The strategic reason in the Middle East that makes both itself and everyone lose

The fierce struggles that actors wage in international relations for their interests often make one ask, in the end, "where is the reason in all this?" Because the politics that actors pursuing their interests produce, displaying high intelligence and strategic-mind performance, rolls toward an outcome in which both they themselves lose a great deal and, of course, often their rivals lose a great deal as well.

When the accounts are seen, a picture emerges in which no one has won and everyone has lost. In a way, since states see their own gains in the losses of the countries they regard as rivals, there is not much to find strange in this result. Yet this kind of state behavior is very ordinary and produces no value for itself or for the rest of the world and builds no future. Behind this state behavior and calculation there are extremely archaic emotions. Such as jealousy, envy, greed.

By carrying out long strategy analyses, one can attribute examples of high intelligence and strategic minds to a country's behavior in a process of rivalry. Yet often these are merely the product of the fine intelligence of those who make the analyses; those who made the move were simply captives of an archaic emotion, that is all.

When it comes to the Middle East, the performance of some states is the best example of what I am saying. Unless there is a much bigger calculation above them all, you can easily think that all the actors playing on the field must have gone mad. The policy each actor pursues in the name of protecting its own country's interest, or even its own hold on power, causes each of them to lose a little more. Of course, these losses further increase the total loss of the whole region, and with each passing day the fragmentation of the Middle East is further entrenched.

In this process, Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example, whose policies are assessed as very effective and whose influence on the ground grows every day, do nothing with every activity of theirs but increase both their own losses and the total losses of the region.

The Shiite-oriented policies that Iran pursues in Syria, Iraq and Yemen apparently enable it to spread on the ground, but leave behind pains and feelings similar to those left by a foreign occupying force. At the end of the day, when the account is seen, we see that Iran, which at the beginning of the road had a potential of legitimacy and sympathy that could reach nearly one and a half billion Muslims, has been confined to its 100-150 million Shiite population and has turned into an object of complete hostility and distrust for the rest of the population.

It is unbelievable but true that the Iranian Islamic Revolution, which in the late seventies and the eighties aspired to be the hope and longing for freedom of the 1.5-billion-strong Islamic world, has spent all the skills of the now-famous Safavid strategic mind on turning into a simple sectarian state. That strategic mind can come and make one stumble into the error of identifying with a criminal dictator who savagely massacres his own people. Apparently Iran makes very effective moves, but these moves leave it with no value it could promise to the world.

The open struggle that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have waged particularly against the Arab Spring process is also one of the most important causes of the instability of today's Middle East. The only target of the struggle of both countries is democracy and especially the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).

Evidently they saw the democratic processes through which the MB came to power as a threat to themselves, and out of the blue they made an enemy of themselves of the MB, which has organizations and an important intellectual milieu in nearly 90 countries.

Yet the MB had no threat or opposition toward either Saudi Arabia or the UAE that would draw so much hostility. The conditions of the Arab Spring countries were very different from those of the Gulf countries, and there was nothing requiring the waves there to affect them directly. The MB joined the Arab Spring process not even very actively, but only after everyone had taken their place, and they had no radical stance.

There was nothing requiring them to target out of the blue this social force that has the potential to develop and strengthen democracy. Indeed, had they wished, they could have taken this wave of revolution on their side and become supporters of a very different change from which they themselves, the Islamic world and the whole world would have emerged as great gainers. They could have been pioneers in overcoming the ill fortune of the Islamic world in this way and could even have further consolidated their rule in their own countries.

Instead, defeated by their extremely archaic emotions, they perceived from this development a needless threat to themselves. And to remove this threat they had wrongly perceived, they clung to coups, the most shameful, most face-reddening, most criminal act in the world, as a "precaution."

Today, because the coups they supported are in office, they seem to have gained certain spheres of influence, but these spheres are neither safe and sustainable for them, nor have they gained any power or dignity from their influence in these spheres. Moreover, because of the contribution they made to these coups, their legitimacy and dignity in the eyes of their own citizens are eroding more with each passing day.

Moreover, the precautions they have taken against the threat they perceived are producing results that will threaten their own security far more. So much so that with each passing day it becomes much more likely than yesterday that they will encounter dangers that would confirm their fears.

So it turns out that strategic mind and management are not everything; a little foresight and heart are needed too.