The first is that rulers understand that their economic future must be different from their past. Nonetheless, three constants of the past suddenly seem in flux, provoking anxiety for regional governments. The lasting turmoil in the region’s warzones has engendered acquiescence (or perhaps even grudging public support) for existing governments, because many find misrule preferable to chaos. Even brutal dictatorships have a certain predictability, and they tend to provide security for most people who abide by their rules. While they provoke regime anxiety, they also have a chilling effect on the populace, helping persuade previously restive populations throughout the Arab World that an unhappy present is preferable to a catastrophically unstable future. The region’s wars appear to have embedded Iranian-supported groups more deeply in local politics, and it is hard to expunge this influence once it is established, as Lebanon has demonstrated.įor the region’s governments, civil wars are not all bad news. Iran has supported its own allies throughout the region, and sustained instability provides it with opportunities to expand its influence at a low cost. These ongoing wars have also heightened fears of Iranian aggression and expansion. The billions of dollars that these governments have poured into their domestic intelligence services proved inadequate to tamp down rebellion, and the fate of the ancien regimes there-and also in places like Iraq, which remains shattered fifteen years after the United States deposed Saddam Hussein-continues to be uncertain and often dire. They are a steady reminder that even the most authoritarian Arab government is susceptible to an insurrection that could smolder for years. These conflicts and their resultant refugee flows evoke an enduring sense of crisis in the region and heighten feelings of vulnerability on the part of regional states. ![]() The most obvious is that it is currently enmeshed in three active civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The region is at a tipping point for several reasons. All of these variables are presently uncertain. It also depends in significant measure on their citizens’ responses. The future of the Middle East hinges in part on these leaders’ ability to accurately diagnose their countries’ challenges, on the adequacy of their actions, and on the degree of partnership they can build with the United States. The fact that Arab leaders see their world changing before their eyes is the only explanation for a series of actions, especially from the Gulf, that would be utterly confounding in any other context. The rulers of today’s Middle East see the region at a similar tipping point, and they see the stakes are as high as they were in 1967. The events of 1967 created a new reality and a new dynamic, and this reality persisted for a half-century. After 1967, Arab monarchies steadied, political Islam gained steam, and the Soviet Union began to lose its Arab footholds. However, suddenly, Nasser was no longer the harbinger of the future. ![]() His Voice of the Arabs radio station had become the soundtrack for news and culture throughout the Arab World. He succeeded in pushing the British out of Egypt and resisting the Tripartite Aggression of 1956. Nasser had been a rising star in the Middle East for more than a decade. With his defeat in the June 1967 war, Nasser’s Arab socialism died, and so did the dream of revolutionary republics leading the Arab World out from the shadow of colonialism and onto the world’s center stage. Undeterred by events in Yemen, Nasser led the Arabs into a war against Israel, which resulted in Israel’s swift capture of the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. As part of that struggle, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had become mired in a war in Yemen that was depleting his military and draining his treasury. ![]() Cold War tensions that divided the Middle East were nothing new, and monarchies and republics continued their quiet sparring to seize the region’s future. In fact, at the beginning of 1967, the political climate seemed sustainable and unlikely to change. In 1967, the Middle East was transformed, but the impending drama wasn’t clear when the year began.
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