Sunday, September 30, 2012

American influence on the Middle East is past its peak – someone should tell them


World View: Is the US now in the same position as the Soviet Union in 1989, when it had to allow its satellites to collapse around it?

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent


"....The Arab Spring uprisings posed a new threat to the US, but also opened up new options. Support for Mubarak was decisively withdrawn at an early stage, to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the Muslim Brotherhood had long been considering how it could reach an accommodation with the US that would safeguard it against military coups, and enable it to chop back the power of the Egyptian security forces. This was very much the successful strategy of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AKP) party, explaining why it was prepared to join the US in invading Iraq in 2003 and why it has become the chief instrument of American policy towards Syria in the past year......."

No comments: