Militarization of the Middle East is dangerous
- By Jin Liangxiang
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E-mail China.org.cn, June 2, 2015
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Destroyed buildings in Ibb, southern Yemen. |
The bombing of Yemen led by Saudi Arabia has continued for about two months despite a short ceasefire. This is the first time that a regional power in the area has launched a bombing campaign against another country in the region since Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait a couple of decades ago. Whatever the reasons for the bombing of Yemen, it sets an extremely dangerous example for the turbulent region known as the Middle East.
In a way, the Saudi-Arabia-led military intervention signals the end of the dormancy of regional powers in the Middle East that began with the Gulf War in 1991. After that conflict, regional countries grew used to asking external powers, particularly the United States, to address regional problems with military action.
The historical consequences of the Gulf War were not limited to the re-establishment of regional order by driving Saddam Hussein's forces back to Iraq, but also included the establishment of the dominant role of the U.S. in the region as an external power. The Gulf War arguably inaugurated intervention by an external power, particularly through military means, as a pattern of regional governance in the Middle East.
The U.S. established various military bases in the Gulf and other parts of the Middle East for the purposes of containing Iraq and Iran. It also established a no-fly zone protecting Kurds in Iraq when it launched the Iraq war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. Most recently, it has dominated the process of the Iran nuclear negotiations, participated in the conflict that toppled Muammar Qaddafi's regime in Libya in 2011, and reluctantly intervened in Syria's domestic crisis in a limited way since 2011.
However, the last few years have witnessed growing U.S. reluctance to get deeply involved in regional affairs. Despite pressures from Gulf countries, the U.S. has been unwilling to intervene militarily in Syria and has called for a negotiated solution to the Iran nuclear issue rather than a military one. These stances can be partly attributed to the U.S.'s declining role in the region as a result of its decreasing dependence on Middle Eastern oil, its relative decline in overall power, its strategy of pivoting toward the Asia-Pacific region and its frustration with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By choosing to bomb Yemen to intervene in its domestic affairs, regional powers have demonstrated their willingness to address issues affecting the region through their own means and their own power. This response is likely the result of their awareness that the U.S. can no longer be persuaded to invest strategic resources in regional issues and that regional powers will therefore have to do something on their own.
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