The New Sheriffs

In 2000 Chalmers Johnson, a professor of history at UC San Diego, famously co-opted the CIA term “blowback” in order to explain the negative consequences of America’s long tradition of foreign interventionism. “World politics in the twenty-first century,” he wrote, “will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century-that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post-Cold War world.”

In the first decade of this century, the sphere in which the United States attempted to maintain such a “Cold War posture” was, of course, the Middle East, where two wars simultaneously stumbled on for ten years. Through the presumptuous overextension of American power in the region we became our own worst enemy, losing any shred of credibility or reliability in the most politically tumultuous sector of the world. And so when stories like this one break, detailing how Syria’s embroiled Assad regime plans to conduct business only in the Russian rouble, the Iranian rial, and the Chinese renminbi in response to American sanctions, it is interesting and necessary to examine it in the light of Mr. Johnson’s ideas. Are the proverbial chickens coming home to roost for the United States?

There seems to be a prevailing sense that the Obama administration’s waffling on the crisis in Syria – even while arming rebels – represents a diplomatic loss. This very well might be true. But there is something else, something perhaps best placed under the umbrella of soft power, that the U.S. is in danger of losing in the region. The decision by the Assad regime to deal only in the currencies of Russia, China, and Iran might be motivated by the simple political fact that these nations are the regime’s sole supporters, but it nonetheless purports an eventual forcing out of western economic interests. We might find that it is not only the United States’s long-criticized martial and diplomatic involvement in the region that is losing its clout, but also this involvement’s natural twin: American business.

To be sure, war-ravaged Syria’s situation in relation to America is confusing and unstable—it is hardly the best nation to look at as a potential microcosm of a developing pattern or larger trend. But it’s not a secret that Russian and Iranian oil industries are shaping  the conflict in Syria, or  that China is vigorously forging business connections in the region. This subtle form of involvement, the kind at which the United States has always been so adept, might now be the product of a consortium of non-American actors. It is a testament to the fluidity of the world stage that Russia and China lead the charge.