Provocation: Morality, Democracy and the Middle East
Is there hope for the Middle East? Does the US government care about Arab lives?
Every month, we give subscribers a chance to provoke our writers. Is there a question you’ve been burning to ask them? A point you’d like to get across? This month, it’s ’s turn. We received many provocations from our subscribers and Shadi chose the ones that touch upon a difficult, pressing and (for him) personal topic: the Middle East. See his response below!
(In case you missed it, here is last month’s Provocation: “Beauty and Niceness in an Accidental World,” by Damir Marusic.)
— Santiago Ramos
There were some good provocations asking why I don’t have kids despite being a prominent voice in favor of people having kids. But as full-scale war threatens to break out in the Middle East, we’ll have to save those for another time. I’ll also just say that I’m finding it hard to comment on events in the region. The indifference and even enthusiasm towards the indiscriminate bombing of Arabs and Muslims speaks to something deeper and dark. It never went away. But I never thought I'd see it presented so unapologetically.
At some level, I think it’s actually pretty straightforward. We're not viewed as equal or equally deserving of dignity. We're of a lesser kind. Arab and Muslim lives are expendable. And that's obviously something that's hard to come to terms with.
Let’s start with the big picture. Mohammed Nosseir asks: “Is the United States a morally-driven nation”? Yes, but it doesn’t always act that way (especially in the Middle East). But this isn’t so different from morally-driven individuals. They don’t always act morally, and we feel a sense of betrayal when they don’t, because we expect better from them.
Because few of us see China as a “morally-driven nation,” there is paradoxically less cause for outrage when the Chinese regime does terrible things, because that is more or less what we expect from the Chinese regime. This is why there is often more frustration and anger directed towards moral individuals (and nations) than immoral ones, despite the former still being clearly better than the latter.
Which brings me to recent developments in the Middle East, and whether or how they implicate my longstanding arguments about the prospects for democracy there. Mary Jane Eyre asks: “Realistically, what do you think are the prospects for liberal democracy in the Middle East? What are some second-best alternatives that you could live with?”
Well, for starters, I don’t even consider “liberal democracy” to be the, or even a, goal in the Middle East. Sure, it would be nice in theory, but to the extent that democracies are meant to reflect popular sentiment, Middle Eastern democracies would need to respect and incorporate the non-liberal religious and cultural preferences of voters. Since I prioritize small-d democracy over small-liberalism, I don’t necessarily see this as a huge problem. (For more on that argument, see my book The Problem of Democracy, which explores the conundrum of what to do when a democracy produces “bad” outcomes). I should add, though, that a certain degree of political liberalism is baked into even a minimalistic conception of democracy. There needs to be sufficient freedom of association and expression for elections to be both competitive and meaningful. If an opposition party cannot organize meetings, hold protests or communicate its ideas and policy preferences through the media, then democratic competition is not fair.
Do I think my more modest conception of democracy is possible in the Middle East? Yes. Unless we consider Arabs to be uniquely incapable of democracy (which, to be fair, a surprising number of people still think), there would be no good reason to say otherwise. But not so long as the U.S. continues to support Arab dictatorships to the tune of billions of dollars and actively undermines even halting moves towards democracy. As recently as 2013, the Obama administration green-lit a military coup against a democratically elected (albeit illiberal) government in Egypt. This was effectively the end of the Arab Spring. It’s one thing for Arabs to have to fight against their own regimes and risk death or imprisonment. But when they have to fight against regimes that also have the support of the most powerful nation in the world — and the most powerful nation in the region, Israel — it’s rather daunting.
(Just as a fun side note, President Barack Obama was known to privately joke, “All I need in the Middle East is a few smart autocrats.” He also wondered out loud why everyone couldn’t just “be like the Scandinavians.”)
There is by now a pretty developed academic literature on how international factors can be decisive in facilitating or undermining democratic transitions. So we, as Americans, aren’t innocent bystanders. We’re directly implicated. As Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way write in their book Competitive Authoritarianism, “It was an externally driven shift in the cost of suppression, not changes in domestic conditions, that contributed most centrally to the demise of authoritarianism in the 1980s and 1990s.” In various Latin American and Asian autocracies that long took U.S. backing for granted, American protection was withdrawn over the course of the eighties, including in Peru, Argentina, Chile, the Philippines, and South Korea. With the United States signaling its new priorities, the opposition became emboldened, regimes wavered in their use of force, and powerful elites began to fracture as they contemplated a different future.
Which brings me to the role of Israel.
, who wrote an excellent Wisdom of Crowds essay on honesty in foreign policy, offers this provocation:Would you be content with a U.S.-Middle East policy that strongly supported democracy in the region (preventing coups, aiding protestors, cutting off aid to dictators, etc.), while still arming Israel to the teeth and shielding it at the UN? Would you find it ‘good enough’ if US policy was essentially, ‘we’ll do a lot to help most Arabs, just not Palestinians’?
