The Middle East today is in desperate need of strategic realignment and, ultimately, a new regional security order. What is necessary, as an embryonic step, is an annual diplomatic regional forum for security dialogue that sets the stage for an eventual indigenous West Asian security architecture that aims to stabilize and secure this conflict-ridden region.
The battle for Damascus and the proxy wars fought on Syrian soil to outwit regional rivals are emblematic of a region still bogged down by the ill effects of a colonial past and the arbitrary drawing of lines in the sand, which created many of the region’s fragile Arab states, setting the stage for the existing chaotic regional order to emerge. Today Syria finds itself as the epicenter of the region’s divisions and costly contests for regional hegemony. It, however, is hardly unique in playing host to the region’s win-lose — or far too often, lose-lose — geopolitical chess games.
