It’s clear that the balance of power —“ and a lot of power is a matter of perception —“ has moved eastward. The center of gravity has moved eastward. It’s a problem for us because most of our alliance investments were to the west, in the Arab world. Now, those alliances have not done for us as much as we hoped they could, even in the Arab-Israeli issue, where they were supposed to be the ones providing all the help.
The third and, again, connected shift is that after Iraq there is a palpable shift in the religio-political sphere from the Sunnis to the Shias, a sect of Islam that has been completely invisible to us. We all of a sudden discovered them, but I don’t think we quite understand what we discovered and what it means for us going forward. A fourth, related shift is that many of the conflicts we are dealing with, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, involve insurgent Sunni forces.
The losers in America’s battles in this region are not evenly distributed among the actors I’m mentioning. The Sunni powers, the Arab powers, have clearly lost as a consequence of our wars of choice and necessity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran and its allies and the Shia forces have clearly gained.
In this respect the United States enabled a shift in power that has long term geopolitical consequences. It isn’t about the Israelis and Arabs anymore. That’s a minor conflict to be used for cred in a larger religio-political power struggle.
The other fascinating part of the discussion centers around the differences between the Shia and the Sunnis. Mr. Nasr does a good job of drawing parallels, although slightly uninformed parallels, to differences between the Churches of the East and the West, as well as between the Catholic and Protestant Churches. He touches on parallels to Christian issues such as biblical interpretation, inerrancy, and the development of doctrine argument and how these play into the Shia-Sunni power struggle.
In reading of the conflicts between Shia and Sunni I couldn’t help but to think of the Young Fogey’s references to the on-line religious arguments that he avoids, occurring in various fora. Think of those arguments as arguments on steroids, backed up with massive armaments, bit players, and enough bloodshed to drown whole cities. If only his discipline in avoiding the on-line conflicts, a common sense approach, would transfer to our leaders in Washington. Our uninformed actions have, as in prior instances, release forces we never expected. Here’s to a non-interventionist foreign policy.
