American Fatalism

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By Marwan Bishara

Al-Ahram Weekly
December 12-18, 2002

A sweeping fatalism is gripping the Middle East as the spectre of war defies UN diplomacy. Washington's conservatives reckon if force doesn't work, more force will, and if things don't worsen they won't improve.


Pursuing this apocalyptic path can only lead to regional chaos and eventually bring down the curtains on an American era. The proponents of another Gulf War reckon it's time for a regional "shake up" among friends and foe alike. They are betting on the easy part -- a quick victory in the war -- but ignore the impossible task of winning the peace.

Putting out fire with fire could set the whole region aflame and, no doubt, the Arab democrats will be the first to burn. Today, a fragile democratic movement in the Arab world is torn between Washington, whose methods and goals they do not share, and a defiant radical Islam whose values they cannot bare. Adhering to the liberal democratic values that America preaches is increasingly labelled as treasonous. By falling in line with the Islamists, though, democrats would betray their own values.

In most Arab countries the political alternative is the non-democratic Islamists who have evolved into the most potent political force owing to oppression and underdevelopment. Because of political repression, many people have taken refuge in religion and have been manipulated by fanatics. In authoritarian Saudi Arabia, the alternative to the royal family is an Arabian Taliban.

With 70 per cent of the Arab population under 25 years of age, the Middle East needs peace in order to groom an educated open-minded generation of Arabs capable of leading domestically and competing internationally. War and conflict will only deepen hatred of the West among youth and further alienate them from democracy.

Democratic change in the Arab world is possible through social and economic reforms that are strengthened by participatory citizenship in an atmosphere of stability -- not war. Otherwise, a repeat of the 1990 Algerian elections, in which the Islamic Front's victory was met by an army crackdown, could lead to civil strife throughout the region.

War also has the potential to open the floodgates of ethnic/religious conflict. In Iraq, the Shi'ites who make up 60 per cent of the population expect to rule. But the Sunnis are unlikely to relinquish power peacefully after centuries of rule. As for the Kurds, anything short of autonomy bordering on statehood in the oil-rich north would be unacceptable. Federalism as a way out of the impasse could lead to the break-up of Iraq under Kurdish and Iranian pressures, which would mean redrawing the map for territory between Iran and Turkey.

Shaking up the ethnic balance in Iraq has the potential to spill over into neighbouring countries with precarious ethno- demographic balances of power. The aspirations held by a Syrian Sunni majority under Alawite minority rule, the Jordanian Palestinian majority under Hashemite rule, the Bahraini Shi'ite majority under a Sunni monarch could all be awakened by changes in Iraq. A similar fate, too, could befall Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and various North African countries.

In Israel/Palestine the threat of a widening war has been clearly spelled out by Israeli ministers: Some have explicitly threatened to transfer Palestinians outside their homeland as a way of dealing with growing Israeli insecurity. A repeat of the 1948 war could only initiate another century-long cycle of conflict.

For these and other reasons, Washington must reconsider its plans for embarking on a "preemptive" war when all indications are that its aftermath would be a disaster. Such advice is not only in the region's best interest, but also in Washington's interests.

The Bush administration's most obvious alternative at this juncture is to promote United Nations Security Council resolution 1441 as the beginning of a true diplomatic process rather than taking it as a green light for war. Diplomacy is most effective when it's seen as a strategic choice. The disdain among Washington's conservatives for UN diplomacy -- the "D word" -- stems not only from faulty reasoning, but also from a growing loss of identity. Once defined by its geo- strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union, Washington is increasingly defined by its geo-economic disadvantage vis a vis the European Union's rising star -- and that bloc will soon be 25 countries-strong.

According to Charles Kupchan, director of Europe Studies and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the end of Pax Americana is near. What will replace American supremacy, and how American leaders should prepare for this new era are the central questions of Kupchan's new book, The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century. Kupchan reckons that the next challenge to America is fast emerging not from the Islamic world or an ascendant China, but from an integrating Europe, whose economy already rivals America's.

Washington's use of force has become the means by which to maintain its superpower status even though the 20th century has taught us that power is anything but restricted to military means. The 20th century is eyewitness to how the pseudo-academic Clausewitzian notion of embarking on war, as diplomacy by other means, has compromised rather than served the interests of states.

America could learn a thing or two from Israel's failures. In spite of its adherence to a doctrine of taking preemptive action and its experience in combating terrorism, Israeli casualties have been continually mounting in recent decades.

Ten times more Israelis are killed today in Palestinian attacks than were three decades ago. Worse, according to Israel's leading military historian Martin van Creveld, "If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you will become weak yourself."

That's why American conservatives' criticism of European diplomacy is counterproductive. The Americans claim that European diplomacy is driven by weakness, while their own is power-based. If Washington continues to augment its military budget and embark on offensive wars while Europe, meanwhile, grows and prospers, the US has only to look forward to a future in which it is Europe's mercenary.

Turkey and Iraq are two important examples of the limitations of force and the effectiveness of geo-economic power. Motivated by the hollow promise of membership in the European community, Turkey's secular military came to accept the results of the most recent elections; its Islamist- like government, for its part, has vowed to respect and uphold the democratic rules of the game and all of Ankara's commitments to the international community. America's use of force could hardly show a similar achievement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region.

Fortunately, America is not only the biggest military spender, it's also an economic and cultural super-power. Its programme of expanding democracy and free market economics is best served not through preemptive wars, but rather through the prevention of crisis and the promotion of peaceful resolutions to conflict.

Marwan Bishara teaches at the American University in Paris and is the author of Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid.


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