by Dr. Spyridon N. Litsas
The Eastern Mediterranean has entered a new period of high volatility, with Israel and Greece in the eye of the storm.
Lit match and dynamite image via glocalprov.com
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 765, March 11, 2018
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The
Eastern Mediterranean has entered a new period of high volatility, with
Israel and Greece in the eye of the storm. Both countries are facing an
upgraded strategic challenge from Turkey and Iran. This is not simply an
interstate problem but a broader crisis that will influence the future
geostrategic physiognomy of the Eastern Med.
In the first two months of 2018, the Eastern
Mediterranean seemed to adopt all the bleak characteristics of the
Balkans: high volatility, resolute revisionist actors, and unstable
internal sociopolitical environments rocked by political scandals. The
region now accommodates two status quo regional powers on the one side
and two revisionist peripheral powers on the other. This creates an
asymmetrical mosaic of political goals.
Israel and Greece, the two status quo powers, find
themselves in a dangerous tango with the two main revisionist powers in
the region, Iran and Turkey. This is hardly news. But for the first
time, this tense tango is being played by an orchestra of balalaikas.
Israel is facing Iranian provocation, both
directly and via proxy. Threatening incidents are taking place on the
Syrian-Israeli border, the most striking example being the Iranian drone
that recently entered Israeli airspace. Hezbollah continually provokes
Israel from both Syrian soil and Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s provocations have two objects: 1) to
inflict psychological warfare and thereby affect Israeli public opinion
in order to influence the state’s military mobilization in a crisis
situation; and 2) to distract the Lebanese people from the economic
crisis, which has led to a fall in Lebanese living standards – a fall
for which Hezbollah must share responsibility as it participates in the
national government.
Israel is strategically pressed by Iran’s
positions in Syria, Yemen, and Qatar, Baghdad’s control by Tehran, and
the advancement of Iranian nuclear ambitions. These factors enable
Tehran not only to ratchet up pressure on Israel but also to strengthen
its revisionist aspirations by putting the religious factor at the
epicenter of its foreign policy.
Since 9/11, international interest has been
focused primarily on Sunni Salafism. The world has largely forgotten
that Iran is not just another Shiite Muslim state but a champion of
global Shiism. The sui generis Iranian blend that came into
being in 1979, which consists principally of nationalistic revisionism
together with strong doses of theocratic atavism, has been enlarged over
the past few decades.
Analysts consistently ignore, or perhaps entirely
forget, that Ayatollah Khomeini’s central doctrine was that religion
must serve the regime (Qujab-e vajebat) and not vice versa. His
goal, in other words, was to create an absolutist theocracy. Iran gains
the necessary leverage to rally the Shiite masses around the world by
acting as a champion of the faith – without neglecting its national
interests.
Thus, when necessary, Tehran is willing to open
lines of communication with Salafist Qatar or the neo-Hanafi Sunni state
of Turkey. The so-called Arab Spring and its ongoing course (i.e., the
Syrian Civil War, Yemen, Libya, etc.), assisted Iran in establishing
direct links with Shiite communities all over the Arab world. At the
same time, it has fully exploited the opportunity to enhance its own
geostrategic value and strengthen relations with Moscow.
These pivotal developments in the zero-sum
environment of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean have
directly resulted in rising antagonism between Jerusalem and Tehran that
could lead the region into Thucydides’ Trap.
Greece faces an even more complex situation as Turkey is undergoing a fundamental domestic ideological transition.
Kemalism, not only as an ideology but as the ideological soul of the
nation and the administrative and political center of gravity of the
state, has ceased to function as a counterbalance to AKP’s agenda, which
promotes political Islam on a Muslim Brotherhood basis.
Turkey is at a historical turning point.
Secularism is being handily beaten by Islamism, bringing back memories
of the time in the late 19th century when the Ottoman Empire
stood idle before the sociopolitical rift between pan-Islamism and
pan-Turkism that deepened as both nationalism and religious zealotry
grew. Today, Turkish foreign policy is following the same pattern of
vagueness on the one hand and maximalism on the other.
