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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The central difficulty for left social movements is determining electoral tactics that will enable them to win both in the short run and in the middle run. On the surface, it seems that winning in the short run conflicts with winning in the middle run.

In the short run, the primary objective of a left movement must be to defend the urgent needs for survival of all the so-called 99% of the population, but especially those of the poorest strata. In order to do this, they have to control state institutions at all levels. This means participating in elections.

In all those places where electoral institutions permit some transfer of power from one set of elected officials to an opposing one, the obvious need of left movements is to win such elections. Winning such elections can, however, disable the ability of left movements to win the middle-run battle concerning the fundamental choice of which kind of system (or systems) will win out in the structural crisis of our existing capitalist world-system. The way to avoid this is never to engage in electoral politics.

Engaging in elections has two negative effects on left social movements. It distracts them from organizing for the battle to win the middle run. And it disillusions members who see it as selling out because they are being called upon to vote for persons who are not committed to transforming the world-system.

Is there any set of electoral tactics that makes it possible to escape these consequences? I think there may be. The first and in a sense the easiest thing to do is to discuss at length within the left movement the difference between the short-run and middle-run temporality and the place of electoral tactics in the struggle.

Just discussing this issue within the left social movement would help holding the left movement together and restoring mutual confidence. The discussion should be about the two greatest dangers. In the short run, winning elections requires the votes of many who have no interest whatsoever in transforming the world. These persons will demand a price for their support.

How big a price will vary. How minimal a payment can be made by the left social movement will vary as well. Each electoral battle is different.

The other danger is that of disillusionment. Again, each situation varies. But the way to combat disillusionment is always to avoid illusions. National or local victories should of course be celebrated. But they should never be treated as more than stopgap victories aimed at protecting the poorest strata.

I believe it is possible for left social movements to be successful at navigating the dangerous shoals of electoral politics. By neither embracing nor refusing definitively electoral politics, they may find that winning in the short run actually can train members for the middle-run battle.

In that way, left social movements might actually do both at the same time — win the short-run and the middle-run battles. Indeed, far from conflicting with each other, this is the only way the left social movement can succeed in either battle.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 December 2017
Word Count: 512
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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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Elections in the United States have one feature that almost no other country shares. They largely occur on mandatory fixed dates. Presidential elections are every four years. Senatorial elections are staggered. One-third of them occur every two years. Both of these elections occur in years ending in an even numeral. Gubernatorial elections tend to occur in the same even years. Local elections are more varied but very many also occur in the even years.

As a result, the so-called off-year elections (that is, years ending in an odd numeral) tend to be considered less important by the national parties. And voters participate at a far lower rate than in the even-year elections

The year 2017 was unusual in two respects. Because of the extremely strong feelings, pro and con, about President Donald Trump, even very local elections seemed to be, at least in part, a referendum on him and what he has achieved in his first year in office. And, secondly, probably because of this, the rate of voter participation was exceptionally high.

The results are straightforward. The Democrats swept the elections. The word sweep is not an exaggeration. They won the two gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and by very large margins. They won special elections for vacant seats in the House of Representatives in what had been considered “safe” seats for the Republicans. They considerably strengthened their position in state-level legislatures and mayoralty elections. If the 2018 elections were held today, the Democrats would have a good chance of getting a majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress.

So, what does this mean? Everyone seems to be writing about this. And the explanations offered vary widely. But most pundits and politicians are arguing that prospects look very good for the Democrats in the congressional elections of 2018 and even the presidential election of 2020. It is clear that Republican leaders are very worried and Democratic leaders very encouraged. Should they be?

The first caution is that the 2018 elections are not being held today but a year from now. In the very volatile situation in the United States and worldwide, a lot can happen in a year. There are a number of obvious uncertainties. The most important: Will the U.S. Congress pass a tax reform bill? Will there be any deaths (or far less likely, any resignations) in the U.S. Supreme Court? Will there be a regional war in Afghanistan between Saudi Arabia (or its proxies) and Iran (or its proxies)? Will Trump sabotage the agreement with Iran? Will one side or the other trigger the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsula.

