Tuesday, January 28, 2014

MidEast Scholar's Diagnosis: "Hopeless"



The Sick Middle East -Daniel Pipes, PhD [pictured]

The recent fall of Fallujah, Iraq, to an Al-Qaeda-linked group provides an unwelcome reminder of the American resources and lives devoted in 2004 to 2007 to control the city – all that effort expended and nothing to show for it. Similarly, outlays of hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize Afghanistan did not prevent the release of 72 prisoners who have attacked Americans.

These two examples point to a larger conclusion: maladies run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers cannot remedy them.

Poor schools, repressive governments, and archaic social mores assure abysmal rates of economic growth. Starvation haunts Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Vast reserves of oil and gas have distorted nearly every aspect of life. Miniature medieval-like monarchies like Qatar become surreal world powers playing at war in Libya and Syria, indifferent to the lives they break, as a vast underclass of oppressed foreign workers toils away and a princess deploys the largest budget for art purchases in human history. The privileged can indulge their cruel impulses, protected by connections and money. Sex tourism to poor countries like India flourishes.

Efforts at democracy and political participation either wither, as in Egypt, or elevate fanatics who cleverly disguise their purposes, as in Turkey. Efforts to overthrow greedy tyrants lead to yet-worse ideological tyrants (as in Iran in 1979) or to anarchy (as in Libya and Yemen). One commonly roots for both sides to lose.

Islamism, currently the most dynamic and threatening political ideology, is summed up by a morbid Hamas declaration to Israelis: "We love death more than you love life." Polygyny, burqas, genital mutilation, and honor killing make Middle Eastern women the world's most oppressed.

Middle Eastern life suffers from acute biases – often official – based on religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe, skin color, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, work, and disability. Slavery remains a scourge.

Conspiracy theories, political zealotry, resentment, repression, anarchy, and aggression rule the region's politics. Modern notions of the individual remain weak in societies where primordial bonds of family, tribe, and clan remain dominant.

The Middle East suffers from an urge to snuff out whole countries. Israel is the best known potential victim but Kuwait actually disappeared for a half year while Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain could be swallowed up at any time.

Middle Eastern states spend outsized amounts of their wealth on intelligences services and the military, creating redundant forces to check each other. They venture abroad to buy tank, ship, and plane baubles. They devote inordinate resources to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and the platforms to deliver them. Even terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda plot to acquire WMD. Cutting-edge methods of terrorism develop in the Middle East.

Economic and political failure creates large bodies of refugees; Afghans have made up the world's largest refugee population since the 1980s; Syrians now threaten to overtake them, sowing poverty and chaos in their lands of refuge. Desperate souls attempt to leave the region altogether for Western countries, with more than a few dying along the way. Those who make it bring their region's maladies to such tidy countries as Sweden and Australia.

Nineteenth-century diplomats dubbed the Ottoman Empire "the Sick Man of Europe." Now, I nominate the whole Middle East the Sick Man of the World. The region's hatreds, extremism, violence, and despotism require many decades to remedy.

While this process perhaps takes place, the outside world is best advised not to expend blood and treasure to redeem the Middle East – a hopeless task – but on protecting itself from the region's manifold threats, from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and harems to mega-terrorism and electromagnetic pulse.
[The Washington Times]
*

4 comments:

LHwrites said...

This is one of the few articles I have read by him that makes a lot of sense. However, this is because, it's nothing new. We have had this discussion many times, in and out of this forum. The MidEast would have been left to destroy each other, which would have happened before the accessibility of WMD, if not for two things: their oil, and the Western ally of Israel (but mostly the oil). That's why they use their oil wealth to rush to embrace WMD and the devices to carry them, because they know it's only a matter of time before their oil is gone, or rendered obsolete, and they each wish to make themselves rulers of their entire region and impossible to ignore by the rest of the world, before that happens.

Bruce said...

I follow Pipes closely. He's one of only two scholars [the other being Barry Rubin, PhD] who are cool headed and make few and accurate predictions. He's also a very humble and nice guy. I had the pleasure of travelling with him on a mission to Israel.

B :}

John Mac said...

Did you hear that Barry had passed away a few days ago?

Bruce said...

Yes I did. May his soul find comfort in the world to come. I also had the opportunity to meet him once at an AIPAC conference. He was also extremely humble and a mentsch to the core. His shoes will be almost impossible to fill.