Saudi Arabia Plays A Decisive Role

Marwan Al Kabalan writes: Fear of Iran taking advantage of the dynamic events in the Arab world spurs dramatic shift in foreign policy 
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 20/05/2011

For the first time since its establishment in 1981, Saudi Arabia is leading the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into playing a very active role in Arab politics. In March, Riyadh led a coalition force into Bahrain to help the government calm the unrest there. Saudi Arabia is also leading mediation efforts to help resolve the political crisis in Yemen. More recently it called upon Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC with the aim of consolidating the role of the regional origination in the face of the many challenges it encounters. This tendency is seen by analysts and observers as a clear departure from Saudi Arabia’s traditional acquiescence in foreign policy.

For the past several decades, precisely since the end of the Yemen War in the late 1960s, Saudi Arabia has adopted an exceptionally quiet diplomacy in managing its foreign and regional policies. Despite leading the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the Saudis have always tried to keep a low profile in Arab politics. When Egypt signed the Camp David Accord with Israel in 1978, the Saudi government respected the Arab resolution of the Baghdad summit in boycotting Egypt. Yet, it refrained from taking any further step towards antagonising former Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat. The Iranian revolution of 1979 and its endeavours to unseat the conservative Arab Gulf regimes did not fray the nerves of the Saudi government. Riyadh considered, publicly at least, the revolution an internal Iranian affair, adhering to the principle of none-interference.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, the Saudi government denounced the invasion and pledged to support the Afghan Mujahideen to expel the invaders.

When the Iraq-Iran war broke out in 1980, Saudi Arabia tried to mediate between the two countries. It was only when Iran rejected every peace initiative that stopped short of full Iraqi surrender; Saudi Arabia took sides in the confrontation.

When Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Saudi leadership requested the help of foreign forces only when it was presented with satellite pictures, showing the Iraqi army taking offensive positions. Throughout the 1990s, Riyadh played the role of stabiliser in the Arab world through the Syrian-Egyptian-Saudi tripartite axis. The axis slowed down the haste of some Arab countries towards normalising relations with Israel.

The Saudis did not hide their displeasure with the US plans to invade Iraq in 2003. Yet, their opposition was expressed from behind closed doors. During the course of the Arab revolutions, this noiseless diplomacy had to change. The Saudis started to play a more aggressive role in the region, expressing their displeasure clearly and loudly with the unfolding events in many parts of the Middle East.

Bahrain move

This dramatic shift in Saudi foreign policy was, in fact, instigated by the fear of Iran taking advantage of the unfolding events in the Arab world and the retreat of the main Arab actors, which have historically played a key role in regional politics. Egypt, Iraq and Syria are all pre-occupied with different sets of internal problems.

The US, the major military power in the region and Saudi Arabia’s key international ally, does not seem interested in any new venture in the region. Anxious to prevent Iran from taking advantage of this fluid situation, the Saudis decided to take the unusual step of taking the lead in an orchestrated effort to fill this power vacuum.

Clearly, many were taken off guard by Saudi Arabia’s new policy. Iran in particular seemed to have been completely unprepared to deal with the GCC move into Bahrain. The Iranians are facing a counter-offensive that threatens the project they have been pursuing for years just when it appeared to be coming to fruition. The success of the Saudis in re-establishing their leading role in the Arab world will result in the emergence of a new balance of power on the ground. This is seen as quite a shift from the traditional passive Saudi role in regional politics and is very likely to create new dynamics in the region.

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is Lecturer in Media and International Relations, Faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.

Kuwait: Members OF Parliament's Boxing On The Sidelines Of The Revolution

By Zuheir Kseibati
This commentary was published in al-Hayat on 19/05/2011

What was witnessed in Kuwait’s parliament yesterday was not part of the winds of freedom and change seen in the spring of the Arabs, who have taken to the streets while armed with their throats in the face of the tanks of alarmed regimes. The scene was not one of Kuwaiti democracy or that of a change movement that would not fall in the trap of the bullets and that blockaded the Arab authority with all that is condemning to it.

