East Meets West: Implications of the Growing Asian Presence in the Middle East – Prelude to War or Pathway to Peace?

Geoffrey Kemp, Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, recently released a book entitled East Meets West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East (LINK).  Its content may help to initiate a turning point of recognition amongst influential policy planners that the military expenses dedicated to protecting the West’s predominant control over the oil-rich Middle East are not benefiting Western powers and that Western policy must make an immediate alteration. The work also emphasizes the rise of Eastern Asian powers in the region, and largely in a way that documents two competing spheres and forms of influence.  Mr. Kemp does a great deal to call attention to the fact that, if processes continue at their present rate, Eastern powers will take over predominant influence of the region in the near term. These points direct an all too important conversation about the end of empire, albeit a conversation powers in history have oftentimes not handled well. The variables correlate significantly to the situation of the Middle East prior to World War I, when two imperialist powers, then Britain and Germany, also split the region in two and came to competition that eventually sparked worldwide conflict. Today the risk is similar, but there are alternatives that would leave all better off. These solutions would necessitate the end of the American era, but usher in a new, multi-polar era with reverberating consequences that would have positive effects on the state of the world.  

Mr. Kemp is presently traveling around universities and institutions displaying his findings and communicating with fellow policy planners (see HERE).  His efforts will certainly amplify a discussion amongst the intelligentsia in America that was temporarily put on hold with the election of Barack Obama, but that has resurfaced as of late: Is America entering a point where the expense of maintaining vast military prowess is superseding its benefit? The present American military presence is superfluous in Iraq, the Arab Sheikhdoms, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Straight of Hormuz, the Gulf, everywhere except Iran (and that may change soon).  Of course, as is typical of all establishment discussion, America is not mentioned as being an empire seeking only personal gain at the expense of others, its intentions are considered benign without exception, and the conclusion that will certainly be drawn in conversation is not that its military footprint should be decreased but rather that Asian powers must ultimately share more of the burden in protecting what is typically referred to as ‘security’ in the region.

It is important to recognize that questions are never seriously pondered about whether the political autocracies and networks of privilege existent in the Middle East, protected and promoted by aid (both humanitarian and arms) and the military presence are desirable and, in fact, even necessary. Instead, the attitude is that the Americans are providing stability and security while the Asians reap the benefits and if the Asian powers do not kowtow to this interpretation there will certainly be war and continuous breakdown of the international arena.   

It is time for a conversation about why the Middle East is kept dependent on foreign powers in the first place, about how the undemocratic, authoritarian regimes have squandered the resource wealth, and thereby the potential for indigenous development, by expropriating proceeds from oil and gas in ways that preserve their unjust political and economic control and form the basis upon which contemporary indirect colonization has reigned. Should not the natural resource wealth of a nation be utilized to develop the sophistication of internal industrial, engineering, cultural and other productive capacities?  The answer has, up to this point, flatly been no. The governments of the Middle East are oligarchies, across the broad, and by portraying this as a cultural rather than externally imposed phenomena, the politicized rhetoric and culture talk of imperialism provides a justification that makes the oppressor a liberating force. Oligarchies necessitate that the general population is left undeveloped, or else they become unsustainable and at the very worst rise to challenge the regime. Whereas the primary commodity of any nation is its people, oligarchies and imperialist subordinates’ greatest crime is in their conscious prevention of cultivation not of the terrain, or of economic infrastructure, but of the human minds that inhabit these nations, the creative capacities of their indigenous populations.

The cultivation of the human being inside the nation must be of primary import in order that a society may coagulate and flourish holistically. Otherwise, no matter the structure of governance, there can only be oppression. This is true in a democracy as well as an authoritarian regime. This is why the methodology of Islam cultivates an awareness of communal purpose and direction that drives individual actions into conformity with a social movement for collective improvement and prosperity. It is also why the theoretical Islamic system, when understood, propagated, and practiced correctly, is antithetical to imperialism and oligarchy, and why a conscious project of preventing Islamic governance from returning to the Middle East has underlined much of Western policy since the fall of the last Ottoman, Islamic regime.

