The unipolar dynamic in international relations is over and the world is fast moving towards a multi-polar world order. As a consequence of this trend, the US power and dominance is being challenged or checkmated in every major geopolitical battleground across the globe by rising powers such as China, India or Russia.

However, the loss of US power and influence is nowhere more pronounced than in the Middle East or the larger MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Apart from other reasons,United States war fatigue, shale revolution and the emergence of Indo-Pacific as the most important geopolitical concern led to the relative decline in the American power or loss of interest in the region.The vacuum so created in the Greater Middle Eastern region is being filled by China as the rising global superpower.

China's growing footprint in Middle East

The scale and depth of China’s economic relations with Middle Eastern countries is phenomenal. Much of China's economic engagement with the region is being done under the stamp of its flagship, Belt and Road Initiative. China imports 70 percent of its oil and 40 percent of its natural gas from the region. Saudi Arabia alone accounts for 20 percent of China's energy imports from the region.It has lately become the Arab world's largest trading partner with a trade of 330 billion USD in 2021 alone.

China has also emerged as the largest foreign investor in the region with 29.5 billion USD of investment in 2016 alone. In 2021 China signed a 25-year agreement with Iran promising a target of 400 billion USD investment. China has also inked a 60 billion USD deal with Qatar to supply China with natural gas over a 27-year time period.Chinese investments in the Iraqi oil sector are unparalleled and the sector is almost completely dominated by the Chinese. China is the largest buyer of Iraqi crude. In May 2024 seven Chinese companies secured the auctions of 10 major Iraqi oil and gas projects. Saudi Arabia is also seeking Chinese investments to help its currently struggling NEOM project. Chinese investments are quite attractive to the countries of the region as they come with less strings attached.

Interestingly, the Gulf states have also started investing in China with sovereign wealth funds (SWF) taking a lead. In 2024 so far, Gulf SWFs have invested a total of 9 billion USD, which is 16% of their total outlays, in different Chinese sectors including healthcare.

China's growing economic presence and diplomatic outreach to the countries in the region has given it a stronger than ever foothold in the region and enhanced its image as a “reliable partner”.Although China's growing footprint in the region is mainly economic, it seeks to leverage its trade and diplomacy to play a more impactful geopolitical role in the region.

China's policy of “non-interference” and “neutrality” when it comes to the conflicts in the region has enhanced its goodwill and perception among both the people as well as the political regimes there. Also, China’s “one-party” authoritarian system displays some resemblance with Middle Eastern political systems, which are mostly either dictatorships or monarchies. It's often said that the Saudi crown prince MBS likes all things American, but when it comes to the political system the Chinese model is said to be his favourite.

China is upgrading its ties with the countries of the region in the defence and strategic domains too. By 2021 China had forged strategic partnerships with 12 Arab countries. It has started to sell military products and equipment to Middle Eastern countries. UAE has in the past brought Chinese military drones.

Under Xi Jinping, China is playing an even bigger diplomatic role in the region now. Xi has established personal relations with many Gulf monarchs who appreciate Chinese involvement in the region. Earlier this year China made headlines when it brokered a diplomatic deal between the two regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia helping them to restore normal diplomatic relations. In the past, China has offered to mediate between Israel and Palestine in order to establish a lasting peace in the Middle East. In the middle of the Gaza war, China hosted reconciliation talks between rival Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah which resulted in the signing of the Beijing Declaration between them. While China has traditionally maintained a neutral stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, it has more recently taken an unambiguous stance in favour of Palestinian right to statehood and equal rights. All this is part of China's larger strategy to earn more goodwill in the region and play a bigger geopolitical role.

Recently, the expansion in the BRICS has mostly happened from the Middle East with UAE, Egypt and Iran joining the grouping in early this year. future.Iran has also been admitted as a full-fledged member of the China led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO). Saudi Arabia, an important US ally and Turkey, the only Muslim and Middle Eastern NATO member, sent delegations to the recently concluded BRICS+ summit in Kazan, Russia.Turkey has publicly expressed its intention to join the BRICS grouping in the future. Some other important countries from the region have also been sending delegations to the BRICS summits. All this is a result of China's growing diplomatic and economic clout in the Middle East.

Decline of US power in the Middle East 

The United States is no more the predominant power in the Middle East, though it still maintains a huge military presence in the region in terms of the number of troops, military bases or close defense and strategic cooperation with countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.The Middle East has lost the kind of importance that it used to occupy in the US policy circles two decades ago.The most significant reason which enabled this shift in US policy has been the emergence of the “Indo-Pacific” as the most significant theatre for global power competition and the consequent change in US foreign and security policy to shift its ‘pivot to Asia'.

The post-Arab uprisings (2010-2011), Middle East has become a highly contested geopolitical and economic landscape with all major global powers vying for influence in the region. Since then Russia has made significant gains in Libya and Syria while simultaneously further strengthening its strategic cooperation with the Iranian regime. China on the other hand has mostly focused on fostering economic partnerships and technological cooperation including in the newly emerging area of artificial intelligence. India too has changed its West Asia policy especially since the prime minister Narendra Modi took over in 2014 and moved beyond the traditional areas of cooperation with the countries of the region emphasising convergence across a wide range of areas including counter-terrorism. Iran,the primary US adversary in the region,is now the predominant regional power with its political influence extending to several Arab capitals.

Indo-Pacific focus ignored Middle East

While the United States is primarily occupied by the Chinese dominance of the Indo-Pacific theatre and geopolitical contestation in Eurasia,China’s silent but steady rise in the political and geoeconomic landscape of the MENA region challenges the singular focus of the US strategy. Since China is going all-round given the truly global ambitions of its policy, the United States current global strategy seems incapable of thwarting the threat posed by China's rise.

Ever since Barack Obama took over as the US president in the late 2010’s, the US policy establishment began a gradual but paradigmatic shift towards the Indo-Pacific, which is currently the engine of the global economy.The Indo-Pacific is a huge region which extends from the Western Indian Ocean to the West Coast of the United States. The rise of China as the chief strategic concern in the US establishment is often attributed to the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “America's Pacific Century” policy in 2011. This led to a broader shift in Obama’s foreign policy known as the ‘Pivot to Asia'.

Since then China’s economic presence in the Indo-Pacific has grown tremendously. The revisionist China sometimes resorts to violent and intimidating behaviour in the region at least in the South China Sea.This has made the United States anxious to stop the rise of China as the preeminent global power because China’s rise is obviously going to threaten the viability of the current US led liberal international order.

The next US administration which took office in 2016 under Trump with a self-defined mandate to ‘Make America Great Again’.Trump increasingly borrowed from a rule book of an ‘inward looking’ policy focusing on domestic economic rejuvenation, tightened immigration regime, scaling down America's global military footprint and demanding reciprocity both from close allies as well as geopolitical competitors This as a result has significantly shaped the outlook of the US power in the world  since. 

Interestingly, Indo-Pacific assumed even more importance under Trump and he launched a trade war with China which severely hurt world economy during his first term in office.The National Security Strategy (2017) drafted under Trump was obsessively focused on the Indo-Pacific and the threats posed by China.The People's Republic of China is proclaimed as the chief strategic concern and economic competitor in the text of the strategy.

Many analysts now believe that Trump's term in the White House severely damaged America's global power and its perception among both the allies as well as rivals. He even hurt America’s role and presence in the United Nations system or the liberal rules-based international order. This Trumpian isolationism led to a general decline in American power and influence to shape geopolitical and economic outcomes across the world including in the Middle East. 

