Our shaky coalition, and how to save it
Oct 15th, 2008 by MESH
From Tamara Cofman Wittes
There are two opposing coalitions in the Middle East today. On the one hand, there is a revisionist coalition comprised of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah—a coalition dissatisfied with the distribution of power in the region, and dissatisfied with the current agenda-setters and frameworks for state action. These revisionists include states and non-state actors. Like other such coalitions in the region’s past century of history, they are using their ability to play spoiler on regional issues and within the domestic politics of certain Arab states, in order to force status-quo states to give them a greater share of attention and power.
Hezbollah’s dynamic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, and Iran’s populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, envision a region defined by unending “resistance” against Israel, the United States and status-quo Arab governments. Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad argue for the redemptive value of violence and offer the promise of justice and dignity for Arabs humiliated by decades of defeat at the hands of the West and Israel, and decades of humiliation and neglect at the hands of their own governments.
Against this group of revisionist actors is a looser coalition of status-quo actors who are trying to preserve the regional balance of power, including the role played by the United States. It is notable that today’s status-quo coalition, unlike any in the Middle East’s past since 1948, includes all the major Arab states alongside Israel and the United States.
Even on the streets of their own cities, moderate Sunni Arab leaders such as Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (all associates of the United States) are less popular than Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad. The radicals’ message of resistance is always combined with denunciations of Sunni Arab leaders for cowering under an American security umbrella and making humiliating deals with Israel, and for ignoring the plight of their own people. The revisionists’ critiques of Arab governments’ performance both regionally and domestically are echoed and reinforced by the narrative of the domestic Islamist opposition inside Egypt, Jordan, and the other Arab status-quo states.
This balance of forces in the region had its coming-out party in the 2006 Lebanon War, and the diplomacy and developments since that conflict all represent the efforts by regional revisionists to capitalize on the openings that conflict created for them, and by the status-quo states to recover and contain the revisionists’ influence.
Because of this regional face-off, and the imperative of containing this revisionist coalition of actors, America and her major Arab partners need one another more than ever. But Arab states are cooperating with America in the face of unprecedentedly high levels of public anti-American resentment and anger. America and the status-quo Arab states must attempt to cooperate in containing these regional threats at a time when each of them individually, and their partnership itself, are subject to widespread public resentment and opprobrium. And the regional revisionists are proving themselves very effective at wielding this public sentiment against both the Arab regimes and against Washington. That puts them in a real dilemma. Over time, in the absence of some kind of regional progress, this U.S.-Arab strategic cooperation on big regional issues like Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel will only survive if Arab governments are willing to repress that domestic resentment and anti-Americanism.
That is not a stable foundation for long-term relations, and it’s a situation that plays right into the arguments of regional radicals like Hasan Nasrallah as to why these regimes have to be overthrown: they sell out to the Americans, they make humiliating deals with Israel, and they don’t care about the people.
Washington and the Arab capitals are like two donkeys tied together on a cart: neither can stand without the other’s help, and neither can escape unless the other is also freed. The Arab regimes are implicated by our failed foreign policies in the region, and we are implicated by their failed domestic governance. If we don’t help each other, we are both in trouble, and we know it.
Escaping from the bind that the United States and its Arab friends are in in the Middle East today requires several things that seem in short supply in 2008: a commitment to sustaining our investments when many weary Americans would prefer to walk away from the table; new investments in issues like Arab-Israeli diplomacy even though the returns are likely to be meager at best; and a commitment to the long term, despite the urgency many feel for quick results.
Here are my thoughts on what such a policy must comprise:
- A renewed effort at Arab-Israeli peacemaking—not because the situation is ripe for resolution, but because a peace process is part of containing the regional revisionists and especially the efforts of Iran to plant both feet firmly in the heart of the Levant. A peace process will not solve all the problems of the Middle East. But a peace process is important because it creates tensions and disagreements among members of the revisionist coalition, weakening their impact on the region and on our regional allies.
- A continued U.S. commitment to security in the Persian Gulf. Despite Russia and China’s more energetic commercial efforts in the region, neither of these countries is eager to take over this job. The United States must continue to keep the Gulf open for all, and I am fairly confident it can be done peacefully. But it does require concerted multilateral diplomacy to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, to deal with Iraqi stabilization, and to help the GCC states build the capacity and will to play a greater role in Gulf security.
- Initiatives that will present a compelling narrative of progress, peace and prosperity to counter the narrative of rejection and resistance put forward by the revisionists. As I said, that suggests the value of efforts at Arab-Israeli peace, but it also suggests the need to present the vast majority of Arabs who live outside Palestine with the opportunity to shape their own future. This promise can only be fulfilled through far-reaching political, economic and social reforms that create a new relationship between Arab governments and their citizens.
Arab leaders keenly feel the threats from radical Islam within their own societies. They know that Islamists have capitalized on state failures and weaknesses, and that the critique put forward by local Islamists is magnified by the rising popularity of Iran and its allies. In this insecure environment, U.S. efforts to persuade at least some Arab leaders of the need to reform should resonate—if it is part of a broader regional agenda, and if it is accompanied by the right kind of incentives.
For now, most Arab regimes believe that the best way to manage the threat from domestic Islamist opposition is to focus on resolving regional conflicts like Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, relieving them of the burden of addressing domestic grievances. While the United States should work with them to resolve regional conflicts, the next president needs to help them understand that the best insulation against the destabilizing effects of regional revisionists and rising domestic Islamism is to repair the frayed social contract between citizens and the state.
Tamara Cofman Wittes made these remarks at a symposium on “After Bush: America’s Agenda in the Middle East,” convened by MESH at Harvard University on September 23.
Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.
5 Responses to “Our shaky coalition, and how to save it”
Tamara Cofman Wittes has usefully identified the dilemmas America faces in countering the oppositional alliance of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Among them is the same dilemma faced by those who wish to advance democracy in the Middle East; to wit, popular discontent among the populations of our status-quo allies takes the form of anti-American extremism, and internal reforms play to the advantage of the extremists.
Wittes recommends policies—such as a Palestinian-Israel peace process and “initiatives that will present a compelling narrative of progress, peace and prosperity to counter the narrative of rejection and resistance put forward by the revisionists”—to assuage the masses, if not entirely, at least sufficiently to maintain the status quo and block the increase of power by the oppositionists. Exactly what those initiatives might be apparently remains to be developed.
I would suggest that we also consider a basic dynamic not discussed by Wittes, that of winners gaining support and losers losing support. It appears to me that Middle Easterners are less moralistic and more pragmatic than Americans: Middle Easterners love the strong and despise the weak. Recall once again the metaphor one of our prime informants, Osama bin Laden, about the strong horse and the weak horse.
When America appears strong and acts effectively, Middle Easterners tend to back off. After the destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime, Iran froze its nuclear program and Libya gave up its weapons of mass destruction. But, on the other hand, when America could not impose order on Iraq, Iran reactivated its nuclear program. When Israel is forced to stop before it can defeat Hezbollah, when Hezbollah is allowed to assert militarily its dominance in Lebanon, when Hamas rains missiles on Israeli towns without response, and when Iran boosts its nuclear program and its annihilationist threats against Israel with no more than empty moralizing from the West, the oppositionists and their sympathizers are encouraged and inspired.
Wittes suggests several carrots to be offered to susceptible Middle Easterners. Equally important, I would suggest, is a big stick for unsusceptible Middle Easterners. The susceptible others are watching, and prefer to side with the stronger, for it is the stronger who can deliver the benefits.
Philip Carl Salzman is a member of MESH.
I shudder when commentators, especially trained scholars of the region like Philip Carl Salzman, write phrases like “Middle Easterners love the strong and despise the weak.” My academic discipline, International Relations, teaches that respect for power is not a trait restricted to those of Middle Eastern origin, but is common to all organized political groups, and is especially evident in environments of insecurity like that of the contemporary Middle East. In politics, power attracts allies and deters enemies; weakness repels would-be allies and draws attacks. This is no more or less true in the Middle East than anywhere else, and no more or less true of Osama bin Laden today than of tyrants and revolutionaries in ages past.
But even if we posit that such essentialist statements are grounded in empirical evidence, how much guidance do they really provide for a new U.S. president wading through the Middle Eastern morass left behind by his predecessor? America’s declining prestige and power in the region are not facts that a new president can immediately change. It is all very well for Salzman to suggest that swaggering around the region carrying a big stick will work to cow the Middle Eastern masses—but doing so when we are in fact relatively constrained risks having our weakness even more fully exposed than it is at present. Restoring American power and credibility should be our real concern, so that we can pursue and preserve our interests in a lasting manner.
America should already have learned in the last eight years that, while we might try to stand as tall as Gulliver in the Middle East, those living close to the ground are well-positioned to strike at our Achilles’ heels: our impatience for quick results, our distaste for extended overseas engagements (especially those that taste of empire), and our understandable reluctance to invest our own blood and treasure in other nations’ well-being (when we don’t see the link to our own). Americans are exhausted with our Middle Eastern adventures, and that is why I suggested above that fixing our problems in that region will demand courage and leadership at home, as much—or perhaps even more—than abroad.
Of all people, an anthropologist should know that such broad regional characterizations as those evidenced in Salzman’s post usually mask considerable local variety, as well as masking real, if tragic, commonalities in human affairs. I hope we can discuss Middle Eastern affairs henceforward without resorting to this sort of analytically fruitless reductionism.
Tamara Cofman Wittes is a member of MESH.
It is not easy being an anthropologist, so good advice is always welcome. Tamara Cofman Wittes offers some suggestions about how anthropologists should understand the Middle East. But I confess to being unclear about her guidelines. First, Wittes objects to my characterization that Middle Easterners are attracted to power on the grounds that everyone, everywhere is attracted to power, and so it is a universal characteristic of all people. Then, Wittes objects to my characterization on the grounds that Middle Easterners are various, diverse, and different from one another, so one cannot generalize. So which is it: all people are the same, so regional generalizations do not distinguish one region from another, or people everywhere are different, so regional generalizations are invalid?
Wittes’s objections to “essentialist statements” and “analytically fruitless reductionism” are today widely held in the social sciences, and very politically correct. These formulations are at the heart of Edward Said’s arguments against what he calls “orientalism” and have been carried forward by the influential Saidian postcolonial theorists. Unfortunately, these arguments have proven to be epistemologically unsound, as demonstrated convincingly by the philosopher Irfan Khawaja (here). The reason is that all knowledge is based on abstraction, on the selection of certain features for categorization and generalization. For example, our concept of “tree” is validly distinguished from “grass,” although there are important different types of trees, e.g. soft wood and hard wood, and many varieties of each. Returning to human populations, nomadic peoples are different from sedentary peoples, notwithstanding the differences within each category, just as are tribal peoples different from subjects in agrarian societies, and from citizens in civil societies.
Wittes is uncomfortable with regional generalizations. But without generalizations, there is no regional knowledge at all. Objections to generalizations about the Middle East can equally be applied to generalizations about any individual country, e.g. Iran, which has much internal regional diversity, or about any region, e.g. Fars or Mazandaran or Baluchistan, or any subregion, individual tribe or community, or any particular family. And yet there are patterns, and distinctions between patterns are evident from one place to another. To be sure, full confidence requires that generalizations must be well substantiated, and evidence must be presented, which is why we write books. But if we did not find patterns, did not generalize, we would have nothing useful to say.
As for my practical policy advice, Wittes rejects (her own interpretation) America “swaggering around the region carrying a big stick,” on the grounds that America is too weak, has lost credibility, and has little support from its own citizens for further “Middle East adventures.” On the tendency of the American public to desire quick results at little cost (a generalization that Wittes is not shy to formulate), we do not differ. That America is too weak to use its power in the Middle East is open to dispute. But none of this explains American policy.
For example, why was the U.S. government so keen to stop Israeli forces from destroying Hezbollah’s military capacity, just when they had, under the disability of incompetent leadership, finally managed to get moving? There was widespread sympathy, both in the Arab Middle East and around the world, for “big stick” action against Hezbollah. But instead of supporting it, after no more than a few weeks of conflict, America pulled the rug out from under Israel. The result? After a short breather, Hezbollah crushes its opposition in Lebanon, the Hezbollah-Syria-Iran axis is strengthened, and prospects for peace and development in the region are set back substantially. If this is the kind of “courage and leadership at home” that Wittes favors, I fear that the state of the Middle East will worsen greatly for the foreseeable future.
