By JAMES POULOS, ocregister.com

Realpolitik is back in the Middle East.

The term, used to describe often hard-nosed practical politics that steers clear of idealistic or ideological imperatives, has been a fixture of international relations debates for decades on end. For supporters, it’s a disciplined, rational approach to the harsh and fluctuating realities of global politics. Opponents cast it as a barely-there justification for unprincipled Machiavellianism.

In the current conflict between schools of geopolitical thought, both realpolitik and its ideas-driven rivals have some legitimacy problems. Over the years, both approaches to foreign policy have yielded some bitter Mideast fruit indeed. Today, neoliberal and neoconservative interventionism find their reputations in tatters, even though counterfactual scenarios can be reasonably imagined where war-ravaged countries on the receiving ends of western military interventions wound up even worse off.

Likewise, the legacy of canny power politics in the region is not to be envied. Sucking it up and working with shaky, even duplicitous allies from Qatar to Pakistan and beyond carried tremendous costs still being paid to this day. Ostensible advantages like those gained by pitting enemy regimes against each other—think of the Iran-Iraq War — didn’t materialize.

And then there’s the age-old conflict in the Holy Land, where no policy or school of thought has proven adept at securing a final settlement or functioning path to peace.

The upshot of these manifold failures has been, in recent years, an all but complete meltdown of the geopolitical position of the Arabs, to the advantage of Turkey and Israel but especially Iran. Teheran has proven more than up to the task of exploiting the situation. With its formidable Hezbollah proxies in place — not just as a satellite capable of projecting Iranian power, but as a successful model of setting up further proxies in other states — Iran’s military has worked systematically toward regional dominance, from next door in Iraq to the Mediterranean coast in Syria and the strategic chokepoint of the Red Sea in Yemen.

These gains have sharply increased the level of difficulty posed to U.S. policymakers, who are still wrestling with the challenges of wiping out ISIS and managing the interminable mission in Afghanistan. Part of the problem traces to the staggering failure of the Obama administration to properly anticipate and counter Iranian expansionism. But another part simply concerns the implosion of so many states in the wake of the Arab Spring, and the weakness of so many of the regimes that survived.

However blame is distributed and whatever degree of skill is applied to the problem set, Iran’s bid to control the Mideast and project its power beyond requires a game-changing approach from America’s Arab allies. Although Teheran’s own ideological mission is clearly defined and as strong as ever, the allies’ chances of success hinge on working the realpolitik playbook.

And that they are beginning to do — first and foremost with regard to Israel. As the Washington media has reported, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is moving with unprecedented speed toward a realpolitik position on the Palestinian question.

“In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given,” he recently told a room of Jewish leaders in New York stunned by the force of his remarks. “It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining,”

As reasonable as good Saudi relations with Israel may be, it’s clear that MbS — as he’s called — recognizes that extraordinary measures such as these are required to reorganize the balance of regional power forcefully enough to turn back Iran’s momentum.

 

Such a move would stand a chance at altering the unfavorable conditions inside the Arab world. Despite a concerted and costly effort, the Saudis and their Emirati allies have been unable to defeat Iran’s proxy Houthis in the civil war in Yemen, which has drawn crucial energy away from the other civil war Iran’s proxies are winning, in Syria. The Arabs need more support to win these conflicts, and to get it, they need to hand the west a legitimate victory in securing peace in the Holy Land.

It’s even conceivable that the Arabs will seek support from Israel itself. The U.S. is already faced with more commitments in the region than it can easily handle. European intervention is effectively off the table with the exception of what would likely be only a carefully calculated contribution from France. Turkey has shown a willingness to insert itself into Arab conflicts in the very north of Syria, but not necessarily in Arab interests. The list of potential allies with effective militaries and limited objectives is short, but Israel is on it.

An explicit Israeli-Arab alliance against Iran would be extraordinary indeed. But the cumulative failure of U.S. policy in the region, and the inability of the western-led international community to take control of the resulting bid by Iran for dominance, has pushed it into the realm of possibility—and the realm of urgency.

James Poulos is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group.