 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Keene Fitzgerald. I am the Security and Defence and Foreign Policy Researcher here at the IIEA. I'm pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar on the topic of the Gaza War and the crisis of the Greater Middle East. We're delighted to be joined today by F. Gregory Goss III, Professor at John H. Lindsay 44 Chair at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service. Against the backdrop of a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and escalating tensions in the Middle East more generally, Professor Goss's address is as timely as it is important. Professor Goss will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to the Q&A with our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. And please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we'll come to them once Professor Goss has finished his presentation. And just to remind everyone attending that today's presentation and Q&A will both be on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion on X using the handle at IIEA. And I will now formally introduce Professor Goss and then hand over to him. Professor F. Gregory Goss III is Professor of International Affairs and John H. Lindsay 44 Chair at the Bush School of Government and Public and Public Service at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on the international politics of the Middle East with a particular focus on the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. He has published three books and most of the most recently international relations of the Persian Gulf, which is published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Professor Goss, the floor is now yours. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to join you and thanks for the invitation. What I'd like to do today is make the case that the war in Gaza, even though it has very specific historical and contemporary causes and antecedents is actually part of a much larger regional crisis that I think is can be characterized as created by and caused by the weakening and collapse of state authority in so many parts of the Middle East and specifically within the Arab world itself, not exclusively, but very much focused within the Arab world. And that the elements of the Gaza war, well, specifically unique to the Arab, the history of the Arab is really conflict, are not unique in terms of those larger crisis that the Middle East is facing. Let me proceed to try to break that down and sell you on this idea that Gaza is in fact one more conflict of a larger regional crisis, the solution of which will not be easy and will not happen in the short term, that's for short. And I believe that Gaza war has very specific causes in the, the, the history of Israeli Palestinian relations in the particular dynamic between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in the larger context of the, of the steady movement to the right of Israeli politics and by right in that context of course I mean the, the, the belief that that Israel should hold on to all of the territories that it that it currently controls even those in the West Bank and the Golan Heights and and directly in Gaza that it obtained in the 1967 war. That right word trend in Israel that makes the two state solution of Palestinian state next to an Israeli state, even less possible. The trends in the Arab world represented by the Abraham Accords and by the, the very public effort by the United States to bring Saudi Arabian Israel into a normal diplomatic relations. All of these trends, even without a two state solution, obviously the Abraham Accords and the, and the Israeli Saudi American triangular relationship, all of these things I think set the stage for the attacks of October 7 and the Israeli counter attacks that continue up to this day. But I make the larger point in this talk that that the Gaza war is a manifestation of a larger crisis in the region, and very specifically in a number of Arab states. And the cause of this is the weakening or collapse of central state authority. This weakening or collapse of central state authority does a number of things which complicate the international relations of the region. One it empowers non state actors. Non state actors which in a more well functioning state would be under the control of the state authority, but with state authority weakened or collapse these non state actors can in fact act independently, militarily, and even diplomatically, in terms of developing relations with outside powers inviting those outside powers into their domestic civil conflicts. So the weakening of the state also opens the door to foreign intervention. As you see in so many of these conflicts. These interventions by foreign powers are not these foreign powers don't have to fight their way into these conflicts they're invited into the conflicts by the parties themselves who desperately seek the money the guns that diplomatic support of these foreign actors. And the state also opens up the door to to refugee problems and we've seen this in Libya we've seen this in Syria we've seen this throughout the region. And thus, the collapse or weakening of central state authority, not only creates problems regionally but those problems as everyone in Europe knows spill over into other regions, and create broader international issues. That are not contained within the region itself. So this crisis of the weakening of the Arab state the collapse in some cases of the Arab state. This crisis defines the geopolitics of the Middle East, more I would argue than sectarianism. The specifics of Arab Israeli tensions, more than great power moves in the region. It is this crisis of the state that defines the crisis of the international relations of the Middle East. So what are the origins of this crisis. Well, first off, what do I mean by a weak state. It's a state that is internationally weak that that perhaps doesn't have sufficient military force to to protect itself against larger neighbors I always use Kuwait as a great example of what I am distinguishing a weak state internationally from a week state