These uncertainties certainly don’t seem minor, at least for me. Given this caution, how should we interpret what happened in the U.S. 2017 elections? I agree with the majority of analysts that the elections showed an anti-Trumpist mood, such that candidates seen as supporting Trump were at a distinct disadvantage.

Trump was doubtless the big loser of the 2017 elections. I think even Trump realizes that. He just thinks he can reverse this mood by the time of the 2018 elections. He thinks he can do this by passing some tax reform bill, almost any reform bill, by the end of this calendar year. Doing this would demonstrate that he accomplished something promised and important. In addition, he thinks he can improve radically the geopolitical position of the United States by a combination of bluster about actions and inaction in reality.

I doubt myself that a tax reform bill will in fact be passed because of the deep divisions among three (not two) groups of Republican congressional legislators: the business-oriented faction, the small government and reduced debt faction, and the nationalist protectionist xenophobes. Of course, whatever the outcome of these divisions, should they manage to pass a compromise bill, that bill will be terrible. But I am only discussing here the likelihood of their passing any kind of bill.

The geopolitical issues are more worrisome. Trump is fundamentally unable to accept the reality of the decline of U.S. power and the harsh limits this puts on his personal attempts to control the situation. Therefore, so-called accidents are a real possibility, a terrifying one.

The tactics of both mainstream U.S. parties facing this situation are at the moment unsure. In 2016, the Republicans had the wind behind their sails and the Democrats were simply inept. Now it’s the other way around. The Democrats have the wind behind them and the Republicans don’t seem to know what to do about it.

The big question, I think, is whether the Democrats can remain as united as they are at the moment. They have been moving leftward for several months now. But there are limits to how far the centrist faction, long dominant, is ready to go. And members of the “leftward” faction (that Bernie Sanders incarnated in 2016) are organizing to seize their chance and press further their control of the party.

The biggest hope for the Democrats is that the Republicans will fail to pass a tax reform bill. This will not only shatter further the spirits of all factions of the Republican Party but at the same time maintain the unity of the Democrats. Voters will see the Democrats as having stopped the very destructive path of the Republicans. They will have “minimized the pain” (as I like to say), responding to the needs of all the many factions of the Democrats that made the 2017 elections such a success.

Doing this will allow the left forces in the United States to organize for the real battle, the middle-run struggle about the nature of our future post-capitalist world-system. What then shall we conclude about the meaning of the 2017 elections? It is in fact too early to tell. We’ll see this more clearly in two to three months from now.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 November 2017
Word Count: 978
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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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BOSTON — Watching the flurry of developments across the Middle East from the United States, as I have done this week, makes me more concerned for the well-being of the region and its people than I have been for many years. This is mainly because we are witnessing the convergence of several destructive forces that are troubling on their own, but collectively devastating when together they drive regional events.

They include most importantly five elements: the domestic and regional policies of the new Saudi Arabian leadership of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman; the explicit support for these policies by United States President Donald Trump and his Mideast maestro Jared Kushner (aka Junior Moron); an aggressive, colonial, right-wing government in Israel that seeks to get closer to Saudi Arabia and also to knock back Iran and Hezbollah; half a dozen fragmenting and unpredictable countries in the region that are wracked by sectarian and political conflicts; and intrusive regional actions by Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.

By far the most important dynamic within this broad regional picture is the convergence between the policies of the United States and Saudi Arabia, which essentially means the policies of President Trump and Mohammad bin Salman, with Junior Moron greasing the wheels that bring these two men together. Not surprisingly, for both the United States and Saudi Arabia, their policies reflect a combination of dramatic initiatives as well as deeply perplexed global and local audiences. What are these men trying to achieve, people ask throughout Arabia and America?

The answer is not clear, but a few certainties are: Both men are woefully inexperienced in the business of statecraft, yet take on gigantic projects to transform their states and others. Both men have massive egos that make them feel they know what is best for their people and the world, and they repeatedly make dramatic decisions in the realm of social engineering based mainly on their instincts. These broad personal values coincide with the policy lines that both men seem to adhere to: push back Iran and its allies in the region, support Israel, beat the terrorists, promote big commercial deals, and affirm the rule of autocratic, family-anchored regimes. So it’s no surprise that Trump tells the Saudi leaders in a phone call a few days ago that he has full confidence in the Saudi policies now being implemented.

