The Arab League voted earlier this week to reinstate Syria’s membership, ending the suspension it imposed in 2011 in response to the Bashar al-Assad regime’s violence and repression against its own citizens participating in mass protests. This is a turning point in the region ~ it not only marks the normalisation of the Assad regime but is also the culmination of a years-long campaign by the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Jordan to re-engage with President Assad.

According to West Asia expert Steven Heydemann, the trio of Arab states are hoping that the lure of normalisation will be more effective than sanctions in persuading Mr Assad to address regional concerns, with refugees and drug trafficking at the top of the agenda. As yet, there are no visible signs that the Assad regime’s normalisation has delivered much, either for Syria or its Arab interlocutors.

Advertisement

But even if nothing tangible results from the re-admission of Syria into the Arab League, it is a very powerful symbolic move. It is, as Heydemann writes, one piece of a larger regional puzzle which marks the ongoing consolidation of what can only be described as a new regional security architecture, a framework for managing rivalries that is perhaps the most significant shift in regional dynamics since the US invasion of Iraq.

As the Americans focus their strategic energy on containing the rise of China, West Asian states seem to have understood that it is up to them to put their own house in order. There have been parallel moves to narrow regional divides ~ between Iran and Saudi Arabia; Qatar and its counterparts in the Gulf Cooperation Council; Turkey and Arab rivals such as Egypt; Israel and Lebanon over maritime issues; and between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. Syria’s normalisation can also be seen as a de-escalation of regional conflicts, the second-order effects of which are apparent in Yemen where Saudi-Iranian rapprochement has led to the longest ceasefire yet in the country’s decade-long civil war.

There are two geopolitically significant takeaways from the developments in West Asia. The first is the growing concern among many oil-rich nations about their continued economic prosperity as the West shifts away from hydrocarbons and towards renewable energy. Secondly, the active outreach of China in the region which is filling the vacuum left by America’s scaled down engagement. Leading states in the region are exhibiting pragmatism in dealing with each other despite the deepseated animosities between them as the present geostrategic flux has perhaps left them with no choice.

This is not to say that all is hunky-dory ~ far from it, given that the cleavages in West Asia run deep. But the emergent situation does indicate that regional actors are factoring in the diminished role of the USA as the security-provider in West Asia as well as the beginning of the end of post-Cold War unipolarity in the world order.