The news that North Korea is suspending some of the most critical elements of its nuclear weapons program and the United States is shipping food to the regime in return is a very positive development in the roughly twenty year campaign to prevent North Korea from joining the nuclear weapons club.
At the same time it raises some serious and tantalizing questions for both policy makers in Washington, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo, and for folks like you and me, all of us trying to make sense out of events.
By the way, the difference between the world as someone in the President’s or Secretary of State’s position sees it and interested observers like us is not as great as one might imagine. There’s the popular, quasi fantasy scenario: the decision maker reviewing true facts uncovered by daring spies, high tech surveillance and skilled analysts and making the hard choices, often in situations that ordinary folks don’t even know exist. Not only is this version of reality depicted in countless books, movies, TV shows, web series and video games, but by policy makers themselves. After all, if I can get you to believe that “I have examined all the classified information, reflected on the American National Interest and made the only possible choice” then I’m home free. An historical example ... when Lyndon Johnson was presiding over the Vietnam war he would invite favored journalists into the Oval Office to talk about how the war was going. He’d often start the conversation with papers marked TOP SECRET spread out on his desk. The papers would be optimistic assessments of progress in Vietnam. Suddenly, the President would realize that these highly classified documents were there and sweep them into a drawer, knowing that any half competent journalist would have read the documents, even upside down, and was now privy to inside secrets that showed the administration’s policy was right.
The reality is less glamorous. The information available to a decision maker is refined and filtered through multiple layers of the national security bureaucracy. The trite notion of “connecting the dots” is misleading as a metaphor for intelligence analysis. Before you can ask how the dots are connected, you have to decide that this factoid is a dot and not a smudge, that this dot is related to some of those other dots but not others, and that you have enough dots to connect. The intelligence briefings Presidents receive every day, as well as the longer term national security assessments are consensual documents, negotiated across departments and agencies. Depending on the President they contain more or fewer references to points on which the various analysts and agencies disagree.
Not only does the President get filtered and selected information about the world, but at every step of the way the raw data is interpreted in light of someone’s theory about how the world works and how the system works in other countries. The President’s own theories and beliefs are deeply involved in the process, from start to finish, as are the beliefs and preferences of other top officials.
You and I, on the other hand, rely on journalists using primarily open sources of information, along with the occasional strategic leak, for our raw data about what is going on. One of the side effects of the Wikileaks episode was being able to see the close correspondence between the information and analysis being reported in secret diplomatic cables to the information and analysis being reported by journalists. And then you and I, like all human beings, interpret and assess information in light of how we think about the world and what we already believe.
I don’t mean to suggest that we are all like the blind men in the fable who are trying to figure out the elephant (including the seventh and eighth blind men who can’t even find the elephant). But it does mean that access to secret information and the inside dope is far less important than the quality of our concepts and theories and the opportunities we have had to reflect upon the times in the past when we have been right and when we have been wrong.
This admittedly overly simplified version of both how the intelligence system works and how decisions are made is meant to suggest that what I think are the questions that the North Korean agreement raises are perhaps not so different from the puzzles keeping analysts in a number of governments busy.
■ What did Pyongyang and Washington really agree to?
■ What does this tell us about the regime in North Korea?
■ Why was the deal struck now and not earlier or later?
■ What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
The agreement. Mark Manyin from the Congressional Research Service has an excellent synopsis of the terms agreed to by both sides at http://www.cfr.org/north-korea/wary-steps-forward-north-korea/p27526?cid=rss-analysisbriefbackgroundersexp-wary_steps_forward_with_north_-030112
In a nutshell, North Korea agreed to suspend operations at its major production facility for nuclear materials, to open its nuclear program facilities to inspectors from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), and to forgo further testing of long range missiles. The United States agreed to resume shipping food aid to North Korea.
It seems to me the biggest question is whether North Korea really agreed to do what it seems to have promised in terms of inspections and changes in its program or whether, some six months or a year from now, it will be clear that North Korea’s agreement did not include the full range of details, from logistics to access to facilities, that would make inspections fully effective.
Almost as important is the difference Manyin points out in the public statements by the two governments that were released simultaneously in Washington and P’yongyang. The Korean statement explicitly mentions resumption of the Six Party Talks; the Washington statement does not. This could be a comparatively minor difference perhaps based on nuances of language (hypothetical example: one side says “this could (meaning “it’s not beyond the realm of the possible”) lead to resumption...” the other side hears that as “this could (meaning “it makes it possible”) lead to resumption ...”) or it could represent a substantive divergence in understanding that could lead to some serious friction later on.
A much smaller question and one where in fact government insiders do know the answer is how this deal was reached. There are no formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang so the normal channels are not there. It would be interesting to know to what extent diplomats from other countries, such as China, were used as intermediaries and to what extent -- if any -- this was the result of quasi-secret, informal talks between U.S. and North Korean official, perhaps at the UN.
What does this tell us about the regime in North Korea? I think it tells us very little, if anything.
There is ample evidence that there have been massive and pervasive food shortages in North Korea for at least the last three years. This is NOT likely to directly threaten the regime with demonstrations or a defiant opposition movement; starving people do not rebel. But the nightmare that haunts North Korea’s neighbors is that the routine functions of government, which in North Korea include production and distribution of everything people need to survive, will grind to a halt because the state cannot pay the salaries of the bureaucrats and workers who operate the system and they will have to spend their time scrounging for survival. If that happens, China will be flooded with millions of grindingly poor and starving people, the world will see scores, maybe hundreds or even thousands of desperate people dying in the mine fields that separate South Korea from the north and the international community will have to mount and sustain a humanitarian relief operation like nothing we’ve seen since the end of World War II.
There are three hypothesis I can think of to describe the current state of politics in Pyongyang.
I. The transition from Kim Jong Il to his young son has gone far more rapidly and smoothly than most people expected. Kim Jong Un is now picking up where his father left off (note that the deal announced in February was largely agreed before Kim Jong Il’s death.)
II. Kim Jong Un is a figurehead, a shadow puppet whose strings are being pulled by a coalition of his older relatives, senior military officers and heads of the state apparatus all of whom are ready agree to a momentarily halt in the nuclear program in exchange for vital food aid.
III. There is no transition as such but a pitched battle between various factions: the Kim family, state bureaucrats, party functionaries and the military. At the moment a faction willing to suspend the nuclear program for the time being or even contemplate ending it is riding high; next month or year all will change.
What we’ve seen so far fits any of those hypotheses. The deal tells us nothing.
Why was the deal struck now and not earlier or later? There is some pretty good evidence that there was a tentative deal reached with Korea before Kim Jong Il’s death and some attempts by the Koreans to get the U.S. to sweeten the deal. It may well be that it is only now, and not a few weeks ago, that it become clear that this deal was as good as it was going to get. I can think of two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, hypotheses that cold explain why not later.
I. Korean politics. The timing is explained by whatever is going on at the highest levels of the North Korean regime.
II. American politics. As we’re all well aware, the first chapter of the 2012 Presidential campaign is in full swing. The North Koreans might be motivated by the calculation that if they wait much longer an agreement could become an issue in the campaign and Obama might wish to bolster himself from an attack by Republicans by either not making an agreement at all or trying to wring more concessions out of them. They might also be concerned about the possibility that a Republican will sit in the White House next January. The fact that Mitt Romney’s chief foreign policy advisor is John Bolton – fiery super hawk from the Bush “Axis of Evil” years – and the other candidates have even more militant advisors may have convinced Pyongyang that it was now or never.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Actually, quite a bit.
The Six Party talks are very important to Chinese foreign policy for both symbolic and practical reasons. From the broad symbolic perspective, the Six Party Talks show China as a leading player in regional politics, underlining the centrality of Beijing to peace and stability in Asia. It is China, not the United Sates who sets the agenda and the timing of negotiations, and China, not the United States, to whom everyone looks for leadership.
From a practical perspective, China cares deeply about both the specter of a horrific human disaster in north Korean and the apocalyptic vision of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. A much smaller practical consequence would be the opportunity Six Party Talks represents for U.S. and Chinese leaders to cooperate on a major issue to counterbalance the prickly relations of the last few months (and the China bashing that will mark the Presidential campaign.)
Bottom line: you and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and I, observers and analysts from the lowest echelons of the CIA to the highest echelons of the Chinese government, all have to stay tuned for further developments.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Arab Spring, Part 2
The first part of this look at the Arab Spring focused on two cases that have gone relatively well. Neither Tunisia nor Egypt experienced a revolution, in the sense of a fundamental change in the structure of society, but both saw a change in regime and a significant opportunity for the development of more democratic politics. Other countries in the Middle East have not fared as well.
Using the same set of variables: structure and cohesion of the old regime, nature of the opposition groups, and role of outsiders, we can take a look at three countries that have had less optimistic outcomes. In Libya the weakness and disarray of the opposition groups stands out; in Syria the structure and dynamics of the old regime seem most important and in Bahrain outsiders played the decisive role.
The Libyan story is widely known: NATO air strikes played a central role in Qadhafi’s demise. The distinction between intervening to prevent mass bloodshed and intervening to support rebel military operations was clear enough in Washington and New York; it was meaningless on the ground.
The base of Qadhafi’s rule of a country created out of three historically distinctive regions was traditional tribal alliances, lubricated by oil wealth and effective control of military force. When the uprising began in the east anti-regime forces were able to create a large number of small local militias. As the battles raged on, these militias became more effective even as the air strikes degraded the capability of units loyal to Qadhafi. (One suspects that the British Special Air Service members who were embarrassingly captured and then released were not the only foreign advisors and trainers in Libya.)
Even when Tripoli fell to rebel forces, the identities and backgrounds of the rebel leaders were obscure. At best the new leadership is a loose coalition of returned exiles, local notables and Islamists. Plans for the future are largely irrelevant right now because the new regime has not solidified its hold on the capital. The streets of Tripoli remain overrun by militiamen whose first loyalty is to their immediate leadership, not some broader Libyan policy. There has been a certain amount of looting and of settling scores with supporters of the Qadhafi regime. Fire fights between groups are fairly common. Many of the militia groups are reluctant to disband lest their home towns and villages be assaulted by other militias. Despite the resumption of oil sales and continued political support from Europe, the future of Libya is very much up in the air.
Why has Syria gone so dreadfully wrong? First of all, the Syrian military political and economic elite is deeply entangled with the Assad family. Since 1969 Syria has been dominated by men from the Alawite sect, a small group among Syria’s minority Shi’a community. The sense of being a minority among a minority that has been historically at the bottom of Syrian society contributes to a great feeling of solidarity among the leadership and resistance to change and reform. It may well be that much of the Syrian elite fears that if the al-Assads go, so too will everyone else.
The Syrian state has developed a very effective repressive apparatus over the past 40 years and bolstered it with propaganda images of regime opponents as either tools of Western Imperialists hell bent on undermining the leading proponent of Arab nationalism or stalking horses for reactionary Muslim Brothers who would destroy secularism and tolerance.
The Damascus regime acts as if they are under serge and fighting for their lives. That may help explain the widespread use of brute military force against civilians, especially in cities like Homs that have long been centers of opposition to Alawite rule.
The Syrian opposition has been hampered by the fact that is it centered in peripheral areas like Homs and Latakia and not at the center of the system, Damascus. It has developed a military wing from units who have defected from the Syrian military but cannot effectively protect civilians in the areas where it dominates. The opposition is split between London-based exiles and groups within Syria itself and it is not clear if the agreement signed last month in Cairo will result in more effective cooperation and coordination.
Outsiders have played a public but ineffective role in Syria. The Arab League continued the pattern it first showed in Libya by criticizing one of its members and then taking the remarkable step of expelling Syria for human rights abuses. The first stage of the Arab League observer mission in Syria could do nothing but verify that the violent assaults continued. While the misson has been extended, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia and the small countries bordering the Persian Gulf) have withdrawn their personnel and called for more active involvement by the UN Security Council.
Calls for more robust external intervention seem to me to be cynically manipulative. Both the United States and the European Union have implemented sanctions against the Assad regime. But the UN Security Council will not take any action on Syria. Russia and China have been extremely reluctant to sanction Iran for its nuclear program because of both a general reluctance to interfere in the internal affairs of any country and some more tangible economic and political ties to Teheran. They are highly unlikely to support a Security Council resolution that would matter in Syria and the members of the GCC know this full well. Many of the rulers and policy makers in Saudi Arabia and Gulf States are convinced that Iran is the central problem in the region. Syria is seen as Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world. I think it is fair to suggest that calls from Gulf States and others for more robust UN involvement in Syria are far more aimed at dealing a blow to Iran than supporting the concept of a Responsibility to Protect that figured so prominently in the justification for Libya.
