BEIRUT — The tripartite Anglo-American-French missile strikes against targets in Syria that aimed to punish the Syrian government and deter it from using chemical weapons should briefly stop the use of these barbaric instruments of war, as has happened previously. Despite this achievement, in the context of the wider, older, and continuing American and European militarism in the Middle East, these attacks generate mixed feelings, because they fail four critical tests of efficacy, legitimacy, credibility, and the wider Syrian war context.

They seem to be political acts that are isolated from the defining local and regional dynamics in Syria and the Middle East; as such they seem mainly to tell domestic audiences in the West that the three attacking powers value human life and international law more than do the Syrian and Russian governments — a questionable point, given how much killing these three states have done in the region for decades. The strikes’ consequences are likely to perpetuate the turmoil and new forms of violence that plague the region, which is the recurring legacy of such foreign military actions.

The Saturday attacks fail the efficacy test. Twenty years of non-stop U.S. and other attacks against terror groups and militant governments since the 1998 missile strikes against Al Qaeda in Sudan and Afghanistan have not deterred Al Qaeda and other terrorists that now flourish. These groups only come to life in zones that have been ravaged by local and foreign military attacks, such as Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, most notably.

The many governments and militant forces that stand up to the United States and other foreign powers have steadily expanded in recent years. Ironically — but not surprisingly — Iranian, Russian, Hezbollah, and Turkish influence in Syria and other Arab lands has grown recently, in large part thanks to the consequences of the persistent militarism of the United States and other foreign and Arab powers who have tried to “roll back” such influence.  Nikki Haley and her posse may be “locked and loaded”, as she says; if so, then Washington’s military performance in the Middle East since 1998 to defeat terror and roll back Iran has mostly shot itself in the foot, actually strengthening the foes it seeks to weaken.

The attacks also fail the legitimacy test because the UN and other international bodies that are authorized to verify who conducted the chemical attacks before any punitive measure are taken have not done their work, which was to start Sunday on the ground. The tripartite attackers cannot credibly claim legitimate self-defense because they were not under threat of imminent attack and were not attacked themselves, as happened in 9/11. Western powers who say they seek to uphold international law and norms by breaking or ignoring them have a serious legitimacy problem on their hands.

The attacks fail the credibility test because Western concerns about deaths by chemical weapons lose some of their acuity, for two reasons. The Syrian government and opposition forces have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, often through inhuman means such as barrel bombs and starvation sieges, which seem not to have generated much action by Saturday’s tripartite attackers, even though their consequences are far greater. Their moral outrage at the deaths of innocent civilians is also clouded by the reality that the United States, France and UK between them have been directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East over many decades of their direct military and political actions across the region, including in Yemen today.

The supreme irony here is that Great Britain was the power that introduced chemical weapons in their arsenal in the region around World War One, which they wanted to use if needed to put down an anti-colonial uprising in Iraq (but did not actually deploy them in the end). The Western attackers’ focus on averting more innocent deaths due to cruel means also would be more credible, for example, if the United States and UK stopped actively assisting the Saudi and Emirati war against Yemen, where tens of thousands suffer from  cholera and thousands have died from this scourge, malnutrition, and other impacts of the war.

All deaths by cruel means of war are abhorrent and must be stopped by the collective actions of all countries that value all human life equally; that will not happen by the occasional actions of a few countries that appear selective in their revulsion at human suffering and death, and episodic in their adherence to international law and norms.

The attacks, finally, fail the test of accounting for the wider realities of the war in Syria and its many regional and global linkages. In specific military operations like this — or the Anglo-American attack against Iraq in 2003, or even the recent two-year war against Islamic State (ISIS) — short-term gains tend to wither away due to lack of linkages to a wider policy that addresses the underlying causes of the war and possible ways to end it. More comprehensive and realistic approaches are required to stop the fighting, stabilize Syria, and redress other tensions that now surround it, including Kurdish, Iranian, Israeli, Turkish, and Russian interests, for starters.

These attacks continue a Western tradition of nonstop warfare in the Arab region that started with Napoleon more than two centuries ago, and only seems to escalate further today with drones, Cruise missiles, electronic warfare, and contracted mercenaries. The results are also the same: resistance from local powers, destruction of Middle Eastern societies, and the birth of radical forces and governments that defy the foreign attackers. This is even more dangerous now because of the direct military intervention in Syria of non-Western and regional powers, like Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, and Hezbollah.

Only political and socio-economic solutions to the deteriorating human foundations of Arab states will end the violence, rid us of our long serving dictators and banned weapons of mass destruction, and achieve peace, equal rights, and prosperity for the bludgeoned people of the region.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow, adjunct professor of journalism, and Journalist in Residence at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. He can be followed @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 16 April 2018

Word Count: 994

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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, The Arab Weekly, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.

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Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s proposal for moving towards new security arrangements in the Middle East is an important gesture that should be read in two contrasting ways, for it faithfully reflects the Arab region’s double perception of Iran as a noble friend, or a deceitful menace.

There is little new in the broad principles or worthwhile goals that Zarif mentions in his effort to jump-start an Arab-Iranian process of dialogue, mutual understanding and widespread engagement.

But one new dimension of his text does deserve serious exploration: his concluding idea that one day Arabs and Iranians could sign non-aggression pacts, after taking mutual confidence-building steps in sensitive arenas, such as nuclear power and military visits, spending, and exercises.

I have spent my whole life working with words in the Middle East, and I know that words can matter, especially if they are a signal of intent and a first step towards action.

Zarif’s concluding words, “all the way to signing non-aggression pacts” certainly reflect the principle of finishing with statement that will keep ringing in the ears of readers for some time, because it captures the heart of the message.

Zarif’s message coincides with the celebration of the annual festival of Nowruz. This pre-Islamic celebration that marks the advent of a new year includes a traditional cleaning of one’s home; Iranians also say it is about friendship, reconciliation, and lighthearted fun, leaving anger and vengefulness for another day.

We might use this guide to engage with Zarif’s thoughts and suggestions — and also to challenge him and the Arab states alike to do the same in their policies and actions, if they sincerely seek actual, not rhetorical, reconciliation and peace.

