Who is winning the Gaza war? China

By Christopher Phillips, Arab News 31 January 2024

Given the horrific violence of the Gaza war, it seems crude to talk of winners and losers. Even so, as the conflict currently stands, there are few winners. The Palestinians have seen more than 26,000 people killed, a further 65,000 injured and untold damage to homes and infrastructure. While Hamas might see its continued existence despite Israel’s vow to destroy it as a success, it would be the most Pyrrhic of victories.

Similarly, Israel is struggling. Some may feel the war has avenged the shocking murders of more than 1,200 people on Oct. 7, but it has, thus far, neither destroyed Hamas nor secured the release of the remaining 132 Israeli hostages taken. Meanwhile, Israel’s global reputation has taken a hit. The International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel must ensure it prevents acts of genocide, following South Africa’s charge, was a blow. Though Israel retains the support of Western allies — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the war will continue — it is taking a toll.

But among the biggest “losers” so far is the US. Washington’s distractions in the Middle East and its own loss of credibility are not only damaging for America, but hugely beneficial to its global rival, China.

On becoming president in early 2021, Joe Biden aspired to limit the US’ involvement in the Middle East. This was something he had urged since becoming Barack Obama’s vice president more than a decade earlier. According to The New Yorker, Biden was “a strident voice of skepticism about the use of American force” in the Obama administration. He was especially reticent about using it in the Middle East, urging caution at key moments in Libya, Syria and even the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. While not advocating a full strategic withdrawal from the Middle East, Biden has long aligned with those urging for a more modest military commitment and for strategic focus elsewhere.

Since becoming president, Biden has put this into practice. His strategic priorities have not been in the Middle East, focusing instead on Asia and China (begun by Obama and Donald Trump) and, after 2022, combating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Withdrawing from Afghanistan and the ongoing discussion about drawing down from Syria and Iraq underlined this strategic shift.

Yet, since Oct. 7, these long-term strategic priorities appear to have been subordinated to supporting Israel. The US has sent aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah, deployed airstrikes and special forces to Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, and targeted various Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Syria. Now, after three US soldiers were killed by a drone attack in Jordan on Sunday, the prospect of even more American military strikes in the region is growing.

It seems unlikely that Biden will authorize a major redeployment to the Middle East, certainly nothing like during George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” that Biden was so skeptical of. But at the minimum, these Middle East flashpoints are distractions from Biden’s declared strategic goals elsewhere.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already warned that the Gaza war is “taking away the focus” from his country’s fight with Russia and the US certainly seems to have cooled its interest since October. Congress is reluctant to approve more funds for arms to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden’s drive to unite Western states against China is losing momentum. He successfully persuaded the G7 to “de-risk” investment in China in May 2023, but since the war in Gaza broke out, Biden’s efforts have been more focused on keeping Western allies supportive of Israel than facing down Beijing.

As well as distracting from the rivalry with China, and Russia, the Gaza conflict is damaging the US’ credibility in the Global South. The international court case against Israel was supported by leading representatives of the non-Western world, including the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Turkiye, Malaysia, Brazil, Pakistan, Colombia and Venezuela. Yet, despite the court warning Israel against genocide, in essence upholding that South Africa’s charges had merit and warranted investigation, Washington insisted it would not change its support for Israel.

This prompted a wave of opinion writers in the West and Global South to charge the US as hypocritical. This legal bastion of the US-led rules-based order was dismissed because, seemingly, it was ruling against a leading US ally. After the Biden administration spent much of 2022 and 2023 urging the Global South to condemn Russia for its aggression in Ukraine, its seeming endorsement of Israel behaving similarly in Gaza only amplified the already sizable loss of faith in US global leadership.

And this, once again, benefits China. For years, Beijing has challenged Washington’s self-appointed global leadership. When the BRICS grouping expanded at the 2023 Johannesburg conference, Xi Jinping stated that the new members would help to give more of a voice to the non-Western world and weaken “US hegemony.”

China’s narrative to the Global South has repeatedly been that the US cannot be trusted, that it is self-serving and that China, as a member of the Global South itself, makes for a better ally. With Beijing already having made serious headway into parts of sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and now the Middle East, it is an argument that has evidently found a receptive audience. China and, for that matter, Russia, have been able to point to the US’ apparent refusal to rein in Netanyahu as yet more evidence that Washington is ultimately a “colonial” force.

Compounding the matter is that China has, thus far, had to do very little to reap benefits from the Gaza conflict. While the US is deeply involved, China has been comparatively aloof. Its leaders have made statements condemning Israeli aggression and urging restraint, but mostly have focused on discrediting the US in the Global South. As a strategy, this costs it little and carries the potential for Beijing to boost its credibility because of US actions. Whether this will work in the long term remains to be seen and may depend on how the war eventually plays out. For now, however, it does seem that if anyone is “winning” the Gaza war, it is China.

Can China become a mediation superpower?

By Christopher Phillips, Al-Majalla 1 December 2023

As the Gaza war rumbles on, China’s position has been remarkably muted. In the past few years Middle Eastern powers have grown used to Beijing playing an ever more prominent role in the region, increasing its trade, investment, and diplomatic activity.

As a result, some observers wondered whether China might step forward to offer a fuller role in the current crisis. Indeed, on 20 November a delegation of Arab and Muslim leaders, including Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, travelled to Beijing to push for more help in ending the conflict.

But while Xi Jinping has urged restraint on Israel, sympathized with the Palestinians and blamed the US for exacerbating the situation, he has not stepped forward in the way some had hoped to offer Chinese mediation.

After China famously brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March, and then was a leading voice in bringing both states alongside Egypt and the UAE into the expanded BRICS in September, expectations were raised that Beijing might come to play a more prominent regional mediating role.

However, as other great powers, notably the US have learned, mediation is a complex and potentially perilous diplomatic activity. China is certainly keen to put itself forward at times and recognizes the value of being perceived as an ‘honest broker’ globally. But at the same time, Chinese power remains limited and instinctively cautious, curtailing how much of a global mediator it can be. In the case of Gaza, there may be too many risks and too few upsides.

The Iran-Saudi detente

China’s involvement in the Middle East has been growing for years. Its thirst for energy has made the region especially important, with China becoming the biggest customer for Iranian and Saudi oil, and the second biggest for UAE oil. The economic relationship has been reciprocal, with Chinese firms investing extensively in the Middle East, and not just in the Gulf.

Israel, Egypt, and Jordan have all increased their trade, while Chinese companies have been behind major infrastructural projects such as the Iconic Tower in the New Administrative Capital outside Cairo and Tel Aviv’s Metro Red Line. Every government in the region save for Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories have signed up to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

This substantial economic presence has not been matched by increased military involvement in the region. Unlike the US, China has only one regional militarized position, in Djibouti, and this focuses more on its investments in Africa and preventing Indian Ocean piracy than the Middle East.

Even so, the extent of its economic involvement has brought influence. 2023 might be regarded as a landmark year after China successfully brokered the détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

After decades of tension that saw Tehran and Riyadh support rival sides in numerous regional conflicts from Syria to Yemen, relations were severed in 2016. But mediation by China, with whom Iran and Saudi Arabia both enjoy strong ties, saw the regional rivals commit to restoring ties in March 2023. Since then, the détente has expanded. Iran has stated that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has accepted an invitation to visit Tehran in the future, while both states have been invited to join the BRICS, again partly facilitated by China.

China’s growing mediation role

2023 was no anomaly, rather the most high profile of a series of mediations China had been pursuing in the Middle East for years, enabled by its increased economic investment. As early as 2004, China was using its economic role in Sudan, where it was an early customer for South Sudan’s oil, to persuade Khartoum to consent to UN peacekeepers being sent to Darfur.

More recently China has nudged Arab states to encourage greater normalisation with Syria, contributing to Damascus returning to the Arab League earlier this year.

China’s mediation ambitions have not been restricted to the Middle East. A month before it brought together Saudi Arabia and Iran, Beijing presented a 12-point plan for resolving the war in Ukraine.

However, while it defended the principle of territorial sovereignty, it did not call for Russia to withdraw from the lands captured since 2014 – a key demand from Kiev as the starting point for any peace talks.

Critics, particularly in Washington, have argued that the peace proposal was more China trying to deflect claims that it has sided with Russia in the conflict rather than a serious effort to mediate.