I hope I am wrong, but I do not see anything good happening in Syria in the near future. The situation increasingly resembles a civil war. It could drag on for months, even years. The regime may survive, ruling a sullen and resentful population ground down by both physical repression and increasingly difficult economic times.
Outside intervention has been decisive in Bahrain.
Bahrain was briefly part of the Arab Spring, when protests erupted against the reluctance of the monarchy to make modest democratic reforms. The regime in Bahrain is a traditional, patriarchal monarchy, in which citizens are expected to forgo political involvement in return for lavish subsidies of everything from gasoline to education. One important reality of Bahrain is that the ruling family and allied members of the elite are Sunni Muslim and the majority of the Bahraini citizens are Shi’a. This has been a source of discontent and agitation for greater democracy for the past two decades and in the 1990s there were some attempts to increase public involvement in consultations without undermining royal supremacy.
When protesters shut down traffic and commerce in Manama, Bahrain’s capital and home to over 10% of the population, both Bahrain’s rulers and their neighbors in Saudi Arabia framed it as a Shi’a assault on Sunni power, fomented by Iran. Saudi Arabia responded to a request form the king of Bahrain for help by sending military units across the 15 mile long causeway that connects the island of Bahrain to mainland Saudi Arabia. After “restoring order” the Saudi units have remained in Manama and effectively suppressed further demonstrations.
If we broaden our perspective from the dramatic events of the past year in the Middle East and take into account developments in the rest of the world in the last three decades we may gain some insight. Beginning in the 1980s what scholars dubbed “The Third Wave of Democracy” spread over Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Long standing authoritarian regimes gave way to multi-party liberal democratic and stagnant command economies were replaced by market systems.
Some of those dramatic regime changes have stuck and former dictatorships have become functioning relatively democratic systems. Others have stagnated or even (e.g. Russia) drifted back toward authoritarian rule.
An important variable in explaining success and failure of nascent democracies has been economic development. Regimes that succeed in meeting basic needs and expanding opportunities for everyday people have tended to maintain their democratic gains. Those that have either not been able to meet basic physical needs or have seen rapidly widening gulfs between a wealthy few and a less affluent many have been more likely to back slide.
The second thing a broader perspective reveals is the reminder that politics is a process, a series of events and underlying dynamics, not an overnight stand. We’re back to Yogi, and it ain’t over until its over.
Using the same set of variables: structure and cohesion of the old regime, nature of the opposition groups, and role of outsiders, we can take a look at three countries that have had less optimistic outcomes. In Libya the weakness and disarray of the opposition groups stands out; in Syria the structure and dynamics of the old regime seem most important and in Bahrain outsiders played the decisive role.
The Libyan story is widely known: NATO air strikes played a central role in Qadhafi’s demise. The distinction between intervening to prevent mass bloodshed and intervening to support rebel military operations was clear enough in Washington and New York; it was meaningless on the ground.
The base of Qadhafi’s rule of a country created out of three historically distinctive regions was traditional tribal alliances, lubricated by oil wealth and effective control of military force. When the uprising began in the east anti-regime forces were able to create a large number of small local militias. As the battles raged on, these militias became more effective even as the air strikes degraded the capability of units loyal to Qadhafi. (One suspects that the British Special Air Service members who were embarrassingly captured and then released were not the only foreign advisors and trainers in Libya.)
Even when Tripoli fell to rebel forces, the identities and backgrounds of the rebel leaders were obscure. At best the new leadership is a loose coalition of returned exiles, local notables and Islamists. Plans for the future are largely irrelevant right now because the new regime has not solidified its hold on the capital. The streets of Tripoli remain overrun by militiamen whose first loyalty is to their immediate leadership, not some broader Libyan policy. There has been a certain amount of looting and of settling scores with supporters of the Qadhafi regime. Fire fights between groups are fairly common. Many of the militia groups are reluctant to disband lest their home towns and villages be assaulted by other militias. Despite the resumption of oil sales and continued political support from Europe, the future of Libya is very much up in the air.
Why has Syria gone so dreadfully wrong? First of all, the Syrian military political and economic elite is deeply entangled with the Assad family. Since 1969 Syria has been dominated by men from the Alawite sect, a small group among Syria’s minority Shi’a community. The sense of being a minority among a minority that has been historically at the bottom of Syrian society contributes to a great feeling of solidarity among the leadership and resistance to change and reform. It may well be that much of the Syrian elite fears that if the al-Assads go, so too will everyone else.
The Syrian state has developed a very effective repressive apparatus over the past 40 years and bolstered it with propaganda images of regime opponents as either tools of Western Imperialists hell bent on undermining the leading proponent of Arab nationalism or stalking horses for reactionary Muslim Brothers who would destroy secularism and tolerance.
The Damascus regime acts as if they are under serge and fighting for their lives. That may help explain the widespread use of brute military force against civilians, especially in cities like Homs that have long been centers of opposition to Alawite rule.
The Syrian opposition has been hampered by the fact that is it centered in peripheral areas like Homs and Latakia and not at the center of the system, Damascus. It has developed a military wing from units who have defected from the Syrian military but cannot effectively protect civilians in the areas where it dominates. The opposition is split between London-based exiles and groups within Syria itself and it is not clear if the agreement signed last month in Cairo will result in more effective cooperation and coordination.
Outsiders have played a public but ineffective role in Syria. The Arab League continued the pattern it first showed in Libya by criticizing one of its members and then taking the remarkable step of expelling Syria for human rights abuses. The first stage of the Arab League observer mission in Syria could do nothing but verify that the violent assaults continued. While the misson has been extended, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia and the small countries bordering the Persian Gulf) have withdrawn their personnel and called for more active involvement by the UN Security Council.
Calls for more robust external intervention seem to me to be cynically manipulative. Both the United States and the European Union have implemented sanctions against the Assad regime. But the UN Security Council will not take any action on Syria. Russia and China have been extremely reluctant to sanction Iran for its nuclear program because of both a general reluctance to interfere in the internal affairs of any country and some more tangible economic and political ties to Teheran. They are highly unlikely to support a Security Council resolution that would matter in Syria and the members of the GCC know this full well. Many of the rulers and policy makers in Saudi Arabia and Gulf States are convinced that Iran is the central problem in the region. Syria is seen as Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world. I think it is fair to suggest that calls from Gulf States and others for more robust UN involvement in Syria are far more aimed at dealing a blow to Iran than supporting the concept of a Responsibility to Protect that figured so prominently in the justification for Libya.
I hope I am wrong, but I do not see anything good happening in Syria in the near future. The situation increasingly resembles a civil war. It could drag on for months, even years. The regime may survive, ruling a sullen and resentful population ground down by both physical repression and increasingly difficult economic times.
Outside intervention has been decisive in Bahrain.
Bahrain was briefly part of the Arab Spring, when protests erupted against the reluctance of the monarchy to make modest democratic reforms. The regime in Bahrain is a traditional, patriarchal monarchy, in which citizens are expected to forgo political involvement in return for lavish subsidies of everything from gasoline to education. One important reality of Bahrain is that the ruling family and allied members of the elite are Sunni Muslim and the majority of the Bahraini citizens are Shi’a. This has been a source of discontent and agitation for greater democracy for the past two decades and in the 1990s there were some attempts to increase public involvement in consultations without undermining royal supremacy.
When protesters shut down traffic and commerce in Manama, Bahrain’s capital and home to over 10% of the population, both Bahrain’s rulers and their neighbors in Saudi Arabia framed it as a Shi’a assault on Sunni power, fomented by Iran. Saudi Arabia responded to a request form the king of Bahrain for help by sending military units across the 15 mile long causeway that connects the island of Bahrain to mainland Saudi Arabia. After “restoring order” the Saudi units have remained in Manama and effectively suppressed further demonstrations.
If we broaden our perspective from the dramatic events of the past year in the Middle East and take into account developments in the rest of the world in the last three decades we may gain some insight. Beginning in the 1980s what scholars dubbed “The Third Wave of Democracy” spread over Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Long standing authoritarian regimes gave way to multi-party liberal democratic and stagnant command economies were replaced by market systems.
Some of those dramatic regime changes have stuck and former dictatorships have become functioning relatively democratic systems. Others have stagnated or even (e.g. Russia) drifted back toward authoritarian rule.
An important variable in explaining success and failure of nascent democracies has been economic development. Regimes that succeed in meeting basic needs and expanding opportunities for everyday people have tended to maintain their democratic gains. Those that have either not been able to meet basic physical needs or have seen rapidly widening gulfs between a wealthy few and a less affluent many have been more likely to back slide.
The second thing a broader perspective reveals is the reminder that politics is a process, a series of events and underlying dynamics, not an overnight stand. We’re back to Yogi, and it ain’t over until its over.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
The "Arab Spring" a year later
It is roughly the one year anniversary of the protests in Tunisia that led to the demise of the Zine Ben-Ali government, the opening act of the Arab Spring. Yogi Berra was right, “it ain’t over until its over.” The dynamics unleashed over the past year have not yet played themselves out anywhere and it is far too soon to reach any definitive conclusions. But it is not totally foolish to take stock in the middle of historical movements and get some sense of direction.
Two observation are safe to make. First, neither the most naive hopes nor most paranoid fears have been realized. Old authoritarian regimes have not been replaced with perfect democracies, with economic justice and unicorns dancing in the streets. But neither have Islamist bogeymen or sinister Iranian agents seized power, forcing burka-clad women back into the kitchen, banning music and laughter, and making great strides toward a restored Caliphate that stretches from the Middle East to China.
Second, the “gee whiz, hip technology has changed everything” notion has been discredited. Flying fingers Twittering, posting to Facebook, and texting were not the cause of success in Egypt nor somehow to blame for the nightmare in Syria. Technology makes it easier to do some things but in the end it is old school politics that matters: real people, face to face in real time protesting, organizing and refusing to play by the old rules.
The cliche that all politics is local has a couple of grains of truth and the events of the past year have varied greatly from country to country, but three basic dimensions can be seen. The structure and cohesion of the old regime, the nature of opposition groups, and the role of outsiders.
I will split this topic into two. The first section, which you reading now, will focus on two countries, Tunisia and Egypt, who have significant success in moving toward democracy. The second installment will discuss three countries with far less promising outcomes: Syria, Libya and Bahrain.
Tunisia, where it all arguably started, has probably made more progress than anywhere else. Elections for a Constituent Assembly last Fall showed significant support for moderate Islamist parties and secular leftists. The parties have so far shown an ability to cooperate in an interim government and draft a new constitution.
The problems with the old regime in Tunisia were symbolized by Zine Ben-Ali, his immediate family and their cronies. Lack of jobs and opportunity, an unresponsive and repressive state apparatus and economic inequality were, and remain, major problems but there is much less resentment of a larger corrupt and illegitimate elite than elsewhere in the Middle East. Thus the challenge of building new institutions is not complicated by the need to simultaneously purge a large proportion of senior officials and business people. An important fact of life in Tunisia is the relatively small size of the miliary and the relatively small role it has played in politics throughout the country’s history. The military is a far less important interest group than in many other countries and less inclined (and able) to impose its preferences on civilian leadership.
The nature and dynamics of the opposition has been profoundly affected by the facts that Tunisia is small country (under 11 million), relatively urban, with comparatively low unemployment and very little abject poverty. That has made cooperation across ideological and social boundaries easier and fostered a climate of trust. Regime opponents and the parties that have emerged to contest elections show the familiar bipolar pattern: political Islam attracts a plurality of the voters but secular democratic liberals also have strong support. And the most prominent Islamist party has repeatedly stressed its commitment to democracy.
Outsiders played no significant role in Tunisia. Tunisia’s neighbors did not fear that anti-regime sentiment would spill over the border (Algeria was right; Libya wrong), neither the U.S. nor Europe felt they had a much interest in the outcome and the regime did not resort to large scale violence or brutal repression that provoked a humanitarian crisis.
Egypt presents a more complicated picture. The ruling elite was far more than Mubarak and his immediate cronies. The liberalization of the Egyptian economy in the 1980s created a relatively large group of newly wealthy people who owed their success to political connections and favoritism. The Egyptian military has been a significant political actor ever since 1952 and the upper ranks of the officer corps were (and are) closely tied to the upper stratum of Egyptian society and politics. Power passed from Mubarak to the senior army officers without disturbing the structures of power and privilege in Egyptian society. The continued demonstrations in Tahir Square and protracted struggle over rules for parliamentary and presidential elections reflect a deep unease among Egyptians that the new boss will, unfortunately, turn out to be same as the old boss. The struggle to change policies and priorities to address economic stagnation, unemployment, and lack of social mobility is just beginning.