Philip Carl Salzman is a member of MESH.
The epistemological debate over what we know about the “Middle East” (or even whether there is one) is interesting. As shown elsewhere on this site, its definition has been unstable, so that even the space shared by “Middle Easterners” is vague. In any case, though, it is impossible to draw a straight line from an episteme to a policy. So I come back to Tamara Cofman Wittes’s three policy recommendations to bolster our shaky coalition: reinvigorate Arab-Israeli peacemaking; multilateralize security in the Persian Gulf; and promote internal Arab reforms. All of these may offer some long-term benefits—it’s anyone’s guess—but in the short term they might strain the coalition still more.
Start with the Arab-Israeli peace process. A successful one would be a feather in America’s cap. But its actual pursuit puts strains on the coalition. The late Elie Kedourie put his finger on the problem exactly thirty years ago, commenting on a now-forgotten policy report on the Middle East prepared by the Brookings Institution in the mid-1970s. The report had determined that the security and future development of Arabs and Israelis would remain in jeopardy “until a durable settlement is concluded.” Kedourie interrogated the claim: “Is it not inconceivable that the very search for a ‘durable’ settlement between Arabs and Israelis will so exacerbate matters, and arouse among various parties such fears for their security and interests, that tensions in the area will be increased rather than lessened?”
This is exactly what happened when Bill Clinton made his last-minute bid to end the conflict with a grand bargain in 2000. The region went up in flames as a result. So it might be best to see the peace process as a gamble. In the short term, it will increase friction within our coalition, probably in equal measure to the friction it creates in theirs. In the long term, we will either win big or crash. Unfortunately, the odds of success have deteriorated considerably over the last decade. This is good enough reason to view America’s compulsive gamblers (the “expert” peace processors) with a dose of skepticism, and limit one’s bets.
Multilateralizing security in the Persian Gulf is also likely to weaken, not strengthen the coalition. If you are an Arab state on the Gulf looking for reassurance, you have stayed firmly in the coalition because there is one higher address for appeals and complaints. If you are now told that all your security requirements will have to go before a committee of the willing and reluctant—well, you’re going to cover your bases and send out a line to Tehran. This is already happening, because of our own internal divisions, as manifested in the last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and the upcoming elections. (See my “Memo from Gulfistan.”) We shouldn’t delude ourselves—this will weaken, not strengthen, our coalition, and it could embolden Iran in its own nuclear gamble. If Iran wins it, our coalition will shake to its foundations.
As for reform, ideally we would like to have both governments and their peoples in our coalition. Ideally, too, we would like them to come together in a way that enhances our interests. Unfortunately, we have discovered that reform, at least in politics, promotes the ascent of those very groups that demand that their countries exit our coalition at the least, and join up with our opponents at the worst. In a long-term, best-case scenario, we might hope to win out. In the short and medium term, we are more likely to empower the various Hamas-equivalents (as we empowered Hamas), which will weaken our coalition, and which has already moved the odds against us in the Arab-Israeli arena.
The last two presidents doubled our bets and rolled the dice in the Middle East. Policy here as elsewhere reflected a growing tendency in American society to take on more risk than necessary, and America is now paying the price. It would be wonderful to make peace, act in accord with the will of all nations, and see friendly rulers and peoples strike democratic bargains. But things do go wrong, the dice have come up snake eyes for the last two presidents in the Middle East, and so if I were the next one, I would ask this question: How about a policy that manages our risk? Looking at Tamara’s recommendations, I would say that all three have more downside risk than upside potential. That’s not a reason not to experiment with them—we could get lucky. But we mustn’t bet the farm.
Martin Kramer is a member of MESH.
Martin Kramer rightly points out that serious pursuit of Arab-Israeli diplomacy might well strain our coalition, even as it strains our revisionist adversaries. Many Arab states might like to continue to hedge their bets, or show us up, through freelance efforts to entice Hamas and/or Syria away from Iran.
