The world is flat: Ground crew for the British Royal Air Force play Risk during a break on their base in Kuwait in April 2003.
The world is flat: Ground crew for the British Royal Air Force play Risk during a break on their base in Kuwait in April 2003.

Yesterday's games



When it comes to the Middle East, the United States has never grown out of its Cold War fixations. Chris Toensing reads two new books on the lamentable history of American strategy in the region.
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East Rashid Khalidi Beacon Dh92 A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East - from the Cold War to the War on Terror Patrick Tyler Farrar, Straus and Giroux Dh110
Every US president in memory has inherited a mess in the Middle East, but President-elect Barack Obama arguably inherits the biggest. In the name of the Bush administration's war on terror, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers are garrisoned in Iraq and Afghanistan, in conflicts that have generated far more terrorism than they have thwarted. In Israel-Palestine and, to a lesser degree, Lebanon, Bush administration policies have widened the existing rifts and helped to crack open new ones. The US-Iranian impasse in place since 1979 is on a path toward outright confrontation. Collapsed or collapsing states dot the rim of the Indian Ocean. Obama steps into the breach burdened with the outsize expectations of the world, at a time when the levers of Washington's power have been corroded by the engineers of the "new American century." Meanwhile, many who professed hopes of dramatic change are now poised for frustration in light of the plodding and conventional foreign policy team Obama has assembled.

Among the hopes invested in Barack Obama is that he will "restore America's standing in the world," so badly diminished by President George W Bush's scorn for international norms. The unspoken corollary is that Bush's predilection for naked coercion marked a break with the traditions of US foreign policy. For Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, that postulate does not quite stand up to the historical record. As Khalidi writes in Sowing Crisis, a collection of lectures smoothed into a book, Bush's Middle East policies were less an aberration than "a logical - albeit extreme and violent - continuation" of the basic approach employed by successive American administrations over the past 60 years. These were policies formulated for the Cold War and left unaltered after the demise of the Soviet Union. The centrepiece of this approach was ever-greater military involvement in the region, first in the form of alliances and aid packages, and then, increasingly, bases and troop deployments.

Before 1991, Khalidi contends, Washington saw nearly every major development in the Middle East through a Cold War prism - including the brief premiership of Mossadeq in Iran, the rise of Nasser in Egypt, the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, the Lebanese civil war and the Iranian-Iraqi bloodletting of the 1980s. This is not an original argument among scholars, but Khalidi makes it compelling for a popular audience. Importantly, he emphasises that Cold War competition in the Middle East was driven by classic great-power grand strategy, rather than any earnest desire to spread liberal capitalism or communism in the region. The US and the Soviet Union first developed a special interest in the Middle East during the Second World War, when both leviathans awakened to the crucial value of the region's petroleum riches. Protecting access to oil, or blocking rivals' access to it, became a central policy objective. Khalidi quotes the American air force commander in Europe, Gen Carl Spaatz, declaring in 1944 that the "primary strategic aim of the US Strategic Air Forces is now to deny oil to enemy air forces," a goal that carried over into the post-war era with the positioning of US airfields within bomber range of Soviet oil facilities. In turn, the Soviets encouraged Azeri and Kurdish separatism in Iran in 1946 to extend their sphere of influence southward - and to keep would-be US bombardiers at bay. That such Cold War thinking survived in Washington long after 1991 is well illustrated with a quotation Khalidi does not cite: Briefing the press in 2001, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz spoke of the need for "area denial or anti-access strategies" vis-à-vis China and a possibly resurgent Russia.

Needless to say, the Middle East itself came to much more harm than good in this chess match between strategists in Washington and Moscow. The CIA's coup targeting Mossadeq and its later jihad in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan are two self-evident examples of superpower adventurism that bolstered indigenous forces of autocracy and obscurantism at the long-term expense of indigenous human potential. Khalidi would add that Cold War logic guided the Johnson and Nixon administrations in their decisions to ratchet up aid to Israel after the 1967 war and through the 1973 conflagration. Wary of looming defeat at the hands of supposed Soviet proxies in Vietnam, these two White Houses could not countenance simultaneous victory by Arab countries armed by the Eastern Bloc. The resulting US embrace of a "special relationship" with Israel, with all its deleterious consequences for the Palestinians and for the cause of peace, has "thrived over multiple administrations down to this day, even though its original Cold War pretext has long since faded away."

That "special relationship" holds pride of place in Patrick Tyler's A World of Trouble, a compendium of presidential blundering in the Middle East that covers much the same ground as Khalidi's volume in far greater detail, but with less analytical acuity. Tyler, a veteran New York Times reporter, mines newly available archives and interviews with key principals to tell numerous stories of US underhandedness in unprecedented detail.

Any claim Washington may have had to "honest broker" status between Israel and its Arab neighbours in 1973 was of course given the lie by the massive October 13 airlift of tanks and armaments to Tel Aviv, the first of several. This move was justified by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a response to "Russian treachery," though Soviet supply of the Arab combatants was considerably more modest, in keeping with Kissinger's plea to Moscow when the fighting began that both superpowers "restrain" their clients. For President Richard Nixon, the Cold War imperative was clear: "We can't allow a Soviet-supported operation to succeed against an American-supported operation." But when Israeli forces crossed the Suez Canal, Nixon worried that the Egyptian government would fall, and listened with new ears to the ceasefire overtures that had been emanating from Moscow since October 10. At this point, Kissinger flouted the will of the president, refusing to deliver a message from Nixon to the Kremlin proposing a joint ceasefire effort. On October 22, the day the UN Security Council passed Resolution 338 mandating the end of hostilities, Kissinger flew to Israel. There he told his counterparts that implementation of 338 was "in your domestic jurisdiction" and that "you won't get violent protests from Washington if something happens during the night, while I'm flying." Israel pressed on, leading the Soviets to contemplate direct intervention and bringing the superpowers closer to a nuclear exchange than perhaps any time since the Cuban missile crisis. Tyler concludes that Kissinger's motivation was to appear tougher on the Soviets and warmer to Israel than Nixon was, all to please the vocal pro-Israel hawks in Congress.

Yet Kissinger had tipped his hand in remarks the preceding summer to the Iranian ambassador in Washington, Ardeshir Zahedi. Of Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian insistence upon a land-for-peace formula, he complained, "It is also senseless for a country which lost a war to demand [its territory back] as a precondition." This fundamental disrespect for the Arab negotiating position, and indeed the principles of the UN Charter, found an echo in ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comment at a Pentagon "town meeting" in 2002. "My feelings about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighbouring countries not to get involved in it, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict." In other words: Might makes right.

Such cynicism certainly underpinned President Ronald Reagan's dispatch of Rumsfeld to Baghdad, where he notoriously gripped and grinned with Saddam Hussein. The fact of the Reagan administration's "tilt" toward Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran is well known - and now, thanks to Tyler, so is the extent. For the first time in print, Tyler spells out the details of Operations Elephant Grass and Druid Leader, whereby a 60-man Defense Intelligence Agency team prepared "beautiful maps" of Iran's military supply infrastructure for personal delivery to Saddam's generals in 1987. With the aid of these maps, and DIA bomb damage assessments, Iraqi warplanes wreaked havoc on the Iranian rear. Reeling as well from the ruthless Iraqi chemical offensive on the southern front (of which, as Tyler shows, the DIA was intimately aware), Ayatollah Khomeini accepted stalemate the next year. Both Tyler and Khalidi, incidentally, perpetuate the notion that Iran also used illicit chemical weapons late in the war. The premier historian of the matter, Joost Hiltermann, has found no evidence for this claim, save for the self-serving assertions of US officials promoting the "tilt" toward Baghdad.

A World of Trouble is immensely valuable for its breadth of primary-source research and its discomfiting tales of presidential foibles. Lyndon Johnson, who professed to hear Jewishness in the voices of broadcasters he considered favourable to Israel, loudly protested his pro-Jewish bonafides to an Israeli diplomat: "I have three Cohens in my Cabinet!" Nixon was likely drunk at the height of the 1973 crisis. George W Bush, seeking to suborn torture of detainees after the September 11 attacks, is said to have bellowed, "Stick something up their ass!"