What happened under the dome of the Kuwaiti parliament was quite simply a bashing party among deputies who disagreed over the freedom and classification of detainees in Guantanamo, thus introducing the sectarian tensions in the country and the region to the house of the legislators, but with punches and insults.

While there is no arguing about the long history and vivacity of parliamentary life in Kuwait, as well as about the deputies’ stand-offs with the governments, the use by some of their muscles as a language of dialogue marks the infiltration of the infection of exclusion and eradication targeting the other.

The paradox in the action of the deputies representing the Kuwaiti people - and who considered that their fist is a tool to reform the nation through the correction of the deviations of others - is the same weapon used by the Arab authority in more than one location by facing the callers for freedom with eradication. If sectarian tensions are added to impulsive reactions, the barriers of differentiation between those who are ruled and those supposed to be representing the people and their demands collapse. One might even say that the authority in some Arab countries is closer to reason than elite groups who tend to counter arguments with accusations of treason and beatings.

There was another scene witnessed in Bahrain. It also featured violence in the form of retaliation by running over policemen. Although some use the excuse of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” the violence failed to conceal – since the beginning – the tendency to elude the language of dialogue and settlements despite the lifting of the banners of rights and freedoms.

Can there be settlements without middle ground solutions or is there a wish to instate Plato’s Republic to compete with Western democracies?

This is not in defense of stalemate or a justification for the governments and authorities imposing the era of the one-voice on all the people, at a time when the latter people are hijacked by the banners of the glorious leader who will definitely open the doors of Jerusalem, even he were to close all the windows of hope in the face of the generations of Arab oppression.

But would the greatest catastrophe not reside in the leader’s insistence on cloning his likes among the generations of silence, so that if the people were to rise and destroy the statues of those controlling their lives and livelihoods, the disciples would be able besiege them?!

Is Iraq, which was liberated from the dictator with foreign weapons, not an archetype of the fake democracy and the pillaging and discrimination that ensued? And although the number of parliamentary seats has increased, exclusion mounted and countless Saddams emerged.

Could Iraq be the stage of a revolution? Or have the seasons of mass murders dried up the Euphrates of hope?

In the meantime, it is also with violence that the Jasmine Revolution is being undermined, as the ousted regime features a class seeking benefits and privileges and is booby-trapping the path toward stability, right until the border.

And it is with violence that retaliation is being fueled in Egypt where the revolution youth are encountering seekers of retaliation and sectarian tensions that are soiling this revolution’s cloak and justice. What is feared is that the winds of “cleansing” and cancellation will grow in the name of eradicating the dubious, or through the use of religion to destroy the unity of the January 25 movement.

From Egypt, to Tunisia, Libya and all the countries unified by the limitation of the conspiracy to a group of citizens seeking justice outside the context of the security apparatuses and a loaf of bread before the victorious battles and the missiles, in all those countries the revolutions are being killed by the transformation of retaliation into a legitimate and methodic behavior that is destroying the state and obliterating the laws in the name of the legitimacy of the street.

No dialogue can succeed in light of such behavior, while the fist of eradication can bury the justice of reform whenever the victorious brandish the sword of preemptive “cleansing.”

Where do the boxers in the Kuwaiti parliament stand at this level?

In Tehran The Fight Is Over Money

By Amir Taheri 
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 20/05/2011

Under the Khomeinist regime, Iran's media have developed a grammar which, if understood, could provide a key to the understanding of one of the weirdest regimes in the modern world.

One rule of this grammar is that no phenomenon could be described in rational terms. Khomeinism, as an ideology based on esoteric mumbo-jumbo, cannot admit the role of reason in shaping events.

That grammar, in which reality is described by abstract labels, might have worked in a primitive tribal society with little scope for conflicting interests and aspirations. Applying it to a complex society such as Iran's is naïve to say the least.

The newest label put in circulation is that of "deviant tendency."

It first appeared in 2009 when the daily Kayhan, reflecting the views of the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei, used it to attack un-named "enemies of the Islamic Republic." Readers were told that the "deviant tendency" was plotting against "the holy heritage" of the Imam, a title bestowed on the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

At the time, observers believed that the label was meant for the supporters of former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mousavi who refused to accept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as president.

