US Hegemony In The Middle East Is Over | West Asia Will Define Its Own Future | US Amb. Chas Freeman

Beginning of Ambassador Freeman's Essay:

Title: The Middle East is Once Again West Asia
Date: August 6, 2023

Names make a difference. Those who confer them reveal their perspectives on the places and peoples they are naming.

Over the course of the 16th to the 19th centuries, Europeans conquered and colonized the world, imposing their self-centered perspectives on its geography. For them, the Ottoman Empire was “the Near East,” a region encompassing West Asia, Southeast Europe, and Northeast Africa. Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the United States became the preeminent component of the self-styled “West,” a trans-Atlantic perspective supplanted the European one. From the point of view of Americans, the lands within the collapsing Ottoman Empire were an intermediate zone between Europe – the Eurasian subcontinent to the East of the United States – and the Indian subcontinent.[1] That’s why Alfred Thayer Mahan decided they should be called the “Middle East,” not the “Near East.” In time, even the people who lived there began to use this American-minted term. The largest newspaper in the Arab world is الشرق الأوسط – which means “the Middle East.”

The Birth of the Nation-State in West Asia

The name persists, but the people living in the region no longer acquiesce in foreign definitions of their homelands’ place in world affairs. Ottoman cosmopolitanism disappeared when the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate expired. After flirting with a variety of transnational ideological identities – including pan-Arabism, Ba`athism, Judaism, Sunni, and Shi`ite Islamism – the region’s peoples have redefined themselves as “nation states.” Türkiye[2] and the fragments of the Ottoman Sultanate’s Levantine territories carved into semi-independent, neo-colonially administered countries by British and French bureaucrats have acquired well-defined international personalities. Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria have come to embrace strong national identities that have survived multiple external and internal challenges to their existence.

Iran has broken with its neocolonialist patrons, installed a defiantly independent Shi`ite government, and asserted its own sphere of influence in West Asia. In this century alone, Iraq has experienced a period of governance as a “thugdom,” an anarchy imposed by a botched American effort at hit-and-run democratization, and the slaughter by foreign and domestic forces of at least half a million of its population. Israel has degenerated from the vaguely humanistic vision of early Jewish nationalism to today’s Zionist negation of universal Jewish values. The indigenous people of Palestine have been the continuous object of relentless genocidal dispossession and brutal oppression by the Zionist settler state. Lebanon, once the playground of French confessional politics and Arab hedonism, has become ungovernable. Syria has been isolated, vivisected, and devastated by coalitions of domestic forces supported by external actors, including the Gulf Arabs, Israel, Türkiye, and the United States. Syria continues to be the locus of a variety of proxy wars, including between Israel and Iran, Russia and the United States, and Türkiye and Kurdish separatists.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, once proudly pan-Islamist rather than pan-Arabist or nationalist, has embraced nationalism. It celebrates its official founding as a state in 1932 and employs the international – not the Hijra – calendar to do so. Egypt retains its distinctive character and cultural identity under a comprehensive military dictatorship. Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) practice independent foreign policies and exercise influence not just regionally but globally. Kuwait – which is surrounded by Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia – is appropriately cautious. Bahrain defers to Saudi Arabia and serves it as a useful proxy in contacts with Israel and the United States military.

Geopolitical Centrality

What has not changed is West Asia’s geopolitical centrality. It is where Africa, Asia, and Europe and the routes that connect them meet. The region’s cultures cast a deep shadow across northern Africa, Central, South and Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean. It is the epicenter of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three “Abrahamic religions” that together shape the faiths and moral standards of over three-fifths of humankind. This gives the region global reach......

Thanks for watching: US Hegemony In The Middle East Is Over | West Asia Will Define Its Own Future | US Amb. Chas Freeman

[VickiNikolaidis]

I've learned a lot from Mr. Freeman's talk. He is well-spoken. Thank you for making his talk available to us. ❤

[whoswho]

The EAST will have peace without US & WEST🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[georgeosei]

Is time for USA to go home and solve their own crisis

[albrathwaite]

Ambassador is hitting every nail on the head with each word coming from his lips.

[davidotness]

I am always more informed after hearing Ambassador Freeman out. Once again, he does not disappoint. Thank you for providing this.

[denis]

Calling USA and EU democracy's is like calling shark a bird ...

[basilal-nakeeb]

Ambassador Freeman offers a realistic and balanced assessment of the future direction of West Asia, something rare among Western diplomats.

[ScottShannon-to]

The first thoughtful introspective on American foreign policy, that I’ve heard in years. I miss our country having quality diplomats.

[zeissiez]

America has just 4% of the world’s population, and its isolated from the “world island” Afro-Eurasia where 87% people live. America relentless strive to maintain its hegemony over the world will eventually end in exhaustion.

[joehoey]

we need more intellectuals to come out, and say
what we already know. THANK YOU!!

[blcheah]

uSA does not want their hegemony to be over. Expect the body count to rise before this is over.

[lawrencecheong]

Brilliant, honest and humble speech. Listen those who have ears!

[hughmcdonnell]

Very coherent and knowledgeable appraisal of the mess we’re in. It’s hard to see a way out of it when we see the calibre of so called western diplomats. I’m convinced that they are all suffering from iodine deficiency.

[rashmigupta]

Such a wholesome lecture! That was the best, most clear and objective summary of Middle East that I've ever heard. Thanks a ton for posting this.
Sadly but accurately he pointed out that Israel currently finds a partner only in Indian leadership who are even disgustingly adopting Israeli policies of punishment 😐

[Lina-nmcp]

Thank you once again Pascal for making this comprehensive information of ambassador Chaz Freeman available ; always great people on neutrality studies and a neutral vision featuring always different sides of the story 🕊️👌

[basfinnis]

You'd think after being bombed to smithereens for years that people would get fed up with it after a while?
Time for a change and for people who actually build things instead of destroying stuff.

[erolboo]

Why Chas Freeman is one of the greatest minds on international relations alive today in my view, he is brilliant, and a massive thanks to Neutrality Studies for giving him a decent platform to speak from, well done your both doing fantastic and important work. :)

[rctube]

At last a mature discussion of international affairs from someone from the US. I didn't think such a creature existed.

[SM-dfhm]

Insightful speech.

Very inclusive and overall accurate description of the geopolitical situation in West Asia.

[paterson]

Isreal was born in hope, for whom? Certainly not for the Palestinians the original inhabitants of the Levant. The Jews are safer living outside the Israeli state. The Israeli state must be reformed into a secular state that protects the rights of all the people who live in Palestine.