As the gods of war exact their grotesque ransom of human blood sacrifices in the Middle East, my mind resurrects the lyrics of a Vietnam era anti war John Lennon song from my boyhood. “All we are saying is, give peace a chance”. Something has gone very badly wrong in the Arab world since the death rattle of the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago. The post Versailles British and French imperial inheritances in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Algeria (where the Gallic mission civilisatrice began in 1830 when the comte d’Artois reigned as the last King of France) and Lebanon have proven an unmitigated human and political disaster. The American and Soviet Cold War interventions in the Middle East after 1945 have only compounded the human misery spawned by the post imperial virus that infected the constellation of Arab states from Suez to Fallujah, from the merciless bombing of Aleppo to the political pathologies of Marxists-Leninist South Yemen (PDRY). Zealots, fanatics, crusaders and messiahs have bequeathed the Arab world nothing but two generations of pain, tragedy and the mangled bodies of our murdered children and legions of parents who cry silent tears of sorrow to their graves. So I channel the memory of the John Lenon song when I plead “All we are saying is give peace – and China a chance!”
The Middle East desperately needs a diplomacy and peace-making paradigm based on trade, development, reconstruction and mutual respect in the regional game of nations. China can provide us this diplomatic DNA as it proved when Beijing mediated the Saudi/Iran rapprochement since it is the largest buyer of both Saudi and Iranian crude oil. The PRC can and has provided billions in reconstruction/development aid to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. The pragmatic development focus of Chinese diplomacy in 2023 is nothing less than the re-enactment of the UAE’s Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s visionary leadership in the Arab World since the 1970s, a policy based on reconciliation, economic development and respect for all human beings and across sectarian/ethnic fault lines. The UAE and China are thus natural allies in inventing a more sane, pragmatic futuristic vision to heal the wounds of a war shattered Arab world. The diplomats of Abu Dhabi and Beijing can now help to nudge history fast forward on a scale that could reinvent the international relations of the Middle East even as the killing fields of Gaza leave us in despair and sorrow. A UAE-China entente would finally give peace a chance.
