Introduction

The situation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has taken an unnerving turn for the worse. The Arab “Spring” or “Awakening” has given way to three spiraling civil conflicts: in Syria, in Yemen, and in Libya. Raging uncontrolled, these conflicts have generated a growing radicalization, both domestically and in the wider region, giving rise to jihadi groups with transnational objectives that are fed by recruits from around the world; they have also started to seep across borders, drawing in neighboring or nearby powers that seek to preserve their interests by supporting proxies or intervening directly. As these conflicts are becoming regionalized and, as a result, increasingly interconnected, they are starting to present a threat to the stability of the entire region, and even of the world: the United States and Russia are at risk of finding themselves in direct confrontation in Syria.

International interference in the region’s conflicts is likely to increase in response to the perceived threat posed by jihadi groups, and also to contain an escalating refugee crisis that is causing extreme difficulties in the region’s host countries and setting off alarm bells in Europe. However, because external powers are deeply divided in their objectives, any intervention is likely to aggravate rather than alleviate the situation. The international “community” exists in name only, and this is inhibiting the search for a solution.

The main external powers playing a role in MENA are the United States, the European Union (and its individual member states, especially the United Kingdom and France), Russia, and China – in that descending order of importance. Russia’s military intervention in Syria can be seen as an attempt to leapfrog over the EU and gain itself a superpower seat at the table of any eventual negotiations over Syria’s future. These powers’ geostrategic interests in the region are of two kinds: resources and alliances, which may be linked. For example, the US presence in the region can be explained by both its interest in protecting the flow of oil to its Western allies and, unrelatedly, its support of its primary ally, the state of Israel; but in the case of Saudi Arabia, the US has maintained a close alliance for decades precisely to protect the flow of oil. It has done so despite the latter’s state ideology – a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam – and consistent abuse of human rights, even if this has come at a serious cost, both reputational and in the form of the 9/11 attacks on US soil, when the majority of hijackers hailed from the Kingdom. France and Britain have their own favorite states in the region, reflecting their post-Ottoman mandate rule, which they feed with arms and other forms of support.

To preserve (and sometimes advance) its interests, the US has provided massive military aid to its allies, especially Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and Syrian rebels.[1] When it felt its interests threatened, it intervened, overthrowing the elected government of Iran in a CIA-instigated coup in 1953, bombing Qadhafi assets in Libya in 1986, ousting the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991, bombing targets in Iraq in 1993 and in 1998-99, and invading Iraq in 2003. Today, the US is bombing the jihadi group known as the “Islamic State” (referred to as IS in this paper) in both Syria and Iraq. Likewise, Russia, which has more limited interests in the region than the US, has responded to the twin threats of the potential loss of its lone regional ally, the Syrian regime, and the emergence of jihadi fighters in Syria (fed by its own repository of radicals in the northern Caucasus) by launching air strikes against Syrian opposition fighters of all stripes.

It may be helpful to look at the accumulating crises in the region in the form of three concentric circles: conflicts in individual countries emerge from local power plays, a weakening state with faltering institutions, a breakdown in elite consensus, and a resulting identity crisis in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings; these conflicts trigger regional interference, by proxy if possible or by direct force if necessary, namely when these proxies fail to do the job on their own; and growing instability then invites intervention by global powers that seek to preserve their interests, thereby adding to instability.

Today, the situation is starting to spin dangerously out of control and is in desperate need of mechanisms that would help deescalate tensions. Given outside involvement, there is very little chance that local conflicts will be resolved politically or settled militarily; more likely they will rage or simmer on, though one or two may go into a frozen state. Regardless, they will continue to destabilize the region. The approach, therefore, should be to first tackle the disputes between the global powers, namely by emphasizing the little common ground that can be found between them. If successful, this in turn could provide the basis for P-5 sponsorship of a collective, balanced process that, by establishing a new regional security framework in MENA, could help reduce tensions among the region’s principal actors: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and possibly Egypt as well (leaving out Israel for the moment).

In this paper I intend to show the depth of the divergence in external powers’ policies toward MENA, and to suggest ways for key players to restore a modicum of common ground as a basis for charting a peaceful and sustainable path out the region’s mounting instability.

