Thread by @prchovanec

I think it's a combination. What I'd like to see more of is analysis of the broader dynamics that led to this agreement, as well as its short- and long-term strategic implications, as opposed to the strictly short-term US political angle that always seems to dominate.

https://twitter.com/mattklewis/status/1306185311567912962

As I've said, the Gulf Arab states have been inching towards a rapprochement with Israel for some time, led by a) the increasing marginalization of the Palestinian issue, and b) their shared antagonism with Iran.

The US Iraq invasion and the Arab Spring capped off a transformation in which the traditional Arab powers in the Middle East - the population-heavy centers of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq - have been eclipsed by the smaller oil-rich Gulf states and a resurgent Turkey.

Those traditional powers once could draw on their populations to field large conscripted militaries, on a Soviet model. Now they are dominated - and torn apart - by smaller richer states that can buy more modern high-tech militaries as well as proxy factions to sponsor.

Israel has deftly capitalized on the split between the PLO and Hamas to render the Palestinians increasingly irrelevant and isolated on the world stage. The new Arab powers quietly see the Palestinians as a strategic liability, not an asset.

That may not be a popular view on the Arab street, but unlike the old Arab powers, who relied on populism to bolster their power and legitimacy, the new Arab powers rely mainly on money, while co-opting and quieting public opinion.

Where does the US fit into this? Most players - except Iran - see the US as a useful, if sometimes unpredictable, provider of a security umbrella under which they can maneuver for greater influence in this landscape, without risking everything.

That won't stop any of them for courting China for whatever it has to offer. China used to be totally irrelevant, but now is their biggest customer, though unlike the US it still lacks the capacity to project real military power into the region - constructively or destructively.

I'm no Middle East expert, far from it, but I have spent the past few years traveling a great deal throughout the region. These are the dynamics I've witnessed, and I think they make far more interesting discussion than whether Trump deserves credit or not for a diplomatic coup.

There is a tendency in US politics - and in the Trump Admin in particular - to see all international developments as "deus ex machina" with the "deus" being the actions of the US President. Without dismissing the importance of US policy, this tends to blind us to crucial context.

For instance, much of the current China debate seems to operate on the notion that the US had, at some point in the recent past, a kind of veto power over China's economic rise. And that "allowing" China's economic development was a foolish mistake.

But in my view, the US never had such a choice. What it did have were more complex choices about how it would interact and cope with a China that would largely decide whether it prospered or not, and what that would mean, depending on its own choices.

One could argue that the "fatal" flaw of US policy in the Middle East, in recent years, wasn't that it didn't have interests worth defending, or threats it had to respond to, but that it imagined the way of doing so was to "remake" the Middle East in a way well beyond its grasp.

As a result, the US did contribute to a reshaping of the Middle East, but not in the ways it necessarily intended, and not with the uncomplicated benefits (democracy and security) it had imagined.

To appreciate how much the Middle East has changed, by the way, consider the following:

In the 1970s, the Arab world's banking center was Beirut, and its media center was Cairo.

Today, its banking center is Dubai, and its media center is Doha.

That's a significant and notable shift in center of gravity, and it would be surprising if it did not have all sort of implications for the region's balance of power, including Israeli-Arab relations.