LThe announcement has its effect but it is slightly misleading: China, Russia and Iran launched, on Monday March 11, joint maritime maneuvers in the Indian Ocean from the Gulf of Oman, with the aim of“to ensure regional maritime security together”.
Against a backdrop of attacks carried out in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sowing panic in the merchant navy, the device could suggest that these powers – one of which, China, has a naval base in Djibouti – are keen to take charge of the regional order.
Not really. These are, after all, only five-day maneuvers. And Iran is the supplier of the said Houthi rebels. On closer inspection, this announcement rather highlights the assurance of continued disorder. Everyone goes from their own building. The United States deployed two aircraft carriers in the region from the start of the war launched by Israel in Gaza in response to the attack of October 7, 2023. But no one has so far succeeded in dissuading the Houthis from continuing. to fire their missiles.
On the scale of the Middle East, this example reflects the state of the world in 2024: a world where several great powers rub shoulders, monitor each other, compete, confront or cooperate depending on the issue, but where none succeeds anymore. to impose order. “Forget the labels of unipolarity or multipolaritywrote journalist Gregg Carlstrom recently in the magazine Foreign Affairs. The Middle East is non-polar. Nobody orders. »
The end of the Pax Americana
This sidereal void is particularly striking if we relate it to those who are still considered the leading world power, the United States. They were, at other times, a major player in the Middle East. They remain present, if only through the crucial military and financial support they provide to Israel. The aircraft carriers, only one of which was maintained in the Red Sea, bear witness to the hegemonic role that was theirs.
But this role no longer modifies the course of events; he is content to limit, without doubt, the conflagration. Benjamin Netanyahu could not wage his devastating war in Gaza without American weapons; the White House is becoming more and more critical of the way in which he conducts it, without however succeeding in getting him to change strategy.
Barack Obama was criticized for the expression “leading from behind” – “lead from behind” – which was lent to him in 2011 to describe the attitude of the United States in the intervention in Libya, led on the front line by France and the United Kingdom. Its detractors had rightly seen it as a sign of the withdrawal of American power; this withdrawal was confirmed by the decision, two years later, by the same Obama, to renounce applying in Syria the red line that he himself had set, that of the use of chemical weapons by Damascus. Today, the United States does not lead “from behind”: it does not lead, period. More than a disastrous episode, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 marked the end of the Pax Americana.
You have 46.72% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.