Gradual US withdrawal

Many observers in the strategic community had expected that the return of a Democratic administration under Joe Biden would overturn many of Trump’s policies or initiatives and consequently restore America’s centrality in the international order. But this has hardly materialised.The Biden administration got involved with post-Covid recovery including rehabilitating the domestic economy. But even on this,the administration’s track record is far from successful.Then the Ukraine crisis came which not just drained American resources but also its policy focus. Ever since the start of the Ukraine war in early 2022, European security is back as a policy concern in the US strategic calculus. With no end to the war in sight, the United States is finding it difficult to come out of this quagmire

Since China or the Indo-Pacific continued  to be the primary focus of the global strategy under Biden, though for obvious reasons, the administration continued the trend of gradual US withdrawal from the Middle East, which has now become a core element of the larger US policy. The United States has a declared objective of keeping its presence and resources in the region to the minimum so that other powers such as Russia, China or Iran do not completely dominate the region. However, this policy is largely failing thus, making USA's  traditional allies in the region, especially the Gulf states, feeling vulnerable and even betrayed. These states as a result are redefining their foreign policy strategies in the emerging multipolar order and increasingly seeking multiple alignments and interest-based partnerships with emerging powers.This is exactly the reason why many Arab countries are joining the China led global initiatives such as BRI.

The National Security Strategy (2022) under Biden talked about “out-competing” China. The strategy sought to counter the challenge emanating from the dramatic rise of China in the Indo-Pacific by working closely with allies.Thus, the arrangements such as the QUAD (India, Japan, Australia and USA) grouping, AUKUS ( Australia, United Kingdom and USA) security alliance and Indo-Pacific Economic Framework(IPEF) or for that matter the Blue Dot Network (BDN) are all geared to the same end - that's to counter China’s growing power and global ambitions.

Further, the strategy had an objective to “eschew grand designs”, promote “de-escalation” and “integration” in the Middle East.The strategy rightly pointed out the inefficacy of the “military-centric policies” in the region and instead aspired to promote regional stability and economic prosperity. However, the US strategy was caught off-guard when the Israel-Gaza war broke out in October 2023 and the question of Palestine was back in the global focus. Till then the Democratic  administration was riding on an illusion of peace promoted by the much hyped Abraham Accords which Biden unsuccessfully tried to sell to the Saudis too.The unrelenting war on Gaza and Lebanon has again militarily trapped the United States in the region, at least temporarily.

The inability of the US and its allies to move towards a resolution of the Ukraine crisis and help bring about a ceasefire in Gaza or force Israel to stop it's genocidal war campaign in Gaza and Lebanon has laid bare the growing powerlessness of the United States in an international order led by it.The hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the West including US in the Gaza war has damaged it's perception beyond repair in the international community.The global public opinion today is not in America’s or West’s favour.

China's strong economic linkages

The United States today lacks a truly global outlook to postpone the erosion of its power or the leadership role in the international system. It is nearly impossible for the US to completely restore its previously held position. Its current strategy is also inadequate to tackle common global problems which afflict humanity today. The US is selling a blueprint to the allies and rest of the world that is deeply nostalgic about its lost hegemony. Many rising powers including India, which the US is counting on along with Japan, Australia, South Korea to deal with China in the Indo-Pacific, have robust and strong  commercial ties with China which they can not easily jeopardize only because the US feels threatened by the rise of China. Even the European Union is economically entrenched with China and the EU would not upset China beyond a certain threshold.

Being the most significant global power currently, the United States should lead the world to tackle global challenges and shun its double standards when it comes to the problems and issues faced by the Global South. Instead of polarising the world further,It should exhibit a true global leadership to serve a reformed international order which in the present shape is biased in favour of the big powers

However, the kind of shape that the US-China rivalry, including their competition in the Middle East, is going to take will depend a lot on the incoming Trump presidency. But there are apprehensions that Trump's second term in office might deal a final blow to the Pax Americana. The vacuum is already being filled by the global and all-round rise of China.

(The author is a Phd Scholar, Centre for West Asian and North African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views are personal. He can be contacted at liyaqatnazir17@gmail.com )