I have never met Foreign Minister Zarif, but I have encountered many senior officials like him across the Middle East during my half-century of reporting here. Several lessons I draw from such encounters seem relevant in how we should deal with his words:

We should read and ponder such a hopeful statement with care, and then delve beyond the engaging rhetoric and smooth personality, to identify if there are any genuine openings for diplomatic breakthroughs.

Zarif’s alluring vision of Arab-Iranian non-aggression pacts makes me wonder if Arab and Iranian leaders could now turn off their childish propaganda machines, sit down for a serious contest of who brews the best tea, actually talk to each other like adults, and most importantly call each other’s bluff — to find out once and for all if we are destined for perpetual warfare, or peace and mutual prosperity.

On paper, no reasonable person could object to any of Zarif’s points, focusing as they do on moving towards “stability, security, peace, and development,” which he says could occur on the basis of a few consecutive steps: A propaganda truce, dialogue, confidence-building measures, exchanges of people and goods and accelerating cooperation across sensitive areas that include military spending and exercises, and nuclear industries.

He rejects any state’s hegemonic ambitions in the region as both unfeasible and a source of new tensions.

Many Arabs would ask him, though, what Iranian troops, funds, weapons, surrogates, technology, trainers, engineers, and advisers are doing in several Arab states, including in situations of war?

Most Arab governments and many citizens do not take him seriously because they do not see his words matching his country’s actions across the Middle East. This is Zarif’s insurmountable obstacle, which he cannot overcome even with the finest vibes of a Nowruz crescent moon and its reaffirmations of peace, love, happiness and coexistence.

Yet deeper demons haunt the Arabs, because most Arab countries — no, all Arab countries — have failed to harness their human, financial, cultural, geographical and natural resources to be able to adequately preserve their national security and well-being.

All Arab states embarrassingly depend on foreign patrons, financiers, protectors and armourers against real and imagined foreign threats, but also against the turbulent agitation of their own justifiably disgruntled citizens.

In the modern struggle for statehood and sovereignty in the Middle East, Iran has broadly out-performed most Arab states. As some Arab countries suffer internal wars and fractures, Iran, Turkey Israel, Russia, the United States hover above them, like vultures waiting to grab a piece of the imminent Arab carcass below, with Syria being today’s most distressing example.

In tandem, Iran has patiently advanced its own strategic military and political alliances within some Arab countries, steadily filling the openings created by internal Arab turmoil, dilapidated statehood, ravaged citizenship, and wars, notably in Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen.

This is what all strong states routinely do; they harness their resources to preserve their strategic interests, even if others complain.

But the Arab states have been unable to do this. Driven by their many internal and regional vulnerabilities and consequent understandable fears, many Arabs point to Iran as their existential and hegemonic threat.

They simultaneously seek protection in Washington, London, France, Russia and even Tel Aviv. Iran’s protestations of innocence or legitimate self-defense seem insincere to most Arab ears, as do its arguments that it seeks only to protect itself against regular warnings, sanctions, and threats of military attacks from western, Israeli, and Arab governments.

Iranian officials can sing Fairouz or Umm Kalthoum love songs all night long, but most Arabs will not believe them. The existential fears of both Iranian and Arab leaders are intense and genuine. Speeches at the UN, debates on television, and media commentaries only exacerbate mutual mistrust. Only drastic acts can break through the rising mutual fears and parallel hardening of positions.

Zarif’s proposal for direct dialogue leading to serious engagements and conflict-reduction measures on key issues could offer a historic opening towards that happy future he paints of a region in peace and prosperity — but only if he is serious, and seriousness here is measured by only one criterion: Pursuing policies that match the rhetoric.

Which is, of course, precisely what Iran says about the Arab countries who say they seek regional calm but spend hundreds of billions of dollars on arms and scramble amateurishly to create anti-Iran coalitions with bizarre groups of Arab, Israel, and American partners that never seem to achieve their aim.

The historic nuclear agreement that Iran signed with world powers three years ago should shape our search for ideas on how to stop the escalation towards confrontation or war against Iran, especially since the election of Donald Trump.

If few Arab officials believe Zarif’s words, perhaps they would react more positively to actions that create an opening for serious diplomatic engagement. An Arab official of equal stature could respond to Zarif with words of equal magnitude, mentioning precisely and honestly the issues that concern the Arab world.

A serious mediation effort could move them both towards a credible negotiating process, initial tension-reduction steps, and ultimately long-term moves towards genuine non-aggression and a region that spends hundreds of billions of dollars on improving human well-being and protecting our fragile environment.

If Zarif wants to be taken more seriously in the Arab region, he might consider unilaterally taking one or two measures on his list of de-escalation actions.

This could entice Arab states to take notice, and perhaps to follow suit. This could happen via backdoor contacts with Arab leaders, to facilitate negotiations and their suggestions for initial confidence-building measures that would reciprocate Zarif’s list.

Strong, confident, peace-loving states do such things, without risking their national security or demeaning their dignity. In fact, the opposite happens: The world respects them for taking bold, unilateral moves towards peace and mutual security. Then, their Arab foes also might wake up and explore more serious and productive policy options beyond foreign arms and protection.

If both sides decide to grow up and act like adults, this may be an opportunity to start walking down that enticing path to a peaceful and prosperous Middle East, shaped heavily by mutually respectful Arabs and Iranians.

Rami G. Khouri is a journalism professor and public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, nonresident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and an internationally syndicated columnist.Follow him on Twitter: @ramikhouri This article first appeared in The New Arab.

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 26 March 2018
Word Count: 1,311
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BEIRUT — For most of the past two centuries, Egypt has been the epicenter, litmus test, proving ground, and mother of cultural and political trends across the Arab region — so we should all be worried by the events of the past month that systematically throttled, indicted, intimated, detained, and otherwise politically eliminated potential serious candidates to oppose Field Marshal-President Abdelfattah Sisi in this year’s presidential election.

