The Arab Spring midterm

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar 

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's fifth guest post at The Reaction. Last month, he wrote on Obama's foreign policy and the secular uprisings in the Middle East. In February, he wrote on dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt and on the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

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It's test-time. The durability of an unpopular dictator, Arab or otherwise, has been called into question since January. Fair enough. But each bud of the Arab Spring has taught us another thing or two.

Tunisia taught us that an aura of inevitability bolstered by rhetoric from abroad could do little to help against galvanized, anti-governmental will. Egypt confirmed that Tunisia was not a fluke, with the additional lesson that years of foreign support and patronage can do little to hold a dictator and his system in place. On the flip side, Algeria is showing us how years of civil war can make a population complacent to revolution. They all demonstrate how the information age has changed politics forever. So if precedental value is important, how do we interpret Libya and Syria?

First, tribal and sectarian allegiances are obstinate, even in the face of destiny.

In February, it looked inevitable that Qaddafi would be the third dictator deposed in so many months. As the so-called Libyan rebels swallowed up government territory on their way to Tripoli, few could have predicted the stalemate that has set in today. The reality is that Qaddafi's counter-punch was engineered through a consolidation of tribal loyalties in and around Tripoli, not a regrouping of government arms. With the rebels faltering, many of Libya's tribal leaders (who have long had a "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship with Qaddafi) rallied around the colonel. They have now succeeded in keeping him in power. Similarly, what we are seeing in Syria is the hardening of the core of Alavi patrons that make up the regime, with the Assad family as their figurehead. The Alavi minority, since coming to power in the mid 1960s, has been the primary power broker in that country. It stands to lose significantly more than any one group in Tunisia or Egypt ever could.

Second, an absence of meaningful diplomatic ties to world's most powerful countries actually hardens regimes and their power.

One could as easily conclude that pariah-status endangers dictators, alienating their populations and driving them to resentment. In Egypt and Tunisia, however, it was the relationships the dictatorial regimes had with democratic countries that allowed the world to exercise influence when it counted. Libya and Syria are regimes that are accountable to almost no one, whose dictators (and respective entourages) are not welcome anywhere. There is nobody to apply pressure or give incentives; the regime is left to fend for its life in the wake of rebellion. What's more, populations in isolated countries probably resent the rest of the world almost as much as they do their own regimes, which has implications for intervention of any kind.

Still, if the world had reacted to help the rebels when even the most loyal to Qaddafi would have bet against him, things could be different there today. Similarly, in countries like Syria (and Iran for that matter), there is probably much less today to the argument that isolation, with tools like sanctions and fiery rhetoric, makes for productive long-term foreign policy. A more rigorous diplomatic project in these places could have set the stage for regime change. Alas, what's done is done.

Partially on account of these lessons, one would imagine that if the regime does fall in Syria, its implications would have a particular thrust. It is the most entrenched, perhaps the most brutal, and almost certainly the most domestically popular of the large Arab dictatorships. Regime change there would usher in a certain inevitability that would echo from Riyadh to Rabat; it could mean the death knell of the Arab dictator as we know it.

Sure, this is conjecture for now. But, hey, this is just the midterm.

Hope's last chance?

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar 

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's fourth guest post at The Reaction. Last month, he wrote on dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt and on the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. On the situation in Egypt, he was recently quoted by Robert Fisk at The Independent. -- MJWS)

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Comparisons to Ceausescu, while initially pessimistic, could turn out to be understated. Qaddafi is digging in and Libya is moving closer to what may be a prolonged and bloody struggle for the country's future. The international community and the United States in particular continue to wonder what role they should play in helping the good guys win.

Surely, it would have been difficult for any U.S. president in 2011 to seriously consider intervention in Libya. But on the eve of his election, one would have thought that Barack Obama was the exception. Promising a break from the past with the Muslim world, the usual suspicion and presumption of ill-intent that followed a U.S. president to the Middle East was tabled in Obama's case. But a combination of unfulfilled promises has relegated him to a class of leaders who must tread with extreme caution in Libya; still, he continues to have a rare opportunity that he should exploit.

