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Opinion
An Iraq War Won't Destabilize the Mideast
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
But a war with Iraq might not shake up the Middle East much at all. Most regimes in the area are too stable, strong and clever. For example, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appears to be vastly more adept than was Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the shah of Iran. The shah allowed the clerical establishment considerable independence -- and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used the mosques and religious schools to build his network of revolutionary mullahs. Mr. Mubarak, by contrast, has thoroughly co-opted his religious hierarchy. The Egyptian people may riot over bread subsidies. They hit the streets in great numbers to mourn the passing of a beloved singer. They have not once set Egypt ablaze over the travails of the Palestinians or the bellicose actions of the United States. And Egypt, with its densely urban, youthful and homogeneous population, is perhaps the most likely state in the Middle East to succumb to a popular dissatisfaction rising from the streets.
Fears of instability in Saudi Arabia also seem misplaced. The most abused people of the country -- the Shiites of the oil-rich Eastern Province, whom the regime's hard-core Sunni clerics refer to as ''dogs'' -- aren't going to riot on behalf of Saddam Hussein, who has brutally oppressed his own Shiite majority. And Saddam Hussein has never been a beloved figure in Saudi Arabia, even among Saudis who loathe the United States.
Saudi militancy is mainly financial and expressed through proxies. The Saudis held a telethon to support Palestinian militants. They spend millions of dollars to support organizations that spread hatred of the United States and Israel. Yet they have not once rioted in significant numbers for the Palestinians or against the royal family's American protectors. This is as true for the fundamentalist heartland in the Najd region as it is for the more cosmopolitan Hijaz. Remember, Osama bin Laden stands out among both rich and poor because he is a Saudi who actually did something himself.
Ever since the Iranian revolution, Saudi Arabia's rulers have fine-tuned their internal security and their modus vivendi with the kingdom's radical Islamists, who have been richly endowed over the past two decades. It is very difficult to imagine a Saudi Khomeini -- or a successful conclave of coup-plotting colonels. A second Persian Gulf war just doesn't offer a regime-shaking catalyst that the Saudi dynasty hasn't handled before.
The instability theory doesn't work any better with Turkey and Jordan. Though a war might encourage Iraq's Kurds to express their ethnic identity more forcefully and thus provoke an incursion by a Turkish military fearful of Kurdish nationalism, neither of these is likely. Turkey has come to terms with the self-governing Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. Slowly, painfully but with increasing astuteness, Turkish society has come to appreciate the differences among the Kurds and how deeply millions of Turkey's Kurds have integrated with the increasingly democratic Turkish republic. Turkish generals, by and large cautious men attuned to popular sentiment, have expressed no desire to occupy northern Iraq. And Iraq's Kurds, repeatedly burned by international politics, are unlikely to risk their self-governing experiment by pressing nationalism too far.
In the event of war, Saddam Hussein may well try to destabilize Jordan, which has close economic ties with Iraq. And many in Jordan's large Palestinian community have lionized the Iraqi dictator as an anti-American, anti-Israeli champion. But it is very doubtful that Jordan's Palestinians think more highly of Saddam Hussein than they do of King Abdullah II. Since 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat were ejected from Jordan, Palestinians on the East Bank of the Jordan River have not once gone on a rampage against the Hashemite monarchy.
The one truly unsettling thing a second Persian Gulf war might unleash is Iraqi democracy. President Bush's rhetoric about Muslims' right to freedom has been unprecedented. Yet the administration has been vague about its aspirations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein. There may be good reasons for this vagueness, but it may also indicate that while promotion of democracy is high on the administration's list of ideals, it is low on the list of priorities.
