Jin Liangxiang
Research Fellow, Shanghai Institute of Int'l Studies
China-US Focus - Feb 22, 2017
The world entered the year of 2017 with everybody talking about US President Donald Trump. It is widely believed that Trump will bring uncertainty to almost every part of the world, including the Middle East. While many are talking about Trump’s Muslim ban and its implications on the relations between the US and Middle Eastern Muslim countries, the biggest change in the Middle East under Trump might be the change of regional geopolitical landscape.
There has been a kind of geopolitical structure in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War, and it was Washington and its Western allies that had created and dominated the structure. The US had been sitting on the top of the structure while major regional players were divided into two groups, “moderates” and “radicals”, according to their policy toward the US The moderates included GCC countries, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority, and the said radicals included Saddam’s Iraq, Qaddafi’s Libya, Iran and Palestinian Hamas.
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