Conflict Dynamics

Political conflicts are wont to turn violent either when the state ceases to function as an effective arbiter of disputes between competing groups or loses its legitimacy by becoming overly repressive, arbitrary, and/or corrupt. Grievances exist in all societies, but when they are not mediated or are suppressed they accumulate and deepen, resulting in an escalating, increasingly violent, contestation for power. Repression can often be sustained for a long time, even for decades, as we have seen in MENA, where autocratic regimes were entrenched and seemingly indestructible.

Yet such regimes are not immortal, or infinitely renewable. They tend to come to an end in one of two ways. Some are brought down by external intervention, as in the case of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Others face popular uprisings against conspicuous corruption and a mounting sense of social injustice; this was the case in 2011, when repressive, aging leaderships were confronted with youth-led popular revolts throughout the region. (A third way – a coup d’état – usually replaces a repressive regime; it rarely introduces a meaningful transformation.)

Civil wars ensue when uprisings fail. This happens either when the beleaguered state uses violent means to defeat the protesters, prompting both sides to muster external support for their respective causes, thereby militarizing the conflict (as in the case of Syria), or when the combined local and international efforts to stabilize the post-regime transition falter (Libya and Yemen). In the latter case, the resulting power vacuum may invite the use of force and, on its heels, interference by external powers: take the Huthi takeover and subsequent Saudi-led military assault in Yemen, or the growing chaos in Libya, aggravated by outside powers’ military support for various local groups.

Once conflicts break out they tend to metastasize if left unattended by the concerted efforts of the international community. Libya is a prime example. Having empowered local rebels to bring down the Qadhafi regime, Western states provided little support to enable local actors to establish a post-regime consensus as the basis for a new national compact. Bereft of institutions that could arbitrate inevitable disputes, Libyan groups resorted to violence, building on pre-existing social, economic, and cultural rifts that served to accentuate their political differences. In Yemen a Gulf-led transition project went off the rails over fundamental differences about how to structure the post-regime order, due to a combination of insufficient international support and partisan interference by Saudi Arabia, which sought to protect its interests by playing its favorite groups against the others. This had the unintended result of forcing a direct Saudi military intervention when its proxies foundered in the domestic power struggle.

A key factor in the metastasizing of conflicts is the manipulation of powerful emotive symbols, conveyed via multiple media, to mobilize popular support. These symbols derive from the principal ethnic and religious fault lines in the region. The latter are not causes of conflicts, but they can be used as threats to unify supporters, and they can then give rise to exclusivist claims to power to protect one’s own “community” against another. As a result, the region’s highly diverse population is reduced to distinct ethnic (Arabs, Kurds, Persians, Turks) or religious (Muslims, Christians, Jews) groups, and to sub-sections, as with the Sunni-Shia divide within the Muslim “community”, and the Salafi-Sufi divide within the Sunni Muslim “community.” (There are many others.) These groups thus gain importance as political entities engaged in a deadly power struggle, despite the high incidence of mixing, miscegenation, and mutual conversion, the high degree of diversity even within these groups, and a long history of peaceful coexistence in most cases.

These meta-conflicts serve to disguise the real power struggles between local groups seeking to control what remains of the state – in order to rebuild it under their control – and between regional states intent on protecting their borders and resources, and perhaps on extending their influence. Hence Saudi fears of an ascendant Iran. Whether a nuclear state able to bully its neighbors or a Western-supported non-nuclear state replacing Saudi Arabia as the West’s primary guardian of the Gulf, Iran is perceived as a direct threat to Saudi interests; the Kingdom would much rather have seen Iran cut down to size by a US-Israeli attack that would have destroyed its nuclear program and changed its regime.

In their final stage, metastasizing conflicts reach the global level. Rather than acting as the “international community,” standing above and arbitrating states’ disputes, global powers have gotten all tangled up in complex conflicts themselves by supporting or confronting one particular actor in pursuit of its perceived strategic interests (the Islamic State in the case of the US, and the Syrian regime in Russia’s case), without taking an overall approach to the regional instability which these conflicts have caused and whose perpetuation or outcome may constitute a much greater threat to their interests: they fail to see the forest for the trees. Moreover, they often pursue a securitized response that tends to fan the flames of conflict rather than douse them, forsaking long-term political approaches for graphic short-term military “fixes” they can sell to home audiences. This is the case for both the US and Russia in Syria.

International Actors in MENA

1. The United States

The Obama administration’s policy in MENA has been the subject of fierce criticism. But before looking at the reasons for this, it is important to understand what the U.S.’s core interests in the region are. Stephen Walt proposes the following: protecting energy channels (mainly to shield its oil-dependent Western allies from shock, as the US is largely energy-independent); preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and defeating or at least containing jihadi threats to US interests. He adds two moral interests as well: promoting human rights and participatory government, and protecting Israel. Pursuit of all these, at times contradictory, interests requires balancing and trade-offs.[2]

According to Walt, the US took three successive approaches in pursuit of these interests before 2011 (and indeed before Obama took office in 2009). It first played the role of “offshore balancer” between various powers in the region; then, after ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait, it pursued a policy of “dual containment” toward Iran and Iraq, inserting US forces in Saudi Arabia; and finally, under the George W. Bush administration, it attempted “regional transformation,” a project that began and ended with the disastrous adventure in Iraq. Under Obama, Walt has championed a return to the US’s erstwhile role of a balancer standing above the fray.[3]

This role may have come naturally to Obama, who, having opposed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, entered the White House with a pledge to bring US troops home. Obama displayed a similar allergy to a prolonged US military presence in Afghanistan, although he has since adjusted his views based on the Iraq-exit experience and subsequent rise of the Islamic State.

Obama has gone further: focused on problems back home and assured of the availability of vast new energy resources in the US, he has significantly limited US engagement in MENA. He has relied almost exclusively on drones to attack jihadi groups, for example in Yemen, and he readily deployed US military might alongside Western allies to conduct air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from 2014 onward. Beyond that he has been pronouncedly reluctant to use force, or any other means, to impose US will or even to shape events – a radical departure from the Bush years.

Supporters of his approach have noted that the large-scale US military intervention in Iraq, while successful in deposing the dictator, failed to stabilize the country; his “leading-from-behind” support of the NATO intervention in Libya similarly failed in that aim; and his hands-off approach toward the Syria crisis has yet to produce results consistent with the declared US goal of removing Bashar Assad. If Obama toyed with the idea of using force in Syria, it was only because of unrelenting pressures from both inside and outside the administration, for example the calls to provide sophisticated weapons to the mainstream opposition and impose a no-fly zone. In effect, the administration has been fighting symptoms in Iraq and Syria by striking at IS from the air; it has not wanted to deploy the kind of force that would be needed to defeat the group, nor has it put serious pressure on the Iraqi government to be more inclusive or pushed for a settlement of the war in Syria.

Obama has been able to stick to his approach thanks to a reported low public appetite for another US military adventure overseas.[4] But among the policy elites, including within his administration, it has provoked great frustration over a perceived lack of US will that is seen as causing a decline of US standing in the world, and the creation of a power vacuum that has triggered a proxy struggle in MENA.[5] The administration has come under attack for frittering away US influence in the region by facilitating Iran’s rise to regional hegemony via its single-minded pursuit of nuclear negotiations, refusing to support its allies fighting Iran-backed enemies, dithering in its Syria policy and failing to prevent a humanitarian disaster there, and ignoring its own red lines. This has left US allies confused and prone to panicked responses to perceived threats, as in the case of the Saudi military campaign in Yemen.

US officials have defended the new US posture as reflecting a combination of global power realities, past failures resulting from a more assertive US approach in MENA (Iraq, Libya), and the need to focus on putting the American house in order (especially stimulating economic growth after a long recession), as well as shifting US attention to the Pacific. They argue that the decline of US influence in the world is structural, and was partly caused by the US military misadventure in Iraq, not by Obama’s subsequent decision to reduce U.S. engagement in the region; and that the power vacuum in MENA is primarily the result of the breakdown of autocratic Arab regimes and the lack of a more inclusive vision to replace them.

