Winter is coming to the Arab Middle East and some in America welcome that so-called autocratic solution as an alternative to two decades of fighting jihadis in the Middle East and a failed Arab Spring. That hope is mistaken.
American foreign policy in the Middle East is based on a myth. For decades, policymakers have worked to prop up Middle Eastern autocracies out of the belief that they serve as the only bulwark against chaos and threats to American interests in the region. This approach gets things backward. Rather than being the solution to the region’s various problems, these actors are responsible for producing and exacerbating the greatest underlying problems in the region, and a blank check from Washington allows them to act with impunity both at home and abroad.
The Long War requires us to transform the Arab Moslem world in order to end the recruiting pool that the current society fosters.
We can turn back the current wave of jihad as past waves have been blunted without this transformation. But this means that another wave will hit our shores again one day, as this wave is yet another wave in a long history of jihadi surges directed at the West. But the next wave of jihadis might have weapons of mass destruction as part of the attacks. We would be wise to make this the last jihad.
The Arab Spring has not caused our problem with jihadis and singing the praises of dictators from the prior Arab Winter who suppressed jihadis as our saviors from jihadis neglects the role dictators had in making their people think Islamism was an alternative to autocracy and in also promoting Islamism as a prop of the dictators. That was no Golden Age of Stability as too many want to believe, in their urge to wash our hands of the region and pretend we don't have a problem to face.
After the Arab Spring fell flat I complained about this relying-on-autocrats notion:
So is the lesson that the Middle East is a mess and we should just stay out? We should just support whatever autocratic regime that promises to control jihadis?
But that didn't prevent the rise of jihadis prior to 9/11 when we did exactly that, which just drove people unhappy with corrupt autocratic regimes to the arms of the Islamists who promised honest, God-based governance.
So we are to go back to that model? Really? Our lesson is to be just stay out because it is a mess?
And I still have hope for the impulses that drove the Arab Spring's fight against the local culture:
The Arab Spring was significant in that it showed people wanted an alternative to the traditional choices of autocrats or mullahs to run their lives. They may not have understood fully what democracy meant, but they knew they wanted it rather than their usual sad lot in life.
And the desire for democracy has undermined one fuel for extremist Moslems. In the past, Arab autocrats tried to bolster "tame" Islamist thinking to bolster their illegitimate dictatorships (or oligarchies or whatever) backed by sham elections. Even Saddam Hussein resorted to that last refuge of a scoundrel in "secular" Iraq.
But the "tame" Islamic clerics who backed despots could never compete on the field of religion with the "wild" underground Islamists who preached belief in God rather than loyalty to the state, which obviously was failing to help the people prosper as the rest of the world passed them by.
But we can't let that help become the restoration of American backing for autocrats who keep the lid on the Islamists. That path just gives the Islamists more credibility as the only resistance to the autocrats.
We need to help the Arab Moslem world resolve its civil war over who defines Islam so that the nutballs lose and are discredited. And as I've droned on about a long time, rule of law is the foundation of winning that war against the people who think Allah should write the laws and that the Islamists are the ones who know what Allah wants:
America's war on terror is in many ways an effort to avoid collateral damage here and in other parts of the world because of an Islamic civil war. Fleeing Afghanistan will not end the civil war. It just risks more collateral damage in the West. The main fight is still helping the good guys beat the jihadis in the civil war.
Mind you, I wouldn't try to openly undermine states like Saudi Arabia by visibly focusing on democracy there first. This specific advice from that initial article goes too far, too fast to be the solution to the correct diagnosis of the myth of autocratic stability:
These autocrats are unreliable and a strategic liability. Washington should end its complicity in the crimes and atrocities committed by their governments and recognize the destructiveness of these partnerships by ending weapons sales to their regimes and removing the expansive U.S. military footprint in the region. The myth of authoritarian stability is inherently flawed. Washington should tear up the blank checks it has written to these autocrats, bringing support for their regimes to a decisive end.
I'd like to point out that our expansive footprint is long gone.
But more on point, I'd rather have democratic and rule-of-law success elsewhere first--say in Iraq where we've expended so much blood and treasure to start the progress--and have states like Saudi Arabia evolve to avoid being the odd man out of growing regional democracy and rule of law.
We may think we can just wash our hands of the problems and let local friendly thug rulers keep the problematic people suppressed. But it won't work for that long.
And then it will get much worse.
And who knows what misfortune might trigger unrest that brings on the winter.
Have a super sparkly stable day.
UPDATE: News from the spark that set off the most recent (and largely failed) Arab Spring:
Thousands of Tunisians have demonstrated against President Kais Saied as the country faces a deepening political and economic crisis."...
"Saied took control of all authority and struck at democracy. The economy is collapsing. We will not be silent," [Said Anouar Ali, 34,] added.
The spring didn't heal Tunisia's problems. And Saied is bringing the winter back. Will Westerners cheer him on believing this will provide "stability"?
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
