The World Cup revealed to billions of fans how power is played on and off the pitch as the planet’s finest football players displayed grit, intelligence, and brute strength. But the will of three referees sitting in the VAR booth, hidden from public view, had the force to rescript the outcome of pivotal matches. Power on the pitch and power in politics, both playing for global dominance. 

This summer issue of The Cairo Review looks over the chessboards of superpowers, moving pieces (either with precision or brute force) to control resources which fuel the global economic dynamo. But some pieces on the board are beginning to insist on moving themselves, middle powers seeking to curry favor and influence in the new paradigm of warfare. It is an issue that pays homage to the human civilization’s enduring lust for power and stability all at once and examines why the latter is much harder to attain.

The flip-flop ease of switching between ceasefires and attacks in the Persian Gulf has convinced Iran’s Arab neighbors that they can’t wait on Washington (or Tehran) to come up with an enduring and stable policy to keep the world’s energy supplies flowing. Instead, they are securing new deals with middle powers who can play an influential, if not multilateral role, that either counterweighs American power in the region or works in symbiosis with it.

In his essay “The New Gulf Realignments: Saudi-UAE Competition and the Evolution of Regional Order”, Abdelrahim Shalaby, former Egyptian Ambassador and Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, writes that “the gradual perception of reduced American strategic centrality in the Middle East has encouraged regional actors to diversify partnerships and hedge geopolitical risks. Gulf states today maintain increasingly sophisticated relations not only with Washington, but also with China, India, Russia, Europe, and emerging Asian economies.”

These strategic realignments may hint at a waning of the traditional power structures which dominated the Western Asia and North Africa regions for decades. But do they signal the limitations of U.S. power?

Yes, argue Dr Gedaliah Afterman, head of the Asia policy program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations at Reichman University, and Fulbright Fellow Caroline Dibble. In their piece, “The Iran War and the Limits of Great Power”, they write: “The Iran war did not end American primacy in the Middle East, but it made it less convincing. It did not make China the region’s new security provider, instead it exposed how little Beijing is willing to risk. The result is a more self-protective region.”

By the same token, the U.S.-Israel war on Iran hasn’t only highlighted the limits of great power but the dangers posed by such unrestrained might. In this issue, former Egyptian Ambassador Alaa El Hadidi reflects on the warnings of the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations during the Vietnam War. Fulbright’s book The Arrogance of Power, is today a relevant critique of U.S. foreign policy, perhaps a blueprint of how American economic and military strength could prove a pitfall if equated with moral superiority. 

It is no surprise, then, that a West Asia region which seeks to protect itself from such pitfalls will likely reformulate regional efforts to deter Iran. Omar Al-Ubaydli, Affiliated Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, examines in an upcoming essay on the evolution of the Arab Gulf’s deterrence strategy. 

“An added impetus for such a strategy,” he writes, “also manifests itself from some of the changes that have occurred within Iran itself as a new generation of leaders assumes control, and a redistribution of internal influence is underway toward more hardline elements of Iranian society.”

Off the battlefield and beyond the negotiating table, there is a significant play for power over wartime narratives. Hany Farid, professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, examines how three information ecosystems—states, influencers, and autonomous AI systems—are interacting to reshape narrative control of global conflicts. Acknowledging how important information integrity is during times of conflict, he writes in this issue that “the challenge then is how to preserve the benefits of a pluralistic, distributed information ecosystem while maintaining sufficient integrity that allows citizens, journalists, and policymakers to distinguish truth from falsehood, and fact from propaganda”.

Is the bishop moving, or is the video of it charging forward in a straight line AI-generated? If the rooks start looking for new regional partnerships, will they abandon their king? At the time of writing this, U.S. President Donald Trump is wooing Saudi Arabia with a civilian nuclear agreement conditioned on signing the Abraham Accords. Not before an irreversible path toward Palestinian statehood, the Saudis replied.

The game is never over, but the rules might be changing.

Firas Al-Atraqchi

Managing Editor of The Cairo Review