domestically. Kuwait of course is a relatively weak state internationally. When the Iraqis invaded in 1990 the Kuwaitis could resist for about 12 hours. However, I would argue Kuwait is a very strong state in terms of its domestic structures, its infrastructural power, right, most of the Kuwaiti citizens identify their government. The government maintains a relatively effective welfare state. It means it maintains a relatively effective security internal security force that can fend off efforts by outsiders to intervene in the politics of the country. It, it places its borders relatively well. This is a relatively strong state in terms of its infrastructural power. What I believe at least now is that many, many states can't make those claims. Now there are always weak states in terms of domestic weakness in the Arab world Lebanon was basically created as a weak state, and the leaders of the various sectarian communities that made up the Lebanese polity, kind of agreed among themselves, to try to maintain the social power and economic power within their own communities and not have a state have a larger state try to control their communities. And so Lebanon has been was beset by civil war in the 1970s by international interventions, the Syrians, the Israelis, number of other parties and finally the United States and European parties in the early 80s. But, and Yemen also has been a relatively weak state, poor, difficult to establish a strong central government. But these states were peripheral right there on the edges that were small. They were not particularly strategic, although they did invite that foreign intervention, most notably in, in, in Lebanon, in the 70s and 80s. But in the, in, in the rest of the Arab world, the trend from the 1960s 70s 80 into the 80s and 90s was for the state to be strengthened oil wealth allowed states to, to develop their infrastructural power both in terms of welfare benefits they could give and also their security services. You know, I don't want to say that these states were particularly friendly or nice. Right. Many, they, and they certainly weren't democratic. But they were much stronger in their ability to vest the interests of their citizens in the central authority and having central authority be able to control society. In the Arab world, which had been beset with military coups and changes of governments in the 40s and 50s. Right. And into the 60s kind of notorious for its domestic political instability actually became extremely stable. In terms of domestic politics, right regimes lasted for decades. Hafiz al-Assad took over in Syria in 1970 and his son is still the president of Syria. Right, the military has ruled Egypt since 1952 with that little hiatus right after the Arab spring. You can think of the Baathist regime, which ruled Iraq from 1968 up until the American invasion of 2003, and the monarchical regimes in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, smaller states, very stable polities by the end of the 20th century. There were some changes to create this 21st century crisis of the weak Arab state. Well, we have the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was American policy driven by hubris and driven by what I think of is the derangement in American foreign policy created by the attacks of September 11, 2001. This policy in Iraq was deliberately to destroy the state, to destroy what was left of an Iraqi state that had been weakened by the misgovernment of Saddam Hussein and by extremely strict economic sanctions. Tank what was left of that state and destroy it intentionally in the misbegotten belief that the United States could rebuild from the ground up. Oh, sorry about that. Something just fell in my little office here. That wasn't that wasn't a bomb or anything. Don't worry. To rebuild the Iraqi state from the ground up into a stable democratic pro American Iraqi state at peace with Israel. This was a fantasy as was obviously demonstrated over the past 20 years. But it, it turned Iraq, which had been a player in Middle East politics into a playing field. Right by destroying the Iraqi state it opened it up to interventions, most notably by Iran and Iran's allies and proxies within Iraqi politics. So that was 2003. Then we get to the Arab uprisings of 2011, where we saw civil wars in Libya and Yemen and Syria and regime crises in Egypt and Tunisia and brain. These are not peripheral states. These are our states in the center of Middle Eastern politics. And so the combination of the American intervention in Iraq the invasion of Iraq of 2003. The uprisings of 2011 created a number of political vacuums in the heart of the Middle East in the heart of the Arab world, Iraq, Syria. And then more on the periphery, Libya, Yemen, plus Lebanon, which had been a weak weakened state from the 1970s, if you will. So these political vacuums in the center of the region and at its peripheries, right. Define the, the, the crisis that the region is experiencing right now. And they define that crisis because they invite foreign intervention. It's been best positioned to take advantage of this change in the regional political political scene has been wrong. The sectarian factor is real here. And I don't want to, I don't want to underestimate sectarianism and certainly to an Irish audience I don't need to talk about sectarianism as a, as a poll around which people can mobilize politically. As such mobilization can lead to violence. But I don't think that we should view this purely through a sectarian lens, purely through the Sunni versus Shia lens. Right. I think that there's a tendency to see the crisis is something, the regional crisis something imposed from the outside the Iranians and the Saudis, maybe a little bit the Turks, kind of impose their sectarian notion of politics upon these countries. And then that has what's led to the instability and the violence that we see in the world. I actually think it's just the opposite. I think it's a bottom up process, which is to say that when the central state breaks down. They will look to whatever communities they feel safest in. Right. Communities where their, their, their