Marc Lynch's essay in the new Foreign Affairs argues the strongest version of a claim most analysts still whisper: the regional order Washington built after 1991 did not survive the war it started in February.
The bargain underneath that order — American protection for Gulf regimes and for Israel, in exchange for alignment, basing rights, and oil that cleared at reasonable prices — failed every clause at its first genuine test, because the allies were not consulted before the war, the strait was not held open during it, the retaliation was not prevented, and the adversary was not removed.
He is careful, too, about timing — Suez in 1956 is remembered as the end of European empire in the Middle East, yet Britain remained the Gulf's dominant power until 1971 — and his warning that "what looks like short-term continuity should not be mistaken for long-term sustainability" is the sentence on which the whole piece turns, the rare political-science line that already thinks like a desk — and,…
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