However, the proposal, which Beijing has since reiterated several times, is further evidence of China positioning itself as a global mediating power.

Washington’s cynicism is not wholly unjustified. It is unlikely that China is mediating for purely altruistic reasons. Putting forward a peace plan in Ukraine may well negate the image of Beijing being Russia’s staunch ally.

Mediating a deal between Beijing’s two biggest sources of oil in the Middle East makes sense economically as it lessens the chances supplies could be hit by regional conflict. Similarly, persuading Sudan to accept peacekeepers in Darfur potentially lessened the chances of harsher sanctions that might impact the flow of oil from the south, while normalization with Syria again lessens regional tensions that might impact China’s economic interest in the Middle East.

But beyond the economic logic of mediation, there is geostrategic merit for China. In recent years, as tensions with the US have grown, Beijing has sought to present itself as a champion of the non-western developing world. This is a deliberate contrast with how it characterizes the US: as a neo-colonial power, out for itself. Mediating high profile international disputes allows China to show itself to be a genuine ‘honest broker’, in contrast to the US, which picks sides and favours its allies. This is seemingly part of a wider Chinese strategy on the world stage to offer itself as a fairer and non-interfering alternative to the US.

The challenges of mediation

However, mediation is not always an easy win and can carry downsides. While China clearly put in some diplomatic hard graft to facilitate the Saudi-Iranian détente, it also came at a time when both states were open to negotiation.

Iraq and Oman had been mediating between the two sides for years, with slow but steady progress. China played an important role in bridging the remaining gaps and incentivizing both Riyadh and Tehran to agree, but Beijing did not have to strong-arm reluctant leaders.

Iran was struggling under continued US sanctions and had also suffered internal discord following the 2022-23 Mahsa Amini protests.

While it was reluctant to end all the regional interference that had so angered Saudi Arabia and others, it was willing to roll back and compromise in some areas. Similarly, Saudi Arabia was keen to move away from the Middle Eastern conflicts of the 2010s to boost its domestic economic diversification, including becoming a global and regional sports entertainment hub. It was also hopeful that détente with Iran could help stabilize neighbouring Yemen. China then, while not quite pushing an open door, did not have to work too hard to find the key.

This is a pattern seen in successful mediations elsewhere. Take one of the US’ most famous: between Egypt and Israel in 1979. The two rivals began with positions not too far apart. Egypt wanted the return of Sinai in exchange for recognizing Israel. Israel was willing to countenance this but demurred on the withdrawal timetable.

Egypt also pressed for steps towards improving the Palestinians’ rights and a peace process, but ultimately President Anwar Sadat was willing to compromise on this to secure his ultimately goals: Sinai, economic support from the US, and increased domestic legitimacy.  Israeli Premier Menachem Begin was similarly willing to give up Sinai, despite opposition from the right-wing settler movement that he drew support from, in order to knock this powerful Arab state out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Though the US had to put in considerable effort at Camp David to iron out the differences and broker a viable deal, the starting positions of the two sides were not so far apart.

However, as the US found later, when negotiating repeatedly with Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and later the Palestinian Authority (PA), it is far harder to mediate when starting positions are much further apart. From the first agreements made in Oslo, through to the present day, there remains huge distance between the two sides. Will any Palestinian state enjoy full sovereignty with control of its own borders and its own army? Will the state encompass all of the West Bank and Gaza? What will be the fate of the settlements? What about East Jerusalem? What about the right of return for Palestinians refugees? These, and many more, were key areas of dispute between the two negotiating sides from the very beginning and contributed to the derailment of the Oslo process and the many failed attempts at negotiation afterwards. For all its power and leverage over the two sides, the US found it could not broker a viable deal.

And here lies the risk for a government putting itself forward as mediator. The US’ failure to successfully mediate between the Israelis and Palestinians has damaged its global reputation over the years. Indeed, closeness to Israel is perceived to have contributed to this failure and is used by rival states such as China to challenge how much of an ‘honest broker’ the US can ever be.

Moreover, as we are seeing in the Gaza war today, by putting itself forward as mediator in 1993 Washington now ‘owns’ the consequences of the failed peace process. Israelis and Palestinians can justifiably demand of the US that, after all its promises and initiatives, it should be playing a leading role in ultimately resolving the calamitous situation. In short, after stepping forward as mediator, it is very hard for the US to walk away even thirty years later, without a serious loss of face and reputation.   

Chinese reluctance in Gaza

All this might point to why China has not thus far offered to mediate on Gaza. On the surface offering to negotiate might make sense for Beijing. China enjoys strong trade ties with Israel and, while it is less directly involved in the Palestinian economy, it enjoys close relations with the key backers of both the PA (the Gulf states) and Hamas (Iran). In theory China might use this leverage to mediate, something that would earn it huge international kudos should it achieve what has eluded the US over three decades.

However, this is no ‘open door’ and the warring parties remain fundamentally opposed in multiple areas. Moreover, for all its increased trade with China, Israel remains firmly in the US’ camp and would not abandon this to entertain a Beijing-mediated deal.

Furthermore, even were China to somehow defy the odds and oversee a successful mediation, it would then ‘own’ the deal and be responsible for enforcing it as the US has since 1993. Beijing will be wary of getting dragged into the Palestinian quagmire.

This would also go against China’s international strategy of the past few decades. Beijing has proven cautious and highly selective in its foreign engagement. It generally invests only in areas where it is likely to see a return, either economically or diplomatically. This has led it to adopt mediation as a tactic, but only in arenas it looks likely to succeed in and that will deliver viable economic and/or strategic benefits. It certainly has not embraced mediation as its new calling and will only therefore offer to broker when there is a clear benefit to China. Gaza currently looks far too risky for risk-averse China, and so Beijing will likely steer well clear.

Israel-Hamas war creates challenges for Britain

By Christopher Phillips, Al-Majalla 19 October 2023

In Britain, the immediate response to Hamas’s shocking slaughter and kidnap of Israeli civilians and military personnel was horror, followed by swift support. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted that, “terrorism will not prevail,” and that, “Israel has the absolute right to defend itself and to deter further incursions.”

The Labour leader Keir Starmer, widely viewed as the premier in waiting given his commanding lead in opinion polls, was, “shocked and appalled by the events in Israel.” He added, “These actions by Hamas do nothing for the Palestinian people, and Israel must always have the right to defend its people.”

However, beyond these immediate shows of support, the conflict presents a challenge for Britain’s politicians. At an international level, the UK government has grown closer to Israel in recent years but at the same time, Britain’s ability to influence its ally and the wider conflict with the Palestinians has greatly diminished.

With Britain’s options abroad increasingly limited, it is at the domestic level that the conflict is most felt. Antisemitism related to events in the Middle East is on the rise, as are clashes between the authorities and the sizeable pro-Palestinian activist community protesting Israel’s reprisals in Gaza.

For both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour party, the dilemma is how to manage instinctive support for Israel and potential domestic tensions while hoping to have a degree of international relevance in the conflict.

A supporter of Israel and the peace process

Britain, of course, has a long relationship with both Israel and the Palestinians. London famously issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and took control of the mandate of Palestine, paving the way for the creation of Israel.

During the Cold War, London put aside any hostility towards Israel for the terrorist campaign that forced Britain to leave Palestine in 1948 to become firm allies. Like other Western states in the 1990s, it accepted the ‘two-state solution’ proposed by the Oslo Peace Accords and has since advocated for it.

The high point came under Tony Blair when the British Prime Minister persuaded US President George W. Bush to revive the flagging peace process. However, Bush’s ‘Road Map to Peace’ floundered like Oslo had before.

Although Blair himself would go on to become the Special Envoy for the Middle East Quartet (the US, UN, EU, and Russia), Britain itself was more marginal to the process.

Since then, Britain’s engagement has been muted. It continues to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. For example, £38mn was promised in aid to support economic activity in the West Bank and Gaza over the 2018-23 period, while a further £20mn was sent to the Palestinian Authority to help pay health and education workers.

It even stepped in to provide £7mn extra in funding to help plug the shortfall when US President Donald Trump cut Washington’s contribution to UNRWA, which pays for vital services in the occupied territories. 

But alongside its aid for the Palestinians, London has grown closer to Israel in recent years. Trade has increased, especially in the tech sector, with Israel now representing the fifth-largest export destination for British goods and services in the Middle East.

As the ruling Conservative Party moved rightwards after the Brexit referendum, many of its prominent figures urged more support for Israel. Priti Patel, home secretary from 2019-22, was a well-known advocate, was forced to resign from a previous ministerial job after a secret trip to Israel.

Similarly, during her brief tenure as Prime Minister in 2022, Liz Truss wanted to move the UK’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, copying Donald Trump, which would have effectively indicated the UK’s support for Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.

In another move, in 2019, the UK designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, something Israel had long lobbied for.

The Conservatives have not been uncritical friends. For example, in 2019, then-foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned Trump’s recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of Golan, while Britain has urged the protection of civilians during previous Israeli assaults on Gaza.

The UK has historically long supported Israel, but today’s conflict erupted when London is led by a government even more pro-Israel than its predecessors.

Globally weaker

Support, however, does not translate into influence. The UK is arguably also in its weakest position globally in years, with a floundering economy and a geopolitical position dented by its departure from the EU.

Indeed, the Conservatives’ more overt embrace of Israel may have been related to this when acrimonious exit negotiations with the EU underlined the need for more close non-European allies.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack and Israel’s response, the UK’s weaker post-Brexit position has been exposed. As one of the largest aid donors to the Palestinian Authority, the EU immediately threatened to withhold all payments in response to Hamas’ actions.

While this was quickly reversed – it turned out the decision was an unauthorised action by a particularly pro-Israel Hungarian Commissioner – the move illustrated the potential levers at Brussels’ disposal to influence the conflict.

When it was in the EU, London was able to influence the bloc’s policies, for example, blocking support for a Paris conference on the two-state solution that Israel opposed as recently as January 2017. But now it has left it lacks such influence.

Outside the EU, it is outside the Middle East Quartet, if that still holds value, while its own aid contribution to the Palestinians is a fraction of the EU and US, who have the real external power.

One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions after the conflict erupted was offering Israel military, intelligence, and security support. This might have seemed an odd proposal given Israel is not lacking in any of these and can also draw on the far greater resources of the US for all.

But in the post-Brexit world, security and military resources are some of the few levers the UK can still offer, having lost considerable economic and diplomatic heft after leaving the EU.

Israel may well accept these offers, but more as a sign of signalling its friendship with Britain rather than any shortage or need that it can’t acquire elsewhere.

Sunak has since also offered military support to Egypt to help keep the Rafah border crossing open for humanitarian aid in the wake of the bombardment of Gaza, again leaning on security offerings given the lack of other options.

Domestic effects

While Britain struggles for relevance and influence over the developing conflict, the war is being felt domestically. 17 British nationals were killed or missing after Hamas’ attacks, and there are fears this number will rise, with over 60,000 British citizens currently estimated to be in Israel or Gaza.

Even high-level politicians are affected, with the Scottish First Minister, Humza Yousaf’s wife’s parents trapped in Gaza after Israel besieged the strip while they were visiting.

Back in Britain, antisemitism against Jewish community members has risen dramatically, as, sadly, is often the case during Israel’s wars. The BBC reported that antisemitic incidents in the UK had more than quadrupled since Hamas launched their attack on Saturday.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors such incidents, recorded 89 “anti-Jewish hate” incidents from 7 to 10 October, including six assaults and three attacks on Jewish-owned property.  

Britain is home to an active pro-Palestinian movement, which has been present on the streets in recent days. On Sunday, several thousand gathered outside Israel’s embassy in London, waving Palestinian flags and chanting, “Israel is a terrorist state.”

In Sheffield, where the council had raised an Israeli flag to express solidarity, a gathering protested outside, and one activist scaled the building and replaced it with the Palestinian flag.

There has long been tension over anti-Israeli protests and antisemitism. Some insist that because Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, protesting Israel constitutes antisemitism.

In contrast, their opponents argue there is a difference between criticising the state of Israel and targeting Jews in general. However, while many pro-Palestinian activists do not consider themselves antisemites, some of their actions have been viewed by members of Britain’s Jewish community as threatening.

The daubing of ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti in areas of London heavily populated by Jews, is one such example. The CST noted that some were, “using the symbols and language of pro-Palestinian politics as rhetorical weapons with which to threaten and abuse Jewish people.”    

Suella Braverman, the Conservative Home Secretary, citing her concerns about antisemitism, suggested to the UK police that harsh measures might be considered.

She stated that “Behaviours that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example, the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism.”

She added, “Nor is it acceptable to drive through Jewish neighbourhoods, or single out Jewish members of the public, to aggressively chant or wave pro-Palestinian symbols at.”

Such remarks alarmed both pro-Palestinian and free speech activists, with fears that Braverman, already known for her staunch support of Israel, was effectively seeking to ban the Palestinian flag.

The police, however, responded by saying, “What we cannot do is interpret support for the Palestinian cause more broadly as automatically being support for Hamas.” They added, “Abuse or intimidation that is religiously motivated will not be accepted, and officers will act when they see it.”

Labour’s balancing act

Labour faces its own challenges in how to respond to the war. Under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, a keen supporter of the Palestinians, Labour was dogged by accusations of antisemitism, prompting many Jewish members and several MPs to quit the party.

Since becoming leader, Starmer has worked hard to rehabilitate the party, launching internal enquiries into antisemitism, and expelling some members, including Corbyn.

It was, therefore, unsurprising that Starmer chose to state his support for Israel at the very beginning of his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday.

This is a break from the Corbyn era, but not with the Labour tradition in general, which has long had a close relationship with Israel dating back to a shared ideological closeness with Israel’s socialist Zionist founding fathers.

However, Starmer has a difficult balancing act to pull off. On the one hand, his vocal support for Israel’s right to self-defence is designed to clearly show British Jews, supporters of Israel and the public in general that he is a very different leader to Corbyn, moving away from both antisemitism controversies and leftist instinctive support for the Palestinians.

But Starmer is also aware that, alongside a committed group of pro-Israel activists within the Labour party (and wider electorate) he must keep on his side, there is also a committed body of pro-Palestinians that he must not alienate if he is to win power.

For example, the Labour Muslim Network (LMN), a body of British Muslim Labour members, criticised Starmer’s comments that Israel had the “right,” to cut power and water supplies to Gaza, which LMN said constituted ‘collective punishment’ – illegal under international law.

As the conflict progresses Starmer may face similar pushback from some of his members and supporters, especially if Israel’s expected reprisals in Gaza inflict heavy casualties.

Several councillors from the UK’s main opposition Labour Party have resigned in the past days in protest over party leader Keir Starmer’s support for what he called Israel’s “right” to cut power and water supplies to Palestinians living in Gaza.

Given Britain’s international weakness, Starmer, like Sunak, knows the UK will probably have little impact on the course of the conflict, other than contributing to the wider body of international support, condemnation and calls for de-escalation, and possibly contributing to pre-existing security and aid operations.

Instead, it will most likely be in the domestic sphere that the conflict has the most immediate impact. As well as protecting and evacuating British civilians caught up in the war, the priority will be to minimise the fallout within British society.

What’s so bad about a multipolar world?

By Christopher Phillips, Al-Majalla 11 August 2023

The multipolar world order is here.

Exactly when it began is a debate for scholars and historians. Some argue it came with Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022, marking the end of the era of US dominance and the return to one of great power competition. Others note the 2008 financial crash, which began the global economy’s shift from West to East and marked the rise of China as a realistic challenger to the US.

Others look at the 2003 Iraq War: a moment of hubris for Washington that exposed the limits of American power and marked the beginning of the end of its post-Cold War global primacy.

But regardless of when multi-polarity began, most analysts agree that the transition to a new global order has now occurred.

Among many American and Western politicians and commentators though, this is usually framed negatively. As Stephen M. Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, notes, the Biden administration appears especially, “nostalgic for the brief era when the United States didn’t face peer competitors.”

The White House’s current hard line against Russia and China, Walt suggests, is an attempt to reassert US leadership over the world.

Given that Washington’s rivals in Moscow and Beijing have long called for an end to America’s dominance, it is not surprising that many in the US and elsewhere in the West are fearful of today’s developing world order.

