The Decline of Arab World: Leaders Who Could Not Lead

Posted by admin in Arab Corruption, ARAB WORLD, Arabs Exclusivity Outside Ummah Domain on December 9th, 2019

The Decline of Arab World: Leaders Who Could Not Lead

By

Mahboob Khawaja, PhD

Editor’s Note

Sitting in the US, perhaps more than any place on the planet, it is easy to feel removed from the ugliness of war. While the US has been almost continuously engaged in warfare for the last 30 or more years, we have largely escaped the massive destruction it brings. The exception being the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but even that was contained to a few buildings and a few thousand lives – not to minimize the pain of losing those lives. However, this is far different from the flattening of entire cities, the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacement of tens of millions. Yet, the US has an active role in conflicts across the globe, and most particularly in the resource rich Middle East and South and Central Asia.

Arab nations have struggled out from under the heel of European colonization to find themselves to find themselves yoked to the interests of Western nations, and the U.S. in particular. They have the curse of desirable resources, particularly oil, and much of the leadership has been corrupted into structures and practices that benefit themselves and Western interests far more than the people or society itself. Dr. Khawaja speaks to this with passion and from a point of close connection in his efforts to bring a broader peace to the Arab nations and the world.

Once the Arabs were leaders in knowledge, creativity, science and human manifestation, progress and future-making – the Islamic civilization lasted for eight hundred years in Al-Andalucía- Spain. But when they replaced Islam – the power and core value of their advancements with petrodollar’s transitory economic prosperity, they chose poorly and fell in disgrace, and lost what was gained over centuries. They relied on Western mythologies of change and materialistic development which resulted in their self-geared anarchy, corruption, military defeats, and disconnected authoritarianism. The Western strategists ran planned scams of economic prosperity to destroy the Arab culture Arab oil and money turning them into redundant beings for the 21^st century world. Today, the Arab leaders are so irrational and cruel that they reject all voices of REASON for the necessity of change and human development – a path that brings only more deaths and destruction to their societies. (Mahboob A. Khawaja, “Arab Leaders Count Dead Bodies but Peacemaking is not the Aim.” Uncommon Thought Journal, USA: 2/19/2015).

[Photo: The rubble of Azaz, Syria from bombing during the civil war.]

When leaders live in self-perpetuated darkness, they lose their sense of moral and political direction. To be an effective leader in the 21^st century knowledge-based and reasoned politics, one must be truthful and should hold the individual and collective consciousness of evil and righteousness, right and wrong, otherwise, professing to be intelligent could easily be transformed into known stupidity. Most Arab authoritarian leaders are no exception in this analytical principle and viewpoint. In absolute authoritarianism as the case across the Arab Middle East, the extension of political anarchy and insanity has become a virtue but devotion to truth and political accountability is fast becoming offensive and undesirable. Today, sectarian conflicts have broken down all the features of socio-economic and political normality and devastated the Arab region. But recall the sectarian divides were engineered by the US and Britain in decade long occupation of Iraq to support their military occupation.

It could be most abhorrent and preposterous to imagine that all is going well across the heartland of the Arab world. Most of the contemporary Arab leaders hold military alliances with the US and/or West European nations and are selected by the intelligence network of the US or the West European nations, and are educated and mentored by such states as the US, Britain, France, Italy, Holland, and others. They are Arab by birth but think like British and American by practice. How do we break with the junk history and start thinking of a new vision for change, human development and providing opportunities to enlist the young educated and proactive people of the new generations? This critical issue was often the core of this author’s thoughtful plan for elite teaching and political change while holding academic positions in the Arab world. But most often, such visions and proactive endeavors were met with powerful cynical resistance and undesirability by the governing elite who were heavily favored and guided by the “NO System” of the foreign Masters.

The Compulsive Reality of Political Change and Future-Making

The oil production and supply to the foreign master was more vital than the societal intellectual and professional development for a sustainable future-making. This was the conspiracy of the rich and affluent sectors of the Arab societies to deny the prospects of a systematic political change through education and institutional building in most of the oil-producing Arab states. Societies and people deny history as a precious learning asset often end-up confronting the future as a tragic abnormality. This is the trend and pattern of the Arab world of the 21tst century unchanged unsustainable kingdoms, emirates and egoistic sadistic prince and princess soon to be replaced by the changing order of time and history. This picture adequately represents Syria, Iraq, Saud Arabia, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt. Unless thinking hubs (if any still alive and operative across these states), initiate navigational change to reconstruct the societal thinking modes and priorities, the future appears obscure for the Arab societies to survive another decade or so.

