Condi Rice and the belated “birth pangs of a new Middle East”

Twenty years ago, as Israeli bombs pulverised Lebanon, Condoleezza Rice surveyed the carnage with the serene vocabulary peculiar to imperial officials who experience other people’s funerals as geopolitical opportunity. These, she suggested, were the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” History, which possesses a considerably darker sense of humour than Washington’s strategic planners, has finally delivered the child. It is simply not the baby Rice ordered. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan is not yet a Middle Eastern NATO, whatever the breathless branding suggests. It has no visible integrated command structure, no demonstrated mechanism for automatic military mobilisation, and no reason to assume that Ankara will march against India because Islamabad is attacked, or […]