MENA Unmasks the ‘Stability’ Myth
The “rich world” – still best identified with the quaint “G7” label — spent much of the past few decades proselytizing in the Middle East in the name of “stability” as if the concept were some kind of gift to humanity. Stability, of course, looks a hell of a lot better from the desks of a Mediterranean cruise ship than it does from a Syrian political prison. As the Arab Spring grows into an Arab Summer, it’s worth a moment to rethink about the rich world’s track record and the light it cast on the motives behind western policies since, well, World War II.
The outcome of the unrest raging across the MENA region remains uncertain. Even in the most hopeful case – Tunisia, Egypt – things could still go badly wrong, as Yasmine El Rashidi notes in this new look at Egypt’s Islamists. Yet one thing seems clear: In the Middle East, western policies that paid lip service to democracy yet poured millions of dollars into the treasuries, militaries and Swiss bank accounts of regional despots, have been pretty comprehensively discredited.
The implications of this for the United States will weigh down and emasculate U.S. policy in the region for a generation. With “democracy” and the actual opinions of average people now a very relevant force in some of MENA’s most important countries, especially Egypt and Turkey, American hopes of plying the region’s political elites with weaponry and credits as a way to keep them in line will fade. As Turkey had already begun to show even before the Arab Spring sprung, empowered Middle Eastern Muslims will insist on charting a course that is separate from Washington on many matters.
This is particularly true with regard to Israel. So much of what Washington, and to a lesser extent, European powers have said and done about the Middle East since 1967 appears to Arab eyes driven primarily by a desire to keep Israel from making concessions to the Palestinians. The west’s stance was a great deal less cynical back when Israel’s primary enemies were the military forces of radical Arab states. Then, Israel’s existence was in question. Neither its existence nor is its right to defend its territory is really in question today. It’s the definition of that territory that is the problem, and those like Iran’s president who still talk of “erasing Israel from the map” are only empowered by the continued existence of the territorial dispute.
Israel must face up to its strategic error and the U.S. must help it to do so. Ever since Egypt’s defection from the “frontline” Arab cause in 1979, Israel has enjoyed a position of enormous strength in terms of military and economic power, and its actions – even the most controversial of them — were backed by the veto-wielding support of a superpower. Today, the many years from 1979 to 2011, when Hosni Mubarak’s rule finally came to an end, should be mourned by Israelis as a squandered opportunity to make peace from a position of unassailable strength. Of course zealous murderers would have remained opposed to any deal, (as, in Israel itself, a zealous murderer opposed the Oslo process of the 1990s, assassinating Yitzhak Rabin to prove the point). But the absence of a territorial agreement provides Hamas, Hezbollah and other radicals with the oxygen they need to keep the fires burning. The U.S. should have pushed harder, yes, but the fault lay primarily with Israel for not recognizing the relative deterioration of its strategic position and of the United States’ ability to make good on unsustainable diplomatic and security guarantees.
This window for negotiated peace has not yet closed, but the opening for Israel to drive a hard, fair bargain over the occupied West Bank won’t be there much longer. Syria’s tumult already has Israelis wondering if they should have made the Golan Heights deal during one of the many opportunities over the past 20 years. Instead, Golan will loom in Syria’s politics as the chief way to manipulate the masses for any group seeking to replace Bashar al-Assad. It is no coincidence that the first acts of violence on the Israeli-Syrian border since 1973 occurred as Assad is scrambling to shore up support for his regime. Modern technology — drones, smart bombs and other weapons — has rendered the Golan Heights strategically irrelevant, except as a potential spark for war.
In the face of diminishing American leverage in the region, Europe’s exasperation at Israeli foot-dragging, the Arab world’s open revolt against the corrupt post-war status quo, to say nothing of Iran’s possible emergence as a nuclear power. The Palestinians make for a miserable partner right now, split as they are between Fatah and Hamas. But, again, the opinions of Arabs can no longer be written off as the “venting” of the Arab street. “Public opinion now matters in Arab politics,” CFR Mideast expert Robert Danin said on Friday. “The Arab people are making their voices heard and seeking to play an active role in their countries’ futures. Leaders can no longer act with impunity and disregard for public opinion.”
For the United States to remedy this situation and salvage its own reputation in the region, it must reprioritize the prevention of Arab-Israeli violence. The deterioration of Syria, the increasing influence of Iran in Lebanon and the bankrupt state of debate within Israel itself mean the incentives are aligning with those who prefer military solutions – and there are no military solutions. Washington, election year politics aside, needs to take steps immediately to spur Israel to negotiate seriously while its military advantages still exist and while the U.S. still maintains the vestiges of the influence it wielded after the Cold War ended.
Why now? Some will point out that volatility makes it very difficult to negotiate anything lasting. This is true so far as it goes. But the momentum is swinging very violently against negotiated solutions of any kind. The region is mired in political risk, from the fraught Iraqi pullout, poisonous U.S.-Pakistani ties, Syria in flames, an embittered Turkey seeking to dislodge the U.S. as the regional power broker, and with a Saudi succession imminent that could, conceivably, remove the final lever of American political influence. The status quo upheld by American power since the end of World War II simply cannot hold much longer.
But the U.S. has not lost its mojo completely just yet. Even if Washington has been distressingly slow to criticize Syria’s brutality or the sham trials of democracy activists in Bahrain, raw power still resides in its hands. If this power is used for the right reasons (as opposed to idiocies like the Iraq War, for instance), the U.S. might stabilize its waning reputation and remain the most important player in the region.
This is why critics of Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya are incorrect when they assert the U.S. has no national interest in that conflict. If “national interest” is defined narrowly as, say, “threat of attack” or “market access,” these criticisms would be true. Libya posed no threat and there were no huge American economic interests at stake. Yet Libya, in this case, is merely a stalking horse for something much larger. The national interest at stake is American credibility in the eyes of Arabs who bravely went into the street to challenge, mostly peacefully, the military dictators our misguided “stability” fetish kept in power for decades. Given how long we misled them, bombing Muhamar Qaddafy seems the least we can do.
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