Far more than in Tunisia, the old regime succeeded in portraying Islamists in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular as enemies of freedom and a threat to Egyptian life. This has made relations between the parties and groups with a liberal democratic secular orientation and the more traditionally Islamic parties difficult. There is a major cultural difference between the relatively well off, relatively well educated, relatively liberal on social issues prototypical twenty something Tahir Square protestor and the Nile villager or urban slum dweller who does not post English language Tweets or trust foreign media like Al Jazeera. These differences are reflected in the backgrounds and orientations of the leadership of secular and Islamist movements. This has made collaboration among Islamist parries and secular liberals more fraught.
The several self-identified Islamist parties have done very well in the convoluted three stage process of parliamentary elections. The Freedom and Justice Party, linked to the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood leadership, has been the most successful vote getter, achieving a plurality of seats. Optimists both within and outside Egypt take the party’s stated commitment to democratic values and tolerance seriously; skeptics worry that an alliance between Freedom and Justice and more extreme Islamists would control over two thirds of the parliamentary seats.
Outsiders played a small role in the downfall of Mubarak. The United States tried to publicly tiptoe between support for the democracy movement and preservation of the institutional and personal ties between U.S. and Egyptian intelligence and military players. It is pretty clear that behind the scenes the U.S. encouraged the Egyptian military to throw Mubarak under the bus to preserve the larger status quo. Relations with outsiders are a much larger issue in Egyptian than Tunisia and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tops the agenda. Polling data is pretty clear that the majority of Egyptians have not ever been in favor of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and strongly support greater Egyptian support for Hamas and the Gaza Strip. But the Egyptian military and political leadership (including Freedom and Justice party leaders) have repeatedly stressed their intention to abide by the treaty. The more serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations, I think, is the Gaza Strip. The primary locus of economic activity in Gaza is the series of smuggling routes that have been set up to evade the Israeli blockade. Under Mubarak the issue was defined as weakening Hamas and other Islamists and Cairo was happy to oblige with border closings and tacit approval of the destruction of smuggling tunnels. But since Mubarak’s departure the emphasis has been shifted from thwarting Islamists to aiding suffering citizens and Egyptian collaboration has dropped dramatically. Another Israeli military adventure in Gaza along the lines of the ill-fated Operation Cast Lead of December ‘08 and January ‘09 could trigger massive public protest that would make the current cold peace untenable with very negative consequences for the Egyptian economy and role in the world.
Tunisia and Egypt are well past the morning after the night before and well into the long, tedious and sometimes frustrating process of creating a new political order that works.
Two observation are safe to make. First, neither the most naive hopes nor most paranoid fears have been realized. Old authoritarian regimes have not been replaced with perfect democracies, with economic justice and unicorns dancing in the streets. But neither have Islamist bogeymen or sinister Iranian agents seized power, forcing burka-clad women back into the kitchen, banning music and laughter, and making great strides toward a restored Caliphate that stretches from the Middle East to China.
Second, the “gee whiz, hip technology has changed everything” notion has been discredited. Flying fingers Twittering, posting to Facebook, and texting were not the cause of success in Egypt nor somehow to blame for the nightmare in Syria. Technology makes it easier to do some things but in the end it is old school politics that matters: real people, face to face in real time protesting, organizing and refusing to play by the old rules.
The cliche that all politics is local has a couple of grains of truth and the events of the past year have varied greatly from country to country, but three basic dimensions can be seen. The structure and cohesion of the old regime, the nature of opposition groups, and the role of outsiders.
I will split this topic into two. The first section, which you reading now, will focus on two countries, Tunisia and Egypt, who have significant success in moving toward democracy. The second installment will discuss three countries with far less promising outcomes: Syria, Libya and Bahrain.
Tunisia, where it all arguably started, has probably made more progress than anywhere else. Elections for a Constituent Assembly last Fall showed significant support for moderate Islamist parties and secular leftists. The parties have so far shown an ability to cooperate in an interim government and draft a new constitution.
The problems with the old regime in Tunisia were symbolized by Zine Ben-Ali, his immediate family and their cronies. Lack of jobs and opportunity, an unresponsive and repressive state apparatus and economic inequality were, and remain, major problems but there is much less resentment of a larger corrupt and illegitimate elite than elsewhere in the Middle East. Thus the challenge of building new institutions is not complicated by the need to simultaneously purge a large proportion of senior officials and business people. An important fact of life in Tunisia is the relatively small size of the miliary and the relatively small role it has played in politics throughout the country’s history. The military is a far less important interest group than in many other countries and less inclined (and able) to impose its preferences on civilian leadership.
The nature and dynamics of the opposition has been profoundly affected by the facts that Tunisia is small country (under 11 million), relatively urban, with comparatively low unemployment and very little abject poverty. That has made cooperation across ideological and social boundaries easier and fostered a climate of trust. Regime opponents and the parties that have emerged to contest elections show the familiar bipolar pattern: political Islam attracts a plurality of the voters but secular democratic liberals also have strong support. And the most prominent Islamist party has repeatedly stressed its commitment to democracy.
Outsiders played no significant role in Tunisia. Tunisia’s neighbors did not fear that anti-regime sentiment would spill over the border (Algeria was right; Libya wrong), neither the U.S. nor Europe felt they had a much interest in the outcome and the regime did not resort to large scale violence or brutal repression that provoked a humanitarian crisis.
Egypt presents a more complicated picture. The ruling elite was far more than Mubarak and his immediate cronies. The liberalization of the Egyptian economy in the 1980s created a relatively large group of newly wealthy people who owed their success to political connections and favoritism. The Egyptian military has been a significant political actor ever since 1952 and the upper ranks of the officer corps were (and are) closely tied to the upper stratum of Egyptian society and politics. Power passed from Mubarak to the senior army officers without disturbing the structures of power and privilege in Egyptian society. The continued demonstrations in Tahir Square and protracted struggle over rules for parliamentary and presidential elections reflect a deep unease among Egyptians that the new boss will, unfortunately, turn out to be same as the old boss. The struggle to change policies and priorities to address economic stagnation, unemployment, and lack of social mobility is just beginning.
Far more than in Tunisia, the old regime succeeded in portraying Islamists in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular as enemies of freedom and a threat to Egyptian life. This has made relations between the parties and groups with a liberal democratic secular orientation and the more traditionally Islamic parties difficult. There is a major cultural difference between the relatively well off, relatively well educated, relatively liberal on social issues prototypical twenty something Tahir Square protestor and the Nile villager or urban slum dweller who does not post English language Tweets or trust foreign media like Al Jazeera. These differences are reflected in the backgrounds and orientations of the leadership of secular and Islamist movements. This has made collaboration among Islamist parries and secular liberals more fraught.
The several self-identified Islamist parties have done very well in the convoluted three stage process of parliamentary elections. The Freedom and Justice Party, linked to the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood leadership, has been the most successful vote getter, achieving a plurality of seats. Optimists both within and outside Egypt take the party’s stated commitment to democratic values and tolerance seriously; skeptics worry that an alliance between Freedom and Justice and more extreme Islamists would control over two thirds of the parliamentary seats.
Outsiders played a small role in the downfall of Mubarak. The United States tried to publicly tiptoe between support for the democracy movement and preservation of the institutional and personal ties between U.S. and Egyptian intelligence and military players. It is pretty clear that behind the scenes the U.S. encouraged the Egyptian military to throw Mubarak under the bus to preserve the larger status quo. Relations with outsiders are a much larger issue in Egyptian than Tunisia and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tops the agenda. Polling data is pretty clear that the majority of Egyptians have not ever been in favor of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and strongly support greater Egyptian support for Hamas and the Gaza Strip. But the Egyptian military and political leadership (including Freedom and Justice party leaders) have repeatedly stressed their intention to abide by the treaty. The more serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations, I think, is the Gaza Strip. The primary locus of economic activity in Gaza is the series of smuggling routes that have been set up to evade the Israeli blockade. Under Mubarak the issue was defined as weakening Hamas and other Islamists and Cairo was happy to oblige with border closings and tacit approval of the destruction of smuggling tunnels. But since Mubarak’s departure the emphasis has been shifted from thwarting Islamists to aiding suffering citizens and Egyptian collaboration has dropped dramatically. Another Israeli military adventure in Gaza along the lines of the ill-fated Operation Cast Lead of December ‘08 and January ‘09 could trigger massive public protest that would make the current cold peace untenable with very negative consequences for the Egyptian economy and role in the world.
Tunisia and Egypt are well past the morning after the night before and well into the long, tedious and sometimes frustrating process of creating a new political order that works.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Dialog on Nukes and Other Intresting Issues
Tony snet me a thoughtful email discussing several things. Thought it deservfed a more public reponse.
You mention seven nations that have admitted nukes (with Israel's denials and PRNK's claims being suspect) but eight nations as a baseline for the Nth Nation Problem; is the 8th South Africa? Was it not true that they dismantled one or more working weapons before the fall of Apartheid? (I am asking that sincerely, not rhetorically). If so, was it not the case that their program was pursued hand-in-hand with Israel? I thought that that was factual and that it was inconceivable that Israel would participate and not also produce.
I’m counting Israel as a nuclear weapons state, despite fact that it is undeclared. South Africa did have an active weapons program almost certainly with Israeli help. And the weapons and program were dismantled when it became clear that the apartheid regime was doomed. This is the only example of a state abandoning an active weapons program -- Libya did have some kind of development program but apparently was a long way from success when it dismantled its nuclear facility in cooperation with the U.S. and UK.
And at the risk of pedantry, you aren't including the US on the list of nations that haven't used nukes, are you? Or does the list only start from when there was a plurality?
The atomic bomb was pursued as a bigger and better bomb for the kind of strategic bombing of cities that was carried out in both Germany and Japan. Only at the end, especially after the successful test in New Mexico did some of the most prominent nuclear scientists in the project raise serious objections to their use. The scale of destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a shock that led some people to wonder if these weapons were not different in kind. Serious thinking about how and when to use nuclear weapons began after the USSR developed an atomic weapon in 1949. It was not until the early 1950s that deterrence theory emerged as a serious subject and the first wave of civilian defense intellectuals began to use game theory and simulations to elaborate increasingly complex scenarios in which I try to decide what to do to deter my opponent when I know that he knows that I know that he knows ...
As I look back on worst days of the Cold War and back at the week of lectures I used to give on nuclear weapons, it seems to me it is a mark of real progress that we don’t have to worry about how much death and destruction is enough, that we do not live in a world in which we’d have about 10 minutes between the time a Soviet submarine launched missile was detected emerging from the Pacific and the time the war head hit LA. I remember being puzzled in the earliest days of the nuclear era, when the threat was lumbering bombers, by the formal evacuation plan for Portland. The idea was that we’d have several hours notice of Soviet bombers coming over the pole and everyone on the east side would get in their cars and escape the city by driving out of town toward Mt. Hood where the Red Cross or somebody would have tents, cots and donuts waiting. The plan called for all the east-west streets to become eastbound and people would drive side by side, bumper to bumper and 60 miles an hour. I could see us driving north on 18th Avenue and stopping at Fremont Street but I couldn’t figure out how we were going to get into the stream of cars on Fremont whizzing away to safety. Would some polite person stop and let us in? Or was it like church where you waited until the folks in front of you went by and then got out of the pew? I think I was also worried that they’d run out of donuts.
I have always been quite confused about the political bodies acting within Iran, and it looks like it isn't clear to others either. Does Clinton's State Department have an official published stance on how they think it works?
I was not as clear as I should have been. We (both “we” the U.S. intelligence community and “we” students of the Middle East) know a great deal about the Iranian system, in the same we know a great deal about American politics. But for both the U.S. and Iran, dissecting specific policies and programs is very difficult. Perhaps ethanol is a helpful example. Instead of waste material like sugar cane or weeds, we use corn even though it is an inferior source on every dimension except putting money in the pockets of big corn producers. Are the members of the House and Senate from corn growing states the key players, or is it the influence of giant corporations like ADM and CONAGRA, or the fact that every president began by trudging through Iowa farms before the caucasuses? If you wanted to change that set of laws and policies, where would you begin, who would you attempt to influence?
Your point about nukes being a deterrent and not an instrument of compliance reminds me of the Vietnam-era personage (I forget who; was it Scowcroft?) who claimed he wanted to nuke Vietnam and put up a parking lot. I assumed that that explicit sentiment was bandied about by the left because it was so inflammatory and by the right as a realpolitik trial balloon.
Probably thinking of Curtis LeMay who wanted to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.
My issue with a PRNK, Pakistan, or Iran with nukes is primarily maintenance. I assume that with a great enough percentage of GDP any nation can get a nuke; fortunately, the higher the percentage the greater reluctance to part with the actual device and all that it entails. And so the prize would sit, propping up some regional middle-weight on the international heavy-weight stage. But as it sits it decays and leaks and is a constant health and security threat; how much GDP is set aside and prioritized year-after-year, decade-after-decade, in a turbulent kleptocracy for nuclear arsenal maintenance and safeguards? Which might be part of the charm; it's one thing to push around Khadaffi and not care too much about who winds up with the keys put fomenting and abetting civil war in a nuclear Iran seems altogether different.
You are right ... and the same is true for Pakistan ... and a lot scarier because a lot more likely.
Lastly, it seemed to me that in Gulf War I, Saudi Arabia relied on the US to local problems like Iraq and by extension Iran. Now with US exhaustion and withdrawal, we see the Saudi armed forces acting abroad (I have no idea how novel or significant that is but it's the first time I had even heard of Saudi security forces). Has the baton been tacitly handed to the Saudi's to up their direct involvement in local areas of their immediate interest? Is the US interested in letting Iran be a Saudi problem?
No. Saudi military has been a major purchaser of U.S. and European weapons for some time. The military is very well equipped and well trained, but small compared to Saddam’s Iraq or Iran. Saudi Arabia could not defend itself against a concerted attack from Iran. The recent operation in Bahrain to support the government was the first operation outside the country. It was meant to support a friendly monarch against a democracy movement that included significant numbers of the Shi’a minority.
We will have finished withdrawing combat forces from Iraq by the end of the year and are going to begin winding down Afghanistan next year. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as withdrawing from the Middle East or abandoning our role as protector in the Persian Gulf.
You mention seven nations that have admitted nukes (with Israel's denials and PRNK's claims being suspect) but eight nations as a baseline for the Nth Nation Problem; is the 8th South Africa? Was it not true that they dismantled one or more working weapons before the fall of Apartheid? (I am asking that sincerely, not rhetorically). If so, was it not the case that their program was pursued hand-in-hand with Israel? I thought that that was factual and that it was inconceivable that Israel would participate and not also produce.
I’m counting Israel as a nuclear weapons state, despite fact that it is undeclared. South Africa did have an active weapons program almost certainly with Israeli help. And the weapons and program were dismantled when it became clear that the apartheid regime was doomed. This is the only example of a state abandoning an active weapons program -- Libya did have some kind of development program but apparently was a long way from success when it dismantled its nuclear facility in cooperation with the U.S. and UK.
And at the risk of pedantry, you aren't including the US on the list of nations that haven't used nukes, are you? Or does the list only start from when there was a plurality?
The atomic bomb was pursued as a bigger and better bomb for the kind of strategic bombing of cities that was carried out in both Germany and Japan. Only at the end, especially after the successful test in New Mexico did some of the most prominent nuclear scientists in the project raise serious objections to their use. The scale of destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a shock that led some people to wonder if these weapons were not different in kind. Serious thinking about how and when to use nuclear weapons began after the USSR developed an atomic weapon in 1949. It was not until the early 1950s that deterrence theory emerged as a serious subject and the first wave of civilian defense intellectuals began to use game theory and simulations to elaborate increasingly complex scenarios in which I try to decide what to do to deter my opponent when I know that he knows that I know that he knows ...
As I look back on worst days of the Cold War and back at the week of lectures I used to give on nuclear weapons, it seems to me it is a mark of real progress that we don’t have to worry about how much death and destruction is enough, that we do not live in a world in which we’d have about 10 minutes between the time a Soviet submarine launched missile was detected emerging from the Pacific and the time the war head hit LA. I remember being puzzled in the earliest days of the nuclear era, when the threat was lumbering bombers, by the formal evacuation plan for Portland. The idea was that we’d have several hours notice of Soviet bombers coming over the pole and everyone on the east side would get in their cars and escape the city by driving out of town toward Mt. Hood where the Red Cross or somebody would have tents, cots and donuts waiting. The plan called for all the east-west streets to become eastbound and people would drive side by side, bumper to bumper and 60 miles an hour. I could see us driving north on 18th Avenue and stopping at Fremont Street but I couldn’t figure out how we were going to get into the stream of cars on Fremont whizzing away to safety. Would some polite person stop and let us in? Or was it like church where you waited until the folks in front of you went by and then got out of the pew? I think I was also worried that they’d run out of donuts.
I have always been quite confused about the political bodies acting within Iran, and it looks like it isn't clear to others either. Does Clinton's State Department have an official published stance on how they think it works?
I was not as clear as I should have been. We (both “we” the U.S. intelligence community and “we” students of the Middle East) know a great deal about the Iranian system, in the same we know a great deal about American politics. But for both the U.S. and Iran, dissecting specific policies and programs is very difficult. Perhaps ethanol is a helpful example. Instead of waste material like sugar cane or weeds, we use corn even though it is an inferior source on every dimension except putting money in the pockets of big corn producers. Are the members of the House and Senate from corn growing states the key players, or is it the influence of giant corporations like ADM and CONAGRA, or the fact that every president began by trudging through Iowa farms before the caucasuses? If you wanted to change that set of laws and policies, where would you begin, who would you attempt to influence?
Your point about nukes being a deterrent and not an instrument of compliance reminds me of the Vietnam-era personage (I forget who; was it Scowcroft?) who claimed he wanted to nuke Vietnam and put up a parking lot. I assumed that that explicit sentiment was bandied about by the left because it was so inflammatory and by the right as a realpolitik trial balloon.
Probably thinking of Curtis LeMay who wanted to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.
My issue with a PRNK, Pakistan, or Iran with nukes is primarily maintenance. I assume that with a great enough percentage of GDP any nation can get a nuke; fortunately, the higher the percentage the greater reluctance to part with the actual device and all that it entails. And so the prize would sit, propping up some regional middle-weight on the international heavy-weight stage. But as it sits it decays and leaks and is a constant health and security threat; how much GDP is set aside and prioritized year-after-year, decade-after-decade, in a turbulent kleptocracy for nuclear arsenal maintenance and safeguards? Which might be part of the charm; it's one thing to push around Khadaffi and not care too much about who winds up with the keys put fomenting and abetting civil war in a nuclear Iran seems altogether different.
You are right ... and the same is true for Pakistan ... and a lot scarier because a lot more likely.
Lastly, it seemed to me that in Gulf War I, Saudi Arabia relied on the US to local problems like Iraq and by extension Iran. Now with US exhaustion and withdrawal, we see the Saudi armed forces acting abroad (I have no idea how novel or significant that is but it's the first time I had even heard of Saudi security forces). Has the baton been tacitly handed to the Saudi's to up their direct involvement in local areas of their immediate interest? Is the US interested in letting Iran be a Saudi problem?
No. Saudi military has been a major purchaser of U.S. and European weapons for some time. The military is very well equipped and well trained, but small compared to Saddam’s Iraq or Iran. Saudi Arabia could not defend itself against a concerted attack from Iran. The recent operation in Bahrain to support the government was the first operation outside the country. It was meant to support a friendly monarch against a democracy movement that included significant numbers of the Shi’a minority.
We will have finished withdrawing combat forces from Iraq by the end of the year and are going to begin winding down Afghanistan next year. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as withdrawing from the Middle East or abandoning our role as protector in the Persian Gulf.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
How Big a Problem is Iran?
The recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear program has put Tehran back at the top of the list with China as the foreign countries that are seen as the biggest threats to the U.S. That was certainly an important theme the Republican candidates’ debates on foreign policy.
How much of a threat is Iran and what should be done about it?
Figuring out how much a threat Iran really poses is complicated by three factors. One is common to all international threat assessment; the second is associated with closed societies; and the third is unique to Iran.
What is known as the Realist paradigm is one of the major approaches in the academic study of international politics; it is the implicit world view of most journalists, opinion piece authors, and more less casual observers (including many political candidates.) In brief, the Realist looks at the world and sees an endless struggle for power in an anarchic world where armed might is the ultimate guarantor of security. “The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” The Realist warns us to always be alert to threats and ready to respond forcefully. “If you want peace,” advises the Realist, “prepare for war.”
The Realist answer to the question of who is a threat and what is the nature of that threat is succinct: capabilities imply intentions. We cannot know the what other countries are really planning on. They go to great lengths to hide their real intentions. But we can observe their actions and assess what they might be capable of. And the prudent observer (remembering that one person’s “prudent” observer is another person’s nervous Nellie) assumes that “they” deliberately developed those capabilities because they mean to use them.
The result is a systematic bias toward overestimating threats and a conflating of what could be possible in a few years with what is being planned or even what is possible now.
The problem of figuring out what those guys are up to is complicated when those guys operate within an opaque political system. In the case of Iran, the relationship between President Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Khamenei, the governmental ministries, the armed forces, and the Revolutionary Guards are extremely murky. If you can’t even figure out which of those guys is making the decision and whether all those guys are on the same page -- or even reading out of the same book -- it gets that much harder.
The recent allegations by Attorney General Holder that the U.S. has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador is a case in point. The evidence that the men who were arrested were up to something seems to many observers pretty convincing. But the evidence of links between the conspirators and anyone in Iran is far more tenuous and no one can say with certainty which, if any, elements of the Iranian system were involved or at what level the plot was hatched.
The third source of difficulty in assessing Iran’s dangers to the United States is the heightened sensitivity of our closest allies in the Middle East. Many Israelis take Ahmadinejad’s holocaust denial and inflammatory rhetoric denying Israel’s right to exist very seriously. They regard the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran as a direct threat to their lives. Saudi Arabia is extremely sensitive to threats posed by its Shi’a minority and the relatively impoverished Shi’a majorities in Bahrain and other Gulf States, and sees them as a potential fifth column that Iran can manipulate. Both countries have publicly and privately (see some of the cables in wikileaks) urged the U.S. to take an even harder stand. Israel and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia share intelligence with the U.S.; their deep suspicions color U.S. intelligence estimates.
I am not going to try to develop a “real” assessment of Iran. I am going to try to describe elements of Iranian behavior that work against U.S. interests and what some of our options may be.
Nuclear Weapons. This is at the top of everyone’s list of problems and is not just an American preoccupation. Western Europe has been as strongly opposed to Iran’s behavior as the United States. While Russia and China have typically opposed calls for stronger sanctions against Iran, they have made it clear that they oppose any attempt to develop weapons.
Iran has long had a nuclear program which it claims is strictly for peaceful use and hence legitimate under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The program is immensely popular in Iran, where it is seen as a matter of national pride, demonstrating the scientific and technological sophistication of Iranians. However, in addition to clearly civilian activities, for the past ten years Iran has also pursued technologies that are potentially directly related to weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that have led to the attempts to both persuade Iran to stop and to punish them with sanctions have largely involved dual-use technologies. That is, technologies that could be used for legitimate civilian projects or for the development of nuclear weapons ... and capabilities imply intent, do they not? The most recent IAEA report goes further. The November 8 report documents persistent foot dragging and refusal to cooperate in some aspects of the inspections by Iranian officials and discusses aspects of the Iranian nuclear research program that are directly linked to the development of weapons.
So what? After all, seven countries (U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, India, and Pakistan) have confirmed their possession of nuclear weapons and no one believes Israel’s official insistence that it does not have nukes. (If Israel is believed to have them despite their denials, North Korea is the mirror image: their claims to already have them are widely regarded as dubious.)
One fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons is the disastrous consequences of their use. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction. They kill people and destroy almost everything for miles. They are only useful as a deterrent. People who think seriously about proliferation and nuclear weapons often talk about “the Nth Nation Problem.” So far eight countries have developed nuclear weapons and been prudent enough to avoid using them. But somewhere out there is the nth nation in the series of nuclear states whose leaders are irrational or delusional or whose internal safeguards are defective and permit an accidental launch of nuclear tipped missile. Therefore every nation that does develop weapons brings us one step closer to catastrophe.
The second fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to gain nuclear weapons is that proliferation breeds proliferation. If Iran developed nuclear weapons, several of its regional neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Egypt would be subject to some internal; pressure to develop their own weapons to deter Iran. The diversion of a large amount of intellectual and engineering prowess and the diversion of money from human and economic development would be significant. And it would bring us all closer to that nightmare Nth nation.
There are two specific immediate consequences of an operational Iranian nuclear warhead that worry people. The first is the threat to Israel. The nightmarish “existential threat” is that fanatical Iranian leaders would unleash a new Holocaust by raining warheads on Israel. This specter leads some elements of the Israeli government to push the United States into attacking Iran by threatening to do it themselves. This fear is echoed by some of Israel’s supporters in the U.S., especially more conservative and hawkish politicians.
