Living in interesting times

There is an old saying, purported by some to be an old Chinese curse, which goes “May you live in interesting times.” What is wrong with interesting times? They must surely be better than uninteresting times, should they not?

As benign as the ‘curse’ sounds, interesting times are fraught with risk. They may spark unbounded creativity, but are essentially periods of danger and uncertainty. Like Hegel said, “World history is not the ground of happiness. The periods of happiness are empty pages in her.”

Over the past few days, we have been thrust into interesting times again. Following the razing of the US embassy in Baghdad by a militia believed to be backed by Tehran, Washington responded by assassinating a top Iranian general and an Iraqi militia leader.  The former commanded Iran’s Quds Force which specialises in extraterritorial operations and is alleged to support non-state groups all over the Middle East. The latter was the deputy chief of an Iraqi-state sponsored conglomerate of several militias believed to be complicit in the US embassy attack.

Over the past decade, burdened by its experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US developed a reputation. From Syria’s Bashar al-Assad calling Barack Obama’s ‘red line’ bluff to Russia’s invasion of Crimea, successive events painted the US as an increasingly complacent world power that could be persuaded to avoid confrontation if regional upstarts threatened it with another quagmire.

Derided as he is, Donald Trump has in some ways represented a reboot of US position in the world. The recent assassination, which followed a threatening tweet by the US president, is intended to signal a return to a ‘muscular’ security and foreign policy. Iran, for its part, has long been maneuvering to challenge US-GCC hegemony in the Middle East by backing insurgencies and non-state groups from Yemen to Syria. As both sides size up a potential confrontation in the aftermath of recent events, it is once again the bystanders who are at risk of paying for these ‘interesting times’.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2020.

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