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.

The Middle East’s outdated regional order — mainly of British and French imperial progeny, established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire with scant regard for ethnic, sectarian and historical realities on the ground — is arguably the chief reason for the recurrence of conflict and the deep-seated security dilemmas present in the region today. The consequence of this order is, as is well known, a tense and tumultuous geopolitical theater, with strategic cultures among the region’s states that view security as a zero-sum power competition. This Thucydidean regional order — and with it, the calculus of its constituent states — must be altered if the Middle East is to see greater stability, security and integration in this new century.

A number of dynamics may now be combining to create an opportunity for just such a reordering of the region: a divisive and ever-bloody conflict rages in Syria with spillover into neighboring states; the Arab Spring’s geopolitical consequences are evolving, without clear direction; and Iran’s nuclear program continues to drive regional and international anxieties and may still lead to a catastrophic war. To be sure, the prospect of further regional decay and, the threat of nuclear proliferation and potentially a major regional war, may well serve as the necessary "precipitating conditions" for regional states, with the support of Washington and other major capitals, to consider new collaborative approaches to Middle East security through the creation of inclusive regional mechanisms.