The argument, which has been repeated to me for what feels like a thousand times, is popular amongst the Arab street and assorted leftists. Yet, it does not stand up to any level of reasoning or comparative analysis. Let's take Egypt as an example.
Egypt currently receives $200 million in aid from the United States. Its ruler, Hosni Mubarak, is certainly nobody to be proud of. But he is in power because he was Sadat's vice president before Sadat died, and Sadat was in power because he was vice president when Nasser died. Nasser was a dictator who, just like Mubarak, imprisoned Islamists, tortured dissidents, and operated a secret police. But Nasser was not installed by the U.S., and neither was his security apparatus. But it is this same apparatus that basically sustains Mubarak.
What really happened was that the U.S., after failing to court and then fruitlessly opposing Nasser, decided during Sadat's reign that buying off Egypt's leadership was a better way to gain influence and reduce tension between Egypt and Israel. That plan worked quite well, and continued under Mubarak. But this hardly proves that American aid=Mubarak is in power. A quick comparative analysis suggests the American aid is neither necessary nor sufficient for Mubarak to stay in power.
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Our good friend Qaddafi in Libya, with neither American backing nor any semblance of sanity, has operated a repugnant police state in Libya for 37 years. Syria is another illegitimate dictatorship that has fared quite well in the Middle East despite American opposition (and a lack of Libya's oil or Egypt's gas and tourism revenues).
Even more compelling is the fact that Cuba and North Korea, two dictatorships that lack any resource wealth to fund a coercive security apparatus, have both survived very well despite the end of Soviet patronage and a strong American desire to topple both regimes.
Thus, considering the easily demonstrable absence of any logic to this argument, I can only contemplate that this rationalization is emotional in nature. Politically, many Arabs see their modern history (rightfully) as a slew of humiliations. The original regimes of the Middle East (although not the Saudi regime), and many of the borders of the region (although not those of Egypt) were imposed by outsiders. But as new local regimes replaced the colonial ones, the people of these states still did not gain freedom. In fact, many of the post-colonial states were even worse and more repressive.
But rather than take responsibility for their own countries, too many Arabs deny themselves agency. They are quick to instead put the entire blame on colonialism and neo-imperialism-- and eager to place themselves as non-actors in their own histories.
Ironically the American-support argument does have validity is in Jordan and the littoral states of the Persian Gulf. It is hard to imagine the Hashemite monarchy or Kuwait existing without American support. But these states are considered to be the most benign in the region; few people are calling for the overthrow of Abu Dhabi. Jordan, unlike Syria or Lebanon, has actually treated the Palestinian refugees in the country as full citizens rather than leaving them to languish without a future in refugee camps.
In the one state where U.S. support was indisputably the backbone of a repressive regime-- the Shah's Iran-- the Iranians overthrew him the old fashioned way: by getting onto the streets and starting a revolution. Unfortunately, the outcome is nothing to admire, but that's another story.
I'm sure that this post will not win me any new friends. But I am writing it out of strong conviction that a more prosperous Middle East will only emerge when more people of the region begin to stand up for their own rights. Sitting around complaining and blaming others never made the world a better place.
- Jon
Comments
Jon,
It is too optimistic to expect Arabs to revolt at this point. Arabic countries are very fragmented both socially and politically. It is hard to consolidate the opposition. Also don't forget the arbitarily drawn borders by the imperial forces. It makes the central states weak, hence resorting to coercive measure to remain in power.
And yes certainly western interventionism does play a role for the dictatorships.
Hi Cenk,
Thanks for raising those points. Always glad to see Turks reading the blog. Certainly many of the borders are arbitrary-- but that is why Egypt is the best Arab example for this comparison. Egypt is not another creation of Churchill's pen; it is a state with a true national consciousness and historical antecedents.
I don't think that the Egyptian state is weak in any conventional sense. It has a strong centralized bureaucracy that began developing in the 19th century. Incompetent, perhaps, but weak, I don't agree. It impressively handled huge amounts of Islamist unrest during the the late 1980s and 1990s. It has to use coercive force because its is unpopular and illegitimate, but not out of the a lack of a centralized state.
My argument here is not that Western interventionism plays no role in these dictatorships. But the calculations for the people of these countries remain the same: they can only be taken advantage of with their own consent. This isn't Eastern Europe during the Soviet era, when revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were repressed by massive Soviet military interventions. There won't be any American tanks occupying Cairo. If you doubt this, reconsider Iran in 1979.
I think you are dead on, however, when you mention that the Arabs are too fragmented socially and politically to do much. It is very interesting to wonder how Arab states would have organized if the West didn't draw the borders for them. And it wasn't as if they ruled themselves before Western intervention-- they were ruled for 500 years by Turks and Persians.
I just think that the problem is a victimization mentality which justifies complacency and irresponsibility. Unfortunately, the only people who seem to be beyond this are that Islamic fundamentalist dead enders. I agree- I don't expect Arabs to revolt any time soon. The Bush administration thought that all they needed was spark- the toppling of Saddam, and all those Arab democrats would jump out of the woodwork. They didn't, but they ultimately must, lest the Arab world succumbs to a bleak future of continuing despotism and socio-cultural stagnation.
Hi Again,
Thanks for your response.
I don't think that victim mentality is what encumbers Arabs to form an opposition. After all, it is the essential ingredient for it in order to form an effective opposing movement.
I agree. Anglo-american alliance has little to do in case of a full scale rebellion agains the Arabic regimes.
However, my emphasize on the arbitarily drawn borders leans on the fact that those borders are actually an obstacle for an opposition. Because, Arabic unrest is not confined to particularly one country but almost in all of them. Whereas the regimes to be toppled are national regimes. In other words, opposing forces does not take a "national" form, but an inter-country one. Not motivated to topple one single Arabic regime at one time but all of them altogether. It is also the reason why Islamic movements are so strong. Because they are the only ones to encompass all of the regimes.
In Iranian case, it had been easier to topple it, because I believe, it took a national form.