At public consciousness, cynicism about the authoritarian rulers is endemic and there is no systematic cure to rethink of any workable solution in overwhelmingly chaotic socio-economic and political affairs. Time and opportunities for political change were deliberately mismanaged and rejected in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and greater Arabia. It was an unrecoverable loss of and waste of time and conducive opportunities to develop the young generations and build new public institutions for systematic political governance but it is too late now. Much of the Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Yemeni war pictures are a record of daily deaths, planned destruction, bombing of the civilian habitats and unfeeling for the living mankind.

Emerging crises clearly bear the fingerprints of Western policies and practices aimed at incapacitating the Arab intellectual hub. There seems to be no escape from the current volatile political crises when the Arab leaders act as if they had no knowledge of what massive civilian deaths and destruction meant to contemporary rational thinkers. Temptation and compulsion of evil embedded in psychological factors of sectarian rivalries operate in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Egypt to perpetuate in-house fear, death, and destruction.

Envisaging Societal “Change” Beyond the Obvious Politics of Insanity

In their slanted vision, the rulers and their foreign Masters were all complicit in lightning up the dark and sadistic faces of the current reality – where people and humanity are not part of any calculation to restore normalcy, peace, and sense of rationality. The US-led bogus war on terrorism has dehumanized the moral and intellectual consciousness of the Arab leaders to just focus on their own survival. Consequently, the Arab leaders are tragically entrapped in a vicious cycle of self-inflicted wars against themselves. The tragic irony of this folly reveals moral and intellectual decadence where once progressive culture and civilization inspired the Western cultures and civilizations for the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution.

We the People of the Thinking Humanity are not the enemy of any American, Russian, European or other societies but we have been coerced through mass media propaganda, conflicting political time zones and national interests of the few warlords to imagine others as our enemies and invest in wasteful exercises of time and history to sell weapons for wars and destroy the living mankind. You will recall that the same insane egoism brought about the collapse of Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini and when all European dragged each other bodies with cruelty and insanity as bombing and killings were normal human acts to safeguard the national borders and flags.

We the Thinking scholars and people of One Humanity are trying to imagine of bridging the superficial differences in human thoughts and official polices and have the consciousness to enjoin the natural bonds of human unanimity and solidarity amongst all the rational and conscientious people of the globe for better understanding of peace, conflicts and global harmony. In a compass of human thought and solidarity with One Global Mankind living harmoniously on One Planet- Earth, we call for recognition and respect of human life, end to mindless wars raging across the Arab world and a return to reasoned politics and system of public governance. If morality and reason are denied its rightful place in human thinking and behavior, it could be beyond wisdom and humanity to imagine creative and plausible workable solutions to irrational and erroneous conflicts that make no sense to any rational thinkers. Logic seeks truth and the truth is unchanging and remains the same as it is today, before and perceivable tomorrow- if there is anything left useful intact across the belligerent Arab lands.

The solution must come out of new thinking and a new vision for political change, dialogue between the sectarian divides and competent leadership to pursue the stated goals. What if they were organized as morally and intellectually conscientious people? What if they knew the complex nature of global politics and the freedom to think, act, and communicate with moral strength to the enemies within the Middle Eastern societies? That is if there were proactive and responsible leaders enriched with intellectual vision and moral integrity and were flexible to listening and learning from the other side without agreeing or disagreeing. Even across the advanced Western societies, leaders know their limitations of knowledge and intelligence. Many, if not all, man-made problems could be resolved peacefully via persuasive communication and without resorting to bloodshed and committing crimes against humanity.

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Arab Rulers Co=Dependency on Foreign Western Masters, Arab World, Decline

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Andrew Korybko
21st Century Wire

Experts all across the world are trying to figure out what’s really fueling the Qatari-Saudi Cold War, but the answer is simple – the US. As it’s always prone to do, Washington is masterfully playing a game of divide and conquer in the Mideast, doing the same thing to its Gulf allies as it did to its North African ones during the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions, except this time pitting them against one another on a state-to-state level as opposed to an intra-state one between the government and some of its citizenry.

