Thread by @GeringTuvia

"The era in which the Middle East situation could be used to inflame major power relations is coming to an end"- In his analysis of Biden's ME policy, Niu Xinchun, Director of Middle East Studies Inst. at the state-affiliated think-tank CICIR wrote some extraordinary remarks 1/12

2/ But first - Niu defines Biden's approach to the Middle East as a mix of minimalism and liberalism: "Biden, who shares Obama's liberalism, believes that negotiation, interaction, and international mechanisms can change a country's foreign policy.

3/ "The "minimalist" approach entails pursuing the fewest goals possible and investing the fewest diplomatic, political, and military resources.
Biden's Middle East policy can thus be described as a "minimalist version of the Obama Doctrine."

4/ "Many Middle Eastern countries have labeled Obama a "disaster," so you can imagine how concerned many of them must be right now."

5/ Biden's Middle East policy goals, according to Niu, are incompatible with the US global strategy: "Biden's foreign policy at the global level announces that "America is back," but it clearly shows that "America is going away" in the Middle East".

6/ "Biden has been "trampled on" by the Middle East so many times in his long political career that it has become a source of "shame" for him. It's easy to see why, as president, Biden is "extremely wary of the Middle East," as one of his advisers put it."

7/ Re Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Niu says that "the Biden administration is clearly uninterested in or optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks... the "two-state solution" is becoming increasingly unlikely to succeed, so Biden will not take substantive action."

8/ Now, for the interesting part.

9/ As to whether the ME can "serve as a catalyst for bettering relations b/w major powers," Niu says that "US global strategy has shifted from "anti-terrorism" to "great power competition," & that it's unlikely it will launch large-scale wars or "color revolutions" in the region"

10/ Niu demonstrates that there is a historical precedent for using the Middle East to improve relations between major powers: "On the eve of the Gulf War in November 1990, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, where he had a…

11/ …"coincidental meeting" with US Secretary of State James Baker in Cairo, breaking the "red line" set by the US government at the time, which stated that "senior US officials are not allowed to have high-level contacts with China.""

In another unorthodox statement, Niu paraphrases Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and concludes that "the era in which the Middle East situation could be used to inflame major power relations is coming to an end"
/End
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/f4mUyGuy2S3h…