We should worry because the brand of top-heavy, security- and military-anchored manipulation and monopolization of power across society in Egypt continues to slowly spread to most other Arab countries. The pre-fixed outcomes of presidential elections or parliamentary division-of-seats in favor of the ruling power elite is not only troubling because it robs society of the potential to address the many challenges it faces in virtually all fields of life; and I mean all fields of life, including education, employment, water, health care, air quality, food security, corruption, human rights denials, poverty, weak social safety nets, labor informality, disparities, lack of political participation or accountability, haphazard mega-urban sprawl, and other critical dimensions of life that are in bad shape, and continue to deteriorate for the most part, across most of the Arab region.

Egypt’s heavy-handed elimination of all serious presidential contenders is also troubling because it takes to a new height of vindictive brutality the rot and the core weakness that degrade and dehumanize hundreds of millions of ordinary Arab men and women who often find themselves naked, blindfolded, handcuffed, and invisible in front of their political authorities. Hundreds of millions among the 400 million Arabs today have seen their political, social, economic, and cultural rights systematically crushed by selfish elites who have followed a predictable script that was initiated in Egypt by the armed forces coup in the 1950s, and now spreads throughout our troubled region: They seize power by force; create and manipulate the levers of influence and control in society; buy off small numbers of people who are brought into the circle of power through crony capitalism patronage; develop mass mind-control indoctrination and propaganda mechanisms that tell every citizen what he or she is allowed to read, hear, say, and think; and, offer hero-worship and sycophantic promises that play on the yearnings for salvation, a savior, and a few loafs of bread for their children every night among the disheveled, desperate skeletons of their once proud citizens.

Egypt is important to watch because it remains the heart and wellspring of this autocratic and destructive trend across our region — though it is important to note the many other fine qualities of the Egyptian people that refuse to die, because they permeate those dimensions of the indestructible humanity, wisdom, and joy of Egypt that do persist below the surface of the power bludgeons.

The presidential “election” is the latest example of how the power control process operates. If anyone is interested in understanding how the Egyptian state has managed its autocratic system for the past 65 years, I recommend strongly a powerful book that has just been published by a respected scholar who has studied Egypt for many decades. It is the book entitled simply Egypt, by Robert Springborg (2018, 245 pp., Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Medford, MA, USA). It traces in great detail and much clarity the traditions and mechanics of the “deep state” that has defined modern Egypt, including chapters on the presidency, the armed forces and security agencies, the parliament, civil society, and the “rocky road ahead.” I recommend it strongly to any reader who wants to understand the autocratic trends that continue to proliferate across our region.

The Egyptian government’s elimination of the presidential candidacies of Ahmed Shafiq, Sami Anan, Khaled Ali, and Mohammad Anwar Sadat was no surprise, given the total power-control track record of the Sisi regime since it eliminated Egypt’s first ever legitimately elected president in 2013. The surprise is that in the wake of the crushing of the 2010-11 Arab uprisings by Arab security states and their foreign supporters in the east and west alike, so many other Arab countries have followed the Egyptian model that openly wields brute force to crush any opposition along with any mere expressions of differing views and any serious exercise of freedom of expression and a pluralistic media.

So half a dozen other Arab governments increasingly apply harsh new restrictions on citizens’ ability to express themselves in the public realm, even on social media. This criminalization of political expression and free speech is the latest wave of public policy barbarism that radiates across Arab frontiers. Many Arab governments find themselves, like Egypt, frantically seeking to contain the anger and humiliation of their own citizens. Those citizens in most cases simply want to express their views, share peacefully in discussing or shaping policies that impact their lives, and in most cases find a way to be able to feed their children and allow them to gain meaningful employment in economies that are massively controlled by small power elites.

Arab citizens in their hundreds of millions are being politically, socially, and economically castrated at birth, and they grow up learning that they have no voice, no power, no rights, perhaps even no value as human beings. The bottom line of this ugly dynamic remains, to my mind, freedom of expression. It is becoming increasingly difficult or dangerous merely to express one’s thoughts in public in many Arab countries. Yet small groups of human rights activists and courageous, patriotic individuals continue to speak out, because they understand that only if all Arabs have the opportunity to participate in their public life and policies can their societies have any chance of addressing the many severe challenges they already face today in all fields of life.

In our lingering post-colonial world, it is noteworthy therefore to see the Washington Post in an editorial this week comment rightly on the severe jail sentences handed down to two Saudi men who tried to establish a small human rights organization on-line and even heeded the government’s demand to close it. The Post Editorial Board said, commenting on the contrast with the liberal, futuristic picture of the country its officials presented at the Davos global gathering: “But the old Saudi Arabia was still evident back at home. On Thursday, two human rights activists, Mohammed al-Otaibi and Abdullah al-Attawi, were sentenced to 14 and seven years in prison, respectively, for briefly founding a human rights organization about five years ago. No matter that they heeded the government’s demands to close it; the prosecution painted such things as publishing human rights reports, disseminating information to the news media and retweeting posts on Twitter as criminal acts…The twinkling promises for overseas investors at Davos cannot mask the fact that Saudi Arabia is still what it was five years ago — a dungeon for those who dare speak out.”

This is harsh stuff, yes. But it pales in comparison to what I have witnessed all around me in recent decades as I move around the Arab world: several hundred million Arab men and women whose minds and self-respect shrivel before our eyes with every new move to knock them down, shut their mouths, close their minds, and have them only obsequiously obey or else, moves ordered and implemented by small groups of ruling men with guns who are addicted to power but cannot use it equitably for their people’s benefit.

The slow, painful hollowing and effective dehumanization of Arab societies deprives them of the dynamism of their greatest resource — the ability of their men, women, and youth to participate in the mechanisms, decisions, assessments, and development of their own societies. Lands where humans and citizens are transformed into docile beasts of burden are troubled lands. When the Washington Posteditorial board recognizes and says this, it probably means there is something there to explore.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and adjunct professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. He can be followed @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 30 January 2018
Word Count: 1,300
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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BEIRUT — The start of another calendar year brings with it the opportunity to look back and look ahead to try to understand the trends that define our Arab region. I have spent the last year steadily researching what I call in shorthand the 4 Ds that define the underlying trends that have slowly brought our region to its fractured and often traumatized state today: state dysfunction, socio-economic disparity, citizen political disempowerment, and individual and collective human despair.