The romanticising of unipolarity

However, multipolarity is here, whether we like it or not and, as Walt and others suggest, it is hard to see any US leader successfully recreating the primacy of the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, despite the panic of some Western alarmists, the new multipolar order may not prove more unstable than the era of US dominance.

Indeed, a closer look suggests firstly, that the ‘unipolar moment’ was less stable than its cheerleaders would argue, and secondly, that multipolarity offers several advantages, especially to non-Western countries.

The ‘unipolar moment’ was first coined by columnist Charles Krauthammer in 1990. He suggested that, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse, the ‘bipolar order’ of the previous four and a half decades, when there were two global superpowers, was now over. In its place, the US was the uncontested ‘pole’ around which the world order would cohere.

During the 1990s this idea became the centrepiece of successive US administrations, with various National Security Strategy documents from the HW Bush, Clinton and W Bush eras calling for ‘US primacy’ in the world.

Many insisted that such American dominance was good not only for the US but also for the world as it would ensure the spread and maintenance of ‘freedom.’

Yet such triumphalism disguised the reality that unipolarity was no more stable than the bipolarity of the Cold War. It is true that the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction receded and there were fewer nuclear scares like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the October War, or the Able Archer incident.

However, while Americans may have felt more secure, unipolarity did little to prevent some of the most horrendous conflicts of modern times. Indeed, the 1990s saw a surge in ethnic killing, such as in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, and the Rwanda genocide.

Political Scientist Ariel Ahram, using data from the Peace Research Institute, Oslo/Uppsala Conflict Data Project has shown that there was no notable reduction in the number of global conflicts during the ‘unipolar era’ of 1990-2015. Indeed, this period saw roughly the same number of wars across the globe as the bloodiest era of the Cold War, the 1980s, and saw far more conflicts than most of the bipolar era.

Arguably the United States’ dominance contributed to this — especially its invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Advocates of US primacy point to positive American interventions in the 1990s, such as the liberation of Kuwait, the enforcement of the Kurdistan no-fly zones and stabilisation efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia. However, critics argue that these were overshadowed by the decision to topple Saddam Hussein, a conflict that, according to the British journal The Lancet, caused over 600,000 deaths in the first three years.

It had a hugely destabilising impact on Iraq and its neighbourhood, contributing to a rise in sectarian violence, the regional empowerment of Iran and the flourishing of jihadist terrorists like the Islamic State (IS).

In many ways, the 2003 invasion was the byproduct of unipolarity. It is hard to imagine the US having the hubristic confidence to launch a similar invasion during the Cold War, fearing how the Soviets might react, nor dare to do something similar in today’s multipolarity.

Arab uprisings attached great hopes on US intervention which never came

The damaging impact of unipolarity was revealed once again in the Middle East a few years later during the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings.

In Syria, for example, rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad, as well as several of the foreign states supporting them, expected the United States to intervene on their side. After all, the US had intervened repeatedly in the Middle East in the past, and successive leaders like George W. Bush and his father had insisted they were defenders of the ‘freedom’ that Syria’s rebels insisted they were fighting for.

This expectation of eventual American intervention led the Syrian rebels and their foreign backers to adopt a maximalist approach. As Bassma Kodmani, spokesperson for one rebel organisation, later recalled, regional powers assured al-Assad’s opponents that, “it is coming definitely, the intervention is coming.”

But US President Barack Obama, famously, declined to send US forces directly against Damascus, allowing al-Assad — with Russian and Iranian help — to eventually pick off and destroy most of the rebel forces.

Here American dominance and the expectations it brought impacted the behaviour of Syria’s rebels and their regional allies, with damaging results.

Finally, unipolarity was not as great a deterrent to Washington’s rivals as some now say it was. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, some US commentators argued that Moscow only dared attack Kyiv because Russia feared the US less than in the past.

Yet even during the unipolar moment, in 2008, Moscow was not deterred from launching a war of aggression against Georgia. Similarly, it annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Some could argue that America’s inaction on these occasions was an indicator of the waning of US dominance, but it is yet more evidence that unipolarity was far from the stable era that some advocates now romantically claim.

The advantages of multipolarity

As well as unipolarity not being that stable, there are also advantages to multi-polarity that US-focused observers might overlook.

As noted, Washington’s great power rivals like Russia and China obviously see believe they have more freedom of action than in the unipolar era and are less constrained by a dominant US.

But they are not the only ones.

Non-western ‘Middle Powers’ can also take advantage of the changing regional order. Medium-sized powers that retain friendships with the US as well as Russia and China can leverage these relations to maximise their benefits.

As medium powers, the ‘great’ powers usually want something from them — such as raw materials, commerce, or military alliance. In the bi-polar and unipolar eras of the Cold War and post-Cold War, global power dynamics limited how much manoeuvrability the middle powers had and what concessions they could extract.

Turkey, Ethiopia, South Africa examples

Turkey is a great example of a middle power making good use of multipolarity. During the Cold War, Ankara had little choice but to align with the US, given it felt threatened by the Soviet Union.

After the Cold War, it similarly largely followed the US’ lead internationally, joining the anti-Saddam coalition in 1991 and getting closer to America’s regional ally, Israel in the 1990s.

However, in recent years, as the US has retreated, Turkey has had much more freedom to pursue its own agenda. This was seen in Syria. Though Ankara remains a close US ally and a member of Nato Turkey cooperated with Washington’s rival, Russia, to strengthen its hand in northern Syria.

Such a situation would have been unthinkable in the bipolar or multipolar era. However, now Washington is only one of several global powers and knows that if it punishes Turkey for its closeness to Moscow, Ankara has alternative allies in the form of Russia and China. As a result, Turkey can maximise concessions from Washington, while maintaining ties with Russia.

The same dynamic has played out with regard to Turkey’s approach to the Ukraine war. It has been able to stay neutral without facing expulsion from Nato. Indeed, it has used its position in the alliance to squeeze concessions from Western allies over the membership of Finland and Sweden.

Some Middle powers, like Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Canada are too deep in the US’ orbit to pull off similar feats. However, other non-Western powers are already doing so.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have skilfully maintained a position of neutrality in the Ukraine war, denying US requests to produce more oil. Both are also growing closer to China, joining the Belt and Road Initiative. Yet this has not damaged Riyadh’s or Abu Dhabi’s close ties to Washington, which remain robust.

In Africa, Ethiopia and South Africa are similarly benefitting. Ethiopia remains a close US ally, receiving military support from Washington, but retains extensive economic ties to China – a major investor in Ethiopian infrastructure.

The Biden administration recently informed Congress that Addis Ababa was no longer committing human rights violations, something it had declared during Ethiopia’s Tigray War, paving the way for the US to resume aid.

Fears of losing influence to its great power rivals in the state with the biggest African army have likely influenced this decision, despite evidence of ongoing human rights abuses, showing how Ethiopia, like Turkey, is taking advantage of the new global structure.

Likewise South Africa, despite remaining a US ally, recently took part in an Indian Ocean military exercise with the Russian and Chinese navies. Though Washington was critical, it did little beyond this.

A non-western world order?

In short, the multi-polar world, as it is currently emerging, is not as negative a development as some Western — especially pro-US — commentators are making out.

The Ukraine war has been gruelling, but wars with similarly unpleasant outcomes broke out during the era of US dominance as well. Indeed, a worldwide look at the ‘unipolar moment’ reveals that it was no more peaceful or stable than the bipolar order of the Cold War, even if Americans and those living in the West may have felt more secure.

How the new multipolar order develops remains unclear, and that naturally brings with it a sense of foreboding, especially for those in the West who are seeing their former dominance subside.

However, there is no guarantee it will be more unstable or violent than the unipolar era and, in many parts of the world, it has the potential to be more advantageous.

Already several non-western ‘middle powers’ have taken advantage of the new global order to gain more freedom of action in their international affairs, and this looks set to continue.

Arguably these states have been quicker to adapt to the new world order and it is their western allies that now need to accept that the unipolar age is over and shift their expectations and behaviours.

From revolutions to rapprochement: The end of the ‘2011 era’ in the Middle East?

By Christopher Phillips, Middle East Eye 23 June 2023

The late Fred Halliday, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, noted how, seemingly once a decade, seismic events would rock the foundations of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The Suez crisis, the Six Day War, the Iranian revolution, the 1991 Gulf War, and the attacks of September 11 each shifted the priorities of regional and international powers in the Middle East, shaping the decade that followed.