Last year, however, the label was used to attack un-named "plotters" who were supposed to be trying to revive Iranian nationalism, along with monarchist traditions, as a rival ideology.

Soon, however, we learned that the "deviant tendency" was present "within the ruling elite, even inside the government."

Early this year, the attacks became more precise. Readers learned that a "dangerous character", identified only by his initial as E.M., was the leader of the "deviant tendency".

That "dangerous character", we were told, pursued a hidden agenda to push the clergy back into the mosques, purge the Persian language of Arabic words, and revive the Persian Empire.

It took the media controlled by the "Supreme Guide" another six months to identify the mysterious E.M as Esfandiar Masha'i, a charismatic figure regarded as Ahmadinejad's spiritual guru.

Officially, Masha'i is Ahmadinejad's Special Advisor and bureau chief. In reality, he seems to be the president's top strategist.

Until this week, the Iranian media were reporting what looked like a power struggle between Khamenei and Masha'i.

Last Monday, Kayhan pulled the curtain further by referring to "Ahmadinejad's deviant tendency."

Although presented as an ideological fight, the conflict may be about mundane matters such as money.

Over the past five years, Ahmadinejad has tried to revive the structures of the state.

Since the revolution, these structures have been either sidelined or dismantled. Their place has been taken by informal structures built around powerful mullahs, sections of the military-security elite, and the so-called "foundations" controlled by the "Supreme Guide". These informal structures have a clientele of millions and act as the regime's base of support.

Ahmadinejad's strategy, presumably worked out by Masha'i, is to circumvent these structures and gradually cut their access to public funds. The goal is to put the clock back to when Iran's oil income was spent by the government rather than informal and thus unaccountable interest groups.

That the fight is over money is now quite openly reflected in the official media.

The media of the "Supreme Guide" cite a series of cases in which the "deviant tendency" is supposed to be trying to seize control.

In one case, the "deviant tendency" won control of the cultural budget, amounting to around $40 million and tried to use it to repair ancient monuments, organise art festivals, and finance film and theatre productions. After a big fight, the "Supreme Guide" managed to win control of almost half of the budget to be distributed among mullahs and spent on "furthering religious purposes."

In another case, the "deviant tendency" shut companies controlled by Mojtaba, a son of the "Supreme Guide", from a $100 million real estate and leisure project on the Kish island. Instead, Iranian-American investors were brought in to help the government realise the project.

In yet another case, the "deviant tendency" created a public-private partnership to gain control of Iran Khodro, the country's largest automobile manufacturer. Not surprisingly, business circles linked to the "Supreme Guide" were furious.

Another case concerns a trans-national railway line from the Gulf of Oman to Central Asia. Again, the entourage of the "Supreme Guide" have failed to receive a share in the $30 billion project, slated to take a decade to complete.

The "deviant tendency" has also rattled nerves, especially among the 200 or so individuals who owe some $50 billion to government banks. Many of these debtors are powerful mullahs whose support is crucial for sustaining Khamenei's claim of leadership.

Some mullahs have lost the gold seams they have been working for years.

One ayatollah who monopolised imports of sugar has seen half of his business transferred a government company. Another ayatollah has seen his quota for imports of wheat disappear as the government buys more wheat, at higher price, from domestic farmers.

Ahmadinejad's most daring coup may be his attempt at gaining control of the oil industry.

He has started by abolishing the Ministry of Petroleum that, over the years, has become an empty shell. Iranian oil industry is controlled by a galaxy of 40 or so companies owned and controlled by powerful clerics and Islamic Revolutionary Guard commanders. The plan is to revive the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) as a state-owned concern dealing with all aspects of the industry.

The fate of such big projects as the gas pipeline to India, initially won by companies linked to the "Supreme Guide", remains unclear.

At first, Ahmadinejad tried to win the backing of the military against the mullahs. Under an ambitious privatisation programme, he transferred public companies worth $18 billion to the military. More recently, however, the "deviant tendency" has been trying to limit the military's economic power as well. This could lead to an alliance between businessman-mullahs and businessman-generals against the "deviant tendency".