I think these fears are exaggerated. Some parts of the Iranian leadership, for example Mahmud Ahmadinejad, are very insular, poorly educated and given to extravagant rhetoric. But that does not make him insane and undeterred by the threat that a nuclear assault on Israel would be met by a larger nuclear counter blow on Iran. And the diffusion of authority and existence of multiple centers of power in the Iranian system guarantee that no single person could make such a far reaching decision on their own.
The second consequence of a nuclear Iran that people fear is bullying. A nuclear armed Iran, the argument goes, will be able to cow and intimidate its neighbors. I think this, too, is an exaggeration. I think the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons are useful only as a deterrent, not a tool of compellance is right. I have a very hard time thinking of a plausible scenario. “All right, King of Bahrain and your lackeys, stop oppressing Shi’a Bahrainis or we’ll blow you up!” But “you” would include the Shi’a citizens of Bahrain.
Fulminating about the Iranian nuclear threat and beating the drums for the imaginary military option probably has the perverse effect of strengthening the argument in Iran for developing weapons as the ultimate deterrent. I think one motive driving Iran’s program is fear of attack from the U.S. Whether Iranians look at the last 60 years of relations with the U.S. or the fate of Qadhafi, they are likely to conclude that the U.S. is a military threat. The fierier the rhetoric, the louder the calls for muscular action in the Washington or Tel Aviv, the more nuclear weapons seem like a good idea.
What is to be done? I think we --meaning the United States, Britain, France and Germany who have played the leading roles in trying to deal with Iran’s nuclear program – are doing pretty much everything that can be done. The strategy has involved attempts at persuasion through negotiations leading to economic and technical support for peaceful nuclear power and economic benefits from removing existing sanctions interspersed with increasingly stringent multilateral sanctions on trade and investment in Iran aimed at directly impeding the organizations and individuals most involved with the weapons program. It is widely believed that there is also a covert dimension, sponsored by the Western powers and/or Israel. Over the past few years several Iranian scientists associated with the nuclear program have been assassinated by unknown assailants. About a year ago, in what is described as an act of cyber sabotage, the Stuxnet worm attacked and seriously harmed computers at a key Iranian nuclear site.
A frustrating difficulty with designing a strategy to counter an Iranian weapons program is figuring out who in Iran is behind it and what they hope to gain. That makes it much more difficult to come up with promises and inducements that would give Iran the rewards it hoes to get from the program or to devise threats and punishments that might actually lead the proponents to decide it wasn’t worth it.
The non-existent military option. As much as tough guy (and gal) Presidential candidates and self-proclaimed foreign policy experts love to talk about it, I do not believe there is a realistic military option for dealing with Iran. No one who has thought about it thinks an invasion or massive bombing campaign is remotely possible. Herman Cain has taken some flack for saying bombing Iran was unfeasible because there are lots of mountains in the country. Problem is not mountains but dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities, Iran’s air defenses, and the real possibility of retaliation. Although there is some speculation that the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador was meant to be implemented only as a response to a U.S. or Israeli assault on Iran, the more likely retaliatory moves would come in the Middle East from one or more of the anti-American or anti-Israel groups Iran supports.
Iran as Middle East trouble maker. When the revolution of 1979 led to the Islamic Republic, the leaders hoped the revolution would sweep the entire Middle East, replacing both traditional monarchs and secular nationalists with devout Muslims inspired by the Shi’a tradition. The fact that those Sunni doinated regimes were allied with the Great Satan U.S. or the equally satanic atheists in Moscow was a major bonus. The major tool for exporting the revolution became support for anti-establishment groups. In some cases this has meant money and arms for groups like Hizballah and Hamas; in others it has been more indirect attempts to support Shi’a minority organizations in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a double boost for Iran. Saddam’s regime, secular nationalists who oppressed a Shi’a majority and had launched a war of aggression against Iran, was eliminated and his military machine dismantled. And the American occupation created a Shi’a dominated political system with many players who had close personal as well as religious and ideological affinities to Iran.
There are, I think, real reasons to be concerned about stability in the Middle East. There are also real reasons to support the emergence of more democratic regimes. Iran does not play a positive role on either dimension. Iranian influence and support goes to anti-regime actors in Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gulf States. And many of the forces Iran favors are not committed to democratic political development. There are good reasons for the United States to use the tools of diplomacy and statecraft to counter Iran.
But perspective matters. The alarmist fears of a “Shi’a Crescent” running through the Middle East are over blown. That really scary bogeyman who goes bump in the night is not an Iranian dominated Iraq. Overestimating threats is as dangerous as underestimating them.
“All politics is local” is a trite but true aphorism. Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, pro-Iranian factions in Baghdad are supported, not controlled, by Tehran. They will act in what they think is their own interest. If that coincides with something Iran desires, well and good. And if it doesn’t, Iran may make it more difficult, but at the end of the day they will go their own way.
In my view, Iran is a problem, not a looming threat. And if this understates Iran’s influence or ability to attack our interests, it may at least serve as a counterweight to the strident analyses that err in the opposite direction.
How much of a threat is Iran and what should be done about it?
Figuring out how much a threat Iran really poses is complicated by three factors. One is common to all international threat assessment; the second is associated with closed societies; and the third is unique to Iran.
What is known as the Realist paradigm is one of the major approaches in the academic study of international politics; it is the implicit world view of most journalists, opinion piece authors, and more less casual observers (including many political candidates.) In brief, the Realist looks at the world and sees an endless struggle for power in an anarchic world where armed might is the ultimate guarantor of security. “The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” The Realist warns us to always be alert to threats and ready to respond forcefully. “If you want peace,” advises the Realist, “prepare for war.”
The Realist answer to the question of who is a threat and what is the nature of that threat is succinct: capabilities imply intentions. We cannot know the what other countries are really planning on. They go to great lengths to hide their real intentions. But we can observe their actions and assess what they might be capable of. And the prudent observer (remembering that one person’s “prudent” observer is another person’s nervous Nellie) assumes that “they” deliberately developed those capabilities because they mean to use them.
The result is a systematic bias toward overestimating threats and a conflating of what could be possible in a few years with what is being planned or even what is possible now.
The problem of figuring out what those guys are up to is complicated when those guys operate within an opaque political system. In the case of Iran, the relationship between President Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Khamenei, the governmental ministries, the armed forces, and the Revolutionary Guards are extremely murky. If you can’t even figure out which of those guys is making the decision and whether all those guys are on the same page -- or even reading out of the same book -- it gets that much harder.
The recent allegations by Attorney General Holder that the U.S. has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador is a case in point. The evidence that the men who were arrested were up to something seems to many observers pretty convincing. But the evidence of links between the conspirators and anyone in Iran is far more tenuous and no one can say with certainty which, if any, elements of the Iranian system were involved or at what level the plot was hatched.
The third source of difficulty in assessing Iran’s dangers to the United States is the heightened sensitivity of our closest allies in the Middle East. Many Israelis take Ahmadinejad’s holocaust denial and inflammatory rhetoric denying Israel’s right to exist very seriously. They regard the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran as a direct threat to their lives. Saudi Arabia is extremely sensitive to threats posed by its Shi’a minority and the relatively impoverished Shi’a majorities in Bahrain and other Gulf States, and sees them as a potential fifth column that Iran can manipulate. Both countries have publicly and privately (see some of the cables in wikileaks) urged the U.S. to take an even harder stand. Israel and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia share intelligence with the U.S.; their deep suspicions color U.S. intelligence estimates.
I am not going to try to develop a “real” assessment of Iran. I am going to try to describe elements of Iranian behavior that work against U.S. interests and what some of our options may be.
Nuclear Weapons. This is at the top of everyone’s list of problems and is not just an American preoccupation. Western Europe has been as strongly opposed to Iran’s behavior as the United States. While Russia and China have typically opposed calls for stronger sanctions against Iran, they have made it clear that they oppose any attempt to develop weapons.
Iran has long had a nuclear program which it claims is strictly for peaceful use and hence legitimate under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The program is immensely popular in Iran, where it is seen as a matter of national pride, demonstrating the scientific and technological sophistication of Iranians. However, in addition to clearly civilian activities, for the past ten years Iran has also pursued technologies that are potentially directly related to weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that have led to the attempts to both persuade Iran to stop and to punish them with sanctions have largely involved dual-use technologies. That is, technologies that could be used for legitimate civilian projects or for the development of nuclear weapons ... and capabilities imply intent, do they not? The most recent IAEA report goes further. The November 8 report documents persistent foot dragging and refusal to cooperate in some aspects of the inspections by Iranian officials and discusses aspects of the Iranian nuclear research program that are directly linked to the development of weapons.
So what? After all, seven countries (U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, India, and Pakistan) have confirmed their possession of nuclear weapons and no one believes Israel’s official insistence that it does not have nukes. (If Israel is believed to have them despite their denials, North Korea is the mirror image: their claims to already have them are widely regarded as dubious.)
One fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons is the disastrous consequences of their use. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction. They kill people and destroy almost everything for miles. They are only useful as a deterrent. People who think seriously about proliferation and nuclear weapons often talk about “the Nth Nation Problem.” So far eight countries have developed nuclear weapons and been prudent enough to avoid using them. But somewhere out there is the nth nation in the series of nuclear states whose leaders are irrational or delusional or whose internal safeguards are defective and permit an accidental launch of nuclear tipped missile. Therefore every nation that does develop weapons brings us one step closer to catastrophe.
The second fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to gain nuclear weapons is that proliferation breeds proliferation. If Iran developed nuclear weapons, several of its regional neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Egypt would be subject to some internal; pressure to develop their own weapons to deter Iran. The diversion of a large amount of intellectual and engineering prowess and the diversion of money from human and economic development would be significant. And it would bring us all closer to that nightmare Nth nation.
There are two specific immediate consequences of an operational Iranian nuclear warhead that worry people. The first is the threat to Israel. The nightmarish “existential threat” is that fanatical Iranian leaders would unleash a new Holocaust by raining warheads on Israel. This specter leads some elements of the Israeli government to push the United States into attacking Iran by threatening to do it themselves. This fear is echoed by some of Israel’s supporters in the U.S., especially more conservative and hawkish politicians.
I think these fears are exaggerated. Some parts of the Iranian leadership, for example Mahmud Ahmadinejad, are very insular, poorly educated and given to extravagant rhetoric. But that does not make him insane and undeterred by the threat that a nuclear assault on Israel would be met by a larger nuclear counter blow on Iran. And the diffusion of authority and existence of multiple centers of power in the Iranian system guarantee that no single person could make such a far reaching decision on their own.
The second consequence of a nuclear Iran that people fear is bullying. A nuclear armed Iran, the argument goes, will be able to cow and intimidate its neighbors. I think this, too, is an exaggeration. I think the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons are useful only as a deterrent, not a tool of compellance is right. I have a very hard time thinking of a plausible scenario. “All right, King of Bahrain and your lackeys, stop oppressing Shi’a Bahrainis or we’ll blow you up!” But “you” would include the Shi’a citizens of Bahrain.
Fulminating about the Iranian nuclear threat and beating the drums for the imaginary military option probably has the perverse effect of strengthening the argument in Iran for developing weapons as the ultimate deterrent. I think one motive driving Iran’s program is fear of attack from the U.S. Whether Iranians look at the last 60 years of relations with the U.S. or the fate of Qadhafi, they are likely to conclude that the U.S. is a military threat. The fierier the rhetoric, the louder the calls for muscular action in the Washington or Tel Aviv, the more nuclear weapons seem like a good idea.
What is to be done? I think we --meaning the United States, Britain, France and Germany who have played the leading roles in trying to deal with Iran’s nuclear program – are doing pretty much everything that can be done. The strategy has involved attempts at persuasion through negotiations leading to economic and technical support for peaceful nuclear power and economic benefits from removing existing sanctions interspersed with increasingly stringent multilateral sanctions on trade and investment in Iran aimed at directly impeding the organizations and individuals most involved with the weapons program. It is widely believed that there is also a covert dimension, sponsored by the Western powers and/or Israel. Over the past few years several Iranian scientists associated with the nuclear program have been assassinated by unknown assailants. About a year ago, in what is described as an act of cyber sabotage, the Stuxnet worm attacked and seriously harmed computers at a key Iranian nuclear site.
A frustrating difficulty with designing a strategy to counter an Iranian weapons program is figuring out who in Iran is behind it and what they hope to gain. That makes it much more difficult to come up with promises and inducements that would give Iran the rewards it hoes to get from the program or to devise threats and punishments that might actually lead the proponents to decide it wasn’t worth it.
