Though it is geostrategic logic that should not have eluded a three-year old, one of the most enduring consequences of American neo-conservatism’s calamitous adventure in Iraq was to leave arch enemy Iran and difficult ally Saudi Arabia alone vying for dominance in the vital Persian Gulf. With one of the Big Three regional powers (Iraq) permanently reduced, realists everywhere would find an increased rivalry between the remaining two to be almost axiomatic. And indeed, that is what has happened.
But here the story grows stranger, telling us a great deal about the evolving multipolar world we now find ourselves in. For Saudi-Iranian competition—particularly played out over the Shia-dominated island Gulf state of Bahrain—has become one of a series of local canaries in the coal mine, indicative of something much larger that is soon on its way to becoming a rule of thumb; it is regional great powers and their rivalries that will matter more and more, even as a weakened (but ubiquitous) America struggles to remind the locals around the world that it alone remains the only true global power. If the Bahrain case is anything to go by, this will increasingly sound more like a plea, as great power regionalism rather than global superpowers drive the new multipolar era.
Experts
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