Paul Thomas: Staying out of Middle East - wise or reckless?

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What if the Middle East had a war and nobody came?

Middle Eastern conflict in one form or another - phoney war, proxy war, asymmetrical war, no-holds-barred insanely destructive war - has become part of the natural order of world affairs, much as the Cold War used to be.

And if relations between Russia and the West deteriorate much further, we could have hot and cold running wars which, 36 years after the Camp David Accords and 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, would be grim testimony to the human race's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

So why is the region always teetering on the brink of war, at war, or picking up the pieces after the last war while re-equipping for the next? Usually for one or a combination of the following reasons:

• The existence of Israel and the non- or stunted existence of Palestine, neither of which is acceptable to many Muslims.

• The rise of militant jihadist Islam.

• Tyranny and its inevitable by-product, rebellion.

• The Shia-Sunni divide.

All but the last of these, a dispute the non-Muslim world doesn't really understand and has little ability to arbitrate, can drag in outsiders, aka the United States with or without the muted support of various countries which have been cajoled, coerced or shamed into pro forma participation.

The rest of the West has fallen out of love with Israel but, like a loyal, long-suffering, bread-winning wife, America stands by her man even when she might be better off taking a hike. Barack Obama clearly detests Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu but that almost obliges him to be more pro-Israel than he might otherwise be.

The neo-conservative architects of the second Iraq war characterised it in terms of toppling a despot and turning Iraq into a beacon of democracy that would inspire hope and change throughout the region. Some of them may even have believed it. The urge to help downtrodden people liberate themselves prompted intervention in Libya and demands for intervention in Syria.

And with the Islamic State taking jihadism to its logical conclusion with its declared aim of killing everyone in the world who doesn't want to kill everyone in the world, we're once again hearing the mantra that if we don't confront the terrorists in their backyard, we'll end up doing so in ours.

American economist Jeffrey Sachs recently attributed China's rise and America's relative decline to their respective approaches to the Middle East: "The US endlessly drains its resources and energy in Syria and Iraq in the same way that it once did in Vietnam. China, meanwhile, has avoided becoming enmeshed in overseas military debacles, emphasising win-win economic initiatives instead."

It could also be argued that America has locked itself into a self-defeating Catch-22: it intervenes militarily to defeat terrorism but by doing so becomes an unwitting jihadist recruiting sergeant and object of hatred, thereby consolidating its status as terrorism's number one target.

So why not just stay out of it? Why not let them slaughter each other until they get tired of it? Or to couch it in more palatable terms: why not accept that these interventions don't have a lasting positive effect if indeed they don't actually make things worse and leave it to the people of the region to decide if they want to live together or die together? Like squabbling siblings who won't find a way to get along while their hand-wringing or exasperated parents beg or order them to, perhaps it's best to ignore them.

And if the geopolitics are too complicated, the sectarianism too entrenched, the hatreds too deep-rooted for there to be a solution, then no amount of shuttle diplomacy or bombs or boots on the ground is going to make much difference anyway.

While this proposition has the virtue of simplicity and the powerful appeal of portraying the easiest and cheapest course of action as the most sensible, doing nothing could turn out to be a high risk strategy. For instance, if the US and its allies abandon their attempts to dissuade Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it's safe to assume Israel will take matters into its own hands and all hell will break loose.

It would also mean turning a blind eye to barbarism, something the civilised world does periodically and then beats itself up for. It's not too much of a stretch to suggest this very pattern led to the creation of Israel, which is more or less where we came in.