LOOKING TO THE WRONG SUPERPOWER FOR STABILITY:

SURVIVOR, GULF STYLE (Barry Rubin, 12/17/07, GLORIA)

[T]he Gulf Arabs want the United States to make problems go away with no risk or sacrifice on their part. They then blame the West for not doing so, a campaign that often finds lots of people in that region foolish enough to believe this propaganda

What most Gulf Arabs want, though, is neither jihad nor an Islamist empire but simply security for themselves. By cheering on and often subsidizing jihad—at least outside their own countries—they hope to buy themselves immunity from the radicals’ violence and revolutionary instability. They seek Western protection and practice appeasement simultaneously as parts of a single coherent policy. The goal is material well-being for themselves and peace at home.

Gulf Arab regimes applauded and subsidized the radical Nasserists and Baathists for decades convinced that the West they maligned would save them whenever needed. They were proved right. In the 1980s, the United States led a coalition to stave off Iran and convoy their oil tankers; in 1991, an American-organized alliance drove Iraq out of Kuwait. History, they hope, will repeat itself.

The problem with this approach is that their policy denies peace, progress, and stability for others, in fact often makes bloodshed and conflict inevitable in large parts of the Middle East. And, irony of ironies, the same strategy of stone-throwing in which they are engaging may end up blowing up their own glass houses.

Which is why the most terrifying moment in Arab history will be when they recognize the post-Ahmedinejad American/Iranian alliance.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 18, 2007 3:30 PM