 

It is important to recognize that the discussions of policy planners in the West heavily influence their respective governmental and private institutions; many of these institutions heavily influence Middle Eastern regimes, and the interests of all these entities are best served by guaranteeing that the discussion remains about what, who, when and how external entities will obtain or retain control. Never, is the discussion to turn into one of how the people of the Middle East may establish influence over their resources, governments, and general lives. It is for that reason, that policy conversations like these must be broadened in a way that includes this ‘public option’ and must in fact be broadened by a coalition of individuals representing the people of the Middle East. In order to facilitate and contribute to discourse in that direction, this article will correlate the phenomena marked within East Meets West to a Middle East on the cusp of losing its last indigenous imperial power during the build up to the First World War. 

As the tale is commonly told, World War I was started by Germany, and they bore the brunt for it by being forced to pay reparations that eventually contributed greatly to also sparking fascism and World War II. In reality however, World War I was initiated not so much by German aggression but because of the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad, financed by the Germans but made politically feasible by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were attempting to reclaim Arabia and wrest it from the control of the Anglo-imperialist parasite of that era, the British Empire.  This partnership between the Ottomans and Germany was based on infrastructure development and could have given Germany access to oil and trade with the Middle East, but would have also resuscitated the waning Ottoman Empire, by then known as the sick man of Europe. The British were all too worried that their monopoly on trade from the Orient and especially from its precursor to today’s multinational corporation, the British East India Company, would be jeopardized.

Map of Proposed Berlin to Baghdad Railroad 

The development of a railroad between Berlin and Baghdad could have erased the strategic control the British held over the Middle East via extraction points at the Suez Canal and the Arab Emirate States. These docks created an advantage as Britain could loot not only India but the Middle East as a whole from these control centers.  It is also the threat of development that led Britain and France to ally with Arab parties as British proxies against the Ottomans, and to then create colonial states after the war that would preserve Western Europe’s control over the Middle East up unto the present.  Policy in the Middle East has continuously tried to prevent the types of development that are implied by such a development program as a trans-regional railroad. Instead, Western powers have maintained a process of extraction of the oil resource by deliberately preventing any type of true development to occur.


The situation then, was similar to today. Egyptian, Sudanese, and African resources, needed by industry and for development at home, were extracted to Europe via the Suez and the looted goods of India and China made their way through the Arab Gulf due to the alliances the British were forming in the region. Preventing development of the landed region of the Middle East made certain that the monopoly of maritime trade preserved the British Empire. While this system was established other coincident developments contributed to exasperating the importance of the region: the British replaced its Navy’s energy source from coal to oil and a German report from 1901 suggested Iraq may lie on a sea of petroleum. Thus the oil wars were initiated then and the region has remained a hotbed of conflict since, with foreign powers propping up loyal regimes largely in order to secure the flow of oil and resources abroad and to prevent any type of indigenous political, economic, and social advance that may pose a threat to the system of plunder.

What the reporting within East Meets West establishes without ever explicitly stating is that the state of the region is returning to a point similar to that which existed on the eve of World War I. Just like today, two versions of imperialism then competed for control over the Middle East. The British model, focused on colonial extraction and prevented indigenous development of the region in much the same way the complete destruction of Iraq is advantageous to American ambitions to replicate that model today. The German model then promoted a form of imperialism based on trade and industry and would have actually afforded the opportunity that the political conflict then raging in the region be resolved. The Ottomans would have been able to reconnect themselves to Arabia, reclaimed and developed Iraq and Persia and reconnected the Middle East economically, politically, and perhaps even culturally in the process.  In reality, that same vision is made possible by the approach taken by the eastern, Asian powers today, especially China’s approach of development and cooperation setting aside the notion that they should influence a country’s politics or occupy it militarily.

It is not a surprise that this similarity has not been identified by academics, the press or government officials. The American academic community’s approach is no different than that of the British beforetime. The British Foreign Office was instrumental in concocting the Islamist threat as a justification for attacking the Ottomans calls of Abdul Hamid for regional cooperation and resistance to imperialist plunder. Their Foreign Office, like the CIA and State Department today, grew nearly obsessed with the idea that Pan-Islamism could restore a sense of autonomy in the Middle East and were all the more upset by the notion that Germany may want to assist in reviving such an endeavor.  