He came to power partially on the perception that his unique persona and experience, and the policies and goodwill that would emanate therefrom, could reverse the Bush-era suspicion harnessed towards America almost everywhere in the world. Obama's domestic and international behavior on most everything Middle East, though, has been a disappointment.

Whatever the reality may be, his policy thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan is mostly seen as a continuation of an unpopular status quo. Everyone, including Israel, is complaining about his lack of coherence. On certain domestic issues that are especially important to increasingly well-connected followers abroad, he has again failed to live up to expectations. He signed an extension to the Patriot Act without reforming its most controversial portions. Just this week, he also ordered trials at Guantanamo Bay to resume, casting his promise to immediately close the prison even further into oblivion.

Miraculously, though, with the wave of unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, Obama's foreign policy credentials in the region have been partially revived. In January, American intervention directly lead to Ben-Ali fleeing Tunisia. The story is similarly positive in Egypt, as President Obama's personal conversations with Mubarak in the days leading up to his departure were historically unprecedented in the scope of their rebuke and insistence; the State Department is even rumored to have been very critical (if not threatening) in Bahrain, where the U.S. has a military base, during "consultations" on the paths forward for the king.

From what can be gauged of the region's opinion of how things have been handled thus far, the reaction is overwhelmingly positive. No burning American flags or effigies of Obama; rather, the U.S. is appearing to come out on the right side of events, without having dictated the results of a crucial, strategic Arab nation's political future.

Among disappointment and positive surprise, Libya, then, is a sort of tie-breaker. Obama needs to be the galvanizing force that ensures the world, and not just the U.S., stands on the side of Libya's people. This should include support for a U.N.- or NATO-led no-fly zone to prevent the strafing of civilians, more humanitarian aid to Libyan refugees, and strong diplomatic support for the Libyan people. But further intervention, such as tactical support for Libyan rebels, should also be considered. At this juncture in history, such intervention is unlikely to engender a negative perception, even if the rebels lose. Consider, furthermore, what all of the parties have to gain.

Through the popular, secular uprisings that are spreading through the region, al Qaeda and terrorism are being dealt a crucial blow that billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan have yet to accomplish. But Obama must note that the clock is ticking and the jury is still out. Compared to the potential cost of inaction, decisiveness in Libya is simply crucial. Over the course of the next year, a partial reversal of decades of negative U.S. perception could instigate the new era of mutual respect and interest that Obama spoke about in his June 2009 speech in Cairo. That event would mean, among other things, a fundamental blow to extremists everywhere in the region and a huge boon America for decades to come.

Their revolution, our game-changer

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar 

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's third guest post at The Reaction. Earlier this month, he wrote a post on dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

Started with the match of a Tunisian who aspired for more, a revolutionary wildfire burns near and far from his resting place. We have already witnessed one of most incredible and unlikely geopolitical shuffles in modern history; still, as this post goes out, Libya's people stand potentially days away from deposing yet another of the world's dictators against all odds. In addition to these being revolutionary times, these are also perception-changing times. Perceptions of peoples and their aptitude for modernity, surely. But most importantly for America, perceptions of the role the rest of the world is going to play in facilitating that modernity.

With the benefit of hindsight, U.S. foreign policy has sometimes been good and sometimes bad. With respect to the Middle East and North Africa, it is probably not controversial to say it has been almost certainly bad. Leaving aside the reality that the majority of the world sees the U.S. as being totally self-interested, we have also managed to sacrifice the stability of those same interests we are thought to be hoarding so maliciously. In every country, we get a D either in terms of the humanity of our policies or the protection of our interests; in many cases, we get a D in both.

I know a bit about Iran, so let's take that example: We went from organizing a coup d'état that ousted a democratically-elected leader in the '50s to supporting Iraq in an invasion against its new popularly-chosen (but in-flux) government in the '80s. This served to bring in and harden the influence of the most extreme elements in Tehran, who still rule that country today, with the price tag of 1.5 million lives. Less than two decades later, we went in and got rid of the two largest threats to Iran's border while it watched and picked off young American soldiers like fish in a barrel, establishing its influence. In the end, we secured neither its respect nor its oil, nor that of its neighbor, while the whole region watched. Henry Kissinger's famous quote on the Iran-Iraq war was that its too bad "they both can't lose". The reality is, they did both lose -- but so did we, in terms of interests and reputation, perhaps the only two factors that matter in international affairs.

In an era of mass transformation, where the world and the region are once again watching, the U.S. has an unprecedented platform to show that it will, at the very least, stand by its ideals. Undoubtedly, perceptions are being formed today about America's propensity to be a constructive player that will follow the U.S. for decades. America may never have this opportunity again.

Now, President Obama's change moniker is without doubt composed partially of hot air. Whether by chance or design, though, the last month has been very kind to the view that some of what he said in his June 2009 Cairo speech was genuine. During the course of revolutionary, albeit unfinished, change in Egypt and Tunisia, the U.S. has walked the tightrope of Middle East policy exceptionally well. That tightrope requires the U.S. to consider its reputation in the region on a case-by-case basis and decide the extent of its action based on any inevitable perception of its involvement, while at the same time being unwilling to sacrifice the ideals of democratic change for peoples who are taking destiny into their own hands.

Whether or not President Obama agrees that the stakes are as outlined above, his policies and his reaction to events suggest he does. Our influence and rhetoric have so far placed the U.S. in a unique position of having encouraged positive change in a region where it is desperate for legitimacy and good-standing (bearing in mind that we not decide how uprisings began or how they will end, but still have a special role to play, for our sake and our reputation). The president explained his choices, confirming that America would place itself on the right side of history while never imitating that it could dictate the outcome of popular will.

So while perceptions are important and good, and affect our interests, what about the interests themselves? The peaceful toppling of these entrenched despots also gives America the opportunity to align those interests with the values it cherishes for its own people. In addition to begetting a positive circle of goodwill that is more likely to serve our physical interests than the shortsighted policy of yesteryears, it also sets the alternative of extremism on its head. No burning U.S. flags in Cairo or Tunis, only cautious thanks for America among a valiant population happy to have friends in high places.

The U.S. has never been a strong ally of Libya, and that among other factors makes its treatment of Libya necessarily different. With the handwriting on the wall in Tripoli, and the work almost done, the U.S. needs to exercise all of its influence to ensure Qaddafi's departure. This means proposing sanctions (largely symbolic) and publicly considering the idea of no-fly zones to prevent the incursion of foreign mercenaries. President Obama needs to speak up and act with intent -- not least because Libya, the region, and the world are watching.

Dictatorships 101, in 2011

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's second guest post at The Reaction. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

As Egypt moves ever closer to life without Hosni Mubarak, governments and analysts everywhere ponder the important question of what will come next. The conventional and clichéd wisdom pronounced by pundits and politicians the world over focuses on the risk of a dramatic rise to power for the Muslim Brotherhood and the inevitability of a new Islamist, and implicitly dictatorial, ruling establishment. Disaster for the U.S., for Israel, and for the future of Egypt, right? If the events of recent weeks demonstrate anything, however, it is that dictatorship is increasingly difficult to manufacture in the age of modern communications.

Let's take a step back and acknowledge exactly what these Twitter and Facebook "revolutions" have managed to overcome in just Tunisia and Egypt so far (bearing in mind events in Jordan and Yemen as well). Former president Ben-Ali ruled over Tunisia, with the help of a highly-trained secret police force (among other levers of control), for over 20 years. Just weeks before he fled the country, few a Tunisian would have ever imagined a day where he and his cronies would not dominate the landscape of politics and life in Tunisia for as long as he lived. What had largely been considered one of the most stable and pacified populations in the Arab world, however, took to the streets in large numbers, rendering the president's apparatus of control inoperable against the masses of people from which it was drawn. Increasingly facing the possibility of internal betrayal and what that would mean for his own head, Ben-Ali fled. What happened afterwards, however, was in many ways more remarkable than his being deposed.

