WE’RE OFF to an explosive start for the year, literally.
So President Rodrigo Duterte wants to put together a committee to explore the possibility of a US-Iranian war, and what such a war could mean for Filipinos in the Middle East. He’s right to be concerned. If war does break out between Iran and the United States, it will further destabilize the Middle East, in which case Filipino OFWs will have to be evacuated as quickly as possible, because any war that involves Iran will spread and escalate very quickly.
US President Donald Trump’s decision to take out Qasem Soleimani has stirred the hornet’s nest not only in the Middle East but closer home as well. The attack, as well as the subsequent rationale for it, sounded like a rehashing of the 2003 War on Terror. Remember that? A large portion of Trump supporters certainly haven’t, and they are quite angry about the whole thing. The same is also true for many Democrats and American Leftists.
In the US, support for war in Iran is severely unpopular. Based on my own interactions on the internet, I estimate that half of Trump’s own supporters don’t want it, and most of the American Left will not support any attack on Iran simply because Trump’s doing it. Furthermore, the United States has fewer and fewer interests in the Middle East, and in the realm of geo-strategy, interests are everything. So why have a war in a place where you don’t have interests anymore?
Some thinkers say that the US should stay for the sake of their allies and ‘multilateral’ concerns, but this logic doesn’t hold up. Allies are made out of expediency and self-interest. You don’t need allies in a region where you no longer have any interests.
And of course, let’s not forget that the US is deeply divided, and is in no shape to start another Middle Eastern War. Put all of these factors and it’s not in Trump’s interest to start a land battle in Iran, and to his credit, he said so.
Fortunately, after Iran bombed a relatively empty US base, and inflicted zero casualties, Trump has signal his unwillingness to further escalate, and had even opened the possibility of diplomatic negotiations with Iran. So things have calmed down for now, but the situation remains tense, as certain interests both in the US and the Middle East want the US to eliminate Iran, and we could all end up back to square one in the months ahead.
What has changed is how the US functions in the Middle East. Trump’s recent actions imply that the US is no longer interested in Nation-Building or maintaining stability. Indeed, the death of Soleimani had not been predicted by many US analysts. Instead, the US will now pursue a more tit-for-tat nationalist policy when it comes to attacks on American assets, and that is a real game-changer.
So is this good or bad for Filipinos in the Middle East? Well, it means that the US is starting to abandon its traditional role the region, and there are draw down numbers to prove this. They’ll probably maintain some sort of presence in the Middle East, but I believe that it will be very different from what it was in the 2000’s and 2010’s. For the locals, however, reduced American interest and military presence will mean a lot of changes, and some of those changes may come in the form of explosions.
So yes, Duterte is right. We should be ready to evacuate millions of Filipinos who are working in the region, because that part of the world is about to get a lot more interesting. (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)