This unprecedented phenomenon of two inexperienced, brash leaderships in two of the world’s most important countries working together to change the world is troubling and dangerous, primarily because the available evidence to date suggests that in their policy-making worlds they are mostly serial failures. Neither Trump nor Mohammad bin Salman have achieved any significant successes, and most of what they have attempted at home and abroad has failed, or even backfired.

The most glaring example of this is their shared desire to push back against what they see as Iran’s dangerous projection of its power, alliances, and interests across the Middle East region. The awkward reality is that for the past 15 years or more, Saudi- and American-led efforts to reduce Iran’s regional strategic assets have failed miserably, and in fact in situations like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon the Iranians are much stronger today because of inept American and Saudi policies. Lebanon may join this list soon.

A critical question is whether this is due to the ill-conceived policies of the United States and Saudi Arabia, or the more clever capabilities of the Iranians in working the regional geo-strategic landscape. A hint is perhaps to be found in their relative experience levels: Mohammad bin Salman has been active in statecraft for about two years or so. Trump has been active for ten months, and Iran (and its predecessor Persian cultures) has been active for around 2,600 years.

We might now see efforts to forge overt or covert cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel, though this will hit against the major obstacle of Arab public opinion being seriously against such a move until the Palestine-Israel conflict is resolved. There is also much speculation about a new war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel, due to the chaos Lebanon might experience from the apparently Saudi-induced resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. I doubt this war will happen, but I leave open the wild possibility that we might see a combined Saudi-Israeli-American military operation against some combination of Iranian and Hezbollah interests. This sounds crazy, but the policies now emanating from the Israeli-Saudi-American combine make the crazy very possible.

The bottom line for my concerns stems from what I see in the bigger picture of events in Saudi Arabia in the past few months, as Mohammad bin Salman assumes almost total, unchecked, power in all spheres of state and society. We are witnessing the third historic phase of the capture of Arab states by family-based, security-anchored leaderships personified in a single man. The Egyptians introduced this durable and ugly governance model to the Arab region in 1952; the Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, Tunisians, Sudanese, and Yemenis adopted it in their countries in the 1970s and 80s; and now we see it taking hold for the first time in a wealthy Arab monarchy that, like all Arab monarchies, used to rule by promoting a minimum of consultations and consensus across the various power groups in society.

We might have cause to worry that the two powerful countries of the United States and Saudi Arabia are each led by a single person who assumed power legitimately (according to local traditions), and whose large ego and grandiose plans are offset by very little experience or appreciation for nuance.

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: 08 November 2017
Word Count: 937
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WASHINGTON — The United States and many Arab governments are looking at the really big challenges they face in our region — and then simply leapfrogging them, and venturing into make-believe new worlds where everything is easy, clean, and modern. In Arab countries, this trend is primarily represented by governments that cannot address the daunting (and still worsening) challenges of equitable and sustainable human development that have accumulated after half a century of poor quality governance, and that are captured most dramatically in unemployed and unemployable youth, rising poverty, worsening income and quality of life disparities, poor education outcomes, high informal labor rates, environmental distress, and expanding wars.

Instead of tackling the root causes for these serious deficiencies, more and more Arab governments are turning to gimmicky and flashy plans to build new cities, even new capitals, that capture all the glitter of technology and green-friendly modernity. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait have all announced plans for such dramatic new mega-urban projects to build entirely new cities that would instantly solve all the problems those countries face. Such ventures seem to me to aim primarily to impress foreign donors and private investors, rather than to tackle the root causes of the poverty- and inequity-based stresses that increasingly plague many Arab countries.

This capacity to ignore reality and escape into a happy new world where peace, security, technology, and modernity reign is now also spilling over into the political and diplomatic realm. Not surprisingly, the United States government actively promotes such fantasies that expect hope and dramatic innovation to replace the hard work of identifying the root causes of a political dispute and tackling them decisively and fairly.

