Reshaping
the Middle East - Part Two
January
05, 2007
Throughout the last
four years there has been insufficient security
and reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The overwhelming need to establish security early
and maintain it was ignored, and that is why we
have the catastrophe we face today. In Afghanistan,
a few billion dollars annually would have been
sufficient to buy and destroy the poppy crop,
which fuels much of the instability. In Iraq,
the lack of security has inexorably allowed the
situation to go from bad to worse to beyond that.
Baghdad is now dividing into armed neighborhood
camps, and ethnic cleansing is gathering pace.
This is not to say that greater democracy is a
bad thing. I too would like to see the spread
of democracy. But it must be done through peaceful
and evolutionary change, not through imposed revolutions
by outsiders lacking the knowledge, interest,
or resources to make it work. Otherwise, we end
up far worse off than before.
In fact, the Muslim world is making good progress
on its own. There are four basic forms of government
now present. First, we have a number of large,
successful Muslim democracies, including Turkey,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Nigeria.
Between them you can find 40% of the world’s
Muslims, another 10% live in democratic India.
A second group of countries have autocratic systems,
but relatively open societies, and the governments
are generally reasonably effective and engaged
in modernizing and liberalizing their societies.
I would include Pakistan, Jordan, Tunisia, some
of the Gulf states, and Morocco in this group.
Egypt may or may not belong. Third, there are
the oligarchic states that are run for the benefit
of a ruling elite, while the rest of society is
badly repressed. This would include Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Libya, Algeria, Saddam’s Iraq, perhaps
Egypt, and the Central Asian republics. Many of
these are either oil states, or heavily socialized
economies with government dividing up the pie
to its own benefit, while providing just enough
to the people to limit opposition. Oil is in fact
a plague, and without it, many of the ills of
the Muslim world would have been greatly reduced.
Despite over five trillion dollars sent from Europe,
the US, and Japan to the oil-producers over the
last 35 years, no major Muslim country, or non-Muslim
country for that matter, has actually developed
a modern economy on the back of oil. Instead,
oil distorts domestic politics, cripples the development
of the modern non-oil sector, prevents the emergence
of democracy, and creates vast incentives for
outsiders to seek influence for their own benefit.
Finally, there are the true Islamic ideological
states such as Iran and the Taliban regime, and
the Islamist regime in Sudan in the 1990’s.
The main point about these is that there are very
few of them, they are notably unsuccessful, and
have not been able to generate or maintain the
support of their own people. The Iranian regime
holds power because of its control of the oil
wealth. This notion that there is a powerful force
of Islamists waiting to overrun the planet is
just not true. In Pakistan for example, the latest
opinion polls show them to have 7% of the public.
So what should Bush have done if he wanted to
reduce the democracy deficit? Instead of this
war, he should have focused on strengthening the
existing Muslim democracies, encouraging those
nations that are autocratic but modernizing to
further liberalize and gradually transition to
democracy, and to have pushed our oligarchic allies
such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to gradually open
up their societies. A strategy that focused on
the unique circumstances of each country, and
used American soft-power judiciously, would have
a much greater impact than the Iraq adventure
did.
Into this current mess stepped the Baker Hamilton
report, which is the bipartisan committee created
by Congress to look at Iraq strategy. It is meant
to give the President a way forward that allows
the US some semblance of a reasonable outcome
in Iraq. The report makes 79 recommendations,
and I certainly will not go through all of them.
However, they can be divided into items that deal
with Iraq specifically, and then more regional
diplomatic recommendations.
With respect to Iraq itself, although they mean
well, the report is basically too little, too
late. At this point the forces needed to really
re-establish order and build real national institutions
is beyond the political capacity of the United
States. By that I mean a real draft and sending
500,000 soldiers. The current Army is simply too
small to do this. Iraq has functionally broken
into three pieces, with the edges consumed by
war. There are no national institutions, and the
army and police are hopelessly infiltrated by
militias. Another 20,000 US soldiers wont change
that. In addition, the allies are leaving, and
no one is taking their place.
