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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Have all the rules of the region been turned upside down? Those who have observed or lived in the Middle East for a length of time might be tempted to think that during the past week, all of the regional rules were suddenly turned upside down. Recent days have brought a dramatic shift in approach that has seen arch-foes bury the hatchet and engage in dialogue and cooperation. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri met for the first time in months with his political rival, parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri; the king of Sunni heavyweight Saudi Arabia held a surprise meeting with the president of Shiite powerhouse Iran; American officials are preparing to ease a diplomatic boycott and meet with their Iranian and Syrian counterparts in Baghdad over the weekend and the European Union will send its foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Damascus next week. This dramatic shift from isolation and confrontation to dialogue and compromise will no doubt puzzle the region's conspiracy theorists. They tend to view the world with a dogmatic framework that reduces the region to a simple dichotomy between Western hegemons (primarily the US) seeking to impose their mandate on the region and local actors, who either join forces with the imperial superpowers or steadfastly fight against them. Such a worldview - while a useful tool for Osama bin Laden and his ilk to neatly categorize states as those whose destruction is either "halal" or "haram" (permissible or prohibited in Islam) - hardly begins to explain the latest developments that we are witnessing in the region. Likewise, this worldview's antithesis - which pits "democracies," "free societies" and "those who love life" against the planet's "terrorists," "sponsors of terrorists" and "freedom haters" - is an equally useless tool for understanding these events. In truth, the recent developments can be attributed to a variety of factors that cannot be so tidily explained. Some can be traced to changes in the United States, which, contrary to popular opinion in this part of the world, is not a monolithic entity. These include President George W. Bush's last-minute drive to create a legacy that would offset his mind-bogglingly long list of foreign policy failures; the Democrats' recent takeover of the US Congress; the diminishing influence of Vice President Dick Cheney in the wake of his closest adviser's conviction on criminal charges; and the bursting of EU diplomats out of their proverbial cages now that the Bush administration's ability to pressure them has been curtailed. But the region's changing diplomatic landscape can also be attributed to forces bubbling up in the Middle East, including the growing resentment among Iranians and Syrians over their isolation; the war-weariness of an entire generation of Arabs and Israelis, and the drive of forward-thinking individuals and organizations for change. These developments serve to illustrate that good guys can become bad guys and vice versa, Arab and Muslim publics are not irrevocably hostile to the West, Westerners can in fact learn to better understand and interact with Easterners, and the winds of domestic and foreign pressure can suddenly change. In this part of the world, the notion of a dynamic world in which we can one day wake up to something entirely different is heartily welcomed.
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#1. To: Steel (#0)
Indeed. But, I seriously doubt if that's the plan.
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