The government that immediately replaced the Ben-Ali regime was largely made up of his associates. And while that new government immediately pledged and took concrete steps to dismantle the means of censorship and develop democratic institutions, the Tunisian population, well-informed, continued to protest. Staging demonstrations and continuing to put pressure on a still-infant government, remaining elements from the old guard were purged from the new interim regime. All the evidence suggests that Tunisia is on its way to democratic institution-building and free elections. From communication to coordination, it is hard to imagine how such an historic sequence of events could have happened without the Internet tools that have only become widely used in the region in the last few years.

Events in Egypt are, in the most important ways, following a similar trajectory. While such events are impossible to predict, it is reasonable to hypothesize that, as in Tunisia, no group that fills the potential power vacuum in Egypt will have the clout, influence, or muscle that Mubarak developed over the last 30 years to implement his dictatorial rule. With the tools at the disposal of the world's citizens today, the fear of new dictatorships springing out of such well-established ones -- former dictatorships that had decades to harness accountability from their repressive systems -- seems almost far-fetched. The protesters and the press, emboldened by the information and images they see and transmit in seconds, are already focusing their rhetoric on a post-Mubarak era and the avoidance of a failed transition to democracy.

The world's governments that have been criticized for becoming more dictatorial in the last decade seem to have done so through reform, not revolution. Take Venezuela, for example. The specter of an Iranian-type genuine revolution turned radical Islamic regime also seems unlikely in the Egyptian context. The lack of a unified and charismatic Islamic front (with the Muslim Brotherhood being rather late to the game), coupled with the modern means of communication that are helping to topple Mubarak, will threaten to make the consolidation of power for a new dictatorial regime untenable unless it is extremely popular.

Most importantly, though, let's acknowledge that democracy's growing pains, whatever they may be, deserve the opportunity to play themselves out. It is not the business of entities foreign to Egypt to try and divine the potential makeup of a future government, and then exercise preference over whether or not Egyptians have a right to their own destiny. Foreign influence (short of intervention) should be designed to help strengthen populations and countries that seek to take destiny into their own hands, in the model of Tunisia (with the U.S.' encouragement of Ben-Ali's stepping down), and not in the old model of Iran. Note that the undermining of Iran's popular and democratic movements of yesterday are thought to have contributed to the radicalism and anti-Americanism of its revolution and its government today.

U.S. policy suggests it is frantically trying not to be on the wrong side in Egypt, and in the region generally. We should consider, though, the monumental reputational damage the U.S. will sustain if it stands on the side of autocracy or even ambiguity as it has done in the last two weeks. The specter of loss of interests should yield to the realization that only democratic partners in the region can protect our interests permanently, and that those democratic partners had better be our friends.

The economic aspects of the Egyptian protests

Guest post by Dan Fejes 

Dan Fejes is a blogger at Pruning Shears. He lives in northeast Ohio.

(Ed. note: This is Dan's second guest post at The Reaction. You can find his first, on the Arizona shooting, a response to the stupidity of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, here. -- MJWS)

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Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to have pretty quickly settled on an ideological basis for the unrest in Egypt. By doing so, it has ignored a more compelling -- and prosaic -- explanation.

There appears to be a yawning chasm between what ishappening in Egypt and elite opinions in D.C. Consider thisexchange between Chris Matthews and NBC News chief foreign affairscorrespondent Richard Engel:

ENGEL: The Muslim Brotherhoodis telling the army that it can be a reasonable, rational organization.I did an interview tonight with one of the senior leaders of the MuslimBrotherhood. He was telling me to tell the American people that theMuslim Brotherhood can be reasoned with, wants to be a player, isn't aradical group. So you're trying -- you are seeing the Muslim Brotherhoodlegitimize itself, much in the same way you saw Hamas try and legitimizeitself during the elections in Gaza.

MATTHEWS: Does thatsurprise you, as someone who really grew up over there as a journalist,living among the Muslim Brotherhood? Does it surprise you that theycould be copacetic with the military?

