Maybe you can mentally project yourself back to moments when you were about five or six years of age. It was a time when you began to develop the sense of anticipation for something joyful to happen soon.
It could have been Christmas
or Eid or Hanukkah, that grabbed your imagination and so, you let yourself fly
into a world of revery where all the sweets and toys that you ever desired
having, now lay in front of you, all at your fingertips.
Do moments like these happen
to children only, or can they happen to adults as well? Actually, they do
happen to adults, but happen somewhat differently. Whereas children have no
preference for a toy or a sweet, given that they covet all of them with no sense
of priority for any, adults do discriminate as to what they want most urgently
on a given day, depending on what preoccupies them on that very day.
You can see something like
this happening to members of the echo chamber that was set up by and for the mob
of Jewish pundits. They all are in a state of euphoria at this time, believing
that the proverbial Santa Claus is coming to town now that the Arabs have
agreed to begin establishing close relations with Israel. And so, each of the
pundits got busy blurting out his or her set of priorities.
One of these pundits is Robert
D. Kaplan whose priorities reflect his past life as an expatriate who spent
many years living in several countries in the Mediterranean region. Thus,
geography is where reveries transported him, and geography is where he sees the
toys and sweets that can be had for Israel and for the other Jewish causes.
Unsurprisingly, the article he wrote came under the title: “The Middle East's
New Map,” and was published on September 24, 2020 in The National Interest.
Here is the revery that
constitutes his top priority: “The process of ending the era of Arab-Israeli
confrontation will continue, culminating perhaps in a political upheaval in
Iran. That is the road that the Middle East may now be on … The battle for
Iranian hearts and minds has commenced following the Israel-Arab Gulf Alliance.
It is the internal dynamic in Iran, that over the coming years has the power to
truly change the region”.
He sees this happening
because, in his daydream, he visualizes what he calls the “Israel-Arab
Alliance” potentially redesigning and rebuilding the region into a geopolitical
order that will suit his politico-religious bent. He dreams that this will
happen because Iran will be eliminated as a player in the region, an event that
will happen –– not by a war between Iran and the Alliance, God forbid –– but by
the Iranian people themselves who will be influenced by the success of
Alliance. According to Kaplan's revery, ordinary Iranians will come to see the
internal contradictions of their own system, and will cause the collapse of the
regime.
Now that he got rid of Iran,
Kaplan looked at the map of the region and saw other powers that could
potentially interfere with the Israel-Gulf Arab Alliance becoming the dominant
power in the area. Because he realized he could not get rid of those powers
through wars –– an idea so preposterous, it would destroy the premise of his
dream –– he proposed to eliminate them by the magical willpower of the dreamer.
He just wished them away and they disappeared as potential rivals. Here is how
he accomplished this feat:
“The Israel-UAE Alliance
enjoys unimpeded naval access around the Arabian Peninsula: The Red Sea, the
Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, with only tiny Qatar and Yemen presenting a
challenge. The growing military presence of China in Djibouti and Port Sudan
will remain a neutral element … Syria and Iraq had organized the rejection
front against Israel. Those states, along with Libya, are now shattered. Egypt
lies impotent beneath debilitating repression and economic mayhem. The
Palestinians, Qatar, and Shiite elements in Lebanon are all that's left of the
Arab rejection front, supported by Turkey and Iran”.
Even though Kaplan has avoided
mention of any role violence might play in the transformation of the region,
the master plan he has in the back of his head envisions the rise of a military
that can rival any superpower. Mindful of the certainty that the UAE will be
getting the F-35s that made the Israeli air force a power to be reckoned with,
he believes that the Alliance combining the two, will rise to the level of a
superpower.
But what about the navy?
Considering that China has already surpassed the United States in naval power,
and that it has projected that power as far away as Djibouti and Port Sudan on
the Red Sea, what can the UAE or Israel or their combined naval power do to
catch up?
Do not worry about China, says
Robert Kaplan the dreamer. His reveries made it so that China will not
interfere with what the Alliance will be doing. As to Qatar, Yemen, Syria,
Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Turkey, they all have their problems, say Kaplan, and
they can do nothing that will interfere with the rise of the Alliance.
The advice I can give to Robert D. Kaplan is to say: Pinch yourself to see that you’re awake. If you are and you’re having such thoughts, you’re in trouble. You are because having these thoughts will signify that you’re regressing to your childhood days before reason had matured enough to start turning you into an adult.