Ahmadinejad may have tried do bite more than he could chew. A fight over money is more serious than an ideological quarrel, especially when we are talking of serious money.

Barack Obama's Speech: No Cairo 2.0

For Americans, perhaps, this was stirring stuff. But for an Arab audience, hoping for more commitment on Palestine, it fell flat

By James Zogby
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 19/05/2011

US President Barack Obama delivering his address on events in the Middle East at the state department in Washington, 19 May 2011. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

 

President Obama has often used great speeches to define critical issues. Given the historical setting – dramatic changes taking place across the Arab world, the killing of Bin Laden, and the floundering Arab-Israeli peace process coming up against the September deadline the president once suggested for the establishment of a Palestinian state – the White House saw this as the appropriate time for another "great speech".

For an American audience, it was an important speech. The president's analysis of the Arab spring was thoughtful and challenging, as was his resolve to "reset" relations with the broader Middle East in the wake of profound changes occurring that region. By embracing and reframing a "democracy agenda" and focusing on the need for economic development and empowerment, Obama shoved aside the neoconservative claptrap and Islamophobic nonsense that has seized the much of the right and infected some of the left.

For Americans, then, it might be fair to say that the speech was challenging and uplifting. It may even have been a useful speech for US policy-makers, although our current "slash and burn" Congress may be disinclined to act in support of the president's initiatives – dooming them before they get off the ground.

But if the intended audience was in the Arab world, then sadly, the speech fell flat.

Arabs already understand that their region is undergoing a profound transformation. And they know and either welcome or dread the challenges they will now face in constructing a new political order. But these, as the president acknowledged, are their transformations and their challenges.

I believe that most Arabs did not need help in understanding the significance or the consequences of this moment in their history. Arabs were not looking to the US president for an analysis of their circumstances. What they want from America may differ in some details from country to country, but a core concern shared by most Arabs is that America demonstrates leadership in resolving the Palestinian issue.

In anticipation of Obama's speech, I asked a wide range of Arab friends and acquaintances, from revolutionaries and intellectuals to government officials, what they hoped to hear from the US president. They offered a diverse menu of concerns – Libyans, for example, want arms; Egyptians and Tunisians want economic assistance and investment to create needed employment – and this they will get. Yet, two strong points of consensus emerge on the issues they hoped Obama would address.

My Arab interlocutors made clear that the US is still paying a price for Bush era policies, and that President Obama is still suffering from a "post Cairo" letdown. That speech raised expectations that were not fulfilled, shaking confidence in US leadership. So, they uniformly cautioned against another "big speech" that promised a lot and delivered too little. And because the 2009 Cairo University speech ramped up expectations about the president's commitment to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, failure to address this issue now, or to address it only in generalities or with more vague promises "to advance the peace process", risks either deepening mistrust or provoking scorn or rage.

In recent days, the Palestinian issue has been foregrounded by the resignation of former Senator George Mitchell and by what is expected to be Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's triumphal appearance before the US Congress. While Mitchell's much-heralded appointment as special envoy raised hopes among some in the Middle East, his tenure was disappointing. His departure now is being viewed as an admission of collapse in the process – in which he and the president had invested a great deal of political capital. So, with Netanyahu and Congress in agreement on the need to block the recently concluded Palestinian reconciliation pact and the Palestinian leadership's efforts to seek United Nations recognition of their state in September, the speech's failure to address these deeply felt Arab concerns constitutes a glaring omission and a lack of serious commitment.

On that January day in 2009 when Barack Obama took the oath of office, he did not receive a magic wand. Instead, he was handed the shovel his predecessor had used to dig deep holes across the Middle East. It is also a sorry fact of which Arabs are only too aware that politics in Washington limits the ability of even the best-intentioned president to take a decisive stand on issues involving Israel. But Obama raised expectations that he would shift Washington and that he understood that resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict was not only important for Israel and the Arabs, but was also "in the national security interests of the United States". This makes the failure of the president's speech to be decisive and direct on the parameters of a solution, a timetable for its implementation and sanctions for non-delivery all the more disturbing.

