Sudan’s War Will Test the New Arab Diplomacy
It would be easier to cheer the Middle East’s new diplomatic activism if so many of the problems it hopes to solve didn’t start out as “own goals.”
There is no lesser of two evils in choosing between two strongmen.
Photographer: Akjot Chol/AFP via Getty Images
For the past three years, the ruling elites of the Middle East and North Africa have been congratulating themselves for what they claim — or at any rate would like the rest of us to believe — is a new era of Arab diplomacy. The narrative, echoed in American foreign policy circles, goes something like this: As the US loses interest (or, in some renditions, abandons its commitments) in the Arab world, regional leaders are adroitly making accommodations with each other and other world powers to solve longstanding problems.
From the Abraham Accords with Israel to the Saudi-Iranian agreement, many recent regional initiatives have been held up as examples of this newfound diplomatic deftness. The underlying message is that Arabs don’t need Western solutions to crises in their midst.