Moreover, they say, US interests in MENA are not neatly aligned with those of its longstanding allies. For example, to the extent that Gulf allies such as Saudi Arabia see an Iranian threat and request US help in countering it, the US has wanted to tackle that threat differently (preferring to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program); it wants to see the region’s conflicts resolved, not to fuel them. If US allies are engaged in what they see as existential struggles, it is incumbent on the US, as their protector, to keep them from being reckless and instead encourage them to pursue peaceful solutions, with Iran at the table. In Egypt and throughout the region, the US has indicated it can deal with Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood; indeed it sees the Sisi regime as creating the next generation of jihadis by suppressing the group.[6]

Outside government, Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, has argued in Obama’s defense that the administration “has not abandoned traditional U.S. grand strategy,” but has “tried to rescue it from its predecessor’s mismanagement. Obama is prepared to save the core of the liberal order – but to do so, he is willing to sacrifice the periphery, both functional and regional.”[7] In the same issue of Foreign Affairs, Marc Lynch elaborated this notion by characterizing the Obama administration’s MENA strategy as “’rightsizing’ the United States’ footprint in the region,” which he summed up as: “not only reducing its material presence but also exercising restraint diplomatically, stepping back and challenging allies to take greater responsibility for their own security.” If things haven’t gone exactly according to plan, the problem lies not so much in the strategy as in its implementation, creating “a gaping chasm between Obama’s analytic successes and his operational failures.”[8]

Be that as it may, a confluence of factors has precipitated a sharp deterioration in the region’s stability; Washington’s changing approach toward its allies, and the uncertainty this has generated, must be considered as having significantly contributed to that. It may be the unavoidable cost of prioritizing the perceived need to strengthen America at home.

2. The European Union

If US policy has contributed to the growing chaos in MENA, EU policy has been conspicuous by its absence, despite a geographic proximity that would suggest an imperative need for a strategic approach that would shelter the union from the twin phenomena of mass migration and terrorism. Instead, Europe has allowed the US to take the lead, even as it – more than the US itself – bears the brunt of the consequences of ill-conceived policies such as the invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, its approach, in mimicking the US’s by placing the emphasis on military means and focusing on symptoms more than on root causes, is terribly short-sighted and, ultimately, self-defeating.[9]

The EU’s policy toward Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean has long been premised on its perception that it is ringed by neighbors to the east and south that, while not at a stage of political and economic development that they could join the union, nonetheless could be brought effectively within its sphere of influence through “the closest possible political association,” short of actual membership, and “the greatest possible degree of economic integration” – the European Neighborhood Policy. To that end, the EU has provided substantial material support to MENA countries, and has facilitated travel to the 26 countries of the Schengen Area. With respect to MENA, the EU established the “Euro-Mediterranean Partnership,” promoting economic integration and democratic reform in sixteen states in the region.[10] In addition, the EU has taken a proactive role (though still in the US’s shadow) in tackling two conflicts of global impact: the Palestine-Israel conflict and Iran’s nuclear program.

The score card is decidedly mixed. While the conclusion of an accord between Iran and the P5+1 (or the EU3+3, as it is called in Europe) constituted a resounding success for international diplomacy and the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, the Middle East Peace Process has been a process in name only with a peaceful, negotiated outcome more remote than ever, and it has not prevented the repeated outbreak of violent rounds of conflict, most recently in Gaza in 2014. Moreover, the Arab uprisings of 2011 and their aftermath made mincemeat of any integrated neighborhood approach, scuttling the notions of economic integration and democratic reform in many of the affected states.[11]

The EU’s lack of preparedness to deal with the most recent crises in MENA has prompted it to respond in an overly securitized way to what are fundamentally political problems. Witness its participation in the air campaign against IS and military support of proxies, such as Iraqi Kurds, at the exclusion of a concerted attempt to address Sunni grievances in Iraq and Syria; its near-total silence over the calamitous Saudi-led war in Yemen; and its use of naval power to interdict people-smuggling across the Mediterranean (EUNAVOR MED). What Europe needs instead are policies that address the drivers of deadly conflict and seek to prevent conflicts from breaking out, spreading, and jumping across national borders – from being hijacked by violent transnational actors such as Al-Qaeda and IS. Most of all, it needs a shared vision and unity of purpose.

