A Free-market Solution to Mideast Crises

American interventions in the Mideast have been little short of disastrous: starting with the CIA coup in Iran in 1953, which led to the Islamic Revolution and the current Islamic state. Further, Iraq had a relatively stable, if murderous, regime that provided drinking water and predictable electric power, roads, security, jobs. and kept out Islamic extremists. The current regime may be more democratic, but chaos rules and Saddam's amenities, mentioned above, are no longer predictable, or even possible.

The conflicts in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic State momentarily controls swathes of both, are part of a larger Middle Eastern conflict: between Sunni and Shia. While the main Shia state is not Arab, Iraq, with a Shiite majority is Arab, as are Shiite majorities or large minorities in many Arab countries. The conflict is not between Persians and Arabs; it's far broader than that. In Iraq, it's between a once-dominant Sunni minority and a now dominant Shia majority; in Syria a Shiite-allied minority rules and a Sunni majority rebels--militarily dominated by Sunni extremists. Sunni Arabia opposes Shiite Iran. Both have many clients: Hezbollah, the PLO, al Qaeda, IS….

The conflict's closest historical analogue is hardly encouraging: Protestant versus Catholic in Europe's Hundred Years War.

One thing this conflict is Not: central to American interests.

Either will sell us oil; they need the money. Oil is sold at international prices and the US is now producing more of its own than is good for the planet: we need less Arab oil, anyway.

The current success of IS, or ISIS, is due to the colossal blunder of the US in going into Iraq in the first place, then strewing its modern weapons all over it. We assumed, wrongly, that the established government would be able to hold onto them. We made the same mistake in Vietnam, where American arms found their way to the Viet Cong. But IS is not another Nazi Germany, nor the Viet Cong, however much it might want to be--albeit with Muslim symbolism. Germany was an advanced industrial state: the Viet Cong had a government sponsor: North Vietnam. Those governments were well established, and Germany had the know-how to rebuild a defense industry. IS has none of these things. It lucked out when the Iraqi army turned tail, and dropped all the American high tech weaponry we'd given them.

IS may be able to terrorize millions for a short while, but how can it supply its army with modern arms and ammunition? It can't produce them. It can buy some on the Black Market, financed by oil and looting, but that can become prohibitively expensive, especially if the US did something uncharacteristically intelligent like embargo arms sales.

IS is against the interests of almost every established Muslim state, secular or non, Sunni or Shiite. Do Arabs want to live under the IS regime, where executions are daily, taxes are high, and codes of conduct are stifling. Some think they do--until they experience it. IS's power is ephemeral, unless the US gives it credibility by making their movement the equivalent of Nazi Germany, against which a mighty alliance (led by the US), would march into battle--strewing expensive weapons. IS tries to incite intervention with its videoed beheadings; it's their resupply and recruitment strategy.

We'd be intervening on the side of Shiites, when Sunnis are rising against the murderous Syrian Assad regime, and against blatant discrimination by the Iraqi Shiite government we installed. Shiite Iran is stable, has democratic elements, but is hostile to the US. Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf kingdoms are hardly democratic. Egypt, our most important Sunni client, is a brutal, repressive military regime. All these Sunni states are supposedly US friends.

So, why intervene on either side, especially when this conflict has been going on since Mohammed's death in 632 and the ensuing battle for succession?

I have a better solution: don't take sides and don't intervene. Sell arms only to stable states, profit from the regional conflict, but don't try to control it: the US can't, and shouldn't try. Defense industries could make money from it, however, without costing US lives or increased US debts.