https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/the-headless-superpower.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-2&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
The Headless Superpower <https://www.nytimes.com/by/ross-douthat> <https://www.nytimes.com/by/ross-douthat> Ross Douthat <https://www.nytimes.com/column/ross-douthat> JUNE 10, 2017 Photo President Trump with the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in Riyadh last month. Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press IF the United States imperium in all its might did not exist, if the Washington, D.C., of Donald Trump and James Comey were just the Sicilian-style backwater that it currently resembles, then no one looking at recent events would doubt that the entire Middle East is on the verge of its own version of a European Great War. Most of the elements that hurled European powers into conflicts in 1914 and 1939 (and 1870, 1853, 1805, 1756 …) are present in the Middle East right now. You have two rival alliances, one led by Iran and the other by the Saudis, riven by religion, ideology and strategic interests. You have ongoing proxy wars between them, in Syria and Yemen, that resemble the Spanish Civil War in their ferocity and factional complexity. You have various unpredictable third forces, from the Islamic State to the Kurds to the Russians, whose instigationist activities or mere self-interest could help set a catastrophe into motion. And now, with the sudden Saudi-led attempt to isolate Qatar and impose a long list of demands <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/qatar-crisis-saudi-arabia-gulf-demands-diplomatic-ties-uae-bahrain-egypt-us-united-arab-emirates-a7777651.html> on the tiny emirate, you have an Austria-and-Serbia-in-1914 confrontation — a larger power demanding a small country cut ties to terrorism, while the small country looks to the larger power’s rivals for support, and a fog of rumor <http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-qatar-crisis/index.html?adkey=bn> and misinformation (now internet rather than telegraph-enabled) hangs over efforts to resolve the spat. Indeed what the Saudis and their allies are doing to Qatar is, by traditional definition, already an act of war <http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/will-qatars-diplomatic-exile-spark-the-next-great-war-saudi-arabia-trump-iran/?utm_content=bufferc8c18&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer> — closing borders and waterways and halting flights in what amounts to a soft blockade. The shows of support for Qatar from the Iranians and Turkey <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/turkey-fast-track-troops-deployment-qatar-170607151127104.html>, meanwhile, are the kind of steps that historically turn crises into open conflicts, as escalation feeds on escalation until the real war comes. You fail to a knowledge that the situation is a direct result of U.S. middle east policy, directly, and indirectly by the actions of its... Except: In the historical examples, 1914 and all the rest, there was not a global hegemon with a military dwarfing all the rivalrous powers and a clear interest in making sure that conflicts stay local and that borders stay where they’ve been drawn. And the main point of the Pax Americana, the best case for all the money we spend maintaining it, is that it promises to keeps a lid on exactly these sorts of regional conflicts — by variously reassuring, cowing and protecting nations that would otherwise be engaged in arms races and shooting wars. Thus we rely on our unpleasant friends the Saudis not to start a regional war because they depend on us for military hardware and, often, to do their fighting for them. We rely on our unpleasant enemies the Iranians not to start a regional war because they don’t want to risk going up against our juggernaut directly. We expect Qatar to accept our mediation because (among other reasons) we have a major military base in their territory. And while the Qataris and all the other players — Kurdish, Turkish, Iraqi, Israeli — have ways to be the tail that wags our dog, they know there are limits, that they have to get what they want without doing anything that makes us turn on them. All of this can work, and it has worked, in the Middle East and elsewhere: Recent decades have seen fewer major wars, fewer combat deaths and many fewer inter-state conflicts than in a multipolar, pre-Pax Americana age. But it doesn’t inevitably work, and it won’t inevitably last. Our leaders can destabilize things from above, as George W. Bush did when he tried to remake Iraq by force of arms. And local actors can expose the limits of our hegemony, as they did under Obama’s more hands-off style, which avoided an Iraq-level blunder but saw the world’s peace weaken as bloody proxy wars increased. Now the heir to Bush’s blunder and Obama’s struggles is a man who has no idea what he’s doing in almost any aspect of the presidency. And not surprisingly, that inexperience or incompetence is one reason the Qatar crisis has become this dangerous already. All that Trumpian glad-handing and orb-stroking in Saudi Arabia seems to have given <https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/6/15739606/saudi-arabia-ties-qatar-trump> the Saudi alliance the sense that they had room to be unusually aggressive, and since the crisis started his tweets <https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/trump-qatar-saudi-arabia-terrorism-corker/529479/> and public statements have often seemed to clash <http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/09/politics/trump-qatar-saudi-gulf-crisis/index.html> with what our diplomats are doing. (Meanwhile the Trumpian strategy, such as it is, in Syria has us getting deeper into that proxy war <http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/08/iranian-backed-militias-employ-drone-against-u-s-forces-in-syria/?utm_content=buffer4a988&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer> ourselves.) So we have a test: How well does American hegemony function when the colossus lacks a head? Is the basic structure of the Pax Americana — the weight of our military advantage, the geopolitical habits instilled by 25 years of unipolarity, the atrophy in other nations’ readiness for interstate conflict — strong enough to keep lesser powers out of major wars even if the president of the United States doesn’t understand his role or how to play it? This time, we can reasonably hope, the answer will be yes. But if so, don’t get comfortable: The Middle East will be in a 1914 alignment for the duration of this presidency, and the kind of test happening in Qatar will come around more than once. 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