Halliday cautioned against a rigid “great turning points of history” viewpoint, observing how there was often as much continuity as change. But his hypothesis seemed to be confirmed a year after his death with the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011. Once again, those events and their repercussions appeared to define regional politics for years afterwards.

But a case can be made that the “2011 era” is now reaching a close. Recent shifts in regional diplomacy, from Turkey’s reconciliation with Gulf rivals, to Saudi Arabia’s detente with Iran, followed by Syria’s return to the Arab League suggest that the Middle East’s international relations are moving away from a viewpoint largely defined by the aftermath of the Arab Spring. 

I say “2011 era” rather than the “era of the Arab Spring“, because the latter ended some years earlier. Despite high hopes and valiant efforts, the wave of revolutions that began in Tunisia in December 2010 has failed, at least for now.

Whether we date that to Kais Saied’s “self-coup” in Tunis in 2021, Russia’s rescue of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2015, the military coup against the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013, or back to the destruction of “Pearl roundabout” in Bahrain in March 2011 is a matter for historians to debate.

However, though the revolutions failed, they cast a long geopolitical shadow as regional and international actors pushed for different outcomes in the different states impacted by the unrest. This informed the emergence of three loose regional alliance blocs: one led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, another by Iran and its allies, and a third by Turkey and Qatar. 

Ideologically inconsistent

These blocs were loose and far from ideologically consistent in their approach to the Arab Spring.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been characterised as backing counter-revolution across the region, but Riyadh still favoured regime change in Syria and both encouraged the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen.

Both generally sought to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from coming to power in the revolutionary states, but again, there is some nuance, with Riyadh backing Yemen’s Brotherhood wing, Islah.

Turkey and Qatar, meanwhile, generally supported the protesters and favoured the Muslim Brotherhood and other popular Islamists that looked set to come to power, but Doha was notably quiet on one revolution in neighbouring Bahrain.

Meanwhile, Iran, despite claiming a revolutionary mantle, only supported revolutions in states where allies of its Saudi, Israeli and US enemies were threatened, such as Egypt, but supported crackdowns by incumbent allied governments like Syria and, later, Iraq and Lebanon.

Though ideologically inconsistent, the key feature of all these states’ actions was a growing rivalry with governments in the other blocs in reaction to their Arab Spring policies.

Some of these rivalries were pre-existing but amplified by post-2011 events, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s tensions with Iran, but some were newer, notably Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s clashes with Ankara and Doha.

Take, for example, Turkey and the UAE. Before 2011 they enjoyed relatively cordial ties, and certainly nothing resembling a rivalry. Yet when Abu Dhabi supported the military coup against Ankara’s Muslim Brotherhood allies in Egypt in 2013, a rupture began. Turkey and the UAE then backed rival sides in the second Libyan civil war, clashed over the Qatar blockade, and even backed rival sides in far-off Somalia and Sudan.

Similar regional rivalries played out across the Middle East and North Africa with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar often backing different players in violent or political conflicts in the struggle to define the post-2011 landscape. This is why recent diplomatic shifts are so significant and might mark the end of this post-2011 era.

Regional flashpoints

Arguably it began with the end of the Qatar blockade in January 2021, opening the way for reconciliation between Doha, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. This in turn saw Qatar’s ally, Turkey, warm its relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and edge closer to a rapprochement with the regime in Egypt.

Finally, a shift in tack from both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, alongside Iran’s internal problems, has prompted improved relations between these three, culminating in the Chinese-brokered restoration of ties between Riyadh and Tehran in March.

As with Turkey and Egypt, this seems to have brought with it an acceptance from all sides of the post-2011 landscape, with Riyadh welcoming Iran’s ally, Syria, back into the Arab League and, possibly, opening the way for a negotiated deal on Yemen.

This does not mean that the conflicts that erupted because of 2011 are over, with Libya, Syria and Yemen still far from resolved. Nor does it mean that the rivalries that characterised the era have been consigned to the past.

However, it might suggest that we are moving beyond a time when the Middle East’s geopolitics are largely defined by the 2011 uprisings and states’ reactions to it.

Recent regional flashpoints, such as Sudan, still attract outside attention and regional rivalry but seem to be less determined by a wider geopolitical environment framed by the Arab Spring. Indeed, the two main players in Sudan today are allies – the UAE and Saudi Arabia – with Turkey and Iran’s past influence there having lessened. 

As Halliday argued, a new seismic shock may yet erupt across the region, either igniting old rivalries, creating new ones, or taking the region’s geopolitics in a wholly unpredictable direction.

But for now, it seems the dominant shadow of the last major shock, the Arab Spring, seems to be slowly fading.

Can Middle Eastern powers help stabilise the Horn of Africa?

By Christopher Phillips, CNBC Africa 13 April 2023

In recent decades, the Horn of Africa has increasingly played host to a fierce competition for influence, stemming from geopolitical rivalries in the Middle East. Typically, such dynamics feed fears of destabilization, particularly in a region with such a troubled recent history of violence. 

While these struggles for influence have, at times, exacerbated problematic dynamics, for the most part these fears have proved to be exaggerated. For the most part, African governments have managed to extract significant material benefits, while Middle Eastern leaders have not militarized the region to the extent that some thought possible at times of maximum tension. A case could even be made that, far from destabilizing the region, power politics in the Middle East have materially contributed to the region’s stability.

The War on Terror, and later the regional tensions exacerbated by the 2011 Arab Uprisings, were the most important catalyst for increased Middle Eastern engagement in the region. 

Somalia, in many ways, has been the most contested area. Qatari involvement in the country dates back to the 2000s, but since then, several Middle Eastern powers have used their wealth to support different candidates. The 2012 and 2017 presidential elections were particularly crucial moments, with Qatar’s preferred candidates victorious both times. The UAE, meanwhile, has secured deals with the breakaway Somali state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland to establish bases and commercial ports there. Turkey, a regional rival of both Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, has established a base in Somalia and explored the possibility of a naval base in Sudan. 

Eritrea has also been seen as a strategically important ally – used for a time by the Iranians to smuggle arms to Gaza. In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE persuaded President Isais Afwerki to abandon ties with Iran, instead joining their coalition against Tehran’s Houthi allies in the Yemen war and allowing Abu Dhabi to use Eritrea’s port of Assab as a military base. As part of this effort to strengthen their military footprint in the region, Riyadh also turned to neighbouring Djibouti, agreeing to build a new Saudi military base there. 

Despite this, the much-feared militarization of the region has not, for the most part, come to fruition. While the UAE did use Assab as a base for a while, it later dismantled much of its military presence as it reduced its role in Yemen. Meanwhile, the bases in Somaliland and Puntland have not yet been developed, nor has the Saudi base in Djibouti. Turkey’s Mogadishu base was primarily used for training Somalia’s security forces rather than to house the Turkish military, and the Sudanese naval position never materialized. 

This is due in large part to the fact that tensions within the Middle East itself have cooled, with notable rapprochements between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, alongside the recent improvements in Iran-Saudi ties. The 2022 Somali election, which saw far less external competition than previously and the victory of a candidate with a ‘no enemies’ philosophy, serves as a useful indicator for the decreased level of competition.

This has meant that nations in the horn have been able to reap the rewards of the increased engagement, without suffering the consequences of destabilization. Indeed, this new strategic landscape has opened the door for Arab powers to make proactive contributions to the region’s stability. The UAE has been especially proactive, using diplomacy and strategic investment to grease the wheels of peace. The UAE’s role in brokering the historic 2018 peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea after 18 years of diplomatic deadlock particularly stands out. 

Elsewhere Abu Dhabi has also helped improve critical infrastructure, such as the ports of Assab, Bosaso, and Berbera. In the latter case, it further sponsored a new Berbera-Ethiopia highway, alongside the UK, that will allow the port to act as a major new outlet for Addis Ababa’s trade, boosting Somaliland’s economy. Other Middle Eastern states have similarly invested in infrastructure, notably Turkey’s upgrading of Mogadishu’s airport and port while Ankara, alongside Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha have all significantly increased their deployment of aid to the Horn. Meanwhile Turkey and the UAE have joined the US, UK and other western governments in helping to train Somali (and, in the UAE’s case, Somaliland) security forces and coastguards in the twin battles against Jihadism and Piracy.