This gruesome quartet of forces has continuously gnawed away at the former “stability” of Arab countries and societies for the past four decades, generating insurmountable obstacles to state integrity that has resulted in six war-ravaged countries and others where internal stresses seem to portend permanent draconian, security-first, responses by political elites that refuse to share power inclusively.

The rot gained wide traction since the 1970s, but the past decade indicates that we should not expect any quick improvements in the region. This decade has included continuing mass desperation, spontaneous uprisings, a few civil wars, much government counter-repression, and foreign military interventions everywhere you look. In fact, Arab and other Middle Eastern countries now join the trend of foreign militarism, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran leading the way in making war or establishing military bases in nearby countries.

I initially sought to understand the underlying reasons for our Arab region’s continuing slide into incoherent statehood and ravaged citizenship by exploring what drove otherwise ordinary young men and some women to support, like, or join the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) – perhaps as many as 50 or 60 million Arabs, according to some pollsters and analysts.

My initial research led me to the frightening conclusion about our Arab region suffering the grotesque realities of the 4 D’s mentioned above. I explored this in more depth by in two ways: the obvious signs that are visible to anyone like myself who travels around the region and interacts with both ordinary citizens and members of the power elites, and the findings of credible empirical research by Arab and international scholars who explore broad trends across the entire region.

Too often for comfort, the findings from my feet and my footnotes point out half a dozen trends that should cause grave concern across our region:

a) Conditions for many or most people have deteriorated in almost every important sector of life (water, education, employment, nutrition, poverty, environment, freedom of expression, political participation and accountability, socio-economic disparities, and a dozen others.)

b) All these dimensions of life link with one another to create an almost insurmountable cycle of obstacles to an individual achieving a better life, because deterioration in one dimension of life automatically triggers similar declines in other sectors; this reverses what happened to ordinary families across the Arab world in 1920-1970, when every generation saw its wellbeing improve.

c) Conditions in all these sectors have continued to deteriorate for the most part in the past decade since the 2010-11 uprisings’ explosion of mass popular despair sent the strongest signal of the past century of the unsustainable nature of current Arab statehood. The massive red flag of the uprisings has been ignored, so underlying conditions continue to worsen, generating new pressures that build up with unpredictable consequences.

d) The accumulated stresses in many sectors have reached a point where it is more and more difficult to stop or slow down the deteriorations and try to improve conditions. Many countries with their mediocre governance systems continue the same damaging policies just to stay in place – like over-pumping groundwater, passing on failing students to the next class, misdirecting subsidies in sectors that inhibit real and sustained economic growth or employment, ignoring the spontaneous explosion in unplanned urbanism, criminalizing free expression on social media, and refusing to allow ordinary citizens to participate in the challenges and thrills of designing state policies that actually respond to people’s needs, rather than the elite’s further enrichment.

e) This cycle of regression has led to severe splintering of Arab states’ populations, on the basis of ethnicity, sectarianism, wealth, and power. As the Arab region’s people fracture into smaller units, many of them also militarize, and seek foreign patrons and protectors. This causes massive new problems for the reconstitution of integrated and healthy states — a challenge that is exacerbated by the underlying socio-economic stresses and disparities mentioned above that continue to deteriorate.

f) All of this, serious and threatening as it is, madly seems to be ignored by both our governing power elites and the leading international powers that support them, whether regional powers like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, and Turkey, or global powers like the United States, Russia, U.K, France and others.

The cumulative consequences of these internal trends within many Arab countries strike me as the most serious threat that we confront (alongside the continued dual challenges of Zionist-Israeli colonialism and non-stop international military interventions). So for the coming months or more, I will ignore Donald Trump, Mohammad bin Salman, northern Syria, Aden, Benghazi, Egyptian jails, and other issues that preoccupy most Middle East watchers. Instead, in these weekly columns I will report on and analyze studies on the issues that I believe form the basis for the Arab region’s continuing deterioration, militarization, pauperization, polarization, and fragmentation. These will include trends in poverty, education, employment, pollution, water equity, housing, corruption, democratization, the rule of law, and disparities in many life dimensions.

Most of these developments are widely ignored by the Arab and international media. Their impact, however, determines the wellbeing of most of the 400 million citizens in Arab countries, who know that they deserve more than the current dysfunction, disparity, disempowerment, and despair that many of them experience in their everyday lives. These issues also ultimately will determine if the violence, cruelty, suffering, and collapse of the past decade are the high-water mark that finally pushes us to repair our dysfunctions — or are just a hint of the much greater disruption, mass suffering, and state collapse that we can expect ahead.
Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 23 January 2018
Word Count: 1,004
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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BEIRUT — The crushing irony for Palestinians today is that their cause remains widely supported by over 120 governments and billions of ordinary men and women around the world, yet the Palestinian leadership is a case study in hapless incompetence that verges on national shame. This was confirmed again this week as the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a policy statement after days of deliberations that is a sad example of meaningless clichés uttered by aging men whose track record of political achievement is empty — and astoundingly so, in view of the massive and sustained support around the world for Palestinian national rights.

The Central Council is supposed to fill the gap between the National Council (parliament-in-exile) that represents all Palestinians around the world, and the Executive Committee that represents the major Palestinian political factions and functions like a government cabinet, headed by the president. In fact, these three organs of government and the presidency are all moribund institutions that have neither impact nor legitimacy, for the leadership has lost touch with the ordinary Palestinians whom it is supposed to represent and serve.

So it is no surprise that after another fiery but hollow speech by President Mahmoud Abbas, the Central Council has decided to “suspend” its recognition of Israel, end security cooperation with Israel, effectively nullify the 2003 Oslo accords, and call on the world to work for the creation of a Palestinian state and end Israel’s colonization policies. These meaningless words by a powerless leadership will have no impact on anything.

It is hard to know what else to say or do in the face of such a failed leadership of a noble Palestinian people that continues to struggle, mostly nonviolently, for their peaceful statehood and end to refugeehood and exile, alongside an Israeli state that would acknowledge those rights for Palestinians. But we must do something, because simply continuing with the same inept leadership that has excluded the vast majority of Palestinians from participating in their national decision-making only guarantees that daily life conditions and future prospects for those millions of Palestinians will only worsen with every passing month — and for those in refugee camps or under Israeli siege in Gaza, it is hard to imagine how life could get any more difficult.