It is also important to note that the Young Turk Movement, largely a European project, temporarily disrupted construction of the railroad during the interval they held power before the outbreak of World War I. In similar ways, the United States has propped up proxies in the region preventing development as well; setting up the petrodollar scheme in 1971 through its proxy in Riyadh has allowed the United States to prevent the worst nightmare scenario where resources of the Middle East will be used to the benefit of the people. The economic development modeled under Washington Consensus terms during the 80’s and 90’s only encouraged booming industrial cities and mass urbanizations alongside the dismantlement of industrial agricultural developments and internal infrastructure projects that could have developed a skilled labor force inside Middle Eastern countries. Instead the Aramco model of slave plantations and lucrative contracts for Western multinationals became and remains the preferred model.

As much as an end of colonialism was pronounced in the post World War II era, the system of control and subjugation has remained largely the same.  Today, as America finds itself confronted with an unsustainable policy at present and the rising influence of Asian powers in the region it is faced with the choice of retreating from the process of imperialism or struggling to maintain control. The inevitable outcome could very well lead to the outbreak of World War III.

Look at the following map from Mr. Kemp’s book:

        Notice the energy ellipse running north to south. This is where all the oil and gas lies, from the Caspian Sea region in the north to the super rich Gulf States of the south  The horizontal ellipsis, properly termed here as “The War Zone,” overstretches Iraq in the west, runs through Iran and ends on the east in Afghanistan. It is from here that Western powers deploy their neo-colonialist control mechanisms. Iraq has been destroyed and is still occupied, Iran is on harsh sanctions, and Afghanistan has been destroyed and is occupied as well with an increasing military presence in Pakistan. However, contrary to initial ideas about the ease with which America would expand its military presence in the Middle East thereby assuming absolute control over entry and exit points, much of the military efforts have come at severe economic and political consequence, and there is an increasing awareness that America’s power and influence in the region is dwindling fast. The book by Mr. Kemp will certainly add to that increasing awareness, leading to discussions that will shortly influence government and the mainstream. The reaction will be based upon a conglomerate of variable reactions and is impossible to predict. The worst fear is that, like the British Empire previously, this awareness could lead factions of power to conclude it best to advocate for all-out war.

As tensions mount in Iran, Iraq stands ready to reignite, political discord prevails in Lebanon, Syria and the Levant generally and Turkey and Saudi Arabia expand their influence in the region, it is apparent that an Arab block is forming around the Israeli State and that pressures in the region are building for a change of course. Iran has gone on-line with the regions first nuclear reactor and other nations are following suit either in reaction or in agreement that it is a productive energy source. While Saudi Arabia continues to commit to its unwritten exchange with the U.S., oil for power, and seems stable, each of the other Middle Eastern States contain variables of unpredictability, resistance to the status quo and radically altering public opinions, that  may force a move further from passively accepting outside interference that extracts more than it provides in exchange. 

Prolonged American presence has created a nightmare that may prove to have long term political and economic consequence. The only contracts that have gone to Western corporations as of late are private security firms, part and parcel of the military presence. With no sign of domestic economic improvements at home and little chance alternatives to American dependencies on oil will be developed, the conditions across the board seem ripe for conflict, and with Asian nations increasingly dependent on Middle East exports and development contracts, the entire world holds a vested stake in outcomes as it has grave implications for global trade.

Conversations about policy in the Middle East never include a discussion of the potential for an alternative course being taken in the Middle East. It is assumed, a priori, that the Middle East must remain a region of oligarchs. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak is courted and loved by Washington for the very fact that he keeps Egypt in the hands of an elite. Similarly, the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia serves as the contemporary twin power through which Western influence has reigned. Israel sits in the middle of a region strategically preventing any sort of cooperative and cohesive indigenous development and so, despite having much of the world’s most covetous resources, the Middle East remains largely behind in its capacity to develop itself. It is imagined that Asian powers prefer the Middle Eastern status quo and that this is why they say little about American militarism.  In similar ways, Germany was serving its own interests by building the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad, but development is quite distinct from imperialism and therefore the Asian model of development is certainly preferable today.

