The Middle East (general catch all)

[Dayuhan]

Agree that this is not the time and place for provoking. We do, however, need to be in front of these and engaging the governments hard to open talks now with the people to ward off more turmoil. Not broadsides of advice from US podiums, but private talks. Not against blazing into town in Airforce one to have those private talks, but give these guys the ability to come out and announce their own changes without the words being fed to them acorss the airwaves.

My advice is contained in my model. First create "hope" through giving the people legal, trusted and certain means to engage and shape government. What these are will vary by culture, country, time. This is first because these are things that can be designed and approved at the stroke of a pen, and because this is the off ramp from insurgency.

Then I would advise them to look hard at how they can shore up and repair the populaces perceptions as to the legitimacy of the government. To look at and address how just the populace finds the rule of law to be and also to address deep-seated perceptions of disrespect where they exist. These are the drivers of insurgency.

Are the people hungry and poor? Certainly, but that alone does not make an insurgency. It typically takes the presence of some disconnected royal living in unearned opulence that can casually suggest when told that the people are staving and that they have no bread to "let them eat cake." A populace also without hope, with no justice under the law, treated with disrespect, and that has come to question a legitimacy to rule that they may once have supported.

I don't think these governments have the slightest interest in our advice, or in our meddling, which is closer to what they would call it. Probably they wouldn't tell us that, but would listen very seriously, promise to think deeply on what we said, then go on doing what they want.

We've a very limited capacity, if any, to change how others govern.

[Bob's World]

Yes, but you also have told me countless times that there is no insurgency in these countries as well...

I think you might be surprised at how much clout the US has, we just haven't been too skilled at employing the more subtle aspects of it. This is why in the geo-politics of the Middle East it is so essential for the US to build and sustain working relationships with Turkey and Iran as these two states continue to rise. It is the art of balancing smaller states against and with each other that creates and sustains a stability that supports one's interests. If properly positioned, a simple private conversation between leaders is probably enough. In many ways this is like a giant game of poker

The new player in this old game is the power of the populaces themselves. The President has been playing that card. He didn't deal it, but when it landed on the table he looked at these guys and suggested that they might want to fold, or at least not raise their bet. Qaddafi over bet his hand and went all in and will end up dead, in prison or in miserable exile. Mubarak folded and will likely live the dignified life of a wealthy former head of state. Currently there are a whole lot of despots still sitting at the table looking at the cards showing and nervously checking and rechecking their hole cards as they attempt to calculate the odds of drawing a winning hand.

Being a despot is a good gig until the people call your bluff.

[Dayuhan]

However we have seen that the U.S. does have the capacity to change how our allies govern - especially when we have good military-to-military relations. The Philippines, El Salvador, South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, and Turkey have all made substantive political moves towards democracy in part due to U.S. pressure and influence. In several of those countries, military governments either surrendered power or acquiesced to a reduced political role and the election of former enemies. How does this not qualify as changes in governance?

Changes in governance, yes, but the degree to which US pressure was involved is debatable in all cases. In the Philippines US pressure was really not a factor at all. In other cases possibly more so, but in no case would I call it conclusive.

I doubt we will know the full picture for a long time, but I imagine there was not a little behind-the-scenes pressure on the Egyptian military by the Obama Administration as well.

Presumably so. Whether it played a decisive or a significant role will depend on who is doing the talking and on what circumstances emerge... as in whether people wish to claim credit or assign blame. If things go bad you can be sure it will all have been America's fault!

If you're going to try to apply pressure, you have to press with the tide, not against it, and to choose your time right. Try to pressure people who feel secure in their position and who see your prescriptions as contrary to their interests and they'll tell you to deposit it gently where the sun don't shine. When - and if - the masses are rattling the gates, they may sing a different tune. Timing is all.

Yes, but you also have told me countless times that there is no insurgency in these countries as well...

As traditionally defined, no, there isn't. Change the definition and it can be anything you want it to be. As stated above, applying pressure on these governments when they see no need for change is going to do nothing.

