No great power involvement---especially if we move off oil

In contrast to the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, the regional crisis in the 2010s developed at a time when, overall, the role and leverage of major powers external to the Middle East, as either active meddlers or security guarantors in the region, or both, actually declined rather than increased. The United States serves as the most evident case in point: the “post-interventionist” US administration has clearly become “tired of the Middle East”, struggling and often failing to keep pace with the dynamically changing situation and unable to alter or decisively affect the course of events. The same even more strongly applies to the European powers. In terms of activity and impact, regional actors (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Turkey) increasingly appeared to outplay external powers and influence.

For external powers, however, that did not remove a number of risks and threats connected to, or emanating from, the Middle East. The increase and diversification of global energy supply and the latest crisis in energy prices made the region less central to the global economy than it had been in the past. At the same time, the fundamental socio-political, statehood and security crisis in the Middle East brought with it new security concerns and implications. They mostly stemmed from reinforced perceptions about the long-term nature of regional instability, the continuing potential for further destabilization, and the related consequences and implications beyond the region, ranging from terrorist connections to migration flows. These challenges affect external powers unevenly. For instance, the role of the Iraq-Syria area as the main focal point for global terrorism activity and magnet for transnational flows of violent extremists in the mid-2010s poses a threat to everyone (but mostly to the countries of the region itself, as well as to those in Europe and Eurasia). In contrast, the avalanche of refugee and migrant flows from the Middle East primarily targets Europe (rather than North America, Eurasia, or other regions).

Until recently, the main type of response by key (Western) external powers to turbulent developments in the Middle East, while not amounting to a hands-off approach, boils down to limited containment. Examples range from limited air strikes against “Islamic State” positions in Iraq and Syria, carried out by the US-led coalition since 2014, to the 2013 deal on Syria’s chemical disarmament co-brokered by the United States and Russia. Not surprisingly, this limited-containment approach has had equally limited results for Syria, Iraq and the region – as well as for the West itself (as shown, e.g., by the persistent migrant flows and accelerating terrorist attacks in Europe). Despite the growing centrality of the Middle East to global politics and security, and its more direct impact on and ties to the West, this damage limitation course taken by key external actors has not been very different from, e.g., the approach taken by the United States and its Western allies (and also by Russia and China) to the Afghanistan problem in recent years.