This diplomatic version of the Arab world’s escapism into shining new zones of high tech bikini beaches is exemplified by fresh reports that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has just made another secret visit to Saudi Arabia to explore ideas for a regional Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This was reported by Politico newspaper, which noted that this is Kushner’s third such visit this year.

Kushner reportedly continues to focus on attempts to draw Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and others into a grand bargain peace plan between Palestinians and Israelis that also repels Iranian influence in the region. Such an “outside-in” regional collaboration would reportedly resolve the Palestinian-Israeli and wider Arab-Israeli conflict, promote closer ties between Israel and many Arab states in the region, and create a united Arab-Israeli-American alliance to confront and “roll back” Iranian influence in the region.

If these reports of American diplomatic aims are true, then it is probably time to assign Jared Kushner the title of “Junior Moron,” because these aspirations are totally unrealistic, and reflect mindsets in the U.S., Israel, and Arab capitals that prefer to escape reality than to grasp and address its complexities. They also totally ignore the sentiments of hundreds of millions of Arab men and women who repeatedly express their support for Palestinian rights and a fair resolution of the conflict, rather than submitting to Israel’s U.S.-backed militarism.

It is not just morally wrong, but also functionally impractical, to try to impose a solution in Palestine-Israel that reflects rightwing Israeli-Zionist expansionist tendencies, Israel’s military superiority, and Washington’s pro-Israel bias, even if some Arab governments seem resigned to accepting this as a key to their own incumbency and longevity.

Billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, a close Trump confidant, told Politico that, “Jared has always been driven to try and solve the Israel-Palestinian dispute. The key to solving that dispute is Egypt. And the key to Egypt is Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.”

Well, not really… The key to solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is actually to affirm Israeli and Palestinian equal rights to statehood by implementing all pertinent UN resolutions that enjoy a global consensus; end Zionist colonial expansion and occupation; end Palestinian refugeehood; and, affirm Israel’s full security and acceptance in the Arab- and Muslim-majority Middle East as a normal, rather than a predatory, state.

The American-Israeli-Arab approach now being explored occurs, ironically, exactly 100 years to the week after the British government in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised U.K. support for the creation of a Jewish homeland — eventually the state of Israel — in Palestine. Big powers today, as in 1917, still view the Middle East through the lenses of their capacities to create make-believe worlds that suit their own needs, rather than to fix the problems of the real world we live in.

Then and now, denying the needs and rights of a majority of citizens in the Middle East who remain powerless to participate in the shaping and constant re-sharing of their hapless world will not bring stability or prosperity, but only endless resistance and conflict. Nothing captures this better than the century-long continuing struggle of Palestinians to achieve their national rights, alongside a defined state of Israel that also has a right to exist. Repeating today the unethical political mistakes of the Balfour years by pushing a few Arab leaderships to link with Israel in order to force a “peace” resolution on the weak Palestinians and then confront Iran will repeat the imperial dynamics of the deceitful Balfour Declaration, for several reasons.

First, because we continue to see in this century-long sad saga of Western powers’ engagements in the Middle East diplomatic moves that are designed in London and Washington (and now also in Moscow and Tehran) with the primary purpose of serving their imperial interests above anything else. Second, it continues the destructive tradition of foreign powers engaging with unaccountable Arab elites, without considering the interests or sentiments of the Arab citizenries. Third, it avoids coming to grips with the heart of the conflict in Palestine — the assertion of Zionist dominance at cost of Palestinian exile or occupation — and instead assumes that the Palestinians are too weak to resist what may be imposed on them because the envisaged new order suits the interests of Arab elites and foreign powers, and those are the only interests that count.

These very troubling trends are manifested by the politics of some Arab governments and their crony capitalist elites, alongside the wayward leadership in Washington that desperately seeks a foreign policy achievement. The Balfour legacy should remind us that political facts can be imposed on weak Arabs in certain moments of history, but such reckless behavior only leads to a full century of warfare by many millions of ordinary men and women who value their human dignity and national rights, even if their Arab elites seem mainly to value validation by American investors and cable television hosts.