I think you might be surprised at how much clout the US has, we just haven't been too skilled at employing the more subtle aspects of it.

A bit hypothetical, that. Has our influence not moved anyone because we haven't used it right, or because we haven't as much of it as we thought we had? Hard to verify that. I see no reason to believe, though, that governments will change their domestic policies because we want them to. Do we change our policies on health care or capital punishment because they don't meet European standards?

This is why in the geo-politics of the Middle East it is so essential for the US to build and sustain working relationships with Turkey and Iran as these two states continue to rise. It is the art of balancing smaller states against and with each other that creates and sustains a stability that supports one's interests. If properly positioned, a simple private conversation between leaders is probably enough.

Remember that they are pursuing their own balances on the side, and that we're not necessarily a part of those balances. I can't imagine any position that would, for example, allow an American leader to tell a Saudi leader what domestic reforms he ought to undertake with any sort of positive results. People don't like that sort of thing. They never have. We wouldn't like it either. They might endure it if we had a real stick to wave, or a carrot they really really wanted, but that's not so much the case these days.

Currently there are a whole lot of despots still sitting at the table looking at the cards showing and nervously checking and rechecking their hole cards as they attempt to calculate the odds of drawing a winning hand.

Being a despot is a good gig until the people call your bluff.

Possibly so, but it's the people who call the bluff, not the USA. We may be able to push a bit with the tide, once it flows, but pushing while it ain't flowing won't do anything. There are very real and very significant limits to what we can do, and if we try to do what we can't, we don't improve things for ourselves.

[tequila]

If you're going to try to apply pressure, you have to press with the tide, not against it, and to choose your time right. Try to pressure people who feel secure in their position and who see your prescriptions as contrary to their interests and they'll tell you to deposit it gently where the sun don't shine. When - and if - the masses are rattling the gates, they may sing a different tune. Timing is all.

In South Korea, Taiwan, El Salvador, and Turkey, significant reforms and democratization occurred without any major crisis or mass demonstrations.

[Bob's World]

A good constitution disrupts the government from becoming overly effective/powerful, while at the same time providing trusted, legal and certain means to the populace to raise such issues without resorting to illegal means.

Even when such means don't exist, sometimes you get lucky, such as when Mr Gorbachev made the conscious decision to not resist the illegal popular movements for liberty that swept across Eastern Europe a generation ago. A different decision and that would have been a bloody disaster.

Most populaces are like that criminal staring up into the dark bore of Dirty Harry's .44 magnum, "you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"
Up until recently they didn't. Now they do. The question will be how many of these governments pull the trigger.

With stability in this region (rather sustaining any particular government of any particular state) being in the US's best interest, the question for the US is how do we best wield our influence see that populaces have better options and to prevent those triggers from being pulled.

[tequila]

I don't think these governments have the slightest interest in our advice, or in our meddling, which is closer to what they would call it. Probably they wouldn't tell us that, but would listen very seriously, promise to think deeply on what we said, then go on doing what they want.

We've a very limited capacity, if any, to change how others govern.

However we have seen that the U.S. does have the capacity to change how our allies govern - especially when we have good military-to-military relations. The Philippines, El Salvador, South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, and Turkey have all made substantive political moves towards democracy in part due to U.S. pressure and influence. In several of those countries, military governments either surrendered power or acquiesced to a reduced political role and the election of former enemies. How does this not qualify as changes in governance?

I doubt we will know the full picture for a long time, but I imagine there was not a little behind-the-scenes pressure on the Egyptian military by the Obama Administration as well.

[Marc]

However we have seen that the U.S. does have the capacity to change how our allies govern - especially when we have good military-to-military relations. The Philippines, El Salvador, South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, and Turkey have all made substantive political moves towards democracy in part due to U.S. pressure and influence. In several of those countries, military governments either surrendered power or acquiesced to a reduced political role and the election of former enemies. How does this not qualify as changes in governance?