ENGEL: Not at all. A lotof them are truly patriotic Egyptians. They don't necessarily want tooverthrow the military regime. In the belief structure and thepolitical structure that the Muslim Brotherhood has, which is common inIslamic moments, they believe in a strict hierarchy. There can be aruler. There can be a military ruler. But as long as that militaryruler doesn't impede on the ability of the Muslim people to worship,then they have no problem with that. So they could live verycopacetically with the military. It's not that it is a Taliban kind ofmovement that wants to take over...

MATTHEWS: I getyou.

ENGEL: ...and tell everyone what to do and how to do it.They're very patriotic. They have lot of supporters. You mentioned Ilived with a lot of them. They were nice people. I mean, If you felldown in the street, they would come and help you out. If you didn'thave enough money for the bus, they would give you money. There was acommunity feeling that a lot of people are nostalgic about in thiscountry that is still present in the poorer, more Muslim -- more Islamiccommunities here.

What people are so upset about is prices havegotten so high, there's become this elite class of Egyptiansthat...

MATTHEWS: Right.

ENGEL: ...no longer reflects alot of the traditional cultural values here. And the Muslim Brotherhoodstill does embrace those values very close to itschest.

Matthews comes across as somewhat surprisedthat the Muslim Brotherhood could play a legitimate role in a newEgyptian government. The assumption, apparently widespread in Washington, is that a populist Islamic movement is necessarily violent.(In fairness, they might just be extrapolating from America's ownexperience with religious extremists.)

In fact, he mighteven be something of an outlier in his mildness. Tom Friedman, whousually -- but notalways! -- hides his anti-Islamic fervor well, hadthis to say: "For the last 20 years, President Mubarak has had allthe leverage he could ever want to truly reform Egypt's economy andbuild a moderate, legitimate political center to fill the void betweenhis authoritarian state and the Muslim Brotherhood."

He simplypostulates that the Muslim Brotherhood is the opposite pole of anauthoritarian state. He does not appear to have done any analysis toarrive at that conclusion. He has not spoken with anyone in theorganization (my God man, are there notaxis in Cairo?) (Also seethis, just because.) He just assumes that everyone intuitivelygrasps exactly what he does.

That seems to be roughly thecenter of conventional wisdom. To find the far edge of fear andloathing, seethis from Richard Cohen: "The next Egyptian government -- or the oneafter -- might well be composed of Islamists. In that case, the peacewith Israel will be abrogated and the mob currently in the streets willroar its approval." His entire misanthropic screed throbs with themessage: these savages cannot govern themselves. It isn't even subtextat this point. It's right there on the surface.

There doesnot appear to be any appreciation that very ordinary concerns might bedriving the protesters. What was toutedas an economic miracle wasdisastrous for those on the lower end of the economic scale; NomiPrins calledthis "the appearance of enhancement." Robust economic growth wasoutpaced byinflation, which lead to widespread hunger (I refuse to use theeuphemism "food insecurity"). Food riots have killedpeople. The marvels of globalization have been decidedly lesswonderful for many.

Do the anti-Islamic commentators in Washingtonhave any sense that such workaday issues might just be front-and-centerin the protester's minds? And that any party that begins to addressthem will thereby enjoy the consent of the governed?

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As acoda, those of us in the West might want to consider the followingthoughts William Gambleshared about Tunisia:

All authoritarian governmentseverywhere, by definition, are not limited by any legal restraints. Thisallows elites to become rent seekers often through state-owned companiesand monopolies. Without legal limits, the percentage of the GDP thatthey take for themselves will constantlyincrease.

[snip]

The main impact of an economy ofcorruption is on investment, the investments necessary to create jobs.For Tunisia and many other emerging and frontier markets, this is amajor if not the issue. The unemployment rate in Tunisia is officially13%, but it is probably twice this for younger people. Even universitygraduates face an unemployment rate of over 15%. This is not unusual forthese markets where unemployment rates among younger workers can rise ashigh as 40%. According to the IMF, the Middle East needs to grow 2%faster every year to avoid its present chronic and high unemployment.

Worsening inequality, impunity for those at the top,reduced investment leading to high unemployment: a multi-party democracyin which a governing majority is persistently unresponsive to publicopinion is functionally similar to a one-party state. And prone tosimilar expressions of dissatisfaction.