All revolutions have their intellectual godfathers, the current protean movements seen on American university campuses being no exception. For those wishing to “globalize the Intifada,” there is no greater inspiration than Edward Said (1935-2003), an early, passionate pioneer of elite anti-colonial mobilization. The stated goal of today’s college radicals seems to be permanent revolution, with Palestine as the latest, essential component in what some have called the “Omnicause.”
Said, besides being a revolutionary thinker, was also the humanist who desired a negotiated peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, advocating first for a two-state and later a one-state solution where, supposedly, all would be reconciled and enjoy equal rights – a particularly liberal, Western, and one might even say American vision. There are extant flourishing, multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracies outside the West, but none in the Middle East. Lebanon between 1943 and 1975 was one fragile attempt towards achieving such a system. One might venture far afield and find this in India or Indonesia, with various caveats, but not anywhere between Morocco and Pakistan. Ironically, the state of Israel which Said so derided is where the ideas of pluralistic liberal democracy are practiced; where Israeli Arab citizens have considerable political and social weight in a state which – with all its faults – aims at a polity and society under the rule of law.
Said’s most trenchant critic, the brilliant Syrian Dr. Sadiq al-Azm, eviscerated Said as a “Reverse Orientalist” who presented an idealized version of the East and of Islam. Al-Azm commented how, if indeed there were influential, toxic “Orientalists” in the West as Said described, the East had produced its own mirror image “Occidentalists,” particularly among the advocates for political Islam. These “Occidentalists” not only caricatured the West, Christianity, and America as a monolithic Other, but also had a vision of Islam, “true” Islam (whatever that means), as eternal and immutable. Such partisans still exist today in both Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance and various Sunni Islamist and Jihadist groupings. Tragically, instead of far more incisive thinkers like al-Azm on the Left or Dr. Charles Malik on the Right, it was Said who would become an academic fixture, his writing assigned in every Arab Studies program in America.
Said’s now almost 50-year-old critique of the United States is that we are “heavily invested in the Middle East, more heavily than anywhere else on earth” was not even true when it was written. The U.S. had 300,000 troops stationed in Europe at the time in opposition to the Warsaw Pact. United States Central Command (CENTCOM), focused on the Middle East, only began in January 1983. But the basic criticism of the U.S. being over-invested in the Middle East, more than it should be, has become a common refrain among realist foreign policy mavens in Washington, even before the renewal of great power competition with Russia and China.
A right-sized U.S. policy in the Middle East would aspire to less. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Politico in 2022 that he brings up LGBT issues “invariably, in every conversation” with his Saudi counterpart and when the Biden Administration spent $320 million to build a ramshackle pier to nowhere in Gaza, then, yes, perhaps the United States is indeed “over-invested” in the region. Right-sizing our policies in the region would require a discipline and farsightedness rarely seen in recent decades, something seemingly beyond the reach of the current administration.
America and the West have every right to protect our legitimate interests in the region. Yet, whether we are doing so effectively and constructively is a different question. One development since Said’s death is the unmistakably conspicuous flow of financial power by Near East nations into the West in order to accentuate Arab soft power. Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have all been engaged in such activities. Qatar, the great patron of Hamas, alone has given $6 billion to American universities. Several of these countries also invest heavily in missionary and propaganda activities, Islamic da’wah, aimed at winning religious converts in the West. It turns out, contra the ideas of Said, that Middle Easterners are not simply victims but themselves have agency.
A less arrogant and more realistic American Middle East policy would finally jettison ambitions to remake the region in our image – ambitions that have cost several trillion dollars – and work with allies to scale down our all-too-busy agenda in order to prioritize our interests.
Our over-investment can be addressed by a policy that strengthens and empowers an inner core of trusted partners in the region. For the U.S., realistically, that means five countries: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Israel. Egypt and Jordan are important as well, but the political volatility and poverty of both preclude them from an inner-core of allies. Wealthy Kuwait and Qatar could also theoretically be part of a future core group, but neither, especially Qatar with its open hostility to most American interests, are there yet.
Such a constellation of American allies makes sense on paper. But the question remains, what is this coalition for precisely? Is it to protect Israel? To deter Iran? To keep sea lanes open and oil and gas flowing? All of the above? Prioritizing our most pressing interests would mean firming up an alliance of these status quo powers open to the United States against those revisionist powers seeking revolutionary change and the expulsion of America from the region, an axis of reform against an axis of permanent revolution. Iran, as it closes in on a nuclear threshold, is at the center of this Permanent Revolution Axis. What students at Columbia cosplay and dream of when they speak of globalizing the Intifada, Iran seeks to actually carry out against us.
We do not have the will or the wallet for another trillion-dollar misadventure in the Middle East. Bearing our limitations in mind, a defensive alliance against the hydra-like subversion of Tehran and its proxies is as essential as it is seemingly impossible under the current administration. We need a system of alliances where the level of American support is understood to be smaller, yet far more reliable. Unfortunately, we have failed and wasted years in building such a coalition, projecting confusion and appeasement instead of resolve and clarity.
Regarding the many demands we’ve made of our Arab allies, that they should liberalize and be more like the West, the time has come to separate the essential from the desirable. Different presidential administrations will draw that line in different places; the Trump Administration worked, against the obstructionism of an entrenched foreign affairs bureaucracy, to help persecuted Iraqi Christians and Yazidis. Secretary of State Antony Blinken may have his own priorities. But, the essential work of diplomacy is inevitably hampered as our list of demands and complaints grows longer and longer. A sharper focus and a shorter list are imperative as we enter into the most dangerous and unpredictable period of international affairs since the Cold War.