Iliyasu Gadu
Ilgad2009@gmail.com
08035355706 (Texts only)
In his seminal book ‘’The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000’’, British Political historian Paul Kennedy took a broad sweep through the rise and fall of the great powers and empires and posited that ‘’The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another’’. He further states that ‘’Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability, military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for’’.
With these words written in 1987 Kennedy may well have uncannily predicting what the United States of America is going through now in the Middle East.
Let us crunch the numbers in this regard.
Presently, America maintains about 800 military bases spread all over the world. In total these costs trillions of dollars to maintain annually. The US economy is presently running a deficit of about 40 trillion dollars and this is bound to ramp up in the coming years as the US continues to suffer reversals in global trade and commerce especially against its main trading partners.
In sum the 800 Military Bases the US maintains around the world amounts to a military overstretch the cost of which hangs like a millstone on American tax payers and the economy. This is what Kennedy cites in his treatise as the overbearing cost of maintaining a humongous military behemoth for hegemonic purposes.
Adding all these together, we get a picture of an America that embarked on this war already on the backfoot of massive existential geo-political and economic challenges.
In essence therefore this war is not necessarily about installing democracy and restoration of human rights in Iran by overthrowing the Islamic theocracy in that country. The real motivation of the US is to add the vast oil and gas resources of Iran to the ones it already controls in the countries of the Middle East. We already saw this pattern in the recent US invasion of Venezuela and the seizure of that country’s oil and gas resources. And adding the control of Iran’s oil resources would strengthen the hand of the US in its bid to recalibrate its geo-political control of the Middle East region and the world by extension.
Iran war may be America’s Suez or Stalingrad moment.
But with the doggedness and resilience put up by the Iranians so far, it appears clearly that the US may not have its way and that going forward, by the emerging realities of the on-going war the Americans may have to prepare to accept that their long exclusive dominance of the geo-politics of the Middle East may be coming to an end.
The US toppled Britain and France for the control of the Middle East in 1956 during the so-called Suez crisis. This war happened following the nationalization of the Suez Canal by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. The Suez Canal was designed by a Frenchman Ferdinand de Lessep and opened for traffic in 1869.
When Nasser nationalized the Canal the British and French in conjunction with the Israelis attacked the Egyptians. And sensing an opportunity to upstage Anglo-French control of Egypt and by extension the Middle East, President Eisenhower threatened the two powers to withdraw or face military and economic action. Thus from 1956 to date the Americans have been in control of the entire Anglo-French geo-political structure in the Middle East.
In the on-going war with Iran, the Americans are facing what is likely to be their own Suez crisis with the possible loss of the Middle East geo-political structure they compelled the British and French to hand over in 1956.
Iran war harbingers the end of Western Hegemony in Middle East
In tactical terms, many analysts are regarding the quagmire that the US has found in Iran as its Stalingrad moment. This refers to the massive battle that resulted in the decisive rout of the Nazi blitzkrieg machine in the snowbound war theatre of the city of Stalingrad by the Soviet Army during the second world war. It was this battle that changed the tide of the second world war and eventually led to the total defeat of Nazi Germany.
While the circumstances in Iran might be different from Stalingrad, there are existential similarities between the two. So far the massive bombardments by US and Israel resulting in the killing of scores of Iranian political and military leadership have neither broken the back of the Iranian military nor decisively resulted in the achievement of the objectives that the two countries had hoped for in Iran. Instead, it is the Iranians that appear to have landed the telling blows on US and Israeli military infrastructures. The ferocity of Iranian counter strikes on US Naval and Airforce assets, has led to the US arranging a ground invasion aiming to establish a beach head in the Iranian Kharg Island from where further US ground troops will be inserted to engage the Iranian military forces and capture the country.
But many analysts believe that in the unforgiving mountainous and desert terrain of Iran, the US forces without a well secured supply line, present themselves as Turkey shoot targets against a well-entrenched battle- hardened Iranian Army and partisans. This much Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister and the most decorated Israeli officer alluded along with even retired American Generals to in their assessment of the war.
How all this will likely play out.
The scenario is that even on the basis of what has transpired so far, Western hegemony in the Middle East will inevitably be rolled back. Western hegemony over the region began with the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France to divide the region between the two without the knowledge of the Arabs who were encouraged to revolt against their Ottoman overlords. The Sykes-Picot arrangement resulted in the arbitrary division of the Middle East region on the basis of the oil deposits mapped out earlier by Western geologists.
It is this geo-political superstructure in the Middle East that the US took over in 1956 and which the US leveraged on to consolidate its control over the region through the establishment of military bases and strategic alliances with the region’s installed rulers.
It is also the access and control of the region’s vast oil resources resulting from the strategic partnerships in the region that enabled the US to build a petrodollar arrangement with Saudi Arabia in 1974.
Now all that is likely to go up in smoke with the Iran war. The US and Israel will have to confront the reality of the emergence of Iran as an authentic regional power whose existential interests in the region cannot be ignored. Also, the US must wake up to the realization that the sale of oil in petrodollars exclusively cannot go on indefinitely. Already Iran is compelling tankers passing through the Hormuz straits which it now controls to pay for their passage in Chinese Yuan. Going forward it is conceivable that the Yuan will become a major competitor to the dollar in global oil sales. We are likely to have a petroyuan and petrodollar competing in global oil sales. And with the blossoming strategic partnership building between Iran and China, bringing Russia and others into the fray in this regard, the inevitable roll back of western hegemony in the Middle East and the world by extension should not be long in coming.
(Concluded)