The EU is hampered in its foreign policy by the requirement of reaching consensus among its 28 member states. As its non-response to the migration crisis has shown, the EU is incapable to rise to the challenge and overcome its internal divisions when the issue is highly politicized. What we have seen instead is that individual member states, especially the UK and France, have pursued their own policies in the region, disassociated from any common EU approach. EU consensus tends to occur mainly when it concerns humanitarian matters, which are less divisive. This has turned the EU primarily into a “payer, not a player,” able to spend money for humanitarian aid and development assistance but incapable of forging a common political strategy that would ensure that money goes beyond funding stop-gap solutions. If this this is an inevitable constraint, however, the EU could at least do more of what it does best: spend vastly more money on targeted refugee aid; help strengthen institutions in the states that are still standing, such as Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon; and give full-throttle financial and political support to UN-led mediation efforts in Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. And it should publicly distance itself from U.S. policy in the region when U.S. and EU interests are clearly not aligned.

In a speech in October 2015, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini pointed the union in the right direction, stating inter alia that “[t]o stabilize places like Iraq, or Libya, we will need to train their security forces as much as we will need to strengthen their other institutions, or to foster development,” and that “[s]trategy needs to provide a direction for the future, to tackle future crises and to prevent new ones.”[12] These are lofty words, but for the moment they remain entirely aspirational, with little concrete chance of being implemented.

3. The Russian Federation

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had extensive interests in MENA, forging alliances with the regimes of Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. Today, Russia’s only remaining foothold in the region is its relationship with the Assad regime, given visual expression through a naval station, but in practice this amounted to little until very recently. In September of this year, Russia built out its military presence on Syria’s Mediterranean coast at an airbase, deploying fighter bombers, ground-attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and reconnaissance drones, as well as other weaponry and attendant military personnel, and initiating an air campaign against various rebel targets in support of Syrian ground operations.

The Russian initiative appears to be driven by a couple of overriding concerns: to protect the Syrian regime, or at least to help shepherd a transition that would protect Russia’s interests (and deny the US the ability to claim “regime change”); and to fight jihadi groups that are fed by hundreds of fighters from the Russian Caucasus who could, upon return home, pose a serious domestic threat.[13] In pursuit of these two overlapping objectives, Russian aircraft have not distinguished between jihadi and non-jihadi rebels, and have thus introduced a new stage in the war, one that pits Russia’s support for the Assad regime in direct contradiction to Washington’s opposition to it. The result of Russia’s deployment has been the establishment of a de-facto no-fly zone for Western aircraft, securing for Russia a role as a central actor in any political resolution of the conflict.[14]

Apart from their differing positions on the Assad regime, the U.S. and Russia have much in common in MENA. They both see a jihadi threat and have proven willing to use predominantly military means to fight it, despite the lack of evidence that such military action could lead to the group’s defeat, their declared goal. Russia played a constructive role in resolving the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, and in the Israel/Palestine conflict it has supported the (severely ailing) peace process. It competes with the U.S. and European states in selling arms to MENA states, but the market is flush because demand is high during the current turbulence, and Russian-made weapons have a corner of the market regardless, given their relative lack of sophistication and lower cost.

Much depends on Russia’s military fortunes in Syria. Its last-ditch support of a crumbling Assad regime may not be enough to save it, and its tactical alliance with Iran may not survive serious negotiations over Syria’s future. Its role at the negotiating table, however, may facilitate necessary security guarantees for the Alawite community in a post-Assad scenario, a necessary condition for a peaceful settlement. But while its military intervention is creating new opportunities (witness the start of international negotiations in Vienna), it is also taking the conflict to a new level of lethality and increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between Russian and U.S. aircraft through accident or otherwise.

4. China

China has three principal interests in MENA: energy security, trade, and the need to avoid getting drawn into any of its conflicts and instead find a way to balance its relationships. So far, it has done well on the first two fronts, less on the third.[15]
China imports most of its oil from Saudi Araba and Iran, especially the former (20 per cent of its imports), and it relies tacitly on the U.S. to protect the channels through which oil is transported. The latter fact means that China has not needed to intervene militarily when those channels were threatened, for example when Iraq invaded Kuwait and posed a threat to oil production throughout the Gulf in 1990. This could change, of course, for example if the Saudi monarchy were to collapse, and combined Western efforts to address the crisis were to prove insufficient or introduce change adversarial to Chinese interests. China also has not participated in efforts to defeat IS, despite the presence of Chinese jihadis (primarily from Xinjiang) among the groups fighting in Syria and Iraq, but clearly it is worried.

