THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS IS INTERNAL:

America and Islam After Bush (Vali Nasr, December 8, 2008 , Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life)

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 have to take my word; just listen to the Iranians and the Arab leaders. You don't hear the Iranians worried about the Arab world; 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."

Then listen to Arab leaders. The first thing every American official hears when he or she arrives in an Arab capital is worry about Iran. 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. So when we look at Iraq and Afghanistan, we're essentially facing revanchist forces -- forces who lost and refuse to accept what has happened and believe they can come back. All of these dynamics are now embedded in the power structure of the region, namely this Shia-Sunni issue. The Arab-Iranian issue is encapsulated in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry around the Gulf and in Iranian-Arab rivalry over the future of Lebanon and the Palestinian issue. These conflict-area issues are going to continuously reflect those dynamics.

Lebanon, for instance, is going to reflect the power play in this region. The winners and losers in these wars are not only the local people. A larger force has been unleashed since the Iraq war. This Iranian-versus-Arab, Shia-versus-Sunni, Persian Gulf powers-versus-the Levant dynamic is going to play itself out. The insurgencies going against the United States are also connected to this, because, as I mentioned, they are intent on turning back the clock in the Middle East to before 2003. So these insurgencies will be ongoing until the final shape of this region is settled. It's not just a matter of troop numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, we're dealing with something larger going on in this region.

Connecting these geo-strategic issues to what's happened in this region religiously is very important. We talk about Iran and Saudi Arabia as countries in secular terms, the way we think of France or Germany or a power play in Europe -- that is, in terms of realpolitik -- but in the mental map of Muslims, they also represent two large civilizational blocks within Islam. Namely, Iran stands for Shia power, whether or not it wears it on its sleeve. Saudi Arabia and the Arab world essentially represent the Sunni face of Islam. In many ways we think there is a single Islamic threat out there, but that's not the case.

There is an intense rivalry between these two sects of Islam, between both the radical elements of each and the establishment elements of each. This civilizational or cultural or religious battle within Islam is now very clearly tied to everything that's happened after Iraq. Therefore it is not going to stop, because it's not a matter of getting a couple of clerics in a room to say nice things about one another; it's not an ecumenical exercise. There is a huge power play associated with this.

We all know how Iraq opened this fissure. It ended up being a turning point for a variety of reasons. First, it is of symbolic value: Post-Saddam Iraq is the first Shia Arab state in history. That represents a major turning of the tide. Now, 60 to 65 percent of Iraq is Shia, which means about 80 percent of its Arab population is Shia. In Lebanon, 30 to 40 percent of the population may be Shia, which makes it the single largest community in the country. Seventy-five percent of Bahrain is Shia, and 10 percent of Saudi Arabia is Shia, roughly speaking. Shias makes up between 20 and 25 percent of Pakistan, 30 percent of Kuwait, 20 percent of the United Arab Emirates and about 20 percent of Afghanistan. Yet for so long, when we looked, we didn't see the Shias, particularly in the Arab world.

So where was this invisible population? It was there. What the U.S. did in Iraq was to show a way to reverse this trend; namely, it showed a path to empowerment for the Shia, first through regime change and secondly through elections. The Shias took to elections very aggressively after Iraq. I remember the very first thing Hezbollah's television stations said after elections in Iraq was, "We want exactly that -- one man, one vote -- not this democracy where at the end of the day the minorities end up ruling." The Shias in Saudi and the Bahrain said the same thing.

Regime change in Iraq worked so well only because we'd already established Kurdistan and the rest is majority Shi'a, with all that entails.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2009 7:35 AM