The long-term purpose behind all of this is to usher in Ralph Peters’ 2006 “Blood Borders” blueprint for the “New Middle East”, wherein the Gulf eventually undergoes a geopolitical reengineering just like “Syraq”, Turkey, and the Balkans are slated to do as well. All in all, the fracturing of the region into a myriad of internationally recognized and de-facto statelets is expected to facilitate the prolongation of American hegemony in the broad interconnected space that the late Brzezinski described as the “Eurasian Balkans,” while simultaneously creating major complications for its Russian and especially Chinese rivals’ access to this geostrategic pivot space at the heart of Afro-Eurasia.

That’s a lot to digest all at once, so let’s break everything down piece by piece so that it’s easier to understand.

“Little Machiavelli”

First off, the Qatar-Saudi Cold War was sparked by the mischievous workings of what the US military once called “Little Sparta”, the UAE (United Arab Emirates), which can nowadays be described as a “Little Machiavelli”. The Hotmail account of the Emirates’ Ambassador to the US was recently compromised and it reveals that Mr. Yousef al-Otaiba has been working overtime to destroy Qatar’s reputation in the eyes of influential American decision makers.

Abu Dhabi has been in a fierce rivalry with Doha since the turn of the century as the two ultra-rich Gulf States compete with one another to court the largest amount of foreign investment and become the ultimate “to-go” destinations in the Mideast. Moreover, the two countries are also engaged in a proxy war in Libya, where the UAE backs General Haftar’s Tobruk government whereas Qatar is behind Muslim Brotherhood factions in Tripoli.

Doha’s sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood – which is designated as a terrorist organization by GCC members the UAE–ally and Saudi Arabia, Gulf, Egypt, and also Syria and Russia incidentally – has long been the bane of regional distrust within the Riyadh-led “Council of Kings”, and intra-organizational tensions reached a boiling point all throughout 2014 but were finally resolved by the end of the year. During that time, Doha promised to radically downscale its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it apparently never fulfilled its promise. Even so, none of the GCC members seemed to care too much until just a few weeks ago, which means that something else must have triggered this major Gulf Crisis.

Accepting that the UAE leaks are true and that its Ambassador to the US is indeed doing all that he can to besmirch Qatar, then it’s very likely that Abu Dhabi hatched a plan to “kill many birds with one stone” earlier last month. The Emirate brokered a de-facto peace deal between the two main sides in Libya’s Civil War at the beginning of May which essentially quashed Qatar’s chances of taking over the country by proxy.

This fragile agreement was nearly sabotaged shortly thereafter by “rogue” troops from the UN-backed government who opened fire on Haftar’s forces at an airbase in southern Libya and killed 141 of them. Nearly a week later, Libyan-based terrorists slaughtered 29 Coptic Christians in Egypt and prompted Cairo to take decisive action by ordering airstrikes against their camps across the border. Taken together, and considering that Qatar is clearly on the losing side of the Libyan Civil War nowadays, the UAE may have found it convenient to pin the blame for both the Libyan and Egyptian terrorist attacks on Qatar, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Trump in Riyadh

The Trump Factor

US President Trump visited Riyadh in the time between both attacks and urged the 50+ Muslim leader attendees to “drive out” the terrorists among their ranks. Apparently, Qatari Emir al-Thani had earlier given an unpublicized speech at the event where he spoke out against the “Arab NATO’s” increasingly obvious anti-Iranian agenda, but this allegedly was supposed to have been kept under wraps in order to avoid debunking the myth of Gulf unity.

Nevertheless, the very fact that the Qatari leader would dare speak in such a non-aggressive way about Iran in front of the infamously Iranophobic American President while being hosted in Saudi Arabia of all places made him the man that the “Arab NATO” decided to pin the blame on for Wahhabi terrorism all across the Mideast. Saudi Arabia would have probably invented a ‘pretext’ had one not fortuitously come up due to none other than Qatar itself just a week later when one of its public broadcasters reported on Emir Thani’s words in what must have been interpreted by the Saudis as one of the greatest humiliations against them in recent history.

Although Qatar quickly retracted the reporting and claimed to have been the victim of “hacking”, Saudi Arabia and its allies obviously didn’t believe it because they heard the country’s leader utter those very same statements about Iran and the “Arab NATO” that Qatar now claimed were fabricated.

This gave Riyadh the public cover for moving forward with its prearranged plans to make Doha the ‘fall guy’ for all of the Mideast’s problems, likely due to the advice being whispered in King Salman and his deputy crown prince Defense Minister Mohammed Bin Salman’s ear by the UAE, obsessed as they are to undermine their Qatari rival every step of the way.