Indeed, The Philippines, Colombia, and El Salvador demonstrate that a combination of political pressure, low profile military engagement, and economic incentives can result in an effective U.S. capacity to change how our allies govern. However, alle these operations had/have one goal: to promote democracy. Until now, our track record on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is less clear than it was/is in the three aforementioned examples.

[Steve the Planner]

Marc:

I continue to monitor the Rage events with a focus on something different.

We tend to focus not on promoting democracy but on establishing or maintaining nation-state power structures.

The debate in the Arab world, in my opinion, has, over the last 90 years or so, focused on who gets to control the apparatus of a strong central government descending from the ancient Persian/Greece/Roman empire models, which place sub-national governance/government in a very inferior position easily controlled from above.

What is fascinating to me about Libya is that, unlike the perennial battle over who gets to be in charge (ultimately creating one form of dictatorship over the previous), is that, with no pre-existing pattern, people are beginning to form, admittedly on an experimental and informal basis) sub-national governance structures.

The question they raise, which is markedly different from other countries, is not "who?," but "how?," which, I believe is the first crack in a wall that has, for the most part, held Arab peoples back, and diverted their attention from the issues needed to be addressed in more sophisticated and urbanized systems like they once had in Babylon, etc...

While the results are unpredicatable, in my view, the challenges raised and faced in Libya (free from distortion of anti-imperialism and poverty of resources) are fundamental ones: How do we, as a modern, young Arab society wish to govern ourselves to provide essential services and opportunities?

The Arab World's future may be re-shaped by these nascent Libyan experiments, which, hopefully will impact all the old, unworkable and externally-derived nation-state systems.

Notably, in a world of Nation-States, the shell and trappings are needed, but how can sub-national governance open opportunities (maybe not immediately) for Arab self-determination and civic advancement?

I heard a lady on CNN talking from Benghazi about what she wanted--- greater services, education, opportunities, freedom---voting rights, while perhaps significant vehicles to those ends, where not a front-runner.

[Marc]

Marc:

We tend to focus not on promoting democracy but on establishing or maintaining nation-state power structures.

The debate in the Arab world, in my opinion, has, over the last 90 years or so, focused on who gets to control the apparatus of a strong central government descending from the ancient Persian/Greece/Roman empire models, which place sub-national governance/government in a very inferior position easily controlled from above.

What is fascinating to me about Libya is that, unlike the perennial battle over who gets to be in charge (ultimately creating one form of dictatorship over the previous), is that, with no pre-existing pattern, people are beginning to form, admittedly on an experimental and informal basis) sub-national governance structures.

The question they raise, which is markedly different from other countries, is not "who?," but "how?," which, I believe is the first crack in a wall that has, for the most part, held Arab peoples back, and diverted their attention from the issues needed to be addressed in more sophisticated and urbanized systems like they once had in Babylon, etc...

While the results are unpredicatable, in my view, the challenges raised and faced in Libya (free from distortion of anti-imperialism and poverty of resources) are fundamental ones: How do we, as a modern, young Arab society wish to govern ourselves to provide essential services and opportunities?

The Arab World's future may be re-shaped by these nascent Libyan experiments, which, hopefully will impact all the old, unworkable and externally-derived nation-state systems.

Notably, in a world of Nation-States, the shell and trappings are needed, but how can sub-national governance open opportunities (maybe not immediately) for Arab self-determination and civic advancement?

I heard a lady on CNN talking from Benghazi about what she wanted--- greater services, education, opportunities, freedom---voting rights, while perhaps significant vehicles to those ends, where not a front-runner.

Steve,

The nation-state has been a somewhat problematic concept in the Middle East. The current borders have been drawn by European colonial powers. Pan-Arabists, Islamists, and Arab Nationalists all claimed to hate and reject them. So, in theory you are right. Because current borders have questionable legitimacy, it should be possible to change them. However, this is not what happened in reality. "Very soon after gaining independence, new leaders concentrated all power in their own person. They set up single-party political systems, military dictatorships, or absolute monarchies. Almost all of them quickly abandoned the idea of Pan-Arabism and sanctified the borders they once claimed to be artificially drawn to divide them." http://www.amazon.com/Stalemate-Conf..._at_ep_dpi_1#_ p. 25. So, in practice, most Middle Eastern leaders strongly adhered to nation-states and their borders. Therefore, I am very pessimistic about the opportunities offered by sub-national governance. Until now, experiments have been problematic at best: Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein (an attack with chemical weapons against Kurdish insurgents), nowadays Kurdistan (attempts to change borders to include oil fields in the autonomous territory), Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, North and South-Yemen,... One of the main problems is that nobody knows how to draw the borders. Like in Kurdistan, all parties will try to include as much oil fields as possible in the territory they control. Perhaps, the power-and-oil-sharing process in Iraq can serve as a model here, but its outcome is still uncertain.

[Tukhachevskii]

What is fascinating to me about Libya is that, unlike the perennial battle over who gets to be in charge (ultimately creating one form of dictatorship over the previous), is that, with no pre-existing pattern, people are beginning to form, admittedly on an experimental and informal basis) sub-national governance structures.

Concur with everything but the above. The interesting (basket?)case that is Libya (or Lybia according to one American book I read!) is that the people are not plucking sub-national governance structures out of thin air. The particular structural trajectory that the Libyan state took under Ghaddafi is intriguing. He styled himself as a revolutionary socialist-Islamic ruler (is that Glenn Beck I hear in the background?). Consequently, in order to undermine the tribal structure of Libya as it existed under the previous monarch (Ghaddafi's own tribal lineage was singularly "unimpressive" so he couldn't draw on that power structure to prop himself up) Ghaddafi introduced popular councils, revolutionary committees, &c at all levels of government (talk about un-intended consequences!). Partly, this was to upset the tribal structure of Libya (which he has been largely succesful in suppressing, until now) but mostly it was to diffuse power to such a degree as to leave him the only centre of authroitative power in the hub-spoke system. He periodically, shook up those councils too. But the Libyan people, more perhaps than any other Arab or African state have a great deal of expertise in political management and organisation even if it was, ultimately, stunted by the presence of Ghaddafi, but the damage was done; the Libyan people got a taste of "civil society". He did the same thing with the Armed forces (after all, he's still only a Col.) especially after the return of Libyan jihadis from Afghanistan and the numerous (almost Nasserite) officer revolts since the late 70s. In fact, it was the absence of any real vertically authoritarian system that enabled the "revolt" to spread so quickly, given that there was no reliable coercive instrument to rely upon other than a few loyal "revolutionary" militias. He diffused his power so effectviely throughout the system that, in the end, he had nothing to back it up in an emergency (especially one in which the international system was not conducive to his particular brand of conflict resolution). It's a wonder he was in power so long (but that's nepotisim, clientelism, et al for you). What we are seeing now is the self-organisation of Libya based upon years of exerience but without Ghaddafi's braking mechanism. In the end, nothing succeeds like success; the question we have to ask ourselves is would the "revolt" have occured without Tunisia and Egypt? Which makes generalisations about the "causes" of revolution in general even more suspect.

[Steve the Planner]

Tukhachevskii:

Ain't it grand and amazing?

What if the new national structure clones into two or more structures, or just local councils?

Who controls the oil?

Question remains whether they will be able to carve out something positive for themselves.

Whether good or bad, the majority of the population is urban and young. There is little room for survival of "ancient" tribal systems that, by definition, argue against youth and urban empowerment.

What was that Jurassic Park quote: Life will out?

Now to find out what kind of life....

[Steve the Planner]

Marc:

Lots of people actually know how to create borders---but they must be definitive, accepted, and defensible if they are to survive without conflict.

Demographics, culture and economics often run over poorly defined borders that are obstructed from natural change (or correction).

This idea of borders cannot change is what stands against the march of history: read USA, Germany, Pakistan, etc...

History has been, and will continue to be written by conflicts surrounding improperly set, or conflicting borders and national/sub-national governance structures.

Aversion to change is a characteristic of empires, often creating the history of conflicts.