The non-existent military option. As much as tough guy (and gal) Presidential candidates and self-proclaimed foreign policy experts love to talk about it, I do not believe there is a realistic military option for dealing with Iran. No one who has thought about it thinks an invasion or massive bombing campaign is remotely possible. Herman Cain has taken some flack for saying bombing Iran was unfeasible because there are lots of mountains in the country. Problem is not mountains but dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities, Iran’s air defenses, and the real possibility of retaliation. Although there is some speculation that the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador was meant to be implemented only as a response to a U.S. or Israeli assault on Iran, the more likely retaliatory moves would come in the Middle East from one or more of the anti-American or anti-Israel groups Iran supports.
Iran as Middle East trouble maker. When the revolution of 1979 led to the Islamic Republic, the leaders hoped the revolution would sweep the entire Middle East, replacing both traditional monarchs and secular nationalists with devout Muslims inspired by the Shi’a tradition. The fact that those Sunni doinated regimes were allied with the Great Satan U.S. or the equally satanic atheists in Moscow was a major bonus. The major tool for exporting the revolution became support for anti-establishment groups. In some cases this has meant money and arms for groups like Hizballah and Hamas; in others it has been more indirect attempts to support Shi’a minority organizations in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a double boost for Iran. Saddam’s regime, secular nationalists who oppressed a Shi’a majority and had launched a war of aggression against Iran, was eliminated and his military machine dismantled. And the American occupation created a Shi’a dominated political system with many players who had close personal as well as religious and ideological affinities to Iran.
There are, I think, real reasons to be concerned about stability in the Middle East. There are also real reasons to support the emergence of more democratic regimes. Iran does not play a positive role on either dimension. Iranian influence and support goes to anti-regime actors in Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gulf States. And many of the forces Iran favors are not committed to democratic political development. There are good reasons for the United States to use the tools of diplomacy and statecraft to counter Iran.
But perspective matters. The alarmist fears of a “Shi’a Crescent” running through the Middle East are over blown. That really scary bogeyman who goes bump in the night is not an Iranian dominated Iraq. Overestimating threats is as dangerous as underestimating them.
“All politics is local” is a trite but true aphorism. Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, pro-Iranian factions in Baghdad are supported, not controlled, by Tehran. They will act in what they think is their own interest. If that coincides with something Iran desires, well and good. And if it doesn’t, Iran may make it more difficult, but at the end of the day they will go their own way.
In my view, Iran is a problem, not a looming threat. And if this understates Iran’s influence or ability to attack our interests, it may at least serve as a counterweight to the strident analyses that err in the opposite direction.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Libya's Morning After the Night Before
“Gadhafi is dead and now the hard part begins” ... we hear that same refrain every time a dictator is deposed and there is an opening for democracy. We’ve heard it so often that it has become a cliche. But it is still profoundly true. Winning -- a war, an election, a rebellion – isn’t everything. When the euphoria wears off, when it really is the morning after the night before, there is a chance to move in new directions, one of which is “democracy.”
Most of us, most of the time, take it for granted that we know what democracy is (perhaps along the lines of the Supreme Court justice who wrote that he could not define pornography but he knew it when he saw it). Some of us -- meaning pundits, commentators and you and me -- sometimes seem to assume that creating a democracy is pretty straightforward: write a constitution, set up some elections, create a free press ... and away you go.
And some of us portray democracy as a delicate flower, thriving only under rare and exotic conditions. The right kind of culture, a developed capitalist economy, wise and saintly leaders, and the absence of internal conflicts are commonly cited as both causes of democracy and reasons why some countries have failed to develop democratic systems. At an extreme, this becomes the pessimistic “you can’t export democracy” and “some people just aren’t ready for it” positions.
At least since the time of Aristotle political scientists have been studying democratic regimes. And we have learned some things that are relevant to political development. At the same time, there is a big difference between studying politics and doing it.
What we know
I don’t intend this as a comprehensive overview of theories of democracy, but a highlighting of some major points. There are real and serious debates about the relative importance of the various factors and the causal relationship that I am going to ignore, perhaps at my own peril.
*Democracy is NOT either/or but a process.
*Culture (meaning political values and beliefs) matters.
*Institutions matter
*Leaders matter
*Dynamics
*Results matter
Quick reminder -- to myself if no one else -- that political systems have multiple causes ... there is no magic bullet that always and everywhere causes democracy. The multiple factors that are causally related to democratic development interact with each other in what can be a virtuous circle, or when things go wrong, a vicious death spiral.
The Democratic Process
Even though we routinely talk about democracies and non-democracies, or (heaven help us) “true” democracy, it makes more sense to see democracy as a continuum. Is the United States a democracy? Was the United States of 1911 a democracy? (I’ll bet your first reaction was “yes” but it was quickly replaced with “depends on what you mean” or “well, kinda” or some other more nuanced response, especially when you thought about 100 years ago.) It is much easier to answer the question, “Was the United States of 1911 more democratic than many other countries?” or “Is the United States more Democratic today than we were 100 years ago?” The question to be asked in 2021 about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, South Sudan and other countries undergoing great changes right now, is not “are they democratic?” but “are they more democratic than they were?”
One useful way to think about democracy is to focus on results and suggest that democracy is a system which provides everyone with an equal ability to influence the key decisions that affect their lives. Then we can ask what aspects of a society contribute to making that happen.
Culture.
Leaving aside the slipperiness and ambiguity of this term (that’s a rant for another day), we know two things.
1) If culture means some broad, national or societal set of values and relationships, it seems to have little to do with democracy. A century ago Max Weber’s notion that it was the Protestant work ethic that explained why some European countries were democratic and the burden of Catholicism that explained why others weren’t. But dominant religion is no longer associated with democracy. Not that long ago some folks were convinced that democracy was impossible in Latin America as long as machismo dominated the culture. There has been lots of regime change in Latin America, but far less movement toward gender equality. There were some quite plausible explanations for why Confucian cultures weren’t likely to become democracies; the success of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have now inspired a few articles on why Confucian cultures are so supportive of democracy.
2) If culture is defined more narrowly and carefully as political culture, it does seem to matter. Beliefs and values about how authority is gained, how rulers deal with the ruled, about the legitimacy of opposition and about the stakes of politics, among others, do matter. In the early stages of developing democracy, political culture among elites matters far more than among followers. For example, the establishment and preservation of democracy in India owes a great deal to the values and attitudes of the relatively small political class rather than the values and attitudes of the hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens.
Institutions.
Democracy is closely related to institutions: free and fair elections, effective legislatures, an independent judiciary, free press, limitations on government, and others. Institutions work by shaping behavior, making some things easier to do and others more difficult. The rules and roles embedded in a functioning legislature, for example, make it easier for diverse interests to be represented and accommodated; they make it more difficult to initiate rapid and tightly focused policy changes.
Several decades ago, when the European empires were breaking up and dozens of countries in Africa and Asia were becoming independent, there was a naive belief in England that if you set folks up with a parliamentary system like the United Kingdom’s (the so-called Whitehall system) you’d get democracies, even if there had been little development of a democratic political culture. The mixed histories of former colonies show that the “right” institutions by themselves do not guarantee democracy but jettisoning those institutions makes it far more difficult to avoid repressive dictatorships.
European parliamentary institutions are far more common around the world than the American system of sharply separated executives and legislatures. But the basic strategies are similar: use the legislature to provide some restraint on the executive; use rules for representation to balance the needs and desires of majorities and minorities; use elections to move people in and out of office. Democratic institutions invite conflict and division; an effective opposition is an important indicator of healthy democracy. This can be a difficult path for countries that have just had a successful struggle for independence or rebellion against an oppressive regime where unity and shared dedication have been key to success.
An important trend in thinking about democracy has been the idea of “social capital.” People who work together in private voluntary organizations (service clubs, social groups, neighborhood organizations for example) learn important lessons about trusting others and working comparatively. And these lessons spill over into the public sphere. Collectively, these groups constitute the institutions of “civil society.” Most elements of civil society are not political but the existence of a social space in institutions outside government control contributes indirectly to greater democracy. Without such institutions, it is far more difficult for people to learn the give and take, tolerance of diversity, and skills at persuading people to go along with you that democracy requires.
Leaders
Leaders matter most in developing democracy in the initial stages. As the dust settles from the rebellion or independence struggle, the first generation of leaders are the ones who set the tone and precedents. If they are committed to democracy (along with all their other goals) then they are far more likely to think about good institutional design and far more likely to reflect the kinds of values that make democracy possible. The continuing impact of Nelson Mandela on South Africa’s development is profound. His successors have not been noted for their deep personal commitment to democratic values, but Mandela effectively institutionalized democratic values by force of example and personal prestige.
Almost everyone who comes to power after a coup or revolution promises democracy, just as soon as the conditions are ripe. More often than not, the new authoritarian ruler finds that the conditions are never quite right, the people have not yet learned how to be democratic. Mustafa Kemal of Turkey is a major exception. He held largely unchecked power for 15 years, but left behind institutions and changed attitudes that have let Turkey develop into a functioning democracy.
Leaders by themselves cannot cause democracy; but the wrong leader at the wrong time can kill it at birth.
Dynamics
Listing factors and discussing them one by one risks losing sight of a critical point: democracy develops over time and the causal factors interact with each other. Leaders with democratic values try to create institutions that reinforce and support those values. Democratic institutions can not only reinforce democratic political culture; they can prevent leaders or popular movements from subverting democracy.
An important term of art in thinking about democracy is a “consolidated democracy,” a system that has passed the most crucial early test: an election that transfers power from one ruling elite to another. For example, 1998 was a pivotal year in South Korea: the third set of national elections elected a president who was a long time opponent of the military dictatorship and its immediate successor regime. The old regime accepted the elections results. The notion of consolidation is a nice reminder of democracy as a process, a series of developments over time rather than a single dramatic event after which everyone can go home.
Results Matter
More democratic regimes are held to higher standards by their citizens. Democracy has many attributes that make it appealing to people around the world. For many an important factor is the association of democracy with prosperity and material well being. That means the regimes claiming to be democratic are under more pressure than others to meet basic needs for physical security, clean water, electricity, food security and housing. It means greater pressure to foster a growing economy that provides jobs.
Beyond Science
We know a lot about democracy and a lot about what contributes to democratic development and what doesn’t. There is a great deal of expertise in the United Nations, in the U.S. and other governments, and in universities around the world. But in Libya, or any other concrete situation, people are not starting from scratch and are not free to map out a comprehensive plan to develop democracy. The challenge is to apply what is known in the midst of a specific situation, with some circumstances dictated by the past, and diverse goals and interests among both the leadership and the citizens. You have to play the hand you are dealt. This is the realm of the art of policies, of statecraft. Development of an increasingly democratic system is not foreordained, nor is it doomed from the start. It is up to the people on the ground and, as Machiavelli pointed out, a heavy dose of luck.
Libya Today
The success of the new Libyan leadership in keeping their pledge to move toward democracy is going to receive a great deal of scrutiny in the U.S. and around the world. Libya will be watched more closely and judged more quickly than, for example, its neighbors Tunisia and Egypt. The prominent role of NATO in supporting the end of the Gadhafi regime and the expectation that Europe and the UN will keep playing a vital role in the transition will keep Libyan development in the spotlight. In the United States, there is the added dimension of partisan politics. The Obama administration is eager to claim credit for every sign in progress in Libya; the administration’s critics are equally eager to pounce on any shortcomings.
Libya faces much greater challenges than the two most prominent triumphs of the Arab Spring, Egypt and Tunisia.
Political culture. Libya does not have even the rudiments of a democratic political culture that promotes cooperation and a broadly national perspective on policy making. It will be quite difficult for the new leadership to tolerate opposition within its ranks or to avoid making decisions that are only about rewarding friends and punishing enemies.
Institutions. Gadhafi abolished the few political institutions that existed when he seized power. In their place he built a system of highly personalized, centralized control. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are potentially democratic institutions such as parliaments and experience with elections, albeit rigged and distorted elections. And there are formal governmental structures and bureaucracies at the local and provincial level, that actually allowed for some citizen involvement. The Egyptian and Tunisian regimes were repressive and controlling, but they did not even try for the almost total control that Gadhafi’s regime attempted. The new governors of Libya will have to start scratch.
Leaders. The rebellion against Gadhafi started rather suddenly and unexpectedly in Benghazi. As it spread a group of leaders emerged, but it has been marked as much by infighting and instability as anything else. Some of the prominent members of the National Transitional Council are known quantities, others have vaulted overnight from obscurity. If they cannot quickly learn to act together and reach agreement on immediate issues, we can expect confusion and chaos and nostalgia for the strong man who could get things done.
Dynamics. Perhaps Libya’s biggest asset in the near future is the availability of advice and support for building a new government from the UN, Europe and the US. Foreign advisors and experts can nudge people in the right direction and the promise of aid can encourage good behavior. But the defects in the political culture and fragility of any new institutions will remain very high hurdles for political development.
