viewpoint: ben cohen

Allies and adversaries in the Middle East

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Who are we at war with in the Middle East?

We are at war with the Islamic State terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria, but we should appreciate that this is not the only enemy. … There are other local forces with whom we have separate, equally complex, and potentially very dangerous conflicts.

The Second World War provides a good historical example of what I mean. From 1941 onwards, the Soviet Union was an ally of Britain, which had been fighting Nazi Germany solo for the previous two years, and the United States, which entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in the decades prior to that capitalist-communist military alliance, the Soviet Union was very much an enemy, perceived by European leaders especially as the main threat to the stability of western democracy.

Only with the rise of Nazism did the Soviet threat retreat into the background. But even then, there was an awareness that once our business with Hitler’s regime was done, we would remain fundamentally at loggerheads with the Soviet Union. That was why World War II segued rapidly into the Cold War that dominated international relations for the next half-century.

A similar pattern is observable with Islamic State. The coalition that the U.S. has assembled to fight this barbaric scourge is, much like the Anglo-American-Soviet coalition of the 1940s, based upon an immediate coincidence of interest. But many of the powers involved with it should not be described as friends. Some of them — particularly those with an indirect, ambiguous role — might in fact become declared enemies in the not-too-distant future.

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