Saudi Arabia may emerge victor in the new Great Game

In the 21st century Great Game for dominance in the Middle East, we have witnessed a colossal miscalculation on the part of the Western powers. The United States was convinced Arabs in Iraq would welcome Americans with open arms. Likewise, the people of Afghanistan would submit in gratitude for liberation from the Taleban. But as all good students ought to know, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Eight years of war in Iraq and America exited in all but secrecy - a middle of the night retreat after gaining little. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Malaki's Shiite-dominated Iraqi government stood firm, improved relations with Iran and Russia, enabled an ethnic cleansing campaign against Sunni-dominated areas, and rejected US requests to remain in Iraq past the initial 2011 deadline for US troop withdrawal. Eleven years after invading Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai is more unpopular than ever. Limited in his role, he allegedly introduced mass corruption in the state, rigged his 2010 re-election win, and has pocketed untold millions of US reconstruction aid monies meant for the people. The Arab world burns under uprisings, protests, tumult and civil war, and instead of compliant secular leaders, Islam dominates.
How could it have all gone so wrong for the US?
Memories are short, and in the US appear to be the shortest of all. It is not trite to peer backward in time, as history always repeats itself. Do we face another lesson at present, involving the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran?
In the ancient world, Sparta and Athens fought so fiercely between themselves they ruined each other in the Peloponnesian War, thus ending the Golden Age of Greece. Rome took advantage of the void in power, and rose in power to control Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for 500 years.
Perhaps the most relevant blueprint for events in the Middle East today are the machinations and assumptions in World War I, of the extended British Empire and the rising American superpower. Claiming "ownership" of one-quarter of the Earth and dominating 458 million people throughout, Britain had become the largest Empire in the world out of all proportion to her size. Like the Roman Empire, expansion was exponentially costly, and by 1914 Britain could not afford to lose her gamble for control of Europe and the Middle East. Convinced the sun would never set on her Empire, Britain made, however, a fatal error in judgment.
Having always remained close to the Germans (Teutons), the English (Anglo-Saxons) reversed course and the two similarly rooted nations became temporary enemies. Britain instead aligned with her traditional enemy Russia, as both shared the same goal: ruin Germany's chance to dominate the region, a significant threat to them both in commerce and industry. The British knew that Germany would then align with the Ottomans, but decided that Turkey could be wooed back into the Empirical fold after the war. Friendship with Germany would be easy to regain, and Russia — merely a temporary asset — could be discarded as a partner afterward.
Britain always intended for the Khilafa (Caliphate) to remain intact, insisting on its importance to Muslims. This was for good reason: British India was her Jewel in the Crown, and it was essential to keep the Muslims, constituting more than 25 percent of India in 1909, happy. It had always been critical therefore to remain on friendly terms with the Ottoman Sultan of Turkey and Khalifa (Caliph) of Islam. Turkey under the secular Young Turks now allied with Germany, Britain set about finding a replacement Khalifa for the Muslim world and put all her stock in the Al-Hashemites. The Arab Revolt, if "well prepared and ably conducted, would be a master-stroke in opposition to the attempt made by Young Turkey under German protection to excite the medieval fanaticism of Islam against other religious sects and to use it as an incentive to strife," wrote Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, a Dutch convert to Islam and scholar of Oriental culture and languages, in 1917.
Essential to a British win was the quashing of the United States, never at heart considered a friend. Like Germany, America was becoming an economic rival and any rapprochement between Germany and the United States could not be tolerated. Stopping any potential alliance and driving a wedge between Germany and the US was therefore a calculated goal of the war. Despite her dislike for the former colonies, Britain needed to draw America into the Great War: Nothing was more threatening to domination of Europe than a US-German alliance.
But America was too pro-British to see London's hidden agenda, and was easily manipulated into joining the Allies in the destruction of dangerous rivals. If the two Germanic nations (Britain and Germany) ruined each other, the United States could — like Rome — rise victorious in their places. On this Britain had not thought, so she was confident of victory at the expense of other nations.
Now that the Middle East is upended in various conflicts, the dominance of Iran and China has become the new world focus. In the new Great Game, the US and Israel are aligned against the rise of the Shiite state, and America is beginning to surround China with not only demands but 60 percent of her Naval force by 2020. As in World War I, diplomacy and friendship with a nation disdained is therefore necessary to win.
Is the US-Israeli alliance banking that Saudi Arabia's position on Iran will prevent any future economic relationship by the Kingdom with her Muslim neighbor? Could a practical commercial alliance be so significant a threat to Western hegemony that Saudi Arabia must be stopped from a destabilizing union with Iran, China and Russia?
As other parties vie for dominance, it would be wrong to expect Saudi Arabia play the pawn in the next phase of change. The Kingdom may well emerge the ultimate victor, and the major players outmaneuvered — just as Rome rose at the expense of Greece, and the Great Game allowed for American hegemony at the expense of the British Empire.