So far, the so-called “Olive Branch Operation” of
the Turkish army against the Kurdish forces of YPG has not evolved in
the way Ankara would have wished. The Kurds, as expected, are applying
conventional rural guerilla warfare. If the Turkish army advances to
Afrin, the Kurds will switch to a door-to-door, alley-to-alley hit and
run tactic, an approach that worked well for them during their Hobbesian
clashes with ISIS in Kobani.
Ankara and Erdoğan have invested heavily in a
confrontation with YPG and an unstoppable advancement to Afrin. Their
aim is to show the rest of the globe, particularly the US, that any
future discussion on the political status quo of the Middle East must
begin by considering Turkish geostrategic desires.
Ankara seems to have forgotten Clausewitz’s dictum
that war is an act of violence intended to compel one’s opponent to
fulfill one’s will. This means that war, since the dawn of time and
despite all technological advancements, remains a lethal tit for tat in
which the prevailing side is the one with the strongest will. YPG is
fighting for its survival and defending its ground. It wants a good deal
more than merely to boast of victory. Its willingness to fight a long
and total war puts Ankara in a very difficult position.
Thus, Turkey, in order to control domestic public
opinion and also send the message abroad that its interests are still a
determining factor in the region, has decided to raise tensions on the
other side of the map: in the Aegean Sea and in the Exclusive Economic
Zone of the Republic of Cyprus. Turkey is implementing a straightforward
projection of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to
broadcast to the US and the EU that it has the necessary power to deeply
influence strategic developments in the region.
This problematic behavior by Turkey is generating
another Thucydides’ Trap – this time a product of the appeasement Greece
is obliged to offer Ankara if it is to survive. The deeply destructive
Greek economic crisis prevailing since 2010, which has penetrated the
country to the core, has established an asymmetrical reality in the
Aegean in which Turkey acts in the role of provocateur and Greece in the
role of conciliator.
Appeasement, as the myopic attitude of Britain and
France towards Nazi Germany between the world wars proved, is not a
guarantor of peace but simply a delay before the inevitable violent
clash. Sooner or later, Athens will be forced to reply to Ankara’s
provocations. There also remains the possibility of an accident
resulting from ongoing military friction in the Aegean.
While the two cases – Israel vs. Iran and Greece
vs. Turkey – seem to be unrelated, there is a strong connection between
them that has to do with the geostrategic orientation of Athens and
Jerusalem. The two states, together with the Republic of Cyprus, are the
only unconditionally western powers in a wider arena that is changing
rapidly under the influence of Moscow and Beijing. While the latter –
for the time being – is showing an interest in establishing a strong
economic and soft-power presence in the region through the One-Belt/One
Road Initiative, the former is rapidly changing its traditional attitude
towards the Eastern Mediterranean by transforming itself into a blue
water naval power.
This change in orientation will allow Russia to
raise the level of geostrategic competition with the US while
establishing itself in states it recently would have found almost
impossible to penetrate (e.g., Turkey). Moscow’s main strategic goal
appears to be to exploit the exhaustion and disappointment of the two
conventional western powers in the Middle East and Eastern Med region
towards Western institutions. This hypothesis grows stronger if one
considers that both Ankara and Tehran have already entered into the
Russian orbit.
Greece and Israel must join forces and present
their cases to NATO and the EU, as they are critical to the geostrategic
future of the region. In so doing, an effective network of diplomatic
deterrence can be created that would promote peace and stability.
Important though that step may be, it is not
enough. After years of productive relations, now is the time when Greece
and Israel must reinforce their cooperation by elevating it to a
military alliance. The recent official visits to Athens by Israeli
President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot
suggest a tendency in this direction. Such a development could serve as
Ariadne’s Thread as the regional geostrategic conundrums grow more and
more dangerous.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/perilous-tango-four-eastern-med/
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