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When you look at a sand dune from a distance, it appears to be a picture of consistency. But get up close, Bret Stephens encouraged, and you'll understand the sheer "randomness and serendipity" that took place to form that dune.

Stephens, a deputy editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal, was speaking at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference held in Washington, D.C. March 21-23. Stephens was on a panel with former Bush adviser and current Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elliot Abrams and Dr. Asher Susser, senior fellow of the Myra and Robert Kraft Chair in Arab Politics at Brandeis University.

The panel, "Shifting Sands," was on the future of leadership in the Middle East. The topic of leadership itself -- that of the Arab states, Israel, and the United States -- was a common theme at the conference, painting a picture of a region at a crossroads and raising questions about the role the U.S. will play in the near future.

"The greatest shift to worry about is us," Abrams said, noting the growing uncertainty in the region.

'Who's going to be in charge around here?'

Abrams said states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia will see a change at the top in the next decade. Without a proper succession mechanism, the stability of those states -- once great regional powers -- is an open question.

"In both cases the succession crisis is a serious one," Abrams said.

Abrams said that in his travels through the region, Iraqi politicians don't raise the Arab-Israeli conflict, but instead are most concerned about Iran's growing influence and whether a Western power will be willing to keep Iran in check.

"Who's going to be in charge around here?" is the most common question Abrams gets. He said the British left Aden in 1967, finally ceding the region to the U.S. That same year, Israel won the Six-Day War. The regional power structure shaped by those events has held for the last 40-plus years. If that is changing, he said, Arab leaders want to know what to expect.

One reason for their concern, according to Susser, is that the tone of Middle Eastern politics is set by non-Arab states. Susser said that with the near-collapse of Turkey's flirtation with the European Union, it has emerged instead as a Mideast power, along with Israel and Iran, supplanting the former big three: Syria, Egypt, and Iraq.

"The Sunni Arab core of the Middle East is contracting; the space they're leaving is being filled by non-Arabs," Susser said.

There are two reasons this has "profound ideological implications," Susser said. The first is that Iran is not just a Middle Eastern power, but a Mediterranean power as well, since it has proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas). And the weaker the states get, the stronger the non-state actors become.

The second reason is that Arabism is a secular ideology.

"Arab nationalism was a platform for secular politics," Susser said. "The death of Arabism, the decline of the Arab states, is also the undoing of secular politics in the Arab world."

And not just in the Arab world, Stephens offered. In Turkey, the increasingly Islamist leaders have begun to crack down on political opponents and the media, mirroring the lead-up to the Iranian revolution that brought to power the theocracy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Stephens said there are whispers of a "Khomeinism by slow degrees" -- a significant development for a country recently attempting to join the EU.

That downgrading of the Sunni Arab elite creates an opportunity as well, Abrams suggested. There is now an objective common interest shared by the Sunni Arabs and Israel: stopping Iran.

Abrams said the Arabs and Israelis are waiting to see what the involvement of the U.S. will be. Will the U.S. beef up its bases in the Persian Gulf? Improve its military cooperation with Israel? Take action to show that Iranian nukes are truly "unacceptable"? If the Arabs can't rely on the U.S., he said, they'll have to get out of Iran's crosshairs somehow.

"Clearly the forces of extremism get stronger; they feel stronger," Abrams said. "And the forces of moderation get weaker."

Abrams said the recent tension between the Obama administration and Binyamin Netanyahu's government worries the Arabs as well; if the U.S. would pull back from its friend and strategic ally, it can't be considered a reliable partner to the Arabs.

"As the United States asks more of Israel, what is it asking of the Palestinians?" Abrams asked.

Stephens agreed, saying the "extraordinary infusion of venom" by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will set the peace process "significantly back" if the U.S. begins to play the role that the Europeans currently play, which is "to serve more or less as the lawyer for the Palestinians."

What message do we send?

Taking a closer look at the Arab world, Stephens said there are three segments of that population. About 80 percent of the Arab world is made up of "pre-modern" elements; about 5-10 percent is modern; and the rest consists of the "small but ferocious anti-modern" Arabs. The modern Arabs make an attempt -- though usually fail -- at upward mobility. Those in the pre-modern communities are often shut out of the outside world, but aren't necessarily hostile to it. The anti-moderns, however, fight "aggressively" against the West and "the forces of modern life," such as technology and political liberty.

"They all share one thing in common, which is that they are all readers of Noam Chomsky," Stephens quipped.

But the American role in the developing world encompasses more than just the Arabs. At a later session, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and to Israel and current professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, discussed American power in the context of China and India, in addition to the Mideast.

Kurtzer said China believes it can develop economically but not politically -- solving only one half of the equation.

"Over time, that dichotomy will reach a crisis," Kurtzer said. "When it happens, we're going to look back and say, 'well, the Chinese model didn't work."

And though China's power still "doesn't compare" to that of the U.S., Kurtzer said, China is investing billions in mining resources in areas of the world where the U.S. and Europe are risking lives to provide stability and security so those nations can survive.

"That is a dichotomy that can't exist as well," he said.

Kristol agreed, but added that the economic development of China -- though, as Kurtzer said, incomplete -- is still an accomplishment, and one that would not happen if the U.S. were not the guarantor of security in East Asia.

"We're better off with a wealthy China and India than with a poor, restive China and India," he said.

Following up on Kurtzer's point, Kristol cautioned against giving China and other such nations too much encouragement without some political development.

"We've allowed the authoritarians to regroup," Kristol said. "That's dangerous. You really don't want to tell authoritarian regimes their bullying works."

In terms of America's role in the world, Kurtzer said there should be three criteria we use to form our global strategy. First, to what extent do countries aspire to what we believe? Second, what are the policies we stand for that we would like to see emulated around the world? Third, how do we maintain paramount military and economic raw power?

On the first, Kurtzer said, "we have some work to do," arguing that having a health care system that leaves millions uninsured isn't setting the right example.

Kristol responded that health care isn't the strategic roadblock some make it out to be.

"People can admire our health care system and still invade their neighbors or kill their people because they believe they can get away with it," he said.

Accept no substitutes

The Jewish State asked Kristol and Abrams if Israel, as a military and economic power in its own right, could fill in whole or in part the vacuum that would be left if the U.S. takes a more hands-off approach to the Mideast.

Both answered that there is currently no substitute for the U.S.

"Israel as an ally and adjunct of the U.S., yes. As a replacement, no," Abrams said.

Kristol said there isn't much Israel could do that the U.S. does, but added: "They can maybe stop Iran's nuclear program, but it would be better if we did it."

Susser ended his presentation at "Shifting Sands" with a word of advice to Israel: whatever the roles of the U.S. and the Arabs, Israel has a particular mission, and the interests of that mission must always come first.

"We are where we are to be the state of the Jewish people," Susser said. "What serves that purpose, we should do; what doesn't serve that purpose, we shouldn't do."