China was as bewildered by the Arab uprisings as Western states were, and had to hedge its bets in several cases in order to protect its trading interests. As a result, it invariably suffered a dent in relations, as the winner of the contest in each country would punish Beijing for having supported the other side. Such was the case in both Libya and Egypt (though the Sisi coup may have made China welcome again). China maintains cordial relations with Iran, importing its oil while at the same time playing a constructive role in the P5+1’s negotiations with Tehran over the latter’s nuclear program.

Broadly speaking, China is becoming increasingly dependent on stability in the Gulf, which today is not a given (if ever it was). Generally, its reliance on the Gulf for its energy security is a great vulnerability, and sooner or later it may find that it is no longer able to avoid being drawn into the region’s conflicts to protect its strategic interests.

Conclusion

The international “community” is acting in MENA in a manner that exposes its divisions and pushes to the background any common ground as may still exist. At the current rate of military intervention by all main parties (except China), the situation in Syria and elsewhere in the region is set to deteriorate, not improve. Perhaps all need to realize the grave perils of such a course before taking the required remedial action – late in the day, perhaps even too late – just as it has taken years of dire warnings backed up by solid scientific evidence before states started giving signs of being serious about tackling climate change.

The proliferation of arms sales by states, or private sales approved by governments, is further fueling deadly conflict. Weapons sales to the region by the U.S., UK, France, Canada, and Russia, among others, are expected to amount to $18 billion this year, up from $12bn in 2014. The main purchasers are the Gulf states, as well as Iraq, Egypt, and Algeria. Russia approved the sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran earlier this year (having blocked it since 2010), perhaps in response to escalating Saudi arms purchases and possibly also as a potential military response to the Saudi air campaign in Yemen (assuming Iran would, or could threaten to, pass these weapons to the Houthis).[16]

These separate and in some cases conflicting approaches to the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa have the potential to rebound negatively on global security. This ultimately cannot be in the interest of global powers, who by jockeying for position are playing with fire. There is an urgent need for these powers to delineate whatever common ground remains and to use this as a basis to deescalate tensions. Successful negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program show that unity of purpose in pursuit of a geostrategic goal can yield positive results, and that multilateral diplomacy can work. Likewise, the EU has shown that when it is unified, as with its sanctions against Russia over the latter’s actions in Ukraine, it can achieve its declared objectives (although sanctions have been unable to reverse Russia’s occupation of Crimea).
Local conflicts in the region, such as the war in Syria, cannot be resolved by themselves. Just as they gravitated outward, drawing in first neighbors and then external powers, now the approach must be the reverse: to reduce divisions and ease tensions between global powers, so that they can work in concert to establish a cooperative security framework in the region. Only if international players succeed in putting their own houses in order and pursue coordinated strategies aimed at de-escalation can we hope that the conflicts in the region can be contained and, over time, be brought to an end.

While there is little to suggest that such efforts stand any great chance of success, there are no better alternatives available, and it’s clear that there is no time to lose. If we look at MENA crises as occurring in three concentric circles, then the first step should be to identify, and act on, shared interests between the U.S. (backed by European states) and Russia in Syria. On the heels of the first round of talks in Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has mentioned three such areas: the defeat of IS, political negotiations for a transitional government (eventually leading to Assad’s departure), and maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity.[17] Yet the Vienna negotiations will not quickly or easily produce a peaceful settlement: the gap between other actors, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia, remains too wide.

This is why it is incumbent on Russia and the U.S. to use any initial agreement on the outlines of an eventual Syria settlement to move forward with addressing the middle concentric circle: to encourage regional states to initiate a process, modelled loosely on the example of the Helsinki process four decades ago, toward constructing a new regional security architecture, guaranteed by the P-5. The initiative should include, in addition to Iran and Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other GCC states; other states in the region, such as Egypt, could perhaps join later. Such a process, if properly designed and guided, by itself should help reduce tensions through enhanced communication and information-sharing, and the beginnings of coordination on issues of common interest. That in turn could lay the basis for settling the internal conflicts raging in Syria and Yemen, and formulating a strategy of defeating IS within a political context of addressing Sunni grievances and allowing a local Sunni leadership to run the areas vacated by the Islamic State.

Until then, international actors involved in the various MENA theaters would be well-advised to keep in mind the medical maxim when treating a patient: “do no harm” or, when bad practices are well underway, “do no further harm” via reckless military adventures.