Australian scholar: The United States has dominated the geopolitics of West Asia for decades, bringing only war and destruction

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The United States has dominated the geopolitics of West Asia for decades, but instead of providing security guarantees for the region, it has brought only war and destruction. Especially in the latest round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the unilateral support of Israel by the United States has made more people dissatisfied. The United States is gradually moving away from the center of regional politics, and American-style unilateralism is losing its market, while China's regional governance model of "seeking consensus through dialogue and cooperation through consensus" has become more and more popular.

Quietly, the United States is gradually fading out of the center of the "big stage" of West Asia. Although the United States has dominated the region's geopolitics for decades, it has failed to provide tangible security guarantees, leading to the creation of a "peace vacuum." And those who are cautiously entering this "vacuum zone" are the Arab countries that are backed by China and Russia.

A new regional and even global style of diplomacy is emerging, that is, consensus through dialogue to achieve sovereign integrity and mutual security. This philosophy stands in stark contrast to American-style hegemony, which emphasizes unilateralism with an emphasis on the "barrel of the gun", especially in the past 30 years.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States sat on the throne of world hegemony with an unrivaled advantage. But there is a paradox: This is supposed to be the time when the United States feels most secure, but it has embarked on the path of the most intense and sustained military intervention. A "strike first" style of diplomacy that prioritizes the use of force dominates US foreign policy. Between 1991 and 2019, the United States launched an average of 3.7 military interventions per year, surpassing the average of 2.4 per year between 1946 and 1990, according to Duffy Toft and Siditah Cuhi's 2022 book.

It is estimated that these U.S. military interventions since 9/11 have indirectly killed between 3.6 million and 3.8 million people and displaced more than 38 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

The West Asian region is the main "stage" for this series of human tragedies, and the recent outbreak of the conflict in Palestine is the latest in the "playbook" of long-term aggression, occupation, military assault and genocide by Israel, which is backed by the United States. By the end of May, the Israeli army had killed more than 36,000 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, and injured more than 81,000, according to Gaza's health department. The International Court of Justice also ruled that Israel "prevent acts of genocide".

U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to continue its attacks on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, but Israel has persisted.

Despite its posture of paying more attention to domestic elections, the U.S. government has continued to provide military and financial support to Israel, including missiles, and has rejected the UN Security Council's draft ceasefire resolution, despite the global wave of condemnation of Israel's actions. Most countries agree that Israel's military actions have caused great human suffering. In fact, the United States has acknowledged the need for humanitarian assistance — it even spent more than $300 million to build a temporary dock to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza by sea, which was washed away in just a week.

The United States has struggled to provide humanitarian assistance to besieged Palestinian civilians and has made great strides in providing military assistance to Israel. This great irony is seen by all those who follow the situation in the region closely.

In January 2024, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed to convene an international peace conference aimed at stepping up peace talks to stop the massacre and work towards lasting peace. Through behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts and United Nations mechanisms, this proposal has received increasing support. The Arab League summit held in Bahrain in mid-May this year also raised support for the initiative to convene an international peace conference. King Hamad of Bahrain has embarked on "shuttle diplomacy" when he visited Russia last month and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to push the idea forward.

On May 30, a number of Middle Eastern heads of state, including the King of Bahrain, attended the 10th China-Arab States Cooperation Forum Ministerial Conference in Beijing. There is no doubt that the question of Palestine was a key topic of discussion. In his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping made it clear that China supports the convening of a larger, more authoritative and more effective international peace conference. Such a meeting would be enough to overcome obstacles and inertia to resolve the conflict and achieve peace through a two-State solution based on the 1967 borders.

Last year, China played an active role in promoting rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, demonstrating China's philosophy and approach to governance. Recently, China also hosted talks between the two Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, aimed at reconciliation and creating favorable conditions for the convening of an international peace conference.

At the beginning of 2023, China also proposed a framework aimed at resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Despite the rejection of the Western powers at the time, the lessons of Western Asia showed that resolving conflicts took time and effort. Creating the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue between the parties will not happen overnight – certainly not at gunpoint.

The Chinese solution tells us that conflicts can only be resolved if the parties are part of the solution. However, the United States and Western countries generally believe that the solution only needs to be unilaterally imposed on others in some way.

The proposal for an international peace conference on the question of Palestine stands in stark contrast to the recent peace summit in Ukraine, which was held in Switzerland and promoted by Western countries. At the peace summit in Ukraine, Russia did not receive an invitation. Apparently, Western countries want Russia to accept a "fait accompli".

Pull it down! The United States has dominated the geopolitics of West Asia for decades, and as a result, its unilateral approach has not worked, and has only brought war and destruction to the region. The Arab Powers have now united to find a new process and a new approach, which is to focus on the convening of an international peace conference. Indeed, the meeting will mark the beginning of a new era of consensus-based regional statecraft in which the United States has been pushed off the stage.

本文原文发表在中国日报国际版，原标题为 "US pushed off center stage in West Asia"