Yet overall Tyler's narrative is somewhat disjointed, a flaw stemming from his thesis that "it remains nearly impossible to discern any overarching approach to the region such as the one that guided US policy through the Cold War? What stands out is the absence of consistency from one president to the next, as if the hallmark of American diplomacy was discontinuity." One suspects that Tyler's failure to see patterns in US engagement in the Middle East comes from his wish to find "a course of action that could bring peace and stability" to the area. Might it not be, as per Khalidi's argument, that Washington's course of action consistently aimed to serve US interests against adversaries conceived in Cold War terms - and that peace and stability were secondary?

Vestiges of such a Cold War approach lurk even in the terminology of America's recent policies in the region. During the Clinton years, the US, fearing the spectre of radical Islamism, propped up anti-democratic Arab regimes and pursued "dual containment" of Iran and Iraq - the precursor to the "rollback" of those "regional hegemons" sought under Bush. In the summer of 2006, and again in the winter of 2007-2008, the Bush administration winked at Israel's bloody assaults on Lebanon and Gaza as blows by its chief "moderate" proxy against provinces of the "extremism" centred in Tehran and Damascus.

Khalidi finishes his lapidary overview by labelling the Middle East "the epicentre" of the "new galaxy of disorder" left by the Bush administration's disregard for international law and institutions. One hopes against reason that Barack Obama will "restore America's standing" by pursuing those interests Americans and Middle Easterners have in common, and not merely by demonstrating greater tact and discretion than Bush in chasing the same old strategic quarries that have led so many of his predecessors to disgrace.

Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report.

How to avoid crypto fraud
  • Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
  • Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
  • Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
  • Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
  • Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
  • Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
  • Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
Emergency

Director: Kangana Ranaut

Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry 

Rating: 2/5

Cryopreservation: A timeline
  1. Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
  2. Ovarian tissue surgically removed
  3. Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
  4. Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
  5. Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
Profile Idealz

Company: Idealz

Founded: January 2018

Based: Dubai

Sector: E-commerce

Size: (employees): 22

Investors: Co-founders and Venture Partners (9 per cent)

Dengue%20fever%20symptoms
%3Cul%3E%0A%3Cli%3EHigh%20fever%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EIntense%20pain%20behind%20your%20eyes%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3ESevere%20headache%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EMuscle%20and%20joint%20pains%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3ENausea%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EVomiting%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3ESwollen%20glands%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3ERash%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3C%2Ful%3E%0A%3Cp%3EIf%20symptoms%20occur%2C%20they%20usually%20last%20for%20two-seven%20days%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
 
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

Game Changer

Director: Shankar 

Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram

Rating: 2/5

War

Director: Siddharth Anand

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Vaani Kapoor

Rating: Two out of five stars 

If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.

When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.

How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.

The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders
Stuart Kells, Counterpoint Press

Other workplace saving schemes
  • The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
  • Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
  • National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
  • In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
  • Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League final:

Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports

Isle of Dogs

Director: Wes Anderson

Starring: Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Ed Norton, Greta Gerwig, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson

Three stars

The biog

Mission to Seafarers is one of the largest port-based welfare operators in the world.

It provided services to around 200 ports across 50 countries.

They also provide port chaplains to help them deliver professional welfare services.

WORLD'S%2010%20HIGHEST%20MOUNTAINS
%3Cp%3E1.%09Everest%0D%3Cbr%3E2.%09K2%0D%3Cbr%3E3.%09Kangchenjunga%0D%3Cbr%3E4.%09Lhotse%0D%3Cbr%3E5.%09Makalu%0D%3Cbr%3E6.%09Cho%20Oyu%0D%3Cbr%3E7.%09Dhaulagiri%0D%3Cbr%3E8.%09Manaslu%0D%3Cbr%3E9.%09Nanga%20Parbat%0D%3Cbr%3E10.%09Annapurna%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A