U.S. policy is creating an opening for China in the Middle East, which Beijing is exploiting skillfully.
By Andy Polk
The Diplomat - April 01, 2014
Over the last decade, the United States has been drawn into a series
of imbroglios in the Middle East and South Asia, sapping military and
financial resources and frustrating policymakers who seem to have no
good options for managing regional troubles. In Asia, by contrast, the
picture is clearer. America has tangible economic, political and
military interests there. The region is also where many believe
America’s global superpower status faces the most obvious challenge:
China. Thus, realists such as John Mearsheimer, writing in The National Interest, approve of the “pivot” or “rebalance.”
In Asia, America is trying to support its allies and preserve
regional stability in the face of rising tensions and nationalist
recrudescence, while avoiding unnecessary confrontation with China. The
recent diplomatic conflicts over air defense identification zones
and increasing confrontations over territorial disputes demonstrate
that playing referee in Asia while protecting American interests is no
easy task. While Asia deserves America’s focus and resources, the real
dress rehearsal for China’s challenge to America’s superpower status is
already taking place—in the Middle East. Here, Mearsheimer’s insistence
on the need for Middle East retrenchment, in order to concentrate on the
more serious rivalry with China, suffers from a major flaw in logic.
History suggests that when a great power draws down from a region,
another takes advantage and fills the void. And indeed, as America grows
weary of its involvement in the Middle East, China is filling the
vacuum. As a result, states in that region are using relations with
China to push back against America, with few economic or political
consequences. Unfortunately, American policymakers seem blind to this
fact, looking at countries such as Syria and Iran, or those in Asia, as
discrete issues, rather than as constituent parts of the broader great
game that is taking place.
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