Please, please, somebody give Junior Moron Jared Kushner a new golf course investment in an Arabian desert somewhere, and spare us this terrible fate that awaits our region.

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: 01 November 2017
Word Count: 1,129
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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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Very often, when I write about the structural crisis of the modern world-system, and therefore of capitalism as an historical system, I receive objections saying that I have neglected the strength of Chinese economic growth and its ability to serve as an economic replacement for the clearly waning strength of the United States plus western Europe, the so-called North.

This is a perfectly reasonable argument, but one that misses the fundamental difficulties of the existing historical system. In addition, it paints a far rosier picture of China’s realities than is justified by a closer look. Let me address this question then in two parts — one, the historical development of the world-system as a whole, and two, the empirical situation of China at the present time.

The analysis of what I call the structural crisis of the modern world-system is one that I have made many times, in these commentaries and in my other writings. It is nonetheless worth repeating in condensed form. This is all the more necessary in that even persons who say that they are very sympathetic to the concept of structural crisis nonetheless seem in practice resistant to accept the idea of a demise of capitalism, however strong the case.

There are a number of elements of the argument to put together. One is the assertion that all systems (whatever their scope and without exception) have lives and cannot be eternal. The explanation of this eventual demise of any system is that systems operate with both cyclical rhythms and secular trends.

Cyclical rhythms refer to the constant swings away from and back to moving equilibria, a perfectly normal reality. When however various phenomena expand according to their systemic rules and then contract, they do not return after contracting exactly to where they were before the upward cyclical shift. They return instead to a somewhat higher point. This is the result of resistance to the loss of gains achieved in the upward phase.

It follows that their curve over the long run is upward. This is what we mean by a secular trend. If one measures this activity on the ordinate, or y-axis of the graph, one sees that over time they approach an asymptote of 100 percent, which cannot be crossed. It seems that when important factors reach an earlier point of about 80% on the ordinate, they begin to waver erratically.

When cyclical curves arrive at this point, they cease utilizing the so-called normal means of resolving the constant strains in the functioning of the system and enter, therefore, into a structural crisis of the system.

A structural crisis is chaotic. This means that instead of the normal standard set of combinations or alliances that were previously used to maintain the stability of the system, they constantly shift these alliances in search of short-term gains. This only makes the situation worse. We notice here a paradox — the certainty of the end of the existing system and the intrinsic uncertainty of what will eventually replace it and create thereby a new system (or new systems) to stabilize realities.

During the longish period of structural crisis, we observe a bifurcation between two alternative modes of resolving the crisis — one by replacing it with a different system that somehow preserves the essential elements of the dying system and one that transforms it radically.

Concretely, in our present capitalist system, there are those who seek to found a non-capitalist system that nonetheless maintains capitalism’s worst features: hierarchy, exploitation, and polarization. And there are those who wish to establish a system that is relatively democratic and egalitarian, a type of historical system that has never existed before. We are in the midst of this political battle.

Now, let us look at China’s role in what is going on. In terms of the present system, China seems to be gaining much advantage. To argue that this means the continuing functioning of capitalism as a system is basically to (re)assert the invalid point that systems are eternal and that China is replacing the United States in the same way as the United States replaced Great Britain as the hegemonic power. Were this true, in another 20-30 years China (or perhaps northeast Asia) would be able to set its rules for the capitalist world-system.

But is this really happening? First of all, China’s economic edge, while still greater than that of the North, has been declining significantly. And this decline may well amplify soon, as political resistance to China’s attempts to control neighboring countries and entice (that is, buy) the support of faraway countries grows, which seems to be occurring.

Can China then depend on widening internal demand to maintain its global edge? There are two reasons why not. The present authorities worry that a widening middle stratum could jeopardize their political control and seek to limit it.

The second reason, more important, is that much of the internal demand is the result of reckless borrowing by regional banks, which are facing an inability to sustain their investments. If they collapse, even partially, this could end the entire economic edge of China.

In addition, there have been, and will continue to be, wild swings in geopolitical alliances. In a sense, the key zones are not in the North, but in areas such as Russia, India, Iran, Turkey, and southeastern Europe, all of them pursuing their own roles by a game of swiftly and repeatedly changing sides. The bottom line is that, though China plays a very big role in the short run, it is not as big a role as China would wish and that some in the rest of the world-system fear. It is not possible for China to stop the disintegration of the capitalist system. It can only try to secure its place in a future world-system.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 November 2017
Word Count: 966
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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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NEW YORK — Should one welcome or worry about the new string of bold announcements by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman about his plans to remake the country in his image concerning what it requires to thrive into the coming generations? I think a bit of both is the answer, because there is cause for optimism as well as serious concern.

The cornerstone of the national reconfigurations is an instant megacity in the desert in the very northwest of the country, near the borders with Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. The new urban wonderland that will be called “NEOM” will cost over $500 billion and will operate independently from the “existing governmental framework.” This is in line with the crown prince’s two-stage vision: gradually leaving behind the traditional Saudi way of governance and social conservatism, and instead engaging in novel forms of dramatic social engineering designed to create a new Saudi society that is sustainable in a future when oil income is expected to decline steadily and the state does not control or finance all aspects of life.

The day of non-stop drama in the desert included the crown prince’s remarks that Saudi Arabia was returning to “moderate” Islam and intended to “eradicate” extremism.

“We are only returning to what we used to be, to moderate Islam, open to the world and all religions,” the 32-year-old prince said. “We won’t waste 30 years of our lives dealing with any extremist ideas. We will eradicate extremism.”

He also said that the kingdom is moving to a “new generation of cities,” powered by clean energy, with no room “for anything traditional.”

So since his assumption of power in the kingdom, the crown prince has announced and then revised plans for a major overhaul of the national economy, significantly softened restrictions on women drivers, laid the groundwork for privatizing some of the national oil company Aramco and reducing state subsidies on basic services, and announced plans for a gigantic international tourism development along the Red Sea coast that will be covered by liberal international norms instead of the austere Saudi-Wahhabi traditions.

At the same time, he has launched a terrible and endless war against Yemen, laid siege to Qatar, continued to explore how to either interfere or constructively engage in the domestic politics of assorted Arab states, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria, arrested both liberal and conservative Saudis who do not fully support his plans, and engaged in a relentless and largely fruitless regional and international attempt to isolate Iran.

Mohammad Bin Salman is certainly making headlines; but is he also making history, or making a mess? For now we can only acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of his current approach.

The good news about his non-stop breaking news style of governance is that he obviously grasps that the current system of Saudi governance and economy is totally unsustainable, and must be changed so that future generations of Saudis can live a decent and dignified life. It is also refreshing to see a young Arab leader who is not afraid of taking bold decisions and making innovative changes in key dimensions of national life. The commitment to eradicating “extremism” also is welcomed, though it would be useful if he would explain a bit more whom he sees as “extremist”. Many analysts and historians feel that some extremist Islamist movements emanated from historical associations with conservative Wahhabi movements in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere; nevertheless, it is important that the Saudi leader is on record as rejecting Islamist extremism.

There is much good sense in Mohammad Bin Salman’s visions — but there is also much to worry about, for Saudis and all others in the Arab world, given Saudi Arabia’s insistence on trying to shape the region in its own image. The main negative is that the Mohammad Bin Salman school of governance is not a new turn towards liberalism; it seems more like a new form of top-heavy decision-making by a small group of men who suddenly announce new national transformation plans to their citizens, without any serious citizen participation in decision-making or any accountability in the politics or financing of the new world to come.

Also unclear is whether it is constructive or destructive in the long run to establish totally autonomous units of life and economy beyond the reach of traditional government systems, and intimately linked with private capital from other Arab and foreign countries. The message this sends is that the existing system of statehood and governance that has defined our lands for nearly a century are hopelessly beyond reform, and simply must be bypassed and ignored in the bright and happy new world ahead. It can generate massive disparities within and among countries, as islands of wealth, innovation, and dynamism create a world totally disjointed from the rest of society where the old ways persist and the dysfunction and miseries accumulate.

This is troubling because it can create resentments among millions of citizens who see themselves as lesser “traditional” beings in their own societies, left out of a shiny new city on a hill, or at least a possible appearance on a CNN special about the Modern Arabs, or The Young Prince That Could, or something like that which we will inevitably see on our screens. The predominance of a handful of Arab officials, an army of Western consultants, managers, and contractors, and endless global private capital in designing, owning, and enjoying the new institutions that are announced to the world — while tens of millions of ordinary citizens remain outside the process — is one of the most problematic aspects of this kind of development that is now common across the region.

Also, if individual men and women of liberal or conservative quarters who dare to use their minds and offer their views on the trajectories of their own societies are arrested and indicted by Arab governments simultaneously with the announcement of the glories to come in our societies, this is even more reason to wonder if this style of decision-making and national planning is the right one. National reconfiguration that denies a role to nationals who insist on using their own minds is thin at best.

I view this balance sheet and I am skeptical, because of what seems to me to be a naked truth: What Saudi and other Arab leaderships across the region have unleashed is less a drastic lurch into a bold new form of national governance, but rather is mainly a reconfigured form of the traditional autocratic, non-participatory, unaccountable ways of Arab governance that have been central to the weaknesses and occasional collapse of Arab states in the past half century or so.

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: 25 October 2017
Word Count: 1,108
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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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According to neoclassical economic theorizing, the relation between wages and jobs is a simple one. When there’s not enough demand for work, wages suffer. Workers compete against each other to get a job. But when there’s high demand for work, wages go up. Employers compete against each other to get the now scarce work force. This shifting cycle is said to maintain the smooth functioning of the free market system, guaranteeing a constant swing back to a moving equilibrium.

What has happened is that this cyclical process isn’t working that way anymore, and for pundits and academics this is seen as a big puzzle to explain. The explanations are varied and multiple. What seems to be at their heart is to suggest that there is a new normal. But why, and how does it work? In the October 8 issue of the New York Times, the lead article in the Sunday Business section had the following headline: “Plenty of Work, Not Enough Pay: Even as job markets tighten in major economies, low unemployment is failing to spur robust salary gains.”

We are offered the explanation of an increase in temporary or part-time workers, plus robots. This makes the employer, it is argued, less dependent on full-time workers. Unions are weaker, and workers find it more difficult to fight employers. All of this is of course true. But why now and not before?

One relatively new argument is that of the vanishing worker. But how can workers vanish? What can this possibly mean? It seems that more and more workers are dropping out of seeking employment entirely. Perhaps they have run out of a safety net or accumulated savings. They have become homeless, or druggies, or both. But they didn’t just drop out, as though this were their choice. They were pushed out, which has a double advantage for producers. They do not need to invest (via taxes or otherwise) in social protection. And they instill fear in those workers still looking for employment that they too could be pushed out.

Again, why now and not before? Before, whenever that is, was during the normal functioning of the modern world-system. Capitalists needed these cycles to work properly with maximum long-term increase in surplus-value. But suppose the employers know, cognitively or intuitively, that capitalism is in a structural crisis, and therefore is moribund. What might they then do?

If they don’t need to worry about effective demand to sustain the system, then they might as well get what they can for as long as they can. They would become entirely oriented to the very short-run. They would seek simply to increase returns on the stock market, without a thought for the morrow. Is this not what is happening now throughout the richer nations and even among weaker ones?

Of course this cannot last. That is why the fluctuations are so great, the chaos so deep. And a few of them, the shrewdest capitalists no doubt, are concentrating on winning the battle of the middle-run to determine the nature of the future world-system (or systems) that we shall construct. We are not seeing a new normal. We are witnessing a transitory reality.

So, what is the lesson for those of us who worry about the “vanishing” workers? Quite clearly we must struggle to defend whatever protection they still have. We must, as I like to say, work to minimize the pain. But at the same time we must also struggle to win the intellectual, moral, and political battle of the middle-run. Only a strategy that combines the struggle of the short-run with the struggle of the middle-run has a chance of preserving the possibility of that better world that is really possible, but not at all inevitable.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 October 2017

Word Count: 624

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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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