Recognising the new realities in the Middle East is important. But recognising that Arabs see Palestinian rights as a central concern and have grown weary of what they feel is America's enabling of Israel's bad behaviour is important, too. The president got the new realities part right, but he missed a vital opportunity on Palestine.

Obama's Latest Middle East Speech: Much Ado About Nothing

By Kori Schake
This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 19/05/2011

President Obama had three significant challenges for his "major address" on the Middle East:

1. Explain his administration's seemingly contradictory responses to uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria
2. Support the forces of democratic change in the region; and
3. Describe how to manage the conflict between our interests and our values in a region where they are often in conflict.

His speech today achieved none of those.

The president laid claim to "a new chapter in American diplomacy," which he described as "shifting our foreign policy after a decade of war." But the vision he now endorses for the universality of American values has actually been the basis for our foreign policy in the Middle East for several administrations, most stridently that of his immediate predecessor -- it was President Obama's policies that had sought to tone down the emphasis our values in order to work more constructively with the repressive governments of Iran and Syria, as well as the repressive governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

He said of democracy's advance that "change will not be denied." But isn't it being denied in Bahrain, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iran? The president said yes, but didn't explain why our policies are different toward those governments. Instead, he continued to promote the sophistry that there is no conflict between our values and our interests. Can anyone tell what our policy toward Saudi Arabia will be as the result of the president's speech? I doubt it.

Obama said our values must be a top priority and supported by all the tools of our power. Yet he was long on pedantry and short of concrete proposals. The policies he outlined fell far short of the standard he himself set. The whole of government approach he advocated sums up to: asking the World Bank to come up with a G-8 proposal for assistance to Tunisia and Egypt, relieving $1 billion in debt for Egypt and another billion in loans, vague promises of enterprise funds and facilitation of trade and incentives for reform and penalizing corruption -- all without any specificity as to how we might achieve that. Debt relief is a good thing, and so is credit from the Export-Import Bank. But is this really all we have on offer for a top priority supported by all the tools of our power? His national security team should have provided him a much better developed program of policies in advance of a major speech.

Scheduling the speech on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's arrival further increased the degree of difficulty for the president, given the administration's inability to make progress on Israeli-Palestinian issues. But President Obama argued that current circumstances make peace more urgent than ever, then proceeded to propose nothing new. He stood boldly for a viable Palestine and a secure Israel. How is this news?

What will Middle Easterners think of the president's speech? Jon Alterman from CSIS put it best: "There's not a huge amount of curiosity about what the president thinks." President Obama's speech today did nothing to change that.

The president's message seems to be that we will speak out on core principles while doing little to promote them. This is likely to incur to American foreign policy all of the detriments of acrimony from governments whose assistance we need and charges of hypocrisy from those working for change, without accruing the benefits of actually fostering change.

The Bush administration is rightly criticized for being long on vision and deficient in day-to-day management for advancing that vision. The Obama administration has taken two and a half years to more or less endorse that vision while demonstrating an equal deficiency in in the conduct of its policies

What Obama Must Do Following His Middle East Speech

By David Ignatius
This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 19/05/2011

With much-ballyhooed speech on the Middle East, President Obama has set himself a challenge that can be summarized in two words: Follow through. Obama spoke with more clarity than some analysts had expected about the two most incendiary issues in the region right now: the violent suppression of protests sweeping Syria by President Bashar al-Assad; and the risk of a new Palestinian explosion if some peace process can’t be restarted.

Obama’s answers on both avoided the conventional wisdom of the day (or rather, yesterday). Rather than offering a quick and easy rhetorical dismissal of Assad, Obama instead called on him to enact specific reforms (as he has claimed he wanted) or leave. And rather than acceding to Israeli wishes that the White House lowball the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Obama insisted on the need for negotiations and stated some simple “principles” to guide negotiations.

But each aspect of Obama’s broad program for the Middle East requires something that has been in short supply at this White House: A systematic ability to implement foreign-policy strategy through committed, emphatic follow-up actions.

It’s this operational question—not the rhetorical framework—that will be the test for Obama’s policies. Somehow, a White House that has burned through two prominent special representatives over the past two years — George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, neither of whom made much progress in the nitty-gritty of negotiation — will have to empower people to get it done. This diplomacy requires personalities with the manipulative skill and subtlety of a Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Do they exist? Can this White House harness them?

The president admirably outlined the tasks for America in this Arab Spring. Now, just do it.

Power Abhors A Vacuum; So Too Should The U.S. In The Mideast

 By David Ignatius
This commentary was published in the The Daily Star on 19/05/2011

The “Arab Spring” has analysts searching for the right historical comparison. Is it like 1848, and the wave of revolution that swept Europe?

Or is it 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or perhaps 1979, and the toppling of the shah of Iran by Muslim radicals?

The democratic uprising of 2011 has elements of all of the above, and the spirit of change mostly has been exhilarating. But the loudest noise I hear from the Middle East just now isn’t from the barricades but from frightened leaders who say, with the desperation of the French army retreating in disarray at Waterloo in 1815: “Sauve qui peut” Save yourself if you can!

The 1815 analogy is useful because it reminds us that an old structure of power – a hegemonic system dominated by the United States – is coming apart as the world changes, and that a new framework will have to be built to maintain stability. In 1815, that process of adjustment led to the Congress of Vienna and a new security architecture – a woolly but important topic to which I will return.

Back to the politics of self-preservation, circa 2011: The tactics vary, country by country. Some Arab leaders (notably King Abdullah II in Jordan) are encouraging change, in the hope they can build new legitimacy; others (Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and, lately, Bashar Assad in Syria) are using military force to beat their people into submission. Such leaders may gain a few weeks’ breathing space through intimidation, but Assad and Gadhafi are likely to fail. They have delegitimized themselves by firing on their own citizens.

The backdrop of this frantic self-preservation is the breakup of America’s reluctant empire. The kings and presidents (not to mention people in the streets) saw in Egypt that the United States wouldn’t rescue its clients. Exhausted by Iraq and Afghanistan (and perhaps also made wiser by these wars), America wasn’t in the business of saving autocratic dictators.

America’s abandonment of President Hosni Mubarak shocked Israelis, Saudis and other status-quo powers, but it was actually just an admission of reality. When you have a million people in Tahrir Square who are prepared to die for a cause, no foreign or domestic power can stop them.

In these moments when old alignments come apart, it’s important that newly liberated countries have some reference point: After 1989, Eastern Europe could look to the European Union for a political-economic model, and to NATO for security guaranties. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918, the British and French mandates briefly administered the pieces of the Ottoman quilt; and when those mandates ended after 1945, a rising America offered hegemony, and a rising Israel imposed constraints.

Right now, we’re between two systems. The old one that accommodated Mubarak and Gadhafi is finished, but there’s no successor yet. In this vacuum, leaders are jockeying for position – often going in two directions at once. Jordan’s king sympathizes with democratic reformers in Bahrain, for example, but he’s also moving to join the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council that sent troops to Bahrain. Saudi King Abdullah is so peeved at America’s abandonment of Mubarak that he sent Prince Bandar bin Sultan as an emissary to China and other Asian nations to seek new allies. But the Saudis still work closely with the CIA against terrorism and with U.S. Central Command on military security.

In addressing all this upheaval, President Barack Obama must focus on basic values: How can the United States support nonviolent change, and oppose the regimes that are using violence to suppress their people? How can the old narrative of rage that was Osama bin Laden become a new narrative of hope and self-reliance?

If Obama wants to take on a big, gnarly topic, he should ponder the analogy of 1815. That was the subject of Henry Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation (published in 1954 as “A World Restored”) and the topic is newly relevant. As Kissinger explained, the far-sighted statesmen of the Congress of Vienna found a way to reconcile the interests of the status-quo powers of the day (Britain and Austria) with the rising powers (post-revolutionary France, Prussia and Russia).

Power abhors a vacuum, such as the one that exists now. We may be entering a “post-American” age in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean that the United States shouldn’t be working with its allies to create a more inclusive security architecture that’s worthy of this time of transformation. A world restored, indeed.