Aha Dua Permata: Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Accelerates US Geopolitical Decline

Friday 24 November 2023

Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Accelerates US Geopolitical Decline

©AFP 2023/Mohammed Abed

President Joe Biden's support for Israel is undermining America's diplomatic standing in the Middle East, with regional players increasingly turning to Russia and China for alternative leadership, Syriana Analysis founder Kevork Almassian told Sputnik's New Rules podcast.

The US is losing its grip amid the Palestine-Israel conflict and alienating Mideast powers by failing to prevent Tel Aviv from bombing Gaza into the Stone Age.

Recently, the Biden administration tried to steal the show by taking the whole credit for the four-day humanitarian pause in the strip. Still, if truth be told, it was Qatar, not the US, who negotiated the truce on the ground.

"The United States has lost all credibility now as a mediator, and nobody in the Arab world at the current moment sees the United States as a mediator," Kevork Almassian told Sputnik.

"The United States is part of this war with Israel against the Arab people. And because of the shift of balance of power that happened, especially after the Ukraine war, the regional powers have become emboldened. Iran has become emboldened. Saudi Arabia has become emboldened. The UAE has become emboldened. Countries are challenging the United States. It's not like the situation 10 years or 15 years ago."

The Americans played the mediator role in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, trying to broker deals between Arab countries and spread their influence across the region in the wake of the USSR's collapse. However, the Syrian war became the watershed when Russia stepped in and changed the course of the conflict together with Iran, according to Almassian.

"And since then, this was, I think, the first setback for the American Empire that their project militarily has failed. And then we saw what happened in Ukraine," the Mideast expert continued. "I think it will end up again miserably for the Ukrainians and fortunately so, because the Ukrainians have been used in this conflict and became a cannon fodder in this very long conflict, and now they call it a stalemate. It's not a stalemate, it's a failure. (...) It's a failure for the America-led counteroffensive and the trying to convert the country into a pro-NATO or NATO country, let's say. So, all these developments lead into one result, [which] is that the Americans have lost their status as the absolute hegemon, and the rising powers such as Russia and China, and they're cooperating together closely, and the regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran, they have become closer together after the Chinese mediation, and they restored ties and now they're coordinating the current affairs in the region with Egypt, with Syria, with Iraq, and the rest of the of the countries."

The US squandered their unilateral momentum after the collapse of the USSR by setting the Middle East on fire, Almassian noted. This conduct was rooted in the US economic model, which is based on war, according to him. In contrast, the Russians and the Chinese are interested in peace and stability in the Middle East, which would in turn contribute to Eurasia's security and economic development. To illustrate his point, Almassian referred to Beijing's Silk Road initiative, which includes ambitious infrastructure projects interconnecting Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This endeavor cannot be accomplished unless there is peace and stability in the region, the scholar stressed.

"The United States, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have been acting like a bulldog, barking at everyone, intimidating everyone, occupying their resources, killing people without any consideration of any law or international law. Millions of people perished because of the America-led wars in these regions. So, that is why I think in order for the people of the Middle East to restart their development process, they need the Americans to get out of the region and ask for the Chinese and the Russians to come and fill the vacuum. We see that they're playing increasing roles. Russia has stabilized Syria, and is mediating between Turkiye and Syria, and the Chinese mediated between the Iranians and the Saudis. This is how respective powers act as the superpower, unlike the United States," Almassian concluded.