For the most part, then, leaders in the Horn can see this period of engagement as a success story. Partly, this is due to active efforts to limit the political influence of the Middle East, notably by Eritrea and Ethiopia, but is also down to the significant presence of other global powers in the Horn, notably the US, UK, EU, and China. Moreover, the rapprochements between key Middle Eastern powers have meant that concessions given away by African leaders have not been negatively exploited. 

Brexit: The grown-ups are back in charge

By Christopher Phillips, Al-Majalla 3 March 2023

Rishi Sunak’s new agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland has been a long time coming. The status of the province was one of the most contested issues in Britain’s divorce from Brussels, helping to topple Theresa May’s government and contributing to how long and acrimonious the process was.

The eventual compromise, the ‘Northern Ireland protocol’ agreed by May’s successor Boris Johnson, proved no long-term solution, as northern Irish unionists, members of Johnson’s Conservative Party and, remarkably, Johnson himself, later railed against what was agreed. Johnson even proposed legislation to unilaterally end the protocol, which would have broken international laws London had agreed to with Brussels.

Against this backdrop, the ‘Windsor Framework’ agreed by Sunak with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in late February is a refreshing climbdown and display of political maturity from Britain’s new Prime Minister.

After several years of nationalist fantasies from Johnson and other Brexit extremists, this deal suggests the adults are back in charge of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

Brexit and Northern Ireland

Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum, a result that few expected and had prepared for. The Prime Minister who called the vote, David Cameron, immediately resigned, leaving his Home Secretary Theresa May to take on the role and the difficult task of delivering ‘Brexit’.

The referendum had only asked the British public whether they wished to remain in the EU, not what London’s relationship with Brussels would be like should it leave the bloc. May interpreted the result as a desire to leave not only the EU, but also its free market and customs union, a ‘hard Brexit’ that would end freedom of movement of goods and people into the UK and allow Britain to diverge standards.

In doing so, she dismissed those arguing for a ‘soft Brexit’ that would have seen Britain remain in the free market and/or customs union, maintaining European trading standards and frictionless trade with its biggest commercial partner, but with no say on EU rules and no control over immigration from the bloc.

Northern Ireland proved a major obstacle to this Hard Brexit vision. Peace between Republicans and Unionists in the once-troubled province had been greatly aided by the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to the south. Dublin, Brussels, Washington and republicans in Belfast all insisted that Brexit couldn’t risk this.

How then could the UK leave the EU and its common market, erecting borders and customs checks, while keeping a soft border between the two parts of Ireland?

May proposed what became known as ‘the backstop’: that Northern Ireland would effectively remain in the EU’s customs union and single market until a solution could be found that allowed it to leave without creating a hard border with the republic.

But this effectively created a customs border in the Irish Sea, outraging Northern Irish unionists and Conservative hardliners, who saw it as severing the region from the rest of the UK.

This helped derail May’s proposed agreement with the EU and contributed to a plot by pro-Brexit Conservatives, particularly the powerful European Research Group (ERG) to topple May in 2019.

Boris Johnson, who was elected as May’s successor, had promised Northern Irish Unionists and businesses that he would not allow a customs border in the Irish Sea, but effectively renegued on this when he eventually agreed a divorce deal with the EU. Unlike May, Johnson had a large parliamentary majority, won soon after succeeding his predecessor, meaning he found it easier to get his agreement with the EU approved into law.

But despite suggesting on the campaign trail that he had ‘an oven ready Brexit’ deal that might somehow solve the problems, especially on Northern Ireland, in fact he ended up negotiating something very similar to that agreed by May.

The major difference was the ‘Northern Ireland protocol,’ which agreed to permanently align Northern Ireland with the customs union and single market, not just temporarily as under May.

It meant customs checks for all goods entering Northern Ireland’s ports, whether staying in the province or moving on to the Republic, causing significant delays and paperwork, and prompting several British companies to cease shipping due to excessive costs.

A broken promise

Johnson’s deal broke his promise to Unionists about a customs border in the Irish Sea and to businesses about trade being frictionless. Such broken promises were unsurprising, given Johnson’s past conduct. He had been the most high-profile member of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the 2016 referendum, making bold claims about the prosperous future that awaited Britain if it left the EU.

The campaigners promised that £350m a week could be diverted from the EU to the NHS; that trade would be uninterrupted by departure from the bloc; and that Britain would be wealthier as a consequence.

None of this turned out to be true. The NHS was not given extra funds and became weaker after Brexit when it could no longer easily recruit vital European staff. Trade between the UK and EU fell by about a fifth, with new customs paperwork (like that in Northern Ireland) impacting profitability.

Meanwhile, far from thriving, Britain’s post-Brexit economy has struggled, being the lowest performer in the G7 and not experiencing the post-Covid recoveries seen elsewhere.

Denial and boosterim

Yet as Prime Minister Johnson, like many of his hardline pro-Brexit MPs, denied that his deal was responsible for the problems. At times, this meant boosterism, talking up ‘Global Britain’ and highlighting the many supposed benefits Brexit had brought. New trade deals were greeted with triumphs by ministers, even though the vast majority simply replicated relationships that Britain had previously enjoyed as part of the EU and brought no new benefits.

Such was the lack of obvious advantages that Johnson had to create a Ministry of Brexit Benefits and the minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, resorted to taking an advert out in a newspaper asking readers to send suggestions of EU regulations they wanted scrapped.

More often though, the hardliners fell back on Brussels-bashing, their favoured predilection throughout the referendum campaign, the Brexit negotiations and for decades before. Incredibly, Johnson blamed the EU for the difficulties caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite having introduced it himself and insisting it was, “a good arrangement…with minimum possible bureaucratic consequences,” when he signed it.

The betrayed unionist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) expressed their anger by engineering the collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing assembly, while hardline Conservative Brexiteers insisted Johnson renegotiate aggressively with the EU. This he did, introducing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which threatened to unilaterally override much of the agreement with Brussels, to overcome, “unacceptable barriers to trade.”

Despite being warned that this would break international law, damage Britain’s global reputation and risk a trade war with the EU in response, Johnson and his short-lived successor Liz Truss, pushed the bill through, insisting this would force Brussels to compromise.

‘Quite a departure’

Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework is, therefore, quite a departure in both content and style. In terms of the agreement, Brussels and London will significantly reduce the customs checks. These include ‘green’ lanes without customs for goods remaining in Northern Ireland and ‘red’ lanes with checks for those going on to the Republic and the EU.

Importantly, it also includes a ‘break’ that allows the Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont to vote against the introduction of any new EU laws it disapproves of, in an effort to appease the Unionists. This has yet to be approved by either the British Parliament or Northern Ireland’s politicians but, assuming it passes, would be a victory for level-headed compromise.

As Irish Journalist Fintan O’Toole has noted, this solution could have been adopted two years ago, but Johnson, the ERG and some Unionists were blinded by their pro-Brexit zeal. In contrast Sunak has seemingly embraced realism to find a workable solution.

Muted praise

Sunak deserves credit for this achievement. He has had to face down some hardline Brexiters in his Conservative party, including Johnson who, retains some support and has said he may not vote for the deal in parliament. Sunak has also risked the ire of Northern Ireland’s Unionists, both the DUP and even more right-wing parties, which could yet trouble him. He has also dared to break the grip that hardliners have had on the Conservative party since Brexit and steer closer to the centre of UK politics.

An indicator of this has been his abandonment of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill days after agreeing the Windsor Framework.

However, praise should be muted.

Firstly, Sunak is no outsider. He is a Brexiter himself and was Johnson’s chancellor, approving and endorsing all his premier’s policies and approaches, including the EU divorce deal and the Northern Ireland protocol. In essence, Sunak is fixing a problem partly of his own making.

Secondly, the Prime Minister is driven by necessity not altruism. His party is 20 points behind in opinion polls and he has a personal approval writing of -26. Most Britons believe victory for the opposition Labour party in the next election is inevitable, so Sunak has to roll the dice in a desperate attempt to shift the dial.

Hardline Brexit and hostility to Brussels are no longer the vote winners they were for Johnson, and he needs to change tack.

Related to this, most voters’ focus is on the economy, which is struggling badly. The Windsor Framework opens the door to better trade for Northern Ireland, greater investment in the province as already indicated by the Biden administration, and closer ties to the EU that might eventually lead to improved commercial links.

This will probably not work, and it could well be Labour leader Keir Starmer who, as the next prime minister, reaps the economic and diplomatic benefits of improved EU ties. But Sunak is a canny operator and will know that if he improves the Conservatives calamitous current position and at least runs Starmer close at the next election it will improve his chances of remaining party leader.

While London may be weaning itself off unrealistic fantasies, that may not yet be true of Belfast’s Unionists. The DUP and other hardliners could yet oppose the changes and refuse to re-enter Stormont, leaving Northern Irish politics in a state of paralysis. Yet they too would benefit from a reality check.

As has been widely reported, demographics and attitudes in Northern Ireland are changing. For the first time since Ireland’s partition, Catholics now outnumber Protestants in the province, while commitment to unionism is waning, especially among the young.

A recent poll showed the majority of Northern Ireland’s population expect unification with the Republic within a decade. Ironically for the DUP, who supported Brexit, the UK’s departure from the EU has played a major role in this. While Britain was part of the EU, formal unification with the rest of Ireland seemed less pressing given the seamless interaction that the single market afforded.

The Brexit process has brought this to an end and, even with the new framework, it is unsurprising that more people are contemplating joining the Republic and with it, returning to the EU.

Such a departure, of course, is the choice of the people of Northern Ireland but, were it to happen, would not reflect well on Brexit. Despite the promises of sunlit uplands, the reality of departing the EU has been tough.

The Windsor Framework goes some way to mitigate some of the harsher effects but will not compensate for the economic and diplomatic losses of the last few years.

Perhaps more significant than the detail of the new framework is the change in approach from London and the improved relationship with the EU it might bring. Now that the adults are, seemingly, back in charge in London, the UK might have more luck at making Brexit work or, at, least, making it work better than it has so far.

Turkey’s Diplomacy Drive: Is this ‘Zero Problems’ 2.0?

By Christopher Phillips, Middle East Eye 3 February 2023

Turkey is undergoing a quiet diplomatic revolution. For much of the last decade, Ankara has weighed in firmly on one side of the various conflicts and disputes in its Middle Eastern neighbourhood.

It supported rebels in Syria, the embattled government in Libya, the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, and the blockaded regime in Qatar.

As the region became more and more contested, these positions contributed to a sharp decline in Turkey’s relations with other major players, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Yet, the past year has seen a change of course. Last February, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed a detente with the UAE during a visit to Abu Dhabi, while in May, he visited Jeddah to reconcile with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In August, Turkey agreed to restore ties with Israel, four years after severing them over the killing of 60 Palestinians in Jerusalem protests.

Just before the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, Erdogan shook hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and later said that Ankara could reset relations with Egypt following Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections in June.

In December, Turkey also ended its 11-year ostracism of the Syrian regime, when defence ministers met in Moscow, raising the possibility of a permanent thaw in ties.

‘Zero problems’

There are echoes of Ankara’s former policy of “zero problems with neighbours” in the recent regional activity. That policy, devised in the 2000s by Erdogan’s then-foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, aimed at improving Turkey’s historically fraught relations with its neighbours to improve Ankara’s regional influence and clout.

It proved highly successful, with Turkey enjoying strong diplomatic, trade and cultural ties by 2010, before Erdogan abandoned neutrality to back certain factions during the upheavals of the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Might the recent reconciliations hint at a revival of this past approach, a “Zero Problems 2.0”?

Turkey is in a very different position today than it was in the 2000s, making it hard to revive Davutoglu’s approach. Back then, Turkey’s economy was booming, and much of its “zero problems” policy was aimed at finding new markets for the flourishing manufacturing and construction sector.

Improved ties with Syria, for example, allowed the flow of Turkish goods overland to entice Gulf markets, while closer ties with northern Iraq saw Turkish companies benefit from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s oil-driven prosperity.

Turkey’s politics similarly had many admirers. Erdogan was held up as a model to emulate, being a democratically elected, moderate Islamist who enjoyed strong ties with the US and EU – whose membership he courted – as well as with the Middle East.

In contrast, Turkey is in a weaker position today. Its economy is struggling after years of poor fiscal decisions by Erdogan and his government, with inflation hitting 85 percent last October.

Erdogan’s democratic credentials have been damaged after cracking down heavily on dissent, opposition groups and freedom of speech in the last decade.

His dreams of joining the EU have long since been abandoned by both Brussels and Ankara, while his ties with the US have similarly frayed, including being ejected from the F35 programme after buying Russian weaponry. In short, Turkey is in a far weaker regional position than in the 2000s.

Few concessions

This weakness is reflected in how few concessions have been granted by Ankara’s regional rivals prior to reconciliation. 

Turkey first fell out with the UAE over its support for the Egyptian coup that toppled Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood allies in 2013. But Ankara did not demand any kind of shift in the UAE’s Egypt policy or an apology before re-opening ties.

Indeed, Turkey seemed more concerned to secure a much-needed $10bn Emirati investment in its beleaguered economy than righting past wrongs.

Similarly, tensions with Mohammad Bin Salman had heightened over the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi on Turkish soil, but Erdogan proved unable or unwilling to seek concessions on this from the crown prince as a condition for re-engaging.

The same is true with Israel. Tensions with Israel date back to the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident in international waters when Israel attacked a Gaza flotilla, and Erdogan has frequently championed the Palestinian cause. However, no improvement in their treatment was obtained as a condition for restoring ties – if anything, Palestinian rights are worse now than in 2010.

While it remains unclear whether relations with Syria will be normalised, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not expected to grant political concessions or apologise for the repression that prompted Ankara to sever relations in 2011. Most analysts believe Erdogan’s primary goal is to repatriate Turkey’s four million Syrian refugees, not squeeze Assad on human rights.

In marked contrast to the 2000s, Erdogan is today seeking reconciliation with his neighbours out of desperation. He is facing a tough campaign for re-election in June and is using diplomacy as a means to bolster his chances.

This might mean securing much-needed investment from the UAE or Saudi Arabia, or mending fences with Syria in the hope they’ll take back unpopular refugees. It seems less of a long-term regional strategy like “zero problems”, and more like a short-term roll of the dice in the hunt for votes. 

An Erdogan victory will not likely prompt a return to regional antagonism, but it would be short-sighted to think his recent reconciliations mark the dawn of a new era of Turkish regional neutrality.

Multiple concerns have driven Ankara’s latest detente diplomacy, but it is no “zero problems 2.0”.  

New UK Prime Minister, same old problems for the Conservatives and the country

By Christopher Phillips, Arab News 12 November 2022

Rishi Sunak’s attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, in Cairo last week was his first major appearance on the global stage as UK prime minister. He has sought to portray himself as a reliable, safe pair of hands after the relative chaos overseen by his two predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and his team had hoped that COP27 would be a chance to showcase Britain’s new stability to the world.

However, even before he arrived Sunak partly undermined this by wavering over whether or not he would attend at all, confirming that he would only at the last minute.

When he arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh, his message of stability was further called into question by events unfolding at home: One of his ministers, a close political ally, was accused of bullying colleagues and forced to resign. The minister in question, Gavin Williamson, had been sacked from previous ministerial positions and accused of bullying before Sunak appointed him.

Immediately, the opposition Labour party, and some in Sunak’s own Conservative party, raised questions about the new prime minister’s capabilities as a judge of character. Whatever honeymoon period he might have hoped to enjoy was seemingly over. Far from projecting an image of stability, the new premier appeared to be overseeing yet more uncertainty.

This, of course, is unsurprising. There is a new leader at the top but the problems Sunak faces are the same ones that helped topple the previous three Prime Ministers: Truss, Johnson and Theresa May.

At their heart lie the deep divisions within the ruling Conservative Party. These fractures are complex and fluid. In the past they were ideological; for example, the pro- and anti-Brexit camps that hobbled May’s government. Yet even when Johnson solved this problem by expelling some MPs and orientating the party more firmly into a pro-Brexit camp, new fissures still emerged.