physical safety can be guaranteed communities where their economic basic economic needs can be met communities in which in essence they won't be killed, and their children won't be killed when they go outside their homes. And that kind of and for historical reasons in so many parts of the Eastern Arab world, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, to some extent Yemen. Those kinds of communities, right, have been largely not completely secular you have the Kurds in Iraq and in Syria, who are ethno national group, not a not not a sectarian group there's sunny Kurds and she occurs right. The identity is more salient in the community that national identity. But as the governments collapsed in these places, or were severely weakened. We saw the rising importance of sectarianism in in political identification. And it's, it's natural for Shia groups in these countries to look to Iran. The largest Shia country in the region for support. And the Iranians had an excellent strategy for dealing with that they were very comfortable dealing with non state actors. They had experimented with this from the early days of the revolution from the early 1980s, with the establishment of his Bella and Lebanon. And in that sense, Iran strategy gave them an advantage in dealing with these fractured political landscapes throughout the Arab world, gave the Iranians entry points and the Iranian Revolutionary ideology linked them to many of these Shia groups in these Arab states to the extent that Iran's allies like his Bella and its proxies in in in Iraq, and the Syrian government which quickly became just one militia among many in Syria, they wanted to become part of the Iranian regional project. Like they didn't have to be forced into this. They were enthusiastic participants in it. Since Iran has predominant influence today in Lebanon in Iraq in Syria and significant influence in Yemen with the Houthis. In many ways the Houthis were more anxious to be Iranian proxies than the Iranians were to be their patrons. But it was so it was such an obvious and easy way for the Iranians to poke this out is that they become the Houthis major supplier of guns and money. So if you look at the early sectarian, right, if you look at Libya, where everyone's a Sunni Muslim, you see the same dynamic. Although society dividing more on regional tribal ideological. So it's the same dynamic but it's not sectarian it's the same dynamic because it's the same cause the collapse of central state authority. We see that sectarianism isn't at the overarching theme of this crisis with the close relationship that Hamas a Sunni Islamist organization in Palestine has has developed with Iran. So, the Iranians have been the most successful players in this game. The immediate aftermath of the Arab uprisings of 2011 it looked like Turkey would also be able to wield considerable regional influence, because Turkey had set itself up under the, the, the, the government of regit tab Abdul one, and his Justice and Development Party, a bottom up populist quasi democratic less so these days quasi democratic Sunni Islamist Party. Like, similar parties Muslim Brotherhood parties were doing very well in the Arab world in the post 2011 uprisings right the elections in Tunisia and in Libya and in Egypt all returned. The Sunni Islamist, the Muslim Brotherhood specifically in Egypt, which is kind of like the Brotherhood branch in Tunisia Islamist in, in, in Libya. And there was a strong belief in Turkey and in many other places that the Civil War in Syria would lead to a Muslim Brotherhood government there. And thus, it looked like Turkey was riding on. So the, the, the, the, the boomlet of the Brotherhood, right quickly receded as the military and, and, and elites of the old regime, if you will, kind of stepped in in Tunisia and Egypt to squash the Brotherhood and Libya collapsed into Civil War. And so the Turkish, the Turkish move to influence basically fail. Saudi Arabia did not have these kinds of regional allies or proxies that Iran or Turkey did their ideological potential proxies. The Salafi jihadists, ISIS and al-Qaeda hate the Saudis and want to kill the sounds. The Saudis are much, much better at dealing with states than they are at dealing with non-state actors. And thus the Saudis really had very little entryway into this crisis, except to support states, support their fellow monarchy in Bahrain. When it faced its regime crisis in 2011, transfer along with the United Arab Emirates, billions of dollars to the military government in Egypt, the general Abu Fattah of Sisi. Right. And thus for the Saudis, you know, intervening in these broken states has been a very, very difficult thing. And they haven't had much success. So what's to be done? The solution here might seem simple, rebuild state authority. But achieving that is hardly simple, right? We know historically that states are built, they tend to be built by hard and violent men, and they're almost always men, certainly in the Middle East. The United States had tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan spent hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars in those countries, and absolutely failed to build stable regimes in either of those places. So if reconstituting functioning states is a necessary prerequisite for a more stable and peaceful Middle East, then the U.S. and Europe are going to have to deal with some unsavory and difficult characters, like Bashar al-Assad, who with the support of Russia and the Iranians has basically won the Syrian Civil War. And Muktada al-Sadr, the extremely difficult leader of what is really the largest faction in Iraqi politics, the Houthis in Yemen. This is not a particularly attractive set of players to deal with, but it will be necessary to deal with them. I think it's foolish to think that the choices that we face in the Middle East are between good governance and bad governance or between authoritarianism and democracy. The real choice is between some amount of order or continuing regional chaos and instability. And I think if we think about the problem that way, our choices might become clearer.