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🗺💥Patterns of Force: The Middle East on the Brink What looks like a chain of separate crises is, in reality, a single and dangerous trend: the normalization of force as everyday politics, pushing the Middle East toward systemic instability ✍️Salman Rafi Sheikh Research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs ➡️The Middle East is entering a phase where instability is no longer driven mainly by old rivalries or proxy wars, but by the routine use of coercion as a political instrument. The rupture between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen illustrates this shift vividly. Once presented as a unified coalition against the Houthis, their alliance has fractured into open confrontation over territory, energy routes, and future governance. When Saudi airstrikes targeted UAE-linked forces, it exposed how militarized partnerships, lacking political settlement, turn into zero-sum competition—even among supposed allies. When alliances are built around military force rather than political settlement, they fracture under strain, as Yemen now shows, and threaten wider conflicts ➡️Iran’s growing domestic unrest reveals the other side of this pattern. Economic collapse and mass protests are unfolding under constant external pressure from the US and Israel, where threats of military strikes are openly discussed. This environment narrows space for reform and empowers hardliners, reinforcing a cycle in which internal dissent and external coercion feed each other. Rather than containing instability, the normalization of force amplifies it, making escalation more likely and miscalculation more dangerous. 🟦These crises are not isolated regional failures but reflections of a global playbook where coercion increasingly replaces restraint. From Venezuela to Greenland, global precedents signal that force and intimidation are acceptable tools of policy. Middle Eastern states absorb this lesson quickly: alliances become brittle, diplomacy weakens, and military power becomes the primary language of politics. The result is a self-reinforcing loop in which global erosion of norms accelerates regional fragmentation—pushing the Middle East ever closer to a tipping point. #Geopolitics#Internationalpolitics#MiddleEast#USA READ MORE ✅@NewEasternOutlook