The Palestinians cannot force major changes in the policies of the Israeli government that continues with the same colonial, Apartheid-like policies that have defined Zionism since the 1947-48 creation of Israel and the dismemberment, disenfranchisement, and dispersal of the Palestinians. But 1.5 million Palestinians of 1948 have become nine million or so today, and they do have the power to do one thing, whether they live in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, as Israeli citizens inside Israel, or throughout the diaspora around the region and the world.

They can and must re-legitimize their national leadership into a single movement that listens to all their views, represents them legitimately, reaches policy decisions on the basis of serious consultations and consensus that allows Palestinians to speak in a single voice, and engages diplomatically around the world with the full support of all Palestinians.

None of these dynamics exists today, which is why the current leadership of the PLO under Mahmoud Abbas is not taken seriously in the region or internationally — least of all by the majority of Palestinians themselves, who have looked elsewhere for leadership in the years since the Oslo process proved to be a failure and Yasser Arafat started to lose his credibility. The leaderless condition of the Palestinian people today is reflected in how the three most dramatic examples of pubic political action in recent years have occurred without any meaningful input from the PLO, or from the Palestinian Authority (PA) which administers limited services and regions in the West Bank and Gaza where Israel gives it permission to do so.

Those three examples are: the current campaign around the world to support Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old girl from a West Bank village who is detained in an Israeli jail pending a possible military court trial, because she resisted Israeli occupation and slapped an Israeli soldier; the weeks of spontaneous popular protest last summer in Arab East Jerusalem, when tens of thousands of Palestinians there defended their holy sites at the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount, for Israelis); and, the ongoing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement by civil society to pressure Israel to stop its mistreatment and human rights denials of Palestinians in the three arenas of occupied Palestine, the state of Israel, and the disapora.

Hamas’ challenge to the PLO leadership in Gaza is another sign of the PLO’s delinquency in protecting, representing, or leading the Palestinians. It is difficult now to create a whole new national leadership, given the fragmented nature of the Palestinian community. Yet the cohesion that all Palestinians feel, wherever they live, also makes it feasible to at least start consultations amongst themselves to find a way out of the current nightmare by giving fresh blood and new life and legitimacy to existing PLO organs.

There is no reason why we should suffer this ghastly fate of being plagued by a colonial Zionist Israeli state that steadily eats up our land, ignored by a mostly caring world that is otherwise preoccupied by more pressing issues, and abandoned by a Palestinian leadership that has become powerless, dependent on donors, docile, a purveyor of empty clichés, and largely incoherent. Such situations might lull some observers to see the end of the Palestine issue, while a more likely conclusion would be that this low point will mark the start of a process of re-birth for the nine million Palestinians who have never stopped struggling and working for their national rights since the 1930s. They are certainly not going to stop now, regardless of the poor quality of their current leaders.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 16 January 2018
Word Count: 974
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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BEIRUT — Of the many fascinating reports in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury book on the Donald Trump White House, perhaps most troubling for Americans and for the world were the new insights into how the United States today shapes its Middle East policies. After spending the last three months in the U.S. and interacting with numerous people and organizations that deal with Mideast issues, I see several problem categories in Trump’s Mideast actions.

The key ones are: the adolescent and personalized nature of how pivotal officials engage with Middle Eastern leaders, based on personal chemistry more than studied national strategic realities; Washington’s working to change Arab leaderships like trading Monopoly properties; the massive sway that extremist, pro-ultranationalist Zionist American donors have in the White House; the disdain that Trump and his associates seem to feel for Arab leaders and countries; the exaggerated and dominant fears of Iran that shape U.S. policies; and, the presumptuous, mostly ignorance-based and unilateral decisions on critical issues such as the status of Jerusalem.

The quotes in the book are not a comprehensive overview of U.S. policy-making in the region or the world, to be sure, but the consistency and tone of the sentiments expressed by White House officials — especially former chief strategist and American White-ultranationalist Steve Bannon — reflect a manner of decision-making in the most powerful office in the world that should frighten us all. (The key quotes in the book are in this report by Middle East Eye: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-president-donald-trump-middle-east-what-we-learned-from-michael-wolff-book-fire-and-fury-1505120232).

The bottom line for me is that major decisions on existential issues that impact the lives of 600 million people in the wider Middle East are being made largely on the basis of policy preferences among the Israeli and Saudi Arabian leaderships, and intermediated by mostly ignorant, and often very young and inexperienced American officials like Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The revelation that President Trump’s White House last year managed Middle Eastern issues mainly through the Israeli, Saudi Arabian, and Egyptian leaderships, with an overarching desire to push back Iranian influence in the region, helps explain why the United States finds itself in confusing situations across the Middle East. It has mainly crisis-managed relations through the lens of security and militarism, and often with mixed successes.

The main problem with the Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian combine as Washington’s preferred entry point into the Middle East is that these four counties’ leaders appear to be totally blind to the conditions, rights, sentiments, and aspirations of the 400 million people in Arab countries, and the other 200 million Middle Easterners in surrounding states. These four states’ steadfast attempts to maintain “security and stability” by using massive military and police force — alongside stringent limits on citizen political, social, and economic rights — has achieved exactly the opposite of what was desired.

Never before has the Arab region been so fractured, violent, volatile, and vulnerable to the whims of desperate citizens, powerful autocrats, renegade militants, durable terrorists, and predatory foreign militaries. And for good measure, Iran’s influence in the region continues to expand in places, as does that of Turkey and Russia, making a mockery of the American approach to Middle Eastern issues. U.S.-backed Israeli, Saudi Arabian, and Egyptian policies in the region are among the leading causes of the tensions and conflicts that plague us all, but they are not solely to blame, due to many other problematic policies by Arab, Iranian, Turkish, Russian, British, and other countries.