The British won World War I, and cast the region into what its planners perceived to be permanent peonage.  The United States took over continuing this policy after World War II. Up unto the present, the policy of extraction through maritime plunder has remained and has effectively driven the Middle East to the lowest levels of development indicators lagging far behind in political and economic freedoms, educational levels, and health and human prosperity indicators across the board. The policy is simply a set of practices derived from the axiom that the region’s rich natural resources must not be used for actual internal development. Instead, they must be extracted, at prices acceptable to the neo-colonialist masters. In order to guarantee that no such idea as the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad would ever be deemed feasible again, the British dismantled the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and used the Sykes-Picot betrayal to create a series of nation states that would produce the types of conflict that prevent development through industry and trade up unto today.  

And so, the present conversation of the Middle East centers again around two outlooks eerily reminiscent of the circumstances existent in the era before the First World War. Firstly, the western model of control and development geared toward creating dependency and secondly, the rising influence of the Eastern Asian powers based largely on mutually rewarding trade and industrial advance. The US State Department is already producing reports that criticize China as an ambiguous military power. The Chinese continue to emphasize that they are pursuing self interests through trade. The newly published book, East Meets West, will only heighten western fears. However, there will certainly be little mention of this background in the political commentary of coming years. We are still to believe that World War I was sparked simply with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Few circles accurately attribute World War I, or the latest War in Iraq for that matter, on oil and imperialist control.  So too, academics in the West will never portray the United States present as an imperialist power. Its military presence is imagined to be utilized only for security and peace-keeping, despite that it has promoted nothing of the sort and increasingly fails to accomplish those ends as times goes on. 

What is certain is that there needs to be a discussion about western military presence in the Middle East. Mr. Kemp argues that China is all too willing to have U.S. military force remain and actually prefers they stay. In reality, it seems that the only thing it is producing is conflict, destabilization and prevention of autonomous control. It is a shame that the peoples of the Middle East cannot wrest themselves from the domination of governments that care not about promoting the actual development of the region for all and that instead are part and parcel protectors of the present system.  

One possible answer that could potentially make everyone happy, including an America retreating from its imperialist role, is the reinvigorated discussion of constructing railways and infrastructure throughout the Middle East. The Berlin to Baghdad Railway, much of the line still existent and operational, could be enhanced and lines may be expanded that could connect the ellipsis of oil, from the Caspian to Gulf, to points in Europe and then off into Africa and Asia.  The details of such a plan must be developed in other reports and series of discussions on region wide development, but it is important to recognize that there is no mention in the dialogue of Western powers that entails greater autonomy, less military presence and an alternative model of foreign influence similar to what was promoted by Germany in the Middle East prior to World War I.  That is not necessarily the case, however, with regard to Chinese, Asian, and Indian influence today. Southeast Asian populations represent the largest populace of Muslims on the planet. China is most concerned with its internal developments and maintaining the resource capacity necessary to maintain them.  The authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, for the most part, may prefer only that they retain oligarchic control over their respective nations, but inserting an understanding of real development and trade as a means of promoting effective relations and advancement for all would benefit the whole world and presents a solution for the peoples suffering daily at the hands of the processes of imperialism.

Military intervention has done nothing to create security or peace. It is time that this is recognized. A comprehensive development plan, the likes of the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad could revolutionize the planet and mark a discontinuation of finance capitalism that has extracted the possibility of true advancement, maintained unjust political modes, and permitted the continuous neglect of human capital in the Middle East. The multiplier effect could birth a new wave of entrepreneurial spirit and cultural advancement, increase scientific awareness and create perhaps millions of additional jobs and opportunities for cooperation in the region over both the short and long term. Additionally, political frictions could be resolved and political power would be spread over greater levels of the populace. While development represents a win-win for parties across the board, there are many factions that benefit from preservation of the status quo.

While the content of East Meets West and similar discussions increasingly being held do nothing to recognize the need for immediate breaks from traditional policy, they do present an opportunity to erase the notion that there is no imperialist force in the world today and to create a call for systems that counter the notion of empire altogether by calling to its antithesis: sovereign development. Citizens of the world must move forward despite the drumbeats of war. This will take nothing less than collective action and the initiation of a conversation that poses solutions and represents true change. In the end, if it can be achieved, destruction may be averted and the idea of empire can be put in the annals of history where it properly belongs.


~Postcript: For an informative and interesting breakdown of the Oil Wars please see the video below: