Implications for a Potential Seventh Critical Turning Point — 2011–15

Abstract

This concluding chapter has two tasks. First, we survey the range of potential factors that are likely to create the conditions for a potential seventh critical turning point in the Middle East. These range from fragile and failing state implosion; violent extremism and the continued export of strategic dysfunctionality; and Palestinian-Israeli generated tensions. Second, we reflect on the nature of current approaches to managing change in the region — noting four different and competing approaches, each of which is supported by a narrative that purports to identify and address underlying structural and systemic causation in the region. The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel and the Rumours of War by Dana H. Allin and Steve Simons constitutes a recent attempt by imaginative scholars to outline the parameters of the next major crisis — identified as the juncture created by Iran’s nuclear programme, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate and the state of US-Israeli relations.¹ We argue that to be able to speculate on the catastrophic event or series of crises which might constitute such a future critical turning point has little utility for policymakers, if we draw the wrong conclusions as to its causes. Under such circumstances policy responses will be driven by existing narratives that misidentify a set of underlying tensions and cleavages that the responses then attempt to address. As a result the policy responses will have limited utility, and, worse, will likely sow the seeds for yet another critical turning point.