Last month’s decision by Washington to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital captures in one fell swoop everything that is wrong and destructive about the Trump approach. It ignores existing international law and UN resolutions that reflect a powerful global consensus; it totally dismisses the sentiments of the hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East who see Arab East Jerusalem as the rightful capital of a future Palestinian state living alongside Israel; and, it makes this decision unilaterally, and mainly on the basis of domestic political commitments to rightwing pro-Zionist lobbies and political donors like Sheldon Adelson, who has pushed hard for this move.

I thought the most striking revelation in the book was the quote by Steve Bannon that Jordan should take control of the West Bank and Egypt of the Gaza Strip, saying the U.S. should “let them deal with it — or sink trying.”

Such disdain towards two long-standing Arab allies of the U.S. like Jordan and Egypt should be a red flag to all leaders in the region who might want to rely on the U.S. as a consistent partner. It is more apparent now that the Trump governance system in the U.S. is likely to please pro-Israeli American political donors more than it would consider the interests of its other friends and allies, or the dictates of international law and UN resolutions. This is a sure recipe for greater strife and suffering in the Middle East, which can only spread dangerously to other parts of the world.

It should also be a warning sign to Arab leaders that they should wake up and figure out how to regain and exercise their own sovereignty, in order to ensure the well-being of their own citizens. Otherwise, they will wake up one day and realize that they have become little more than properties on a Monopoly board that adolescent airheads in the White House buy, sell, and discard at the whim of wild men in the U.S. waving campaign donation checks.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2018 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 09 January 2018
Word Count: 901
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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BOSTON — Does it make any difference that the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) unanimously declared a few days ago that Arab East Jerusalem is the occupied capital of a Palestinian state, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the imminent seat of the U.S. embassy there? Does this OIC declaration nullify the boast by Junior Moron Jared Kuschner, Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, that the United States brought together about the same number of Muslim-majority states in a coalition to fight terrorism and roll back Iran’s influence in the Middle East? Maybe, but it is hard to say now, in view of the evolving way that changes occur in the Middle East these days.

Two major trends are clear so far in how states and other actors behave. All the major powers in the Middle East (the US, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, and Russia) patiently pursue policies that they feel will best serve their long-term national interests, and they do not hesitate to use military force and diplomatic brutality to achieve their aims (even if they fail sometimes, as the UAE-Saudi moves in Yemen and Qatar seem to be failing); all other governments and important non-state parties in the region are scrambling in search of short-term arrangements and alliances that will get them through the next year or two in decent shape, not hesitating to change alliances, policies, or allegiances when doing so helps them make it to 2020 in one piece. Predicting how governments will act these days is a hazardous business.

We should keep this in mind as we ask whether the Islamic world’s unanimous declaration on Arab East Jerusalem will have any impact on the ongoing conflict about the status of Jerusalem. The Trump Declaration comes 100 years after the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the United Kingdom that supported the establishment of a Jewish homeland in a land that was almost totally Palestinian-Arab owned and inhabited. The juxtaposition of these two declarations a century apart should alert us to the pivotal and historic moment we are experiencing now. Just as the Balfour Declaration spawned subsequent international legitimization of the creation of a Jewish-majority state in an Arab-majority land, this American announcement sets the stage for the fate of Jerusalem, and a big political battle to come over this issue.

It seems that virtually the entire world opposes the American decision on Jerusalem, except for the Trump team, the rightwing settler-based government in Israel, and their scattered supporters here and there. It seems to me that there is only one important question we need to focus on during the coming months: Will any of those countries that oppose the Trump Declaration take any tangible, impactful diplomatic, political, economic, or other actions to counter it? Street demonstrations in the Arab world and friendly states reflect genuine anger and opposition, but they have zero impact on the decisions of the U.S. or Israeli governments. Thousands of statements against the Trump Declaration have been made in the past week, and a few Palestinian and Arab parties have said they will refuse to meet with the visiting U.S. vice president when he tours the region soon. This expresses genuine anger and opposition, but it triggers no change in anyone’s policies.

Palestinians, Arabs, Turks, Europeans, Russians, Iranians, and others in the world who reject the U.S. move on Jerusalem as dangerous and illegitimate now stand face-to-face with the consequences of their historical inability to harness their assets and resources for effective diplomatic action on issues they view as important or even existential. There exists an extensive and accessible toolbox of instruments to use by those countries or political groups that support Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, especially in today’s globalized, media-connected world where every single human being can make his or her voice heard.

The OIC declaration is an important expression of… well, of a heartfelt declared position that is valuable rhetoric, but of nothing else that has any meaning or force. Jared Kuschner will not be impressed, which is probably why his father-in-law issued the Jerusalem statement in the first place. They and the Israeli government will watch closely now for any signs of actual tangible actions by any of the parties that oppose them, beyond symbolic boycotts and street protests.

We have seen in recent years how history changes and power relationships evolve in the Middle East when local and foreign parties use their military, economic, and soft power on the ground to achieve their aims. If such power is used to counter the U.S. Jerusalem decision, we are likely to see important changes ahead. If not, we are likely to see the Trump Declaration achieve the same results for Zionism, and against Arabism and Palestinian rights, that the Balfour Declaration ultimately achieved in the past century. Historical pivots are like that, and we should recognize them when they happen in our time.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 13 December 2017
Word Count: 828
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — For all its drama, controversy, and importance, the expected American government decision this week to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and perhaps move its embassy must be appreciated within the wider context of how Washington makes Middle East policy decisions. This suggests to me that the Jerusalem issue for the U.S. is more a symptom of existing political legacies rather than a unique provocative move that generates new realities. It is significant for confirming what has been clear since the early 1970s: For Washington, the Arab countries comprise the first dispensable region in the world, and they can be treated with disdain forever.

My visit to Washington, D.C. earlier this week and discussions with analysts who follow the Middle East closely convince me that we must reconcile five critical aspects of what the U.S. government does and says in the Middle East, in order to decipher Washington’s actual policy aims in the region.