Practical American support for liberal ideas in the Arab world has been virtually nil. The administration recently faced its first really hard test: Mr. Mubarak's imprisonment of the democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American. The administration failed to put any serious pressure on Egypt. This is the kind of corrupt stability in the Middle East that does us no honor and ultimately harms our interests. Bin Ladenism's appeal is unlikely to end in a Muslim world dominated by such unchanging despotism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/...the-mideast.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap
An Iraq War Won't Destabilize the Mideast
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
- Nov. 26, 2002
But a war with Iraq might not shake up the Middle East much at all. Most regimes in the area are too stable, strong and clever. For example, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appears to be vastly more adept than was Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the shah of Iran. The shah allowed the clerical establishment considerable independence -- and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used the mosques and religious schools to build his network of revolutionary mullahs. Mr. Mubarak, by contrast, has thoroughly co-opted his religious hierarchy. The Egyptian people may riot over bread subsidies. They hit the streets in great numbers to mourn the passing of a beloved singer. They have not once set Egypt ablaze over the travails of the Palestinians or the bellicose actions of the United States. And Egypt, with its densely urban, youthful and homogeneous population, is perhaps the most likely state in the Middle East to succumb to a popular dissatisfaction rising from the streets.
Fears of instability in Saudi Arabia also seem misplaced. The most abused people of the country -- the Shiites of the oil-rich Eastern Province, whom the regime's hard-core Sunni clerics refer to as ''dogs'' -- aren't going to riot on behalf of Saddam Hussein, who has brutally oppressed his own Shiite majority. And Saddam Hussein has never been a beloved figure in Saudi Arabia, even among Saudis who loathe the United States.
Saudi militancy is mainly financial and expressed through proxies. The Saudis held a telethon to support Palestinian militants. They spend millions of dollars to support organizations that spread hatred of the United States and Israel. Yet they have not once rioted in significant numbers for the Palestinians or against the royal family's American protectors. This is as true for the fundamentalist heartland in the Najd region as it is for the more cosmopolitan Hijaz. Remember, Osama bin Laden stands out among both rich and poor because he is a Saudi who actually did something himself.
Ever since the Iranian revolution, Saudi Arabia's rulers have fine-tuned their internal security and their modus vivendi with the kingdom's radical Islamists, who have been richly endowed over the past two decades. It is very difficult to imagine a Saudi Khomeini -- or a successful conclave of coup-plotting colonels. A second Persian Gulf war just doesn't offer a regime-shaking catalyst that the Saudi dynasty hasn't handled before.
The instability theory doesn't work any better with Turkey and Jordan. Though a war might encourage Iraq's Kurds to express their ethnic identity more forcefully and thus provoke an incursion by a Turkish military fearful of Kurdish nationalism, neither of these is likely. Turkey has come to terms with the self-governing Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. Slowly, painfully but with increasing astuteness, Turkish society has come to appreciate the differences among the Kurds and how deeply millions of Turkey's Kurds have integrated with the increasingly democratic Turkish republic. Turkish generals, by and large cautious men attuned to popular sentiment, have expressed no desire to occupy northern Iraq. And Iraq's Kurds, repeatedly burned by international politics, are unlikely to risk their self-governing experiment by pressing nationalism too far.
In the event of war, Saddam Hussein may well try to destabilize Jordan, which has close economic ties with Iraq. And many in Jordan's large Palestinian community have lionized the Iraqi dictator as an anti-American, anti-Israeli champion. But it is very doubtful that Jordan's Palestinians think more highly of Saddam Hussein than they do of King Abdullah II. Since 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat were ejected from Jordan, Palestinians on the East Bank of the Jordan River have not once gone on a rampage against the Hashemite monarchy.
The one truly unsettling thing a second Persian Gulf war might unleash is Iraqi democracy. President Bush's rhetoric about Muslims' right to freedom has been unprecedented. Yet the administration has been vague about its aspirations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein. There may be good reasons for this vagueness, but it may also indicate that while promotion of democracy is high on the administration's list of ideals, it is low on the list of priorities.
Practical American support for liberal ideas in the Arab world has been virtually nil. The administration recently faced its first really hard test: Mr. Mubarak's imprisonment of the democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American. The administration failed to put any serious pressure on Egypt. This is the kind of corrupt stability in the Middle East that does us no honor and ultimately harms our interests. Bin Ladenism's appeal is unlikely to end in a Muslim world dominated by such unchanging despotism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/...the-mideast.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap
