Kamran Bokhari
@KamranBokhari · Think tanks & analysts — US/UK
Kamran Bokhari is a geopolitical analyst.
➤ Iran’s strategic degradation has opened the door to a new Middle Eastern security architecture but the transition from war to peace could prove more destabilizing than the war itself. ➤ The next faultline in the Middle East is Turkey-Israel. With Tehran weakened, Ankara is emerging as Israel’s most consequential new competitor in Syria and across the Levant. ➤ Israel’s strategic environment is changing fundamentally. The era of Iran-backed proxies as Israel’s principal threat is giving way to the prospect of a functioning Syrian state backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States. ➤ Washington is redesigning the region. The Trump administration’s burden-sharing strategy seeks to shift more responsibility onto Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other regional powers. ➤ The Turkey-Saudi-Pakistan defense pact could become the foundation of something much larger. Egypt and Syria may join, while Jordan, the Gulf states, Azerbaijan and eventually Central Asia could extend the architecture across southwestern Eurasia. ➤ The central challenge is no longer simply containing Iran. Washington must simultaneously stabilize Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen; manage a weakened but unpredictable Iran; and prevent Israel’s rivalry with emerging regional powers from becoming the new source of instability. ➤ Israel’s relationships with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are therefore strategic - not merely diplomatic - questions. If these relationships remain fundamentally adversarial, Iran could exploit those divisions even from a position of weakness. ➤ The emerging order will be a flexible regional network with Washington as architect rather than security provider. But because the new system is being built while the old one is collapsing, instability will intensify before a more distributed balance of power takes hold. My Aug 24 essay: https://t.co/sK4HOxICY8
For ~35 years there has been a lot of talk about the rise of a 'multipolar' world. But what if that is the wrong way to understand what's happening? ➤ The U.S. is retrenching from Eurasia. Yet no single Eurasian power is positioned to fill the vacuum. ➤ China has the econ, industrial & tech weight to challenge U.S. primacy. But China cannot dominate Eurasia because Russia, India and Turkey all have powerful incentives to prevent Beijing from turning its relative strength into regional hegemony. ➤ Russia may be weakened by the Ukraine war, but that makes Moscow more - not less - important to the Eurasian balance. Russia cannot afford to let China exploit its weakened strategic rear while Moscow concentrates on confronting the West. ➤ India has its own China problem. New Delhi cannot match Beijing across the Eurasian landmass, so it is looking outward - deepening relationships across the Pacific to prevent China from dominating India's strategic environs and relieve pressure on the Indian Ocean. ➤Turkey is playing the same game on a different map. Ankara is expanding across the Black Sea, Caucasus, Caspian and Middle East - not because it can dominate Eurasia, but because it can complicate the ambitions of Russia, China and India. ➤This also explains the SCO & BRICS. They may look like the foundations of a post-Western bloc. In reality, they are forums where competing powers coordinate, deconflict & bargain, while preserving max strategic autonomy. ➤ So 'multipolarity' is a misleading description. Multiple centers of power do not necessarily create multiple poles. What is emerging across Eurasia is something messier: a fragmented balance in which China, Russia, India & Turkey simultaneously cooperate, compete & constrain one another. ➤ That fragmentation could actually serve Washington. The U.S. does not necessarily need to dominate Eurasia to shape its order. As it retrenches, it can leverage the rivalries of Eurasia's major powers - shifting burdens to them while ensuring none becomes hegemonic. The goal isn't dominance. It's balance. My latest essay: https://t.co/pD3JNA4LF8
➤ India’s rise has depended on more than economic growth and military modernization. It has also been enabled by a favorable geopolitical architecture. ➤ The U.S.-India alignment was central to that architecture, particularly as Washington sought to balance China. ➤ But Washington’s new burden-sharing strategy is reducing its dependence on individual regional partners - including India. ➤ At the same time, the U.S. is seeking a more stable equilibrium with China, weakening the strategic logic behind the old alignment. ➤ India’s neighborhood is also becoming more hostile, from Bangladesh’s tilt toward China and Pakistan to renewed tensions along the Himalayan frontier. ➤ The Iran war and the emerging Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan alignment are creating additional complications to India’s west. ➤ These pressures constrain India’s ability to convert economic and demographic weight into broader strategic influence. New Delhi’s answer is to build a more distributed regional network involving Japan, Australia, Indonesia and other Indo-Pacific powers. ➤ BL: India’s rise continues, but the strategic environment that fostered it is changing - forcing New Delhi to do more with less American strategic backing. My essay from last week: https://t.co/JeAUCkFh5k
As Washington shifts toward a burden-sharing/shifting strategy that expects allies to lead in their own regions, France offers a cautionary case study in the gap between strategic ambition & actual capability. In the South Caucasus, Paris has watched its influence erode as Armenia pivots toward Washington while normalizing ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey. The pattern extends from the Sahel to the Middle East, where France retains diplomatic reach but increasingly struggles to turn it into strategic leverage. My latest for @Forbes explores the deeper paradox of America’s new geostrategy: some of its most capable allies - France, Germany & the UK - are proving least able to fill the regional security roles Washington increasingly needs them to play. https://t.co/ufBaLYCOIY
In yet another assessment later that month I highlighted how the weakening of Iran and its proxies marks beginning of a new era in which Israel once again has to contend with state actors, particularly Turkey. https://t.co/ufrfRUFrch