{"id":39577,"date":"2018-10-23T05:53:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T10:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39577"},"modified":"2018-10-23T05:53:14","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T10:53:14","slug":"the-middle-east-not-russia-will-prove-trumps-downfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39577","title":{"rendered":"The Middle East, Not Russia, Will Prove Trump\u2019s Downfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Middle East, Not Russia, Will Prove Trump\u2019s Downfall<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo Source The White House | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The\u00a0Middle East\u00a0<\/a>has a century old tradition of being the political graveyard of American and British political leaders. The list of casualties is long: Lloyd George, Anthony Eden, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair and\u00a0George W Bush. All saw their careers ended or their authority crippled by failure in the region.<\/p>\n

Will the same thing happen to\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0as he struggles with the consequences of the alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi? I always suspected that Trump might come unstuck because of his exaggerated reliance on a weak state like Saudi Arabia rather than because of his supposed links to Russia and Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the PR company boosterism of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and his ambitious projects, Saudi Arabia has oil and money, but is demonstrably ineffective as an independent operator.<\/p>\n

The Middle East disasters that toppled so many Western leaders have a certain amount in common. In all cases, the strength of enemies and the feebleness of friends was miscalculated. Lloyd George was forced to resign as prime minister in 1922 because he encouraged the doomed Greek invasion of Anatolia which almost led to a renewed Turkish-British war.<\/p>\n

George W Bush and Tony Blair never understood that the occupation of Iraq by American and British ground forces had no support inside Iraq or among its neighbours and was therefore bound to fail. A British military intelligence officer stationed in Basra told me that he could not persuade his superiors of the potentially disastrous fact that \u201cwe have no real allies anywhere in Iraq\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Middle East, Not Russia, Will Prove Trump\u2019s Downfall Photo Source The White House | CC BY 2.0 The\u00a0Middle East\u00a0has a century old tradition of being the political graveyard of American and British political leaders. The list of casualties is long: Lloyd George, Anthony Eden, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair and\u00a0George W Bush. All […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[93,5493,7844,1167,441,22167,522,11708,13056,694,701,818,827,857,965],"class_list":["post-39577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-britain","tag-counterpunch","tag-donald-trump","tag-greece","tag-iran","tag-jamal-khashoggi","tag-middle-east","tag-mohammed-bin-salman","tag-patrick-cockburn","tag-russia","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-turkey","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39578,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39577\/revisions\/39578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}