These five are:
1) The lingering inconsistencies, imprecision, and frequent changes in policy statements within assorted government agencies on issues like Syria, Qatar-GCC, Palestine-Israel, and others;

2) Whether presidential tweets on foreign affairs should be seen as serious policy directives, or just whimsical, emotional blasts by a policy-challenged, facts-light, super-egotistical, and often childish mind;

3) The various actual military and diplomatic actions of the U.S. on the ground, in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, and other places, that speak louder than words or tweets;

4) The question of whether President Trump’s Mideast policies aim mainly to enhance American national security and well-being, or rather respond primarily to American domestic political constituencies that he sees as critical to his incumbency and Israeli interests — including wealthy donors, rightwing Zionist nationalists, Evangelical Christian fundamentalists, and assorted extremists who support Arab autocrats more than they value human dignity, genuine stability, or democratic governance; and,

5) The personnel President Trump appoints to manage his Mideast policies, particularly his Israel-Palestine team that is simultaneously inexperienced on the issues at hand and also dominated by his son-in-law junior moron Jared Kushner and fellow supporters of Israeli positions on settlements, a “unified Jerusalem” under Israeli control, and other Israeli positions, rather than trying to play an impartial mediation role that serves the equal rights of Arabs and Israelis while also enhancing American interests.

If we can understand such core dynamics, we might learn what the U.S. is trying to achieve in the Middle East under President Trump. The current decision on moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, whose pre-1967 Arab side remains under Israeli occupation, may turn out to be a symbolic decision that pleases those pro-Zionist and pro-settlement fanatics Trump seems to favor, while also continuing the American policy of not making deep unilateral moves in Jerusalem until the status of the entire city is agreed upon in direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. We should know this week.

Many fascinating arguments on this are being offered these days, among the most useful of which is the analysis and survey data of Dr. Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution
(https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/12/05/why-is-trump-about-to-declare-jerusalem-the-capital-of-israel/), which I recommend to any interested person.

My own conclusion on how Washington has behaved on Jerusalem and the many other dynamic issues in the region is a stark sense that the United States under the Trump administration has an “Arab countries” policy, and a separate set of policies for other issues across and beyond this region, such as energy and investment flows, trade and weapons purchases from the U.S., fighting terrorism, and countering Iran. The anticipated new Jerusalem position confirms what has been clear for decades, that the Arab world has become the world’s first informally designated dispensable region, i.e., the Arab countries can collapse into civil wars, sectarian strife, destroyed cities, mass refugee flows, environmental exhaustion, and devastated economies, without serious reaction from the United States because these countries are more or less meaningless to the United States’ well-being.

The important issues for the U.S. where Arabs are concerned are Israel’s security, the preservation of Arab autocrats, maintaining global energy exports, and containing terrorism. Those goals are more or less all achieved. Everything else that matters to the 400 million people of the Arab world — decent jobs, housing, health care and education, human dignity, opportunity, security, human and national rights — seems to be totally meaningless for American policy-makers. This is why Washington can make its decision on the Jerusalem issue almost totally on the basis of responding to Israeli and pro-Israeli parties that are important to it, while ignoring international law, the rights and sentiments of Palestinians, and the views of billions of Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world who also care about a peaceful and shared Jerusalem.

The reason that American policy rests on a foundation of disdain for dispensable Arab people and societies is mainly that Arab government leadership for decades has largely failed to give our region either security and prosperity, or a respected voice in the world. I wish the evidence supported a more positive conclusion, but if that evidence exists, it must be in a secret vault somewhere, far, far away from Jerusalem.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 December 2017
Word Count: 854
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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BOSTON — It has been a full century since the birth of the state system of the modern Arab world largely at the hands of foreign powers, and anyone who wishes to keep track of its turbulent changes today must watch Syria most of all. Syria is not the most powerful country in the region, given the heft and interventionist impulses of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Yet Syria should remain the focus of your gaze because in its dilapidated condition it captures all the main trends that shape our region and that reflect popular sentiments, manifest the exercise of power by many different parties, draw in regional and global powers, and thus impact others in the world.

We watch Syria more closely than other Arab lands in 2017, as we did a century ago in 1917, because for imprecise peculiar reasons that nestle in the heart, mind, and genes more than in rational strategic balances, beloved Syria remains the fulcrum of our identities, national viabilities, and future directions. Just as was the case a century ago or several millennia ago, this is because Syria’s attraction to foreign armies near and far is more about the strategic interests of those foreign countries than it is about anything intrinsic to Syria, which has become the ghost of the unstable global state system that haunts us all.

It is staggering to see Russia, Turkey, and Iran today meeting regularly to determine Syria’s future according to their strategic self-interests, just as France and Great Britain did a century ago. So here is a nifty starting point, to note lesson number one, to learn from Syria’s still tumultuous modern history: Defining a sovereign state by the best interests of foreign powers is a recipe for perpetual tension and guaranteed future conflicts. The British and French never fully learned this lesson. The Russians, Iranians, Turks, and Saudi Arabians should ponder this as they gather in Sochi, Geneva, Moscow, Astana, Riyadh, and other diplomatic Disneylands to create a new Syria to their liking.

Syria’s current tumult since the early 2011 uprising really started after the end of the Cold War in 1990 that marked the soft opening of this phase of the region’s historical transformation: from a stable of static states rigidly controlled by all-powerful central governments and bolstered by great powers, to fragmenting states where non-state internal and external parties share sovereignty with retreating or contracting governments. (The exceptions are the energy-rich countries, though even they are troubled economically or politically in cases like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Oman, and Iraq.)

