**The Middle East to 2020**

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

**The Middle East to 2020**

The major influences, or "drivers," that were identified in *Global
Trends 2015* have been affecting Middle Eastern events for some time and
will continue to do so, to varying degrees, over the next decade and a
half. In addition to sharing with other regions the effects of these
worldwide influences, Middle Eastern affairs between now and 2020 will
be shaped by the heavy hand of the region's own history and the peculiar
legacy of conflicts, suspicions, and attitudes this history has left.

-   **Demographics** will affect the Middle East mainly through the
    continued rapid population in several regional states, with the
    strains this growth places on urban services and the ability of
    economies to generate needed jobs. "Youth bulges" are likely to
    persist in several Middle Eastern countries, and unemployment and
    underemployment among young adults will spell discontent in the age
    cohort most susceptible to political radicalization. A few states
    will make at least partially effective efforts to control population
    growth---emulating those, such as Iran, that already have made
    progress in that regard---but the needed leadership for such efforts
    is likely to be too spotty for effective population control to be a
    region-wide trend.

-   An abundance of fossil fuels and a scarcity of water necessarily
    make **natural resources and the environment** a major part of the
    Middle Eastern story, now and for at least the next couple of
    decades. Oil and gas will be the mainstays of the region's economy
    in the absence of alternative engines of growth and income on the
    horizon. By 2020 the different consequences for economics and
    economic policy of the country-by-country differences in energy
    reserves and depletion rates will be more apparent than now. The
    interests of those with more rapidly depleting reserves (such as
    Bahraini and Iranian oil) will diverge increasingly from those with
    longer-lasting resources (such as Saudi oil and Qatari gas).
    Increased consumption of water as a result of population growth will
    make conflict over that resource increasingly acute between those
    who share aquifers (e.g., Israel and the Palestinians) or river
    basins (e.g., Turkey, Syria, and Iraq).

-   **Science and technology** will be an influence in the Middle East
    mainly because of the role of information technology in facilitating
    the spread of news, information, and ideas. That spread will in turn
    affect political trends and political volatility in several ways,
    including popular reactions to emotion-laden events and the
    diffusion of ideologies, including extremist ones. Other scientific
    and technological advances, such as biotechnology and materials
    technology, will have less impact on people in the Middle East than
    in some other regions.

-   The impact on the Middle East of the strictly economic side of the
    **global economy and globalization** will be hard to distinguish
    from issues of energy markets---the principal link between the
    "natural resource" issue and the region. Vibrant economic growth in
    other regions will have an indirect negative effect on the politics
    of many Middle Eastern states by providing an unfavorable comparison
    and thereby feeding envy and impatience with ruling elites. In some
    countries, however, it may be a stimulus to more progressively
    minded elites to be more assertive and to take greater risks in
    pursuit of economic reforms. The increased cross-cultural contacts
    accompanying globalization will engender a potentially destabilizing
    mix of emulation and resentment.

-   **National and international governance** is in some respects the
    "driver" that carries the most weight for the Middle East, because
    the story of failure and crisis in the Middle East will continue to
    be largely a story of ineffective governance. More specifically,
    this means the failure of political systems to articulate and
    aggregate a range of views and interests, and the failure of regimes
    to move beyond stultifying patronage politics and beyond the minimum
    necessary accommodations to retain power. In most Middle Eastern
    countries a centralized state apparatus will remain the dominant
    actor in public affairs, with tribe and family retaining significant
    influence at the local level. A civil society worthy of the name
    will be more apparent in some Middle Eastern states in 2020 than it
    is now, but overall it will continue to be overshadowed by the state
    above and the village below.

-   The shape of **future conflict** also will be an important aspect of
    Middle Eastern affairs over the next 16 years, because of an
    abundance of intense animosities that will continue to rival the
    region's abundance of energy resources. Those resources also will
    provide the wherewithal for states to arm themselves with more
    advanced weapons as military technology progresses. Such weapons may
    include weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of which will
    be a problem involving the Middle East at least as much as any other
    region. Enhancement in the arsenals of regional states will threaten
    to intensify conflicts between states in the region as well as
    conflicts involving the United States.

-   The **role of the United States** will be critical in shaping Middle
    Eastern events between now and 2020. The United States is the
    dominant military power in the region and, according to plans of the
    current administration, intends to remain so for an indefinite
    future. It is, by nearly universal agreement, the one state with at
    least a decent chance of moving Arabs and Israelis out of their
    dead-end conflict. It is the forger of a new political and economic
    system in Iraq. It is the principal security guarantor of several
    Middle Eastern states and the principal *bete noire* of several
    others. And it is the main source of an alien culture that is
    admired by many Middle Easterners but disdained by others.

The principal set of influences affecting Middle Eastern affairs that
probably is not adequately captured by this list of "drivers" has to do
with how people in the region identify themselves and distinguish
themselves from others. Put differently, how will the major fault lines
of conflict be drawn, and how will Middle Easterners tend to distinguish
"us" from "them"? Will it be primarily on the basis of religion,
ethnicity, nationality, class, tribe, or something else? Religion, and
specifically Islam, has increasingly become the prime identifier in
recent years. Whether it continues in that role (see below) or not, the
question of identity will be a major influence on regional events. A
continued emphasis on Islam as an identifying attribute would color
regional politics, define possible major regime changes, set limits on
economic and social policies, and help define relations with outside
powers. Conversely, the supplanting of religion as dominant identifier
would itself be a major change. The change would be unlikely to take the
form of a gentle drift into liberal democracy; more likely it would
involve the rise of a new identity of protest and opposition.

# Change and Continuity

The amount---and sources---of change likely to occur in the Middle East
over the coming 16 years can be gauged partly by looking backward over
the same amount of time, or perhaps twice or three times as much time.
And while the region unquestionably has seen some major redirections and
jarring events in that recent past, they have occurred against a
backdrop that has exhibited at least as much continuity as change.

Petroleum is part of that backdrop. The muscle-flexing by OPEC, the oil
price shocks of the 1970s, the huge transfers of wealth from consumers
to producers, and the more recent difficulties that Middle Eastern
producers have had in managing the oil market have entailed important
changes to the region. But they have been important because of the
continuing large role that the petroleum trade plays in the Middle East.

The conflict between Arabs and Israelis has been another major, and
depressingly constant, factor in Middle Eastern affairs. This has been
true ever since the creation of Israel more than half a century ago, but
especially since Israel's conquest of Arab lands in the 1967 war. The
most promising attempts to break out of that conflict have included some
of the most significant and surprising regional events. But the constant
elements of antagonism and distrust have repeatedly brought the
Arab-Israeli story back into familiar ruts. Sadat's journey to Jerusalem
led to an Egyptian-Israeli accord that could have been pathbreaking but
was not (with only the Jordanians having since followed suit) and now is
little more than an armistice with guarantees. The Oslo accords were
potentially the greatest departure in Arab-Israeli history---addressing
the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum that is at the core of the larger
conflict between Jews and Arabs---but they have broken down. More to the
point, they have broken down not because of new problems or bad
surprises but rather because of the old antagonism and distrust.

The political role of Islam has become another pervasive and probably
long-lasting element in Middle Eastern affairs, although the modern
version of it has not been an obviously (to outside observers) large
determinant of regional events for as long as oil and the Arab-Israeli
conflict have been. Political Islam has had its current salience for the
past quarter century, since the Iranian revolution. The changing shape
over the past half century of the discourse of political opposition in
the Middle East---passing through secular Arab nationalist and leftist
phases before giving way to its currently dominant Islamist
coloration---suggests the potential for still more mutation between now
and 2020. There is good reason to believe, however, that the current
coloration will be longer lasting. Nasser's brand of Arab nationalism
was the product of a particular post-colonial moment, and the leftists
were the legatees of the now-discredited Marxist experiment, support for
which always depended on performance unaided by spiritual yearnings.
Modern political Islam actually is a product of 13 centuries, not just a
quarter century, of such yearnings. The core concept of the radical
Salafi brand of political Islam is a return to earlier roots.

These contours of modern Middle Eastern history suggest a couple of
conclusions. One is that there is likely to be considerable continuity
between the present and 2020---bearing in mind, of course, that such a
conclusion always is the easiest projection to make about anything, and
does not represent what is most useful about a futures exercise. The
point is only that the turbulence of what is undeniably a turbulent
region should not lead us to overlook how strong are certain currents
flowing underneath the churning surface. A second conclusion is that
those changes, including major changes, that do occur in the region
during the next decade and a half are more likely to result from
existing forces reaching some breaking point than from new variables
affecting the region for the first time.

A major caveat to any projections about change in the Middle East in the
coming years is that everything depends heavily on the United States.
Many of the directions Middle Eastern events have taken during the past
several decades have depended on US action (e.g., Camp David, Operation
Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom) or inaction. The Middle East now
plays, and is likely to continue to play, at least as large a part in US
foreign policy discourse as ever before.

# Major Trends

The following four trends are especially likely to shape events in the
Middle East between now and 2020.

**Breakdown of the social contract between rulers and ruled**. Regimes
in the region will find it increasingly difficult to live up to their
part of an implicit bargain with their populations: to provide economic
(and physical) security in return for the people forgoing a meaningful
political role and overlooking corruption and economic privileges
enjoyed by ruling elites. That difficulty, and popular responses to it,
will reflect several influences, including population growth
outstripping the ability of economies to generate new jobs, mass media
increasing awareness of political and economic alternatives, and the
uneven effects of globalization making it at least as much a source of
resentment as an engine of prosperity.

This breakdown has the potential to bring about major political change
in several countries, either revolutionary or peaceful. It is difficult,
however, to identify tipping points, because political change will
require other catalysts besides popular discontent. Iran, for example,
almost certainly will undergo significant political change between now
and 2020, and probably will become a more liberal and more democratic
country. It is uncertain, however, what---or who---will lead Iranians to
throw off their current lethargy and effect such change. Saudi Arabia is
another important country where the regime/populace bargain seems
unlikely to be sustainable for another 16 years, but that statement says
nothing about the nature or direction of whatever political change does
occur.

**Extremist violence turns inward**. More of the political violence in
the Middle East, including terrorist violence, is likely to be aimed
more directly and conspicuously at the area's regimes than it is now.
(This does not necessarily mean that terrorism against US and other
Western targets will lessen at the same pace.) This trend is related to
the one just mentioned, and not just in the sense that increased popular
discontent will partly take the form of extremist violence. Another part
of the bargain between some regimes and their citizenry is that any
political violence would be directed outward, against Israeli, Western,
or other targets. Increased international pressure on some regimes to
take more comprehensive and effective counterterrorist measures will
make it harder for those regimes to condone or overlook such
outward-looking terrorist-supportive behavior. This will combine with
other elements of popular dissatisfaction to make attacks on the regimes
themselves more frequent.

Terrorism alone will not topple regimes, but more peaceful opposition
will play off it, and it could precipitate more broadly based political
change. In several Arab countries the feasible alternatives to existing
regimes will be moderate Islamists and radical Islamists. Responses by
regimes will be variable, ranging from increased repression (which
sometimes, and in most cases eventually, will fail) to varieties of
co-optation.

**Weapons proliferation**. Advanced weapons, including perhaps nuclear
weapons, probably will be more widespread in the Middle East in 2020
than now. International efforts to check the proliferation of weapons
will slow, not stop, their spread. Most of the principal motives for
acquiring nuclear or other advanced weapons will persist even after
changes of regime. In some cases, added insecurities associated with a
change of regime may even increase the incentives to proliferate. In
Iran, a change of regime might ease Western concerns about nuclear
weapons in the hands of mullahs but would not erase a more broadly based
Iranian view that such weapons would be an appropriate accoutrement to
Iran's status as the dominant regional power.

Peace agreements would not by themselves remove the causes of
proliferation. An Arab-Israeli settlement probably would be a "cold
peace" akin to the current Egyptian-Israeli relationship. Israel almost
certainly would retain its nuclear arsenal, and that would weigh heavily
on national security decisionmaking in other regional capitals.

Ironically, some of the most significant proliferation might involve
moderate states such as the current Saudi regime rather than "rogues"
such as Libya or Syria. The former will seek ways to ensure their
security without overly heavy reliance on the United States. The latter
will seek to escape the opprobrium of being "rogues" and to be fully
rehabilitated as members of the international community.

**New ties with outside powers**. There will be strong reasons for
states both outside and inside the Middle East to explore new
relationships with each other. For the outsiders, oil and money are
reasons enough to want to be engaged, in addition to any other political
or security-related reasons that specific powers may have. Regimes
inside the region will look for security support and sources of arms and
technology, while trying to avoid overly close relationships that could
be a political liability with their own populations.

Foreign relations for Middle Eastern states will exhibit considerable
volatility. This is partly because their objectives in forging new
relationships will be somewhat contradictory. (In particular, the United
States could be seen as both the strongest possible guarantor of
security and the most politically unpopular patron.) It also is because
the region's foreign relations are in some ways still sorting themselves
out from Cold War-era patterns. There could be some increased
polarization between those who throw in their lot with Washington and
those who do not.

# Shocks

Although some of the biggest events in the Middle East between now and
2020 may come out of the blue, most of the shocking and unpredictable
events are likely to be perturbations in what already are known to be
major regional issues.

**Arab-Israeli conflict: war or peace**. The conflict plays such a large
role in regional discourse that any sharp departure from the current
standoff would have substantial regional repercussions. Departures could
take either of two opposite directions.

One would be the outbreak of a new war between Israel and one or more
Arab states, especially Syria. Neither side would seek a war, but there
will be continuing potential for an unintended outbreak of hostilities,
stemming perhaps from confrontation in the Shaba Farms area where
Lebanon, Syria, and Israel meet. A new war might entail use of CBRN
weapons, possibly initiated by Syrian employment of chemical weapons. A
war would undo whatever amelioration of anti-Americanism there might
have been in the Arab world. It also would torpedo any ongoing efforts
to advance or resurrect an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, although
it could also serve as a catalyst for new outside mediation efforts.
Another crushing Arab military defeat at the hands of Israel would
exacerbate the disillusionment of Arabs with their ineffective regimes.

The opposite departure would be the conclusion of a final, comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace settlement, which seems so elusive now that it may
deserve to be called a "shock." Perhaps the death of Arafat---which is
likely before 2020---would set in motion events leading to a settlement.
Although an accord would be at least initially a "cold peace," if it
were regarded as acceptable to the great majority of Palestinians it
would mean the biggest change in regional discourse since Israel's
creation. It would significantly affect attitudes toward the United
States by negating the most frequently recited regional complaint
against Washington. It also would be a moment of truth for several Arab
regimes, which would lose their most effective distraction from their
own shortcomings and major excuse for not facing up to needed reforms.

**Advent of a new radical regime**. The coming to power of a radical
(probably, but not necessarily, Islamist) regime in a Middle Eastern
state which currently has more moderate leadership could be an important
cause as well as effect of some of the possible developments discussed
above. As a consequence of popular dissatisfaction with existing
governments, to have one or more revolutionary changes of regime
somewhere in the region in the course of the next 16 years should not be
surprising. But any single change will be a shock. That would be
particularly true if the change occurs in an important state such as
Egypt (the most populous Arab country) or Saudi Arabia (the wealthiest
one). A new radical regime might go through an initial phase---as the
Iranian revolution did---of seeking to foment similar revolutions in
other regional states in the belief that it would need like-minded
neighbors to survive. As such, a new radical regime could be a
destabilizing force for the whole region.

At a minimum, it would shake up regional alignments, partly in
unpredictable ways. Replacement of the Saudi regime by a radical
Islamist successor, for example, might increase Arabian-Iranian
tensions, with a rivalry for Islamic leadership (one party Sunni, and
the other Shia) overshadowing whatever common characteristics would set
both regimes apart from the al-Saud. Radical regime change would
unavoidably affect relations with Washington and probably the US role in
the region. It also would affect the Arab-Israeli equation---in a major
way if the change of regime occurred in Egypt or Jordan.

**Major change in oil prices**. The heavy dependence of the Middle
Eastern economy on the oil market means sudden changes in that market
are bound to have significant regional repercussions. The effects of a
major increase in oil prices might be hard to disentangle from the other
effects of whatever caused the jump in price (which might be war or
revolution in the Middle East itself). Increased oil revenues could
weaken or at least postpone popular pressures for political and economic
change in producing states, which might help stability in the short term
but weaken constituencies for reform that would eventually be needed
anyway. A drop in prices (perhaps reflecting moves toward alternative
fuels in consuming countries) would naturally tend to have the opposite
effects. A key question in that instance is whether fiscal crunches and
further inability to meet popular demands for services would outpace any
acceleration in reform that realistic leaders would be almost be forced
to accept.

**Alternative outcomes in Iraq**. Although the effects that political
change in Iraq will have on the rest of the region are sometimes
overstated, the size and centrality of Iraq mean that events there are
bound to have repercussions elsewhere in the region. That the United
States has made the outcome in Iraq a matter of high stakes for itself
will accentuate those repercussions, at least regarding the US role in
the region and relations between the United States and regional states.

There is a broad range of possible outcomes in Iraq. Which would be
"shocks" and which would not is a matter of definition, debate, and
individual expectations. Probably the "non-shock" portion of the range
would include all of the possibilities that could plausibly be described
as largely democratic. Those possibilities could run from political
systems having electoral elements combined with a heavy dose of
patronage politics and negotiated power-sharing (something like today's
Lebanon) to a more democratic Switzerland-on-the-Tigris.

The principal possibilities outside that range are:

-   ***A radical Islamist regime***. The effects would be similar to the
    advent of such a regime in another major regional state (see above).

-   ***A secular strongman*** (something like Tunisia's Ben Ali, or
    Saddam without the brutality). This outcome would have some
    stabilizing aspects, at least in the short term. In the long run it
    would face many of the same challenges as neighboring states in
    trying to meet popular expectations, as well as representing a
    non-solution to the problem of apportioning power among Iraq's
    sectarian and ethnic groups.

-   ***Civil war***. This would be very likely to draw in outside
    states, especially Turkey and Iran, with the danger of the conflict
    turning into an interstate war.

-   ***Iraq breaks up***. In some respects, not forcing the different
    sectarian and ethnic groups in Iraq to share the same country would
    be more stable than some of the alternatives. But this possibility
    would raise many of the same concerns among---and invite
    intervention by---neighboring states, as well as almost certainly
    leaving dissatisfaction among some of those groups about the
    division of Iraqi resources.

Any of these last four possibilities would be seen as a major defeat for
the United States, with corresponding negative consequences for US
prestige and influence in the region.