Side note on oil Libya has great potential oil wealth. It will require substantial technical assistance and new investment to compensate for the years of neglect under Gadhafi and the damage done to facilities during the recent fighting. Oil wealth is not the magic panacea that cures all the problems of the country. In fact, countries with economies dependent on oil are more likely to suffer from the “resource curse.” (Oil is a capital intensive rather than labor intensive industry. That means it does not create a large number of jobs. Great oil wealth leads to spending on consumption, such as subsidized education, housing, or fuel rather than investment in job creating industries. Countries reliant on oil are almost always plagued by high levels of corruption.)
Results. The first challenge facing Libya’s new leaders is physical security. The national army is gone, the police force is gone. The rebel armies, by most accounts, are a coalition of locally based militias with a relatively weak national command. If the rebel forces cannot quickly be reorganized into a cohesive force with top down command and control, then ordinary Libyans will be at the mercy of whomever in the neighborhood has guns. In addition to the grievances everyone has against Gadhafi, there are local grievances against those who were favored by Gadhafi, or collaborated with the regime. If the people with guns are not controlled, Libyan could become the scene of score settling bloodshed.
For a long time the most central part of being Libyan has been how you survived under the Gadhafi system. The exhilaration of victory and sense that this is a shared experience that cuts across traditional regions or communal relationships could be the start of a new Libyan national identity. But the thrill of victory wears off very quickly and the routine challenges of every day life take over. Unless the new leadership can build on the current good feelings and maintain a sense of unity, Libyan politics could degenerate into regionalism and factionalism.
Thumbs up, thumbs down.
Libya is not going to blossom into a recognizable democratic system overnight, or even over the next decade. If the standard is perfection, Libya will be judged a failure. It is easy to say that the standard should be “good enough, all things considered.” Each of us is going to have decide whether what is emerging in Libya is good enough.
Most of us, most of the time, take it for granted that we know what democracy is (perhaps along the lines of the Supreme Court justice who wrote that he could not define pornography but he knew it when he saw it). Some of us -- meaning pundits, commentators and you and me -- sometimes seem to assume that creating a democracy is pretty straightforward: write a constitution, set up some elections, create a free press ... and away you go.
And some of us portray democracy as a delicate flower, thriving only under rare and exotic conditions. The right kind of culture, a developed capitalist economy, wise and saintly leaders, and the absence of internal conflicts are commonly cited as both causes of democracy and reasons why some countries have failed to develop democratic systems. At an extreme, this becomes the pessimistic “you can’t export democracy” and “some people just aren’t ready for it” positions.
At least since the time of Aristotle political scientists have been studying democratic regimes. And we have learned some things that are relevant to political development. At the same time, there is a big difference between studying politics and doing it.
What we know
I don’t intend this as a comprehensive overview of theories of democracy, but a highlighting of some major points. There are real and serious debates about the relative importance of the various factors and the causal relationship that I am going to ignore, perhaps at my own peril.
*Democracy is NOT either/or but a process.
*Culture (meaning political values and beliefs) matters.
*Institutions matter
*Leaders matter
*Dynamics
*Results matter
Quick reminder -- to myself if no one else -- that political systems have multiple causes ... there is no magic bullet that always and everywhere causes democracy. The multiple factors that are causally related to democratic development interact with each other in what can be a virtuous circle, or when things go wrong, a vicious death spiral.
The Democratic Process
Even though we routinely talk about democracies and non-democracies, or (heaven help us) “true” democracy, it makes more sense to see democracy as a continuum. Is the United States a democracy? Was the United States of 1911 a democracy? (I’ll bet your first reaction was “yes” but it was quickly replaced with “depends on what you mean” or “well, kinda” or some other more nuanced response, especially when you thought about 100 years ago.) It is much easier to answer the question, “Was the United States of 1911 more democratic than many other countries?” or “Is the United States more Democratic today than we were 100 years ago?” The question to be asked in 2021 about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, South Sudan and other countries undergoing great changes right now, is not “are they democratic?” but “are they more democratic than they were?”
One useful way to think about democracy is to focus on results and suggest that democracy is a system which provides everyone with an equal ability to influence the key decisions that affect their lives. Then we can ask what aspects of a society contribute to making that happen.
Culture.
Leaving aside the slipperiness and ambiguity of this term (that’s a rant for another day), we know two things.
1) If culture means some broad, national or societal set of values and relationships, it seems to have little to do with democracy. A century ago Max Weber’s notion that it was the Protestant work ethic that explained why some European countries were democratic and the burden of Catholicism that explained why others weren’t. But dominant religion is no longer associated with democracy. Not that long ago some folks were convinced that democracy was impossible in Latin America as long as machismo dominated the culture. There has been lots of regime change in Latin America, but far less movement toward gender equality. There were some quite plausible explanations for why Confucian cultures weren’t likely to become democracies; the success of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have now inspired a few articles on why Confucian cultures are so supportive of democracy.
2) If culture is defined more narrowly and carefully as political culture, it does seem to matter. Beliefs and values about how authority is gained, how rulers deal with the ruled, about the legitimacy of opposition and about the stakes of politics, among others, do matter. In the early stages of developing democracy, political culture among elites matters far more than among followers. For example, the establishment and preservation of democracy in India owes a great deal to the values and attitudes of the relatively small political class rather than the values and attitudes of the hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens.
Institutions.
Democracy is closely related to institutions: free and fair elections, effective legislatures, an independent judiciary, free press, limitations on government, and others. Institutions work by shaping behavior, making some things easier to do and others more difficult. The rules and roles embedded in a functioning legislature, for example, make it easier for diverse interests to be represented and accommodated; they make it more difficult to initiate rapid and tightly focused policy changes.
Several decades ago, when the European empires were breaking up and dozens of countries in Africa and Asia were becoming independent, there was a naive belief in England that if you set folks up with a parliamentary system like the United Kingdom’s (the so-called Whitehall system) you’d get democracies, even if there had been little development of a democratic political culture. The mixed histories of former colonies show that the “right” institutions by themselves do not guarantee democracy but jettisoning those institutions makes it far more difficult to avoid repressive dictatorships.
European parliamentary institutions are far more common around the world than the American system of sharply separated executives and legislatures. But the basic strategies are similar: use the legislature to provide some restraint on the executive; use rules for representation to balance the needs and desires of majorities and minorities; use elections to move people in and out of office. Democratic institutions invite conflict and division; an effective opposition is an important indicator of healthy democracy. This can be a difficult path for countries that have just had a successful struggle for independence or rebellion against an oppressive regime where unity and shared dedication have been key to success.
An important trend in thinking about democracy has been the idea of “social capital.” People who work together in private voluntary organizations (service clubs, social groups, neighborhood organizations for example) learn important lessons about trusting others and working comparatively. And these lessons spill over into the public sphere. Collectively, these groups constitute the institutions of “civil society.” Most elements of civil society are not political but the existence of a social space in institutions outside government control contributes indirectly to greater democracy. Without such institutions, it is far more difficult for people to learn the give and take, tolerance of diversity, and skills at persuading people to go along with you that democracy requires.
Leaders
Leaders matter most in developing democracy in the initial stages. As the dust settles from the rebellion or independence struggle, the first generation of leaders are the ones who set the tone and precedents. If they are committed to democracy (along with all their other goals) then they are far more likely to think about good institutional design and far more likely to reflect the kinds of values that make democracy possible. The continuing impact of Nelson Mandela on South Africa’s development is profound. His successors have not been noted for their deep personal commitment to democratic values, but Mandela effectively institutionalized democratic values by force of example and personal prestige.
Almost everyone who comes to power after a coup or revolution promises democracy, just as soon as the conditions are ripe. More often than not, the new authoritarian ruler finds that the conditions are never quite right, the people have not yet learned how to be democratic. Mustafa Kemal of Turkey is a major exception. He held largely unchecked power for 15 years, but left behind institutions and changed attitudes that have let Turkey develop into a functioning democracy.
Leaders by themselves cannot cause democracy; but the wrong leader at the wrong time can kill it at birth.
Dynamics
Listing factors and discussing them one by one risks losing sight of a critical point: democracy develops over time and the causal factors interact with each other. Leaders with democratic values try to create institutions that reinforce and support those values. Democratic institutions can not only reinforce democratic political culture; they can prevent leaders or popular movements from subverting democracy.
An important term of art in thinking about democracy is a “consolidated democracy,” a system that has passed the most crucial early test: an election that transfers power from one ruling elite to another. For example, 1998 was a pivotal year in South Korea: the third set of national elections elected a president who was a long time opponent of the military dictatorship and its immediate successor regime. The old regime accepted the elections results. The notion of consolidation is a nice reminder of democracy as a process, a series of developments over time rather than a single dramatic event after which everyone can go home.
Results Matter
More democratic regimes are held to higher standards by their citizens. Democracy has many attributes that make it appealing to people around the world. For many an important factor is the association of democracy with prosperity and material well being. That means the regimes claiming to be democratic are under more pressure than others to meet basic needs for physical security, clean water, electricity, food security and housing. It means greater pressure to foster a growing economy that provides jobs.
Beyond Science
We know a lot about democracy and a lot about what contributes to democratic development and what doesn’t. There is a great deal of expertise in the United Nations, in the U.S. and other governments, and in universities around the world. But in Libya, or any other concrete situation, people are not starting from scratch and are not free to map out a comprehensive plan to develop democracy. The challenge is to apply what is known in the midst of a specific situation, with some circumstances dictated by the past, and diverse goals and interests among both the leadership and the citizens. You have to play the hand you are dealt. This is the realm of the art of policies, of statecraft. Development of an increasingly democratic system is not foreordained, nor is it doomed from the start. It is up to the people on the ground and, as Machiavelli pointed out, a heavy dose of luck.
Libya Today
The success of the new Libyan leadership in keeping their pledge to move toward democracy is going to receive a great deal of scrutiny in the U.S. and around the world. Libya will be watched more closely and judged more quickly than, for example, its neighbors Tunisia and Egypt. The prominent role of NATO in supporting the end of the Gadhafi regime and the expectation that Europe and the UN will keep playing a vital role in the transition will keep Libyan development in the spotlight. In the United States, there is the added dimension of partisan politics. The Obama administration is eager to claim credit for every sign in progress in Libya; the administration’s critics are equally eager to pounce on any shortcomings.
Libya faces much greater challenges than the two most prominent triumphs of the Arab Spring, Egypt and Tunisia.
Political culture. Libya does not have even the rudiments of a democratic political culture that promotes cooperation and a broadly national perspective on policy making. It will be quite difficult for the new leadership to tolerate opposition within its ranks or to avoid making decisions that are only about rewarding friends and punishing enemies.
Institutions. Gadhafi abolished the few political institutions that existed when he seized power. In their place he built a system of highly personalized, centralized control. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are potentially democratic institutions such as parliaments and experience with elections, albeit rigged and distorted elections. And there are formal governmental structures and bureaucracies at the local and provincial level, that actually allowed for some citizen involvement. The Egyptian and Tunisian regimes were repressive and controlling, but they did not even try for the almost total control that Gadhafi’s regime attempted. The new governors of Libya will have to start scratch.
Leaders. The rebellion against Gadhafi started rather suddenly and unexpectedly in Benghazi. As it spread a group of leaders emerged, but it has been marked as much by infighting and instability as anything else. Some of the prominent members of the National Transitional Council are known quantities, others have vaulted overnight from obscurity. If they cannot quickly learn to act together and reach agreement on immediate issues, we can expect confusion and chaos and nostalgia for the strong man who could get things done.
Dynamics. Perhaps Libya’s biggest asset in the near future is the availability of advice and support for building a new government from the UN, Europe and the US. Foreign advisors and experts can nudge people in the right direction and the promise of aid can encourage good behavior. But the defects in the political culture and fragility of any new institutions will remain very high hurdles for political development.
Side note on oil Libya has great potential oil wealth. It will require substantial technical assistance and new investment to compensate for the years of neglect under Gadhafi and the damage done to facilities during the recent fighting. Oil wealth is not the magic panacea that cures all the problems of the country. In fact, countries with economies dependent on oil are more likely to suffer from the “resource curse.” (Oil is a capital intensive rather than labor intensive industry. That means it does not create a large number of jobs. Great oil wealth leads to spending on consumption, such as subsidized education, housing, or fuel rather than investment in job creating industries. Countries reliant on oil are almost always plagued by high levels of corruption.)