The UAE already had an ax to grind with Qatar because of Libya, Egypt as is known totally despises the peninsular country for supporting former Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, and the Saudis will never forgive Emir Thani for speaking the way that he did about Iran while being hosted by the Kingdom.

From the UAE’s perspective, all the right pieces were in play for getting Saudi Arabia to marshal the GCC and its wider allies against Qatar, but Abu Dhabi – the “Little Machiavelli” that it is – ensured that Riyadh would do its bidding by making a personal appeal to the young Saudi Defense Minister.

Mohammed Bin Salman is widely regarded as the “mastermind” behind the disastrous War on Yemen which sapped so much of his Kingdom’s finances and prestige, and he’s clearly desperate for a “quick victory” which can help reclaim the carefully crafted perception among the Sunni community of Saudi hegemony in the Mideast. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that UAE Ambassador to the US or one of his fellow Emirati “deep state” allies convinced the Defense Minister that a “quick campaign” against Qatar could not only achieve just that, but it would also help reshape the historical narrative about the Mideast by blaming all of its Saudi-inflicted woes on Qatar instead.

Additionally, the timing of events is such that ego-centric Trump could also take a piece of credit for this too, as he was more than eager to do on Twitter earlier this week.

Target: Iran

All told, the “Little Machiavelli” hatched the type of plan that would have made its medieval namesake proud. The UAE was able to get regional and confessional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to take the lead (and therefore, the blame if anything goes wrong) in marshalling some of the “Arab NATO’s” countries against Qatar in order to pin the blame for years of Wahhabi terrorism in the Mideast right on its leadership’s doorstep, obviously intending to initiate a game for keeps whereby the Kingdom either turns Thani into a puppet or outright deposes of him by prompting either a Color Revolution, Hybrid War, and/or royal coup against him.

The days of an LNG-rich Qatar thumbing its nose at the rest of the GCC and subsequently pioneering a somewhat independent foreign policy by patronizing the hated Muslim Brotherhood and pragmatically interacting with Saudi archenemy Iran could become history, and the fact that this “quick victory” could also distract from the disastrous War on Yemen was too tempting of an opportunity for King Salman and his gray-cardinal-Defense-Minister-son to turn down.

That being said, there are certain risks inherent with enacting a de-facto embargo against Qatar and isolating it on the partial grounds that it’s becoming too close to Iran, and the most obvious of them is that this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy by driving Doha into Tehran’s arms.

The Islamic Republic already offered humanitarian aid to the peninsular emirate in the form of food supplies and said that it could make use of its airspace to get around the GCC’s embargo, which was clearly unacceptable for Saudi Arabia.

Just a few days later, Daesh carried out an unprecedented series of terrorist attacks against the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum, which the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps blamed on its Saudi rival who promised last month to take the regional proxy battle between the two to Iran’s home turf.

Evidently, Riyadh wanted to prevent a Qatari-Iranian Strategic Partnership from forming and potentially coalescing around a “gas OPEC”, but the Kingdom might have unintentionally made this an accelerated fait accompli so long as Emir Thani can hold onto power and doesn’t back down.

Doha, Qatar.

The Russian Red Herring

This entire episode was interestingly interrupted by the US’ ridiculous claims that Russian hacking was behind the revived Qatari-Saudi Cold War. It’s laughable that the American “deep state” establishment (the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) feels the need to obsessively try to link everything that “goes wrong” in the world with Russia, but there might actually be a little something more to it this time around.

The author explained in his latest research article about “Russia’s Energy Diplomacy In The Mideast: Boom Or Bust?” that Russia has recently – and to the surprise of all but the most astute observers – cultivated very positive relations with its former Saudi and Qatari rivals, both of whom it ordinarily competes within their respective oil and gas energy markets, but also in Syria as well. That state of affairs might be changing, however, since the author forecasted that Russia would be able to mediate between Saudi Arabia & Qatar and Iran & Saudi Arabia so long as it continues to maintain great relations with all of them.

In fact, about the first pair of rivals, President Putin even called Emir Thani earlier this week and the Russian leader himself was besought by Turkish President Erdogan a day before that over this very same topic too. Clearly, Russia was – and still is – on track to position itself as the ultimate neutral arbitrator in this spat, seeing as how it’s not a Muslim-majority country like potential mediators Turkey or Kuwait are, nor does it have any self-interest in taking sides among either of the two Wahhabi-exporting countries.

