The British ‘withdrawal’ from the Mideast didn’t occur in 1948 but rather in 1971, and it was a long, drawn-out process that was delayed by the retention of strategic outposts and the invocation of selective interventions. Likewise, the US appears to be doing something similar, seeing its 2011 Iraqi withdrawal as a valuable opportunity to ‘trim the fat’ on its regional military footprint while making for a more ‘lean’ and efficient deployment of unconventional (but equally influential) force. Whereas the British eventually faced their ‘East of Suez’ moment, it may be that the technological and strategic applications of force projection in the 21st-century could indefinitely prolong American hegemony in the Mideast via the lessons learned from the British experience, provided that the Black Swans of a Saudi collapse, a Kurdish flip, or a Gulf Cold War redux don’t happen first. orientalreview.org/2015/01/09/the-us-is-following-in-the-uks-mideast-footsteps-and-the-pentagon-doesnt-mind/
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 23:51:48 +0000
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