The problem is that the genie has been released.
It takes far less effort to keep a neighborhood
from forming a militia than it does to make a
militia disarm. It takes less effort to maintain
a secure Baghdad than to create security in the
midst of mayhem. It takes less effort to prevent
someone from joining the insurgency than it does
to make him quit. It takes less effort to get
Iraqis to work together when they don’t
hate and fear each other than it does when they
do. It takes less effort to create an equitable
sharing of the oil revenue than it does to impose
it once regional groups have staked a claim. It
takes less effort to reconcile groups who have
not seen their loved ones murdered or tortured,
than it does when that has happened on a massive
scale. It takes much less effort to keep a doctor
or engineer in Iraq than it does to convince one
who has fled to Damascus to come back. America
has enough force to keep a lid on things, but
not enough to truly fix the country.
On the regional diplomatic front the Baker Hamilton
report makes some good points. In particular,
it states:
Iraq cannot be addressed effectively in isolation
from other major regional issues, interests, and
unresolved conflicts. To put it simply, all key
issues in the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli
conflict, Iraq, Iran, the need for political and
economic reforms, and extremism and terrorism
— are inextricably linked. In addition to
supporting stability in Iraq, a comprehensive
diplomatic offensive — the New Diplomatic
Offensive — should address these key regional
issues. By doing so, it would help marginalize
extremists and terrorists, promote US values and
interests, and improve America’s global
image.
There is a lot of good sense here on a regional
level. Certainly solving many of the conflicts
would improve the situation generally. But it
is far from clear that solving the Palestinian
issue or resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran
will substantively change the dynamic in Iraq.
But it may help in keeping the Iraqi civil war
from being transformed into a proxy regional war
between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and
Egypt on the other. And creating a real Palestinian
state would do wonders for lowering the temperature
throughout the region.
Despite the pessimism over the Iraq situation
and Bush’s attempt to reshape the Middle
East, I still find tremendous reasons for optimism.
The fact is that over 50% of the world’s
Muslims live in democracies, and another 20-30%
are in societies that are clearly trending toward
real democracy in the next 10-20 years. Women’s
rights are rapidly improving, whether in Pakistan
where the horrible rape laws have finally been
repealed, and where a woman runs the central bank,
or in Iran where the majority of university students
are women, or in Afghanistan, where millions of
girls now are going to school, or in the four
major Muslim countries that have elected women
as Prime Minister in the last 10 years.
In the Middle East, far from calling for perpetual
war with Israel, the entire Arab League has offered
full peace and normal relations in exchange for
Israel returning to the 1967 borders. Muslim minorities
throughout the West are successfully integrating,
albeit more slowly and with greater difficulty
in Europe. In America, Muslims have higher incomes
and levels of education than the national average.
One in 30 American physicians is a Muslim. Throughout
the Muslim world there are strong progressive
voices that are gathering steam, whether in Egypt
or Iran or Pakistan. Civil society is playing
a stronger and stronger role. Muslims are not
trying to conquer the world. In fact, 50 years
ago, except for the Turks and Saudis, all Muslims
lived in European colonies. Muslims primarily
want respect and equality, and that is the world
we need to create.
The answer for all of us is justice. We must create
a world of justice. A world in which there is
justice for an Imam in America, and justice for
a Jew in Iran, justice for Muslims in India and
for Hindus in Bangladesh, for Muslims in Chechnya
and Palestine and Kashmir, and for Christians
in Indonesia and Copts in Egypt and Armenians
in Turkey and Buddhists in Malaysia. We cannot
ask America to treat us fairly, and not hold Muslim
countries to the same standard of treatment for
non-Muslims. Justice is the highest value in the
Qur’an. Nothing is legitimate unless it
promotes justice. Bush’s reshaping of the
Middle East is not the answer, justice is the
answer.