Yes, this would certainly be a lot better than the current policy. I’m just not sure it’s possible to separate the rest of the Arab world from Israel’s behavior as an increasingly unconstrained rogue actor. The sad fact of the matter is that Israel stands at the center of a region the United States helped form, and Israel is a staunch opponent of democracy in the rest of the Middle East. The reason for this is simple enough: Arab populations tend to be doggedly anti-Israel.
But the problem is deeper than this. U.S. policymakers have said for decades that, along with preserving the free flow of oil, ensuring Israel’s security is the core regional priority. Insofar as democracies would be more anti-Israel — and they would — the prospect of Arab democracy is seen as a problem to be managed and contained rather than encouraged.
This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.
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What if, in an alternate world, all of the muslim countries in the region had made peace with Israel while continuing to peacefully support the struggle of Palestinians for a state? Or, what if the Arabs / Palestinians had accepted the 1947 UN plan for Partition Palestine? I understand the plan was deemed pro-Zionist and therefore unfair to the Arabs. In that scenario, would have the Middle East developed differently?
Israel-Palestine conflict is only one of several factors that have made Middle East so volatile, making it an infertile environment for democracy. Other factors include acquisition of sudden wealth of some, but not all, Middle East nations in the form of Petrodollars that was used to spread Wahhabism to various parts of the muslim world, radicalizing them even more. Egypt was probably the pre-eminent Arab nation after the war, but is now eclipsed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Then there is Shia - Sunni conflict that played out in Iraq and Syria, and then between Iraq and Iran.
US administrations may be guilty of supporting dictators and authoritarian regimes in the middle east, but that was driven by a need for stable and uninterrupted supply of Oil that only dictators were deemed capable of ensuring. That in turn increased unrest among the Arab citizens that in turn forced the leaders to clamp down even more etc.
I think it was Fareed Zakaria who said decades ago that oil has proven to be more of a curse than a benefit. I agree. Without it, the Middle East would probably be a lot more stable, peaceful, and even democratic.
I guess the point I am making is that US policy could have been better in theory, but the challenges in the Middle East are more structural IMHO.
Let's back up a moment... I remember watching the planes smashing into the World Trade Center and later wondering why these Arabs hated us so much. I had worked in the oil business and knew that ARAMCO - the Arabian-American Oil Company is one of the most prosperous economic enterprises in the world. At that time the U.S. hadn't gotten directly involved in any Mid East wars and just wanted stability so cheap oil could fill our tanks. I didn't know a Sunni from a Shi'ite and really didn't care to have the need to know.
Later, I came to understand more of the tumultuous Middle East history and studied the rise of radical Islam in Egypt and Palestine. Iran under the Shah seemed to be on the path to modernization but we know how that ended up with a merging of two versions of radical Islam. I watched the devastation of Iraq and then Syria and the rise of ISIS and its barbarism. I watched in horror as they eradicated pre-Islamic Syrian history and dynamited the ancient Buddhist cliff carvings.
Fast forward to October 7 with Hamas brutally attacking Israeli civilians and scurrying back beneath a shield of their own civilians daring Israel to respond knowing the casualties of dense urban warfare. Does the U.S. care for Arab/Iranian lives? The real question is do the radical Islamists care for the lives of their own citizens they so carelessly sacrificed?
I live in liberal California, but I witness very little animosity towards our sizable Muslim community. Nationwide, there are more the 70 Muslims serving in the Biden Administration.
"Muslims also won seats in Texas, Illinois, California, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These newly elected officials come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including Somali, Pakistani, Afghan, Indian and Palestinian, but tend to be young and Democratic.
The path to these wins was paved in part by higher-profile Muslim politicians, including Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in Congress, who is now Minnesota attorney general; André Carson, a congressman from Indiana; and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. But Mohamed Gula, national organizing director at Emgage, a Muslim civic engagement non-profit, said the phenomenon was also fueled by the community’s desire “to create social change, to create a culture shift and the systems that are supposed to represent us”. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/26/us-midterms-muslim-candidates-elected-politics
My research points back to the Arab invasion of Persia (Iran) over a millennium ago in 654 and the forced conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam. The current split between the Sunnis and Shia is ancient and deep. It is this vicious holy war within Islam that leads to the visions of bloody jihad perpetrated by radical Islamists. No, it is not the West that doesn't value Muslim lives, it is the division deep within Islam itself that causes the carnage. Most of us in the West would like to walk away from this madness and cruelty and probably would if not for Israel being a bastion of Western liberalism in the region. Sadly, I find the West values Muslims more than they do themselves.