Arab problems need Arab solutions
ALL politics is ultimately local, which applies to both America and the Arab world. In the US, it means that the problems of the Middle East will steadily drop down the priorities of American politicians as they start sorting out who will run for president in the 2016 elections. Throughout 2015, more and more time will be spent examining the prospects of Hillary Clinton fighting for the Democrat nomination to run against the Republicans who are thinking about Jeb Bush as they scramble to find a candidate who will be able to see off the extremists of the Tea Party and beat the Democrats.
The sorry state of the Arab world will not matter in this race. No American party will win votes by calling on America to rebuild Syria or seeking to return to Iraq for another attempt to restore nationwide security. Even the galvanising effect that the presence of Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has had on international politics will make lit- tle difference to the inward focus of American politicians. The US will not want to get entangled in the long-term process of rebuilding the failing states of the Arab world like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
The distancing of the Americans means that the Arab world will have to look out for itself. There is no global policeman who can come and wave a wand. And even if there was, the entire region knows exactly what happened in Iraq when America led an international alliance to topple the terrible regime of Saddam Hussain, but totally failed to have a plan for managing the politics of their military success and plunged Iraq into a disastrous civil war that set the scene for its current disintegration.
It will not be easy for the Arab world to come up with the necessary structures to manage this process. All Arab states have been debating the theory of establishing a new "regional security architecture" but there is very little agreement on what this should be. There are far too many questions to make the process feasible at the moment, but Arab leaders will need to find answers to these questions because the requirement for an Arab solution for Arab problems will become ever more urgent. Many of the Arab world's securi- ty problems need "boots on the ground". So would such a future Arab military alliance ask Arab nations to contribute their own soldiers to a joint Arab force that could be sent to trouble spots to either impose peace or monitor ceasefire lines?
Who would command such a force? The single pan-Arab body, the Arab League, has lost all legitimacy and there is no regional charismatic leader. Most responses to regional crises are ad hoc arrangements set up by whichever countries care the most at the time, who work out their own command structures.
Where can the Arab world find enough troops to make this work? The surviving major nations of the Arab world include the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which have very small populations and correspondingly small military forces, and Egypt, which is still recovering from its own trauma. The Moroccans may wish to be helpful, but they are only one country and the Algerian army is constitutionally required to stick to defending its own borders. Such an Arab force is unlikely to emerge. Therefore, an ad hoc series of military campaigns will be the way forward.