Can the US administration find an opportunity in the crisis in the Middle East?

These officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave Sunday night for a week of diplomacy in the region and will go with the modest goal of forming an "umbrella of Arab allies" in opposition to the militant group Hizballah that incited the conflagration by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"She's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but stronger ties to the Arab world," an administration official said. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hizballah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.' That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire, then soon or later, they go back to fighting."

Notice that the dynamic in play is Arab versus Persian, not Sunni versus Shia. Is there a subtle reason for this? Is there an attempt to redefine Middle Eastern relationships in terms of cultural groups (Arab, Persian, Azeri, Siwa, and so forth) and not in terms of religious affiliation? Secretary Rice herself says:

"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the birth pangs of a new Middle East. "Whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.''

That can have some interesting implications. If religion takes a back seat to cultural affiliations, the Middle East will be seen less as a monolithic threat to the West. Individual countries in the region will act in their own interests (and in the interests of their populations) rather than being compelled to act to push forward the agenda of Islam. Of course, countries generally act in their interests already, but not always, and even when they do, they represent themselves as soldiers of Islam, and that complicates diplomacy.

And finally, if people in the region, and their leaders, see cultural groups where before they only saw religion, much of the sting might disappear. This is for the future, of course, but if Israelis are seen as just one more cultural group, instead of Jews, some of the animosity might disappear, or at least, it might be throttled back.

Can it happen? It's starting to already. Hizbollah has been subjected to a lot of criticism by Arab countries in the region. Syria is seen as an outsider, the Alawite religion of its leadership considered to be an aberration by most Muslims. Fellahin Egyptians have always seen themselves as the inheritors of a rich cultural heritage from ancient (non-Muslim) Egypt, something that does not belong to descendants non-Egyptian Arabs who took control during the conquest of the 8th century.

There are other examples, some longstanding, some only beginning to take hold in the region.

The point is that if there is a shift taking place in the region, a shift that can be amplified by clever diplomacy, the result is that in the future we'll see the the region organized as nation-states instead of as a religious super-state (or attempting to move in that direction). They will deal with each other and with the West in terms we'll all understand, despite the differences in religion, simply because religion is taking a backseat.

Finally, we might see a lot less meddling by non-Arab nations pulling the strings of puppet client groups attempting to influence events in an area that, culturally and geographically speaking, should be of little interest to those non-Arab nations.

And if all this happens, the "clash of civilizations" might be over, if only because the civilizations are going to seem a lot more alike.

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