Still, given the regional balance of forces, I’m optimistic that we and our allies can bear greater strain than the last go ’round, and that the attempt will bring us net benefits—if not a peace agreement (I don’t expect it will bring that). Even if, say, Israeli-Syrian talks induce our “moderate Arab allies” to fly to Damascus bearing gifts, that can have a positive impact on our broader regional confrontation. It may give Assad material incentives to constrain radical activity, and the improvement in intra-Arab relations will create concomitantly greater tensions between Damascus and Tehran. These two core members of the revisionist coalition already face disagreements over Hezbollah’s priorities: Syria wants Hezbollah to focus its attention on protecting Syrian and Shiite interests inside Lebanon, while Iran wants to use the group across borders, as a club against Israel and the West in the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program. What Hezbollah wants is perhaps the key question (anyone want to weigh on that?), but my point is that our Arab allies, even when they’re going behind our back, might actually help exacerbate these tensions among the revisionists, to our benefit. The downside is real, but I think the upside is significant.
On reform, what I’m advocating is that the U.S. government lay out a case to its Arab counterparts that it’s been unwilling to make before—that they must take some responsibility for the rise of regional radicalism, and their fault lies in their selfish, short-sighted, ham-handed grip on power; that they are cultivating their own worst nightmare—and ours—and that is not something we can tolerate; and that liberalizing reform, like peace, is part of building a Middle East we can all live with and live in.
I doubt that America’s making this case will transform any Arab leaders into disciples of Thomas Paine and Adam Smith. But we may get more movement out of some of them than we have so far. Unlike Martin, I don’t believe said movement is likely to sweep Islamist radicals into government across the region. The regimes still have what John McCain would call a “strong hand on the tiller”—meaning that the changes we’ll see will not be open contestations for executive power. If we are smart about it, as I write in Freedom’s Unsteady March, we will press for improvements in basic political freedom, to create a more pluralistic political marketplace, one that will weaken regimes but also weaken the Islamist forces Martin worries so much about. The downside, in other words, is not as bad as Martin makes out.
In the end, this case for reform makes strategic sense for the United States. It accords with our national values and with our vision for a future Middle East where we can continue to preserve and advance our interests. If we get anything out of the governments as a result, it will improve our operating environment by putting the revisionist radicals on the defensive and reducing their appeal. And if we don’t get anything out of them as a result, at least we will not be blamed as much by their angry populations for what comes next. Being on the right side of history is worth something, I think. Just don’t ask me to quantify it.
Gulf security is the hardest piece of my tripartite program to put into place. This is because the prospects for a more multilateral Gulf security regime are dependent on the progress of Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran can be dissuaded from its current path through concerted multiparty diplomacy and sanctions, then I think my vision of a more multilateral Gulf security framework is possible. If not, then Martin is right that the Gulf Arab states will demand a hegemonic U.S. security guarantee, as they have since the late 1980s, and we will have little choice but to provide it. I guess all I can say for sure is what I said above—the next U.S. president, one way or another, must remain committed to a strong investment in Gulf security. The modalities are still up in the air.
Finally, let me assure Philip Carl Salzman and MESH readers that I have no problem with generalizing, but generalizations are useful only to the extent that they fit the data and illuminate something new about what we observe. What we can observe is that many non-Middle Eastern political actors respect power, while many Middle Eastern political actors demonstrate an apparent indifference to clearly superior force. Just to take one momentous case, Saddam Hussein knew in both 1991 and 2003 that he would face military defeat at the hands of an American-led coalition, yet he decided that losing a war was preferable to backing down. Clearly, there is something going on in the Middle East that is not adequately explained by the notion that “Middle Easterners love the strong and despise the weak.”
More broadly, I could not agree more with Martin Kramer’s point that “it is impossible to draw a straight line from an episteme to a policy.” Debating Edward Said’s influence on Middle East studies is a hobby I leave to my colleagues in the academy; as Martin demonstrated so well in Ivory Towers on Sand, those academic debates are of little relevance to the world of policy. One of this blog’s great strengths so far has been its ability to avoid such self-involved discourse in favor of considered attention to real policy problems. That’s a tradition I’d like to uphold.
Tamara Cofman Wittes is a member of MESH.