Middle East
Assessing China and Russia’s Moves in the Middle East
The United States will need to learn how to work with and around the influence of other powerful states.
Colin P. Clarke is a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, an assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics for Strategy, and an adjunct senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Rand Corporation.
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The United States will need to learn how to work with and around the influence of other powerful states.
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The announcement that the United States will withdraw its remaining troops from Syria has clear implications for many players with interests at stake in the ongoing civil war. Attention has focused on what the U.S. withdrawal will mean for the Kurds, and whether Turkey will be less restrained, or how Iran and Russia might try to project influence farther east in rebel-held territories retaken from the Islamic State. Noticeably absent from these analyses has been how the withdrawal would affect another great power with vested interests in the Middle East—China.
For more than a year, Saudi Arabia and its allies—especially the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, collectively referred to as the Quartet—have led a relentless, and seemingly counterproductive campaign against Qatar in a feckless attempt to bully and intimidate Doha. In addition to a blockade, the Saudis are allegedly moving forward with a plan to dig a canal on their border to turn Qatar into an island.