Additionally, given that the Saudis likely didn’t plot their terrorist attack in Tehran overnight and probably put some prior planning into it which involved some degree of American complicity or another, the US might rightly have predicted that Russia could be the only country which would have any feasible chance at preventing the forthcoming spike in sectarian tensions between the two antagonistic countries from boiling over into a hot war.

Accordingly, this prompted the US to try and attribute responsibility for the Qatari-Saudi Cold War – and by extent, the preemptive Saudi-supported terrorist attack in Iran – to Russia by cleverly giving Qatar a “face-saving” way out of this mess if only Emir Thani would bite the bait and blame the whole “misunderstanding” on Russian hackers.

The Gulf leader, however, seems to be much wiser than the Americans give him credit for, knowing that he’s indeed playing a game of keeps with Saudi Arabia and that he will either be deposed or make his country strategically powerless if he backs down and capitulates in the face of the Kingdom’s unyielding pressure.

As for Saudi Arabia, it also doesn’t seem to be too eager to advance the sloppy conspiracy theory of Russian culpability, especially since Qatar didn’t take the first step in this direction. Either actor might change their positions on this matter as time goes on, or this desperate American move might soon fizzle out and be forgotten about if neither of them gives it much attention.

Provided that the current trajectory on this sub-tangent continues, then Russia could eventually play a very important role in avoiding a larger conflict, much as it did nearly 4 years ago when it came to the US’ false flag chemical weapons attack in Ghouta and the consequent run-up to war.

Saudi Arabia As The “Next Syria”

(Photo: FarsNews)

Russia is keenly aware of the US’ plans to “balkanize” the “Eurasian Balkans”, and it knows that this would be disastrous for the emerging Multipolar World Order. On the one hand, Moscow is both unable to completely stop some of the centrifugal forces that Washington already initiated and balks at the military commitment needed to delay them, which explains for example why it’s promoting Kurdish “decentralization” in the Russian-written “draft constitution” for Syria as a compromise to this pro-American group’s unilateral “federalization” attempt.

On the other hand, though, this obviously doesn’t mean that Russia is indifferent to the fragmentation process at large. How this relates to the ongoing Qatari-Saudi Cold War and the Wahhabi Kingdom’s utilization of Daesh proxy terrorists against the Islamic Republic is that Moscow believes that this is the American-provoked external catalyst needed to initiate the irreversible but potentially long-term processes of state dissolution in this part of the Mideast just like what happened in North Africa and “Syraq” over the past six years. Bearing in mind that the Mideast’s two most religiously influential states are directly involved this time around, the geopolitical consequences could shatter the balance of power in Eurasia.

The author explained Iran’s structural Hybrid War vulnerabilities in his summer 2016 article about “The US-Saudi Plan To Prompt An Iranian Pullback From Syria”, which focused on how Daesh, the Baloch, Kurds, Arabs, and Azeris could all be leveraged within Iran’s borders as tools to undermine the state and induce desired concessions from its leadership, so the reader should review that analysis if they’re unfamiliar with these concepts.

As for Saudi Arabia, its sectarian leadership provoked serious Shiite unrest in the oil-rich Eastern Province after carrying out state-sponsored oppression against its confessional minorities. A similar scenario is slowly unfolding but isn’t yet imminent in the southwestern part of the Kingdom along the Yemeni border in Shiite-majority areas which used to be part of its neighbor prior to the 1934 Treaty of Taif that ended the Saudi-Yemeni War. It’s therefore not without cause that the majority-Shiite Houthi national liberation group regularly targets Saudi military positions in this part of the country. Finally, the last main structural vulnerability in Saudi Arabia is the royalist divisions over the crown prince and grey cardinal Mohammed Bin Salman.

The Defense Minister and aspiring king is doubly hated by some in the monarchy for the self-inflicted financial and reputational wounds to his country brought about by his decision to launch the War on Yemen, and also for his internal “reform” (in a relative sense) agenda of Vision 2030 which aspires to modernize the economy into a real-sector one and away from its oil-exporting dependency.

If his signature domestic project is carried out to its full extent, then it could initiate piecemeal socio-cultural changes which provocatively go against the hardline Wahhabi teachings of the Kingdom’s influential clerical class. Many observers were too busy (rightly) talking about Saudi Arabia’s many foreign policy follies to notice the one thing which it “did right”, and that strengthens its relations with China to the level of a de-facto strategic partnership during King Salman’s visit to the People’s Republic earlier this spring.

The author wrote about the significance behind this event and the reason why China signed over $65 billion dollars of deals with the Wahhabi Kingdom in his piece for The Duran titled “Why is China choosing to partner with Israel and Saudi Arabia?”, but the pertinent point comes down to the fact that “China Chases Markets In The Mideast”.

What’s meant by the author’s cited article from last fall is that China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity envisions the GCC playing a pivotal role in the larger paradigm as Beijing builds factories and railroads in the region in exchange for the Kingdoms investing some of their copious cash in the People’s Republic for the ultimate win-win outcome. In fact, the successful pairing of Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 with China’s OBOR could lead to the moderation of Saudi Arabia’s sectarian-centric regional foreign policy if the influence of the clerics is diluted as a result, and this, in turn, could seriously increase the prospects for a multipolar Mideast.

The author wrote about this and even mapped out the many interlinked New Silk Road corridors which could realistically sprout from this new regional dynamic in his piece titled “Eurasianism: How A Better Mideast Would Look” from last fall, and the reader should certainly skim through it to get a clear picture of why Russia is so strongly opposing the US’ “Blood Borders” blueprint in the “Greater Mideast” and believes that even the troublesome Gulf is worth saving in terms of how it relates to the “bigger picture” of promoting multipolarity all throughout the supercontinent.

All of this, however, could be jeopardized if Qatar & Saudi Arabia and Iran & Saudi Arabia enter into an existential proxy struggle within their rival’s borders and turn the Wahhabi Kingdom – among other countries – into the “next Syria”.

Concluding Thoughts

The US is intent on destabilizing Afro-Eurasia in order to more easily control the Eastern Hemisphere by proxy, hence why it’s recently resorted to the combined approach of employing Hybrid War alongside its “Lead From Behind” regional strategy of local lackeys in order to bring this about.

Although all of the involved parties in the current Gulf Crisis stand to experience multilaterally beneficial gains if they can peacefully contain themselves long enough to reap tangible dividends from China’s OBOR projects, the unfortunately reality is that regional dynamics and the history of distrust between several sides means that the US can more easily manipulate them all into a Hobbesian asymmetrical conflict against one another.

The UAE, also known as “Little Machiavelli”, is playing a key role fanning the flames of conflict via its masterful intrigue because it envisions itself receiving the US’ blessing in becoming the post-fragmentation consolidating force in this part of the “Eurasian Balkans” due to its unique nature in being a collection of separate emirates. From the American perspective, the UAE could become a pivotal center of gravity after the Mideast is redrawn with “Blood Borders” (likely adjusted from the frontiers that Ralph Peters originally had in mind 11 years ago due to changed circumstances in some areas) because it could exert centripetal influence in amalgamating some of the post-Saudi Emirates left over in the wake of the Kingdom’s collapse. With this in mind, the UAE’s plans look especially cynical because it’s basically setting up the Saudis to fail in order to replace their regional role when the dust settles.

Russia and China are well aware of what’s going on, however, since they wised up a few years ago during the US’ coordinated proxy assaults against each of them in Ukraine and the South China Sea in realizing that their chief geopolitical rival will wield the weapon of Hybrid War in trying to sabotage their 21^st-century competitive connectivity projects in a desperate attempt to indefinitely prolong the fading “unipolar moment”.

For this reason, both Eurasian Great Powers are especially concerned about the US’ latest efforts to manipulate the Gulf States and Iran into a self-perpetuating cycle of destabilizations against one another as it attempts to trick them into turning the “Blood Borders” blueprint into a reality. Regrettably, Saudi Arabia is much too gullible and easily guided in the direction of the US’ grand strategic interests, so it’s uncertain at this time whether the warned-about scenario can still be avoided.

Nevertheless, the US certainly thinks that Russia stands the best chance of anyone at stopping its plans, which is why it tried to destroy its recent reputational gains in the Gulf by accusing it of “hacking” Qatar and therefore instigating the whole crisis. The fact that neither Doha nor Riyadh have bit the bait, or at least not yet, leaves hope that Moscow might be able to use its positive relations with both countries and neutral status among them to mediate a peaceful solution to the first stage of this spat, and then possibly expand upon its gains to ease the aggravated tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

It’s admittedly an ambitious task, and one which definitely doesn’t have any guaranteed chance of achieving even the most modest symbolic success, but it’s still Russia’s – and to an extent, also China’s – geopolitical responsibility as one of the dual engines of Eurasian integration and the emerging Multipolar World Order to at least exert its best behind-the-scenes efforts in trying before it’s too late.

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