Patrick Chovanec Profile picture
Sep 16, 2020 16 tweets 3 min read Read on X
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.
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.

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More from @prchovanec

Nov 7, 2024
I no longer feel like I belong in this country. On a deeply personal level, its values are no longer my values, as they once were. My persistence in it feels increasingly strange and unwelcome.
This is not some angry declaration. The feeling perplexes me, more than anything else.
I say this as someone who served in the military, worked in politics, and spoke proudly and fondly of our country while living abroad.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 6, 2024
Well, so it has come to pass. I cannot say I am surprised, because I did see it coming, but it is saddening nonetheless. I will not say much, because I don't trust myself to. But I do think this nation has made a grave mistake. How grave, we shall only learn in time.
This is not the country that I spent a lifetime, at home and abroad, loving and defending. It is something else, and what exactly that means for me I cannot yet say.
I'm cautious about sayihg what I really feel right now, especially on this platform, because I know it would be mocked. And that, itself, is a symptom of what I see, the glee that many now take in other Americans' sadness and fear. We are remaking ourselves in his image.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 29, 2024
Then you're a fool. We have a democratic republic. I've been a limited-government conservative Republican my whole life. In fact, some of my major criticisms of Trump are that he is too much a big-government interventionist in the economy.
This inanity about "the US is not a democracy, it's a republic" is getting way too prevalent. The US has a republican form of government - as does China and North Korea. Unlike them, it is democratic in that it derives its authority from the consent of the governed.
"The US is not a democracy, it's a republic" is a line that comes from the old John Birch Society (which was drummed out of the mainstream Republican Party because of its extreme conspiratorial views) based on a very ignorant reading of how the Founders used the term democracy.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 25, 2024
If Musk tried to withhold Starlink services to aid a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, our Defense Dept should sit him down and tell him he going to restore it or the U.S. government is appropriating the company in the interests of national security. Full stop.
I’m usually for the U.S. government taking a hands-off approach to business, but we’re talking about a wartime scenario that would almost certainly involve the U.S. in a peer-to-peer conflict and there’d be no room for fooling around.
And quite frankly if he was having conversations with any adversary country about it that would be very problematic in and of itself.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 11, 2024
1. There are times when a thread makes so many important mistakes and feeds into so many misconceptions that it's worthwhile to address it point by point. My apologies.
2. It is true that Trump's tariffs against China were ostensibly imposed for the purpose of forcing China to alter it own unfair trade practices - in large part because the President's legal authority to levy special tariffs requires him to cite this as the reason.
3. However, it was unclear from the start what the "ask" was from China - what exactly the Trump Admin wanted China to do that would allow the tariffs to be lifted. And Trump repeatedly talked about tariffs being good and beneficial in their own right.
Read 20 tweets
Jul 27, 2024
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. As someone who used to analyze and “summarize” these bills for Congress, let me explain …
The reason the bills are “mammoth” is that they includes hundreds, even thousands of legislative changes on a wide variety of unrelated topics. Basically a “bill of bills”.
Where AI could help us by offering some context to what these often small changes actually mean, in terms of policy. Often it’s hard to understand what changing “and” to “or” in Clause 81 of Title II refers to or the impact it could have.
Read 6 tweets

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