The Middle East is a region with a long-standing history of empires, with new and old imperials reshaping regional dynamics.
China seems to be a newcomer in the Middle East as US influence declines. Even so, it is craving to overcome the US-led dominance in the Middle East by overcoming the region’s local political and security barriers. In fact, the US is now hog-tied to demand major supplies of crude oil from the Middle East due to intensifying Chinese oil imports from the region’s major energy markets.
More importantly, the Middle East is the foremost and most crucial region for the future of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Chinese energy markets. In so many minds, Chinese hopes for a neutral engagement with countries in the Middle East may put an end to the evolving cascade of crises in the region like the Saudi-Iran conflict, the Saudi-Yemen crisis, and the Syrian civil war.
China is believed to be promoting stability in the region through developmental peace rather than the Western notion of democratic peace, but despite such an approach, there may be a risk of a rising US silent war against China. Historically, French and British imperialist tendencies dominated the Middle East in the form of far-flung empires until the end of World War 2. Nevertheless, China’s and the US’s presence in the Middle East looms large to serve their imperial interests, as did the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but China may stabilize the region more than the United States.
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, US protracted dominance in the Middle East has finally weakened, but in terms of security and military deployment, it still stands on the verge of becoming a regional hegemon, like having air and sea bases stretching through much of the Arabian Peninsula between Greece in the northwest, Oman in the southeast, and Djibouti in the southwest. Believe it or not, the golden age of Islam in the Middle East remained an imperial one, especially during an epoch of empires sweeping through the region like the Ottoman Empire, which ruled from Algeria to Iraq for 400 years, and the Mongol Empire, which during the 13th and 14th centuries defeated the military blitzkriegs of the Abbasids, Khwarazmian Bulgarians, Song, and so on.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union strenuously beefed up Nasser’s Egypt, Algeria, South Yemen, and other countries that had bankrolled and supported the communist regime in Moscow. The Arab Spring of 2010–11 was a time when the entire region came under Jim Jam, regimes were overthrown in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Tunisia, and people rose up to protest against authoritarianism, dictatorial regimes, poverty, and corruption. In addition, the Arab Spring was a double-edged sword for the US by undermining its long history of alliances with major countries that have helped the US tackle major issues in the region.
The influence of Baathism came to light, which is a mix of Arab nationalism and socialism in the style of a socialist, communist, and Soviet bloc with an anti-Shiite philosophy that led to hard-boiled conflicts between Shia and Sunni-dominated countries. Even though a bloodless and pacifistic US effort to bring democracy to the Middle East may sow the seeds of new Arab-US ties. The brutal Baathist Assad regime in Syria is very insouciant regarding development, peace, and prosperity in Syria. As a result, between 1946 and 1970, the country experienced 10 bloody military coups. Hence, The Sunni-led movements of Salafism and Wahhabism were used as socio-religious tools to combat European imperialism in the late 19th century in the Arab world.
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq led to the politics of sectarianism, a massive civil war, and the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Consequently, China’s growing role as the biggest trade partner and external investor in the Middle East may promote pacifism and economic growth in craptastic regions like Yemen, Syria, and Egypt. In some senses, the recent diplomatic settlement between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China may fan the flames further if Iran is unwilling to cease support for dangerous proxies such as Houthis, Hezbollah, and paramilitary groups in Iraq and the Syrian Assad regime.
Syria will be considered a green-eyed monster, in front of a more vouchsafed Western military dynamism as long as it continues to rely on US enemies like Russia and Iran for its survival. Moreover, the Arab-Israel conflicts throughout Middle Eastern history have tarnished independent arab nationalism. The Arab world has evoked tremendous wrath against Israeli Zionism and Semitism. The US-Israel alliance is a grave threat to pan-arabism and arab cultural entity. China can broker a diplomatic settlement between many of the hitherto neglected regimes in the Middle East but between Palestine and Israel, it will remain a thorny question for China’s existence due to US involvement as far it is concerned.