We are in the middle of a great but chaotic historical transformation, not just a random collapse of states or their regional order, as foreign analyses often frame our region’s troubles. Since 1990, Syria has captured all the main trends that plague our region today. Here is a handy checklist of the most significant ones, for those keeping score:

• the relentless expansion of corruption and military-anchored rule, leading to incompetent economic management of otherwise resource-rich lands

• recurring non-violent and militarized citizen rebellions against state authoritarianism

• the contraction of the central government’s services to citizens and its overall authority, due to a combination of managerial incompetence, political brutality, and financial and legitimacy insolvency

• the slow hollowing of the integrity of rural and provincial agricultural communities, leading to bloated and chaotic urbanism, where social services and job opportunities are woefully below citizens’ basic needs

• the emergence of tribal, religious, ethnic, ideological, and professional organizations that replace the state’s role in asserting citizens’ identity, security, basic services, opportunity, and fundamental human dignity

• a steady increase in internal militarized politics and confrontations, leading to sustained warfare alongside episodic violence and terror

• a parallel increase in external military interventions by regional and global powers that carve out zones of control for themselves inside Syria

• the creation of ungoverned spaces where insurgency and terror groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State can take root

• the transformation of the national economy into war profiteering and criminal networks that generate a new power elite which coexists with the power of the state and the engaged foreign parties

• the fragmentation of state authority and territorial integrity, leading to breakaway sovereignties (like the Kurdish region, attempts to create Islamic proto-states like ISIS or Al Qaeda have done, or areas controlled by foreign militaries from Iran, Turkey, Russia or the U.S.)

• the resurgence of citizens taking charge of their local communities in many cases, making it more difficult for them to revert to total obedience to a corrupt and authoritarian central state

• attempts to reconfigure Syria at the hands of foreign powers more than the will of Syrians themselves.

I draw two main conclusions: a) authority, identity, and sovereignty in this Arab-majority land are all being reconfigured by the complex intersection of local, regional, and foreign powers, whose interests do not coincide and also keep shifting according to short-term gains; b) the Syria situation shows that there is no such thing as an “international community” that can preserve universal ethical and political norms, when a major global power is involved. Syria is the arena of our bewilderment, but Middle Eastern and foreign powers are the heart of this sad tale. Outcomes on the ground are shaped by identity power, military might, and fighters on the ground, rather than any abstract global values. When Vladimir Putin’s air force comes up against Voltaire’s humanism, it is no contest. The bombers win.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 28 November 2017
Word Count: 906
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We can explore many angles to the current drama that at its core intertwines the actions and interests of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. The most significant aspect of this diplomatic face-off — the core of the core — strikes me as a single dangerous phenomenon: The wealthiest and strongest Arab state, Saudi Arabia, has decided to adopt the most destructive and failed governance model of one-man rule for life that has brought most of the Arab region into the early decades of the 21st Century as a tattered, fraying wreck.

That model was pioneered 65 years ago by Egypt, and has been maintained in Cairo ever since. The family-run, security-anchored president-for-life model spread from Egypt to many other Arab lands, like Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, and others. They very briefly tested pluralistic democracy, but that lasted for just flash before being crushed by the unbearable weight of the authoritarian state and its one great leader.

Saudi Arabia’s effective ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is making a tragic dash to one-man authoritarian rule. All other problems that define Saudi Arabian policies in the region are a result of this failed model of Arab governance, including the stresses in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s regional role, the situation in Syria, the war in Yemen, the fears of Iran, and almost every other problem that plagues our region. In this region of 400 million Arabs, some 75 percent of them teeter in that brutal zone of poverty, vulnerability, helplessness, deprivation, and total lack of political voice or civic rights. They are modern history’s grim verdict on one-man, one-family rule-for-life.

Saudi Arabia now moves into this zone where a single person — unelected, unaccountable, untouchable — controls absolutely the levers of policy-making, economy, religion, security, media, social norms, and future strategic direction. That single great leader — like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the rest of them — always has no previous experience in public life, policy-making, or national governance. For more Arab states today to sign on to this travesty of statehood and citizenship rights is a frightening reminder of how little our Arab leaders have learned, and how helpless our people are to do anything about this.

I hope and pray that Mohammad bin Salman matures quickly; recognizes the many proven dangers of the devastatingly failed model of national governance he has chosen to apply in Saudi Arabia; grasps the impotence of militarism as a primary instrument of foreign policy-making; and appreciates the realities of human nature that instinctively prompt any human being who is bullied by a strong neighbor to stand up and resist, even at a very high cost. This is what has happened with Saudi Arabia’s strong-armed policies in Syria, Qatar, Yemen, and Lebanon, where its significant military, economic, and political pressures has only generated massive, spontaneous, and sustained resistance.

Saudi Arabia’s moves in Lebanon to use Prime Minister Saad Hariri to foster chaos in Beirut, in order to rein in Hezbollah, as a means of weakening Iran, are fascinating tactical details. They will be long forgotten in a few months. But Saudi Arabia’s adoption of Sisi-style Egyptian authoritarianism that controls every aspect of every citizen’s life will have terrible long-term consequences. It will likely be a devastating blow to Saudi Arabia, whose economic development could follow the slow self-hollowing that we have witnessed for decades in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and the other lands that suffered the ignominy of one-man rule-for-life. Others across the region will also suffer from the impact of Saudi actions, as we see in Yemen, Bahrain, and Egypt today.

I was saddened, but not surprised, to read in the press this week that one of the Saudi crown prince’s advisers is the former Egyptian security chief Habib el-Adli, who was tried and sentenced to seven years in jail for his alleged brutality and torture under recent Egyptian autocratic regimes. Even worse, this combination of home-grown Saudi adoption of one-man rule with the inputs of the one Arab country whose model of military-managed incompetent autocracy has shattered much of the Arab region, is explicitly and fully supported by the American president. Donald Trump said recently that he has, “great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing.”

This combination of Egyptian, Saudi, American extremism — which Israel clearly welcomes — is the ultimate bad news response of the forces of militaristic authoritarianism to the Arab people’s demand for social justice, dignity, citizenship, and hope that they expressed in their uprisings seven years ago.

Masses of ordinary Arab men and women risked their lives — most of them had nothing to lose, because their lives were virtually meaningless — simply to demand a decent life. Mohammad bin Salman, Abdelfattah Sisi, and Donald Trump have now replied by offering them a life as robots — programmed to do, think, feel, and say what the great leader orders. This kind of rule always collapses when citizens reach the point of total degradation by their own government.

Mohammad bin Salman will not believe this kind of thought from journalists or independent analysts, and he will probably ignore the defiant responses his policies have elicited in Qatar, Yemen, and Lebanon. So I ask him to please ask Sophia the robot to do a quick search of historical accounts of how human beings around the world all ultimately respond to one-man authoritarianism.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 November 2017
Word Count: 896
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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