Those splits were over Johnson himself — including his repeated mistakes in office and his creative relationship with the truth, particularly over whether he broke his own lockdown rules during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eventually the anti-Johnson group won out and dispatched their leader, much to the outrage of his supporters.

The contest to succeed him prompted yet more splits within the party, with MPs coalescing around several candidates in what became a bitter leadership battle.

Though Liz Truss emerged victorious in the vote by party members, she faced resentment from many MPs, a plurality of whom had supported her main rival, Sunak. When her initial economic policies proved disastrous, those same anti-Truss MPs acted with brutal speed, toppling her within weeks. Her reign as premier was the shortest in UK history.

Though Sunak has tried to present a display of unity by appointing to his government members who previously served in the cabinets of Johnson and Truss, alongside his own allies, divisions remain. It is no coincidence that the MP who first accused Williamson of bullying was a Truss appointee, although a civil servant subsequently weighed in to say he had been treated in a similar way.

One of the challenges facing Sunak is to try to hold his fractured party together without it undermining his ability to govern. Another example of this dilemma could be observed during his first week in office and concerned Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

She had resigned from Truss’ government for breaching security protocols but days later, after Truss had gone, Sunak reappointed her. Insiders suggested Sunak brought her back because she is a powerful figure with her own following in the Conservative Party, who could prove troublesome outside of government. But as with the Williamson situation, the decision to appoint someone with a questionable record undermined Sunak’s claims of being a leader of integrity and stability.

As the Labour leadership was quick to point out, it seemed like he was putting the needs of his party ahead of the country.

So, what does all of this mean for Britain’s place in the world? Whatever his hopes for an international reset, if he cannot keep his party in line it will prove difficult for Sunak to make much progress.

Arguably the most contentious issue will be Britain’s relations with the EU. Johnson took a highly confrontational approach, especially over the Brexit-related issue of the Northern Ireland protocol governing the border with Ireland, and Liz Truss had promised to replicate this in her leadership campaign.

EU leaders were initially hopeful that the aura of reliability and sensibleness projected by Sunak might mean there would be a more conciliatory tone from London, especially now that the UK’s economic troubles mean it cannot afford a trade war with Brussels.

However, with hard-line Brexiteers still prominent within the Conservative party, many of whom backed first Johnson and then Truss, they will make it difficult for Sunak to pursue any detente with the EU if his position looks weak.

More generally, if Sunak’s administration is riven by the kind of splits, backstabbing and frequent ministerial changes that have characterized the party for the past six years, it will be hard for him to convince international partners that things have changed under his leadership.

Indeed, Brexit and its fallout, of which Conservative party infighting is but one effect, has seriously undermined Britain’s global reputation. A change of leader at the top of the Conservative government, however well-intentioned, will not suddenly fix this.

This does not mean the UK will be inert internationally under Sunak. Internal rifts will not prevent it from playing a prominent role in supporting Ukraine, or other policies Conservatives are largely united on.

But areas of contention, such as relations with the EU or the green policies being discussed at COP27, will be harder for Sunak to push through. Until he is able to unite his party behind him, perhaps by winning a general election, against the odds, or until the fractious Conservatives are voted out of office, Britain is likely to remain divided at home and weak abroad.

Even then, such has been the damage caused over the past few years, it will prove to be an uphill task for any new government to reverse course and repair Britain’s reputation as a global player.

Turkey’s growing ‘empire’ in northern Syria

By Christopher Phillips, Arab News, 19 August 2022

Several Syrians were arrested last week in the Turkish controlled city of Jarablus in northern Syria for“desecrating the Turkish flag” after protests against suggestions that Ankara was considering normalising ties with Damascus and its ruler, Bashar Assad.

The arrests, extending a Turkish law against flag desecration to occupied territory, are intriguing and, to some, alarming — and revive questions about Ankara’s long-term goals in northern Syria. Though Turkey claims its presence is necessary to combat Kurdish terrorism and protect Syrians from Assad, does it also harbor neo-imperial ambitions for a permanent outpost?

Turkey first sent troops into northern Syria in 2016 and since then has launched three further major military operations. As a result it is now the key external player in Idlib, the last redoubt of the anti-Assad opposition, and the de facto ruler in three further northern pockets, centered on Afrin, Jarablus/Al-Bab and Tal Abyad. It is in these three pockets where it is most accused of creeping imperialism.

The operations to capture them, launched in 2016, 2018 and 2019, were designed to push terrorists away from Turkey’s southern border. Daesh was the first target but PYD Kurdish militants, who allied with the US to fight Daesh and who Ankara claims are an arm of its own outlawed Kurdish separatists the PKK, soon became the primary focus. Once captured and purged of the PYD and Daesh, these zones served two further purposes. First, they provided a “safe zone” for two million Syrians, mostly opponents of Assad. Ankara had backed the rebels in their unsuccessful efforts to oust the Syrian president and these zones offered the last remnants fleeing Assad’s reconquest a final enclave, along with Idlib. Second, as the 3.4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey proved increasingly unpopular among Turks, these zones were promoted as a resettlement location, with Ankara stating in 2019 it intended to move 1 million refugees to Tal Abyad.

However, the scale of Turkish involvement has raised eyebrows. The Financial Times notes that Turkey has deployed up to 5,000 troops and is spending $2 billion a year there. This includes extending Turkish state services. The Turkish lira has replaced Syrian currency, Turkish banks and the Turkish post office are the only financial services, children learn Turkish as a second language at school, the Turkish Red Crescent operate the hospitals, Turkish ministries direct education and religion, and power comes from Turkey’s grid. Turkish can now be found alongside Arabic on street signs, while some landmarks, such as Saraya Square in Afrin, have been renamed after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Officially these zones are ruled over by Turkey’s Syrian allies — local councils and the Syrian National Army — but these are all salaried and trained by Ankara and it is widely acknowledged they have little independence.

On the one hand, the Turkish government and many of their Syrian supporters reject the accusation of imperialism. After all, there is a legitimate threat from the PKK — an organisation the US and EU have designated as terrorist — and PYD activity along the border has diminished with the advent of these safe zones. Moreover, as seen by the Jarablus protests, Syrian dissidents living there want Turkey to stay and are angry at any suggestion they will normalise with Assad and abandon them. Turkey can further claim that by providing services it is giving northern Syrians a better life than if they remained in Assad-controlled Syria or in refugee camps elsewhere.

But there is a darker side to Turkey’s operations. First, there seems to be a concerted effort by Ankara to shift demographics in its favor. To prevent the PYD’s return Turkey has sought to settle pro-Turkish Sunni Arabs to dilute the Kurdish presence. The most obvious example is Afrin. In 2011 there were an estimated 350,000 Kurds in the city but barely 150,000 after Turkey’s 2018 invasion. Those who remained faced discrimination as Turkey’s Syrian allies looted Kurdish homes, while Kurds were largely excluded from the new ruling and security structures, despite once forming a majority in the city. Turkey then encouraged over 85,000 Sunni Arabs displaced from elsewhere in Syria to move into the vacated Kurdish homes. A once-Kurdish city was transformed into a mostly Sunni Arab pro-Turkish ally.

Second, there have been complaints that Turkey is illegally building permanent structures on occupied land. Rather like Israel’s West Bank settlements, Turkey’s vast new housing projects for the proposed 1 million refugees in Tal Abyad may contravene international law. Third, the character of Turkey’s Syrian allies is questionable. While they’re not as bad as the Assad regime, many of the leading figures in the local councils and the Syrian Arab Army have been accused of acting like thugs and warlords. This is why Turkey’s move to arrest protesters over desecrating the Turkish flag is so controversial. It fits a wider pattern of thuggish autocracy in these “safe zones” that also points to an increasing informal de facto annexation by Ankara.

The future remains unclear. There does seem a degree of genuine support for Turkey’s presence among the local population — at least those who have remained, unlike the many Kurds that fled. As long as Assad remains in Damascus it seems unlikely these opposition-minded Syrians will seek to eject Turkey, nor would they be able to. The future is more likely to be decided in Ankara. These zones are seen as Erdogan’s project, with his domestic opponents less enthusiastic. Were he to lose the 2023 presidential election it is conceivable a new government would cuts its losses. If, however, Erdogan remains for some time, it is plausible to see the imperialism creep more and more, until these regions come to represent de facto Turkish client regimes in the North Cyprus mould.