Think tank and media cooperation, China Leadership Monitor on peak China, Abu Aardvark on Israel/Lebanon/Iran
Really, since last week it’s hard to focus on much beyond the Israel/Lebanon/Iran escalation. Living in Abu Dhabi, in nearly every social situation you’re interacting with someone who is directly affected by the crises in Palestine and Lebanon, and the big picture geopolitics of it constantly gets a human face that is heart breaking and at times overwhelming. In China it’s Golden Week, so there’s not as much China-MENA news as we’ve seen recently.
China-Arab Think Tank Alliance debuts its conference - People’s Daily. This is a trend I’m seeing more of - China-Arab think tank cooperation. There’s been a lot of two-way traffic since the end of Zero Covid; before the pandemic the think tank space was quite modest.
The first conference of the China-Arab Think Tank Alliance was held in Shanghai Municipality on Friday, discussing issues such as China-Arab high-quality development, high-standard opening-up cooperation and the Palestinian question.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Deng Li said that the alliance is the result of deepening traditional friendly relations and political mutual trust between China and Arab nations. He emphasized that it serves as an important measure for jointly meeting challenges and creating a better future.
The alliance is expected to focus on five key goals including serving development, supporting cooperation, promoting peace, calling for justice and expanding exchanges, said Deng….
Arab representatives also praised China's contributions in promoting regional peace, including its efforts in the Palestinian question.
Representatives from nearly 40 think tanks from China, 19 Arab countries and the Arab League, as well as some Arab diplomatic envoys to China, attended the conference. China-Arab Think Tank Alliance was established in January 2024.
China hosts Belt Road AI training for Arab media professionals - Jordan Times. Another example of growing people-to-people cooperation, a BRI cooperation priority that wasn’t especially vibrant in the Middle East even a couple of years ago.
The China Broadcasting and TV Centre, funded by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, hosted a two-week training programme from August 15 to 28, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
The initiative, which aims to enhance cooperation between China and over 150 partner countries, brought together media professionals from Jordan, Palestine, Bahrain, Kurdistan Iraq, and Tunisia to explore the growing role of technology in the media landscape.
The Fall issue of the China Leadership Monitor is out with a series of essays centered on the idea of peak China. Two articles at the top of my list: Minxin Pei “Do Chinese Leaders and Elites Think Their Best Days Are Behind Them?” and Zongyuan Zoe Liu’s “China’s Persistent Global Influence Despite Economic Growth Challenges“.
What after Israel's killing of Nasrallah? By Marc Lynch in his fantastic Substack, Abu Aardvark's MENA Academy. Marc’s latest post is a useful overview - go read the whole thing and subscribe.
But right now, it’s hard to not be focused on Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon and decapitation strike against Hezbollah. Generally, the academic literature and policy experience shows that decapitation strikes are not very effective against entrenched insurgencies and institutionalized militias. But what Israel has done to Hezbollah over the last days — at great cost to Lebanese civilians — has gone far beyond the typical assassination. Reports suggest that Israel eliminated not only Nasrallah but also a wide swathe of Hezbollah’s senior and middle leadership, in the wake of the pager attack which wreaked havoc among the lower echelons (to say nothing of the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, and the steady killing of IRGC commanders around the region). There is no question that this full spectrum devastation of Hezbollah’s organization without immediately taking massive retaliation has forced a significant revision in most people’s reading of the balance of power in the Middle East. That it did so through the bloody bombardment of heavily populated civilian areas should surprise nobody who has watched the last year in Gaza — or the last few decades of Israeli tactics in Lebanon — and will fill everyone with fear for what is to come for Lebanon. And as hated as Hezbollah was in some quarters of the Arab world (especially Syrians), the idea circulating among some Israeli leaders and sympathetic pundits that Arabs or Iranians who have spent the last year watching Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza will cheer for Israel or rally to its side is just delusional.
It’s hard to not be astonished by Israel’s tactical successes against Hezbollah. But I suspect that the current euphoria among Israeli circles about its successful offensive and the inability of Hezbollah or Iran to respond will soon appear shortsighted. We haven’t even begun to see how, where and whether the response will come — and it would be foolhardy to assume that it will follow the same predictable course as previous rounds of escalation and de-escalation. I’ve been warning for a while now that September and October of this year were the most dangerous for regional escalation, since Israel knows Biden will do nothing to restrain it in advance of the Presidential election, and has an incentive to do as much damage to its adversaries as possible before it might be reined in by a Harris transition…. and, if things go horribly wrong leading to full scale war and economic catastrophe it might still benefit Netanyahu short term by helping elect Trump.
The costs and risks of what follows the Israeli offensive have yet to be registered — not only in terms of possible retaliation, not only the too easily forgotten civilian deaths and destruction, but also the erasure of all targeting red lines, and the uncertainties generated by the shifting incentives for organizational and political survival by the new Hezbollah leadership. A lot of the shadow war between Israel, Iran and Hezbollah over the last several decades has involved signaling through carefully targeted strikes which communicate clear messages about escalation or de-escalation (bombing empty fields or unmanned rocket launchers vs aiming at populated city centers). We are entering an era of no limits, with new leaders whose patterns and beliefs aren’t well understood and could face unclear cross-pressures about whether and how to respond. Hezbollah retains an enormous arsenal and well-armed and trained fighters, and a history of tactical innovation which suggests that this is far from over. Dangerous times. Keep an eye out for a longer form article on this soon.