Results. The first challenge facing Libya’s new leaders is physical security. The national army is gone, the police force is gone. The rebel armies, by most accounts, are a coalition of locally based militias with a relatively weak national command. If the rebel forces cannot quickly be reorganized into a cohesive force with top down command and control, then ordinary Libyans will be at the mercy of whomever in the neighborhood has guns. In addition to the grievances everyone has against Gadhafi, there are local grievances against those who were favored by Gadhafi, or collaborated with the regime. If the people with guns are not controlled, Libyan could become the scene of score settling bloodshed.
For a long time the most central part of being Libyan has been how you survived under the Gadhafi system. The exhilaration of victory and sense that this is a shared experience that cuts across traditional regions or communal relationships could be the start of a new Libyan national identity. But the thrill of victory wears off very quickly and the routine challenges of every day life take over. Unless the new leadership can build on the current good feelings and maintain a sense of unity, Libyan politics could degenerate into regionalism and factionalism.
Thumbs up, thumbs down.
Libya is not going to blossom into a recognizable democratic system overnight, or even over the next decade. If the standard is perfection, Libya will be judged a failure. It is easy to say that the standard should be “good enough, all things considered.” Each of us is going to have decide whether what is emerging in Libya is good enough.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Coptic Protest Turns Violent
Last Sunday’s violent confrontation between Egypt’s military and protesters that left dozens of people dead and as many as 300 injured threatens to become a major crisis in Egypt’s political evolution. The military’s carefully crafted image as the most authentic national institution, above politics and ideology, was reinforced when the army took a hands off approach to last spring’s demonstrations and then took control of the country to guide it to democracy. Despite some serious criticism about the pace of reform, centering on the continuation of Mubarak-era emergency laws and some of the provisions for parliamentary and presidential elections, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has retained widespread legitimacy and approval. That is now threatened by what appears to many Egyptians as the violent suppression of a legitimate protest march.
What stands out to many observers is the centrality of the Copts in the original protest. I suspect that many people, hearing that a “Coptic Christian” protest turned bloody did a double take. Christians in Egypt? Isn’t it Muslim like the rest of the Arab Middle East?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, Egypt is a Muslim country in the sense that around 90 percent of the people are Muslim, but no, Egypt is officially a secular republic and non-Muslims play a significant role in Egyptian life. The arrival of Islam in the 7th Century resulted in widespread conversions and a profound transformation of local cultures, but it also left space for religious minorities. The Copts of Egypt are a good example.
At the time of the arrival of conquering Arab armies and Islam, Egypt was a Christian country, part of the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox world. The great schism between Rome and Constantinople had occurred some 200 years earlier.
Islam in Egypt, as elsewhere, was spread from the top down, as the religion of a conquering force. Some people converted to Islam because of its values and spiritual appeal. Others because it was expedient. The Quran makes a clear distinction between “People of the Book” and pagans. The People of the Book are Jews and Christians to whom God sent prophets, beginning with Abraham and ending with Jesus Christ. The fact the Jews and Christians worship one God, Allah, even if they don’t know His proper name, and their religions are based on the teachings of God’s prophets, even if they misunderstand and misrepresent them, means that they can be tolerated within a community dominated by Islam.
Thus significant Jewish and Christian communities persisted in the Middle East, most often in cities. As long as they paid extra taxes and did not challenge the dominance of Islam and Muslims, Christians and Jews could govern themselves and run their domestic affairs as they saw fit.
Because Jews and Christians were second class citizens and because they were not bound by Islamic law, they tended to specialize in occupations that were forbidden to devout Muslims, like banking and money lending, or were nasty and smelly, like tanning hides. Banking and money lending became a significant source of wealth for some Jews and Christians. The Quran forbids usury which was traditionally interpreted as any interest charges on loans. But if non-Muslim, lower status people wanted to risk going to hell by meeting the obvious need for banking and finance, that was their look out.
Side note: traditional Christian teaching in Europe equated charging interest with usury and condemned it. Think Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. As capitalism emerged after the Renaissance, the teaching was modified to damn “excessive” interest so good Christians could get in on the action.
In general Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East fared far better than Jewish communities in Europe. There was nothing remotely like the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th Century. In fact, most of the Jews expelled from Iberia quickly resettled in North Africa and the Middle East. There was nothing like the Inquisition and forced conversion, and there were no wide spread pogroms or virulent anti-Semitism. But Christians and Jews always had much lower social status, were always heavily taxed and barred from many occupations and were always acutely aware that they were a tolerated minority, not full members of the larger community. And they could always be scapegoated in times of stress and turmoil.
When Europe began to impinge heavily on the Middle East in the early 19th Century, it affected the status of religious minorities, especially Christian communities. Christians were seen as more reliable and “more like us” than Muslims and were preferred in the colonial civil service and wealthy Christian families were more eager to send their sons to the Sorbonne or Oxford to be educated. This cut both ways. It led to the economic and social advancement of some families. Some of the prominent figures in various nationalist movements in the early to mid 20th Century were Christians. Copts were especially prominent in Egyptian intellectual and political life. The Coptic Christian Butros Butros-Ghali capped his career in Egyptian government by serving as foreign minister before becoming UN Secretary General. But the apparent pro-Copt bias of the British led to resentment against them and the perception that they weren’t really loyal Egyptians. This was especially noticeable in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Egypt was struggling for real independence form Britain.
Egypt has seen growing influence from groups who want a more socially conservative, explicitly Islamic society. As a more Westernized, non-Muslim minority, Copts have often been targets of harassment and vandalism. Coptic communities have looked to state authorities to protect them and under the old regime the security forces were generally ready to help by suppressing radical Muslim groups. The fact that Copts are seen in some quarters as sympathetic to the old regime makes them more vulnerable now that Egypt is in the midst of political and economic insecurity.
The Sunday march began as a protest against the desecration of a church in Aswan province and the failure of the local authorities to do anything about it. Everyone agrees on that; then it gets murky. Many sources agree that the marchers were joined by other Egyptians who are concerned about broader principles of democracy and freedom as well as supporting the rights of Copts as Egyptian citizens. And joined by some who are unhappy with the military regime in general. The marchers were apparently set upon by “thugs” armed with clubs and iron bars and, by some accounts, guns. The security forces either did nothing initially or actively aided the attackers. Everyone agrees that shots were fired; at first the military blamed the marchers claiming that 13 soldiers were dead. (That claim has largely disappeared in the last couple of days.) Hospital authorities state that several of the dead were crushed by vehicles; the army denies that they ran over anyone with tanks or armored personnel carriers. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has announced an investigation.
I think much rides on this investigation. I am pretty sure most politically active Egyptians have already made up their minds about what really happened and will accept the findings of a military run investigation only if it fits with their preconceived narrative of a shocking military assault on innocent civilian demonstrators. Anything that looks like a cover up or whitewash will be met with open skepticism and could lead to renewed demonstrations. It is important to keep in mind that for the Egyptian military, stability is the supreme value. Preserving the system that puts the military front and center as the symbol of nationals unity and patriotism and has made the senior officers wealthy and privileged is the first priority. Mubarak was pushed out because he and his behavior had become a source of instability. Democratic reforms were embraced by the senior military officers because they seemed to offer the best chance at restoring stable government and avoiding a real revolution. If demonstrations, especially violent demonstrations like the attack on the Israeli embassy and Sunday’s march, begin to break out in Egypt, the military may decide that military dictatorship is the only option.
What stands out to many observers is the centrality of the Copts in the original protest. I suspect that many people, hearing that a “Coptic Christian” protest turned bloody did a double take. Christians in Egypt? Isn’t it Muslim like the rest of the Arab Middle East?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, Egypt is a Muslim country in the sense that around 90 percent of the people are Muslim, but no, Egypt is officially a secular republic and non-Muslims play a significant role in Egyptian life. The arrival of Islam in the 7th Century resulted in widespread conversions and a profound transformation of local cultures, but it also left space for religious minorities. The Copts of Egypt are a good example.
At the time of the arrival of conquering Arab armies and Islam, Egypt was a Christian country, part of the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox world. The great schism between Rome and Constantinople had occurred some 200 years earlier.
Islam in Egypt, as elsewhere, was spread from the top down, as the religion of a conquering force. Some people converted to Islam because of its values and spiritual appeal. Others because it was expedient. The Quran makes a clear distinction between “People of the Book” and pagans. The People of the Book are Jews and Christians to whom God sent prophets, beginning with Abraham and ending with Jesus Christ. The fact the Jews and Christians worship one God, Allah, even if they don’t know His proper name, and their religions are based on the teachings of God’s prophets, even if they misunderstand and misrepresent them, means that they can be tolerated within a community dominated by Islam.
Thus significant Jewish and Christian communities persisted in the Middle East, most often in cities. As long as they paid extra taxes and did not challenge the dominance of Islam and Muslims, Christians and Jews could govern themselves and run their domestic affairs as they saw fit.
Because Jews and Christians were second class citizens and because they were not bound by Islamic law, they tended to specialize in occupations that were forbidden to devout Muslims, like banking and money lending, or were nasty and smelly, like tanning hides. Banking and money lending became a significant source of wealth for some Jews and Christians. The Quran forbids usury which was traditionally interpreted as any interest charges on loans. But if non-Muslim, lower status people wanted to risk going to hell by meeting the obvious need for banking and finance, that was their look out.
Side note: traditional Christian teaching in Europe equated charging interest with usury and condemned it. Think Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. As capitalism emerged after the Renaissance, the teaching was modified to damn “excessive” interest so good Christians could get in on the action.
In general Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East fared far better than Jewish communities in Europe. There was nothing remotely like the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th Century. In fact, most of the Jews expelled from Iberia quickly resettled in North Africa and the Middle East. There was nothing like the Inquisition and forced conversion, and there were no wide spread pogroms or virulent anti-Semitism. But Christians and Jews always had much lower social status, were always heavily taxed and barred from many occupations and were always acutely aware that they were a tolerated minority, not full members of the larger community. And they could always be scapegoated in times of stress and turmoil.
When Europe began to impinge heavily on the Middle East in the early 19th Century, it affected the status of religious minorities, especially Christian communities. Christians were seen as more reliable and “more like us” than Muslims and were preferred in the colonial civil service and wealthy Christian families were more eager to send their sons to the Sorbonne or Oxford to be educated. This cut both ways. It led to the economic and social advancement of some families. Some of the prominent figures in various nationalist movements in the early to mid 20th Century were Christians. Copts were especially prominent in Egyptian intellectual and political life. The Coptic Christian Butros Butros-Ghali capped his career in Egyptian government by serving as foreign minister before becoming UN Secretary General. But the apparent pro-Copt bias of the British led to resentment against them and the perception that they weren’t really loyal Egyptians. This was especially noticeable in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Egypt was struggling for real independence form Britain.
Egypt has seen growing influence from groups who want a more socially conservative, explicitly Islamic society. As a more Westernized, non-Muslim minority, Copts have often been targets of harassment and vandalism. Coptic communities have looked to state authorities to protect them and under the old regime the security forces were generally ready to help by suppressing radical Muslim groups. The fact that Copts are seen in some quarters as sympathetic to the old regime makes them more vulnerable now that Egypt is in the midst of political and economic insecurity.
The Sunday march began as a protest against the desecration of a church in Aswan province and the failure of the local authorities to do anything about it. Everyone agrees on that; then it gets murky. Many sources agree that the marchers were joined by other Egyptians who are concerned about broader principles of democracy and freedom as well as supporting the rights of Copts as Egyptian citizens. And joined by some who are unhappy with the military regime in general. The marchers were apparently set upon by “thugs” armed with clubs and iron bars and, by some accounts, guns. The security forces either did nothing initially or actively aided the attackers. Everyone agrees that shots were fired; at first the military blamed the marchers claiming that 13 soldiers were dead. (That claim has largely disappeared in the last couple of days.) Hospital authorities state that several of the dead were crushed by vehicles; the army denies that they ran over anyone with tanks or armored personnel carriers. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has announced an investigation.
I think much rides on this investigation. I am pretty sure most politically active Egyptians have already made up their minds about what really happened and will accept the findings of a military run investigation only if it fits with their preconceived narrative of a shocking military assault on innocent civilian demonstrators. Anything that looks like a cover up or whitewash will be met with open skepticism and could lead to renewed demonstrations. It is important to keep in mind that for the Egyptian military, stability is the supreme value. Preserving the system that puts the military front and center as the symbol of nationals unity and patriotism and has made the senior officers wealthy and privileged is the first priority. Mubarak was pushed out because he and his behavior had become a source of instability. Democratic reforms were embraced by the senior military officers because they seemed to offer the best chance at restoring stable government and avoiding a real revolution. If demonstrations, especially violent demonstrations like the attack on the Israeli embassy and Sunday’s march, begin to break out in Egypt, the military may decide that military dictatorship is the only option.
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