Tamara Cofman Wittes: Our Shaky Coalition, And How To Save It

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http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/10/our_shaky_coalition_and_how_to_save_it/

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.

2 Responses to “Our shaky coalition, and how to save it”

  1. on 16 Oct 2008 at 10:19 amPhilip Carl Salzman

    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.

  2. on 16 Oct 2008 at 5:49 pmTamara Cofman Wittes

    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.

Tamara Cofman Wittes: Our Shaky Coalition, And How To Save It

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