Seven Pillars

Description

For decades, US foreign policy in the Middle East has been on autopilot: Seek Arab-Israeli peace, fight terrorism, and urge regimes to respect human rights. Every US administration puts its own spin on these initiatives, but none has successfully resolved the region’s fundamental problems. In Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East? a bipartisan group of leading experts representing several academic and policy disciplines unravel the core causes of instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Why have some countries been immune to the Arab Spring? Which governments enjoy the most legitimacy and why? With more than half the region under 30 years of age, why does education and innovation lag? How do resource economies, crony capitalism, and inequality drive conflict? Are ethnic and sectarian fault lines the key factor, or are these more products of political and economic instability? And what are the wellsprings of extremism that threaten not only the United States but, more profoundly, the people of the region?

Sujets

• Political Science
• Middle Eastern
• World

Informations

• Publié par: AEI Press
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780844750262
• Langue: English

Extrait

Seven Pillars
Seven Pillars
What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?
Essays by Danielle Pletka • Michael Rubin A. Kadir Yildirim • Thanassis Cambanis Florence Gaub • Michael A. Fahy Bilal Wahab • Brian Katulis
Edited by Michael Rubin and Brian Katulis
T HE AEI P RESS
Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute
WASHINGTON, DC
ISBN-13: 978-978-0-8447-5024-8 (Hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-5025-5 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-5026-2 (eBook)
© 2019 by the American Enterprise Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI.
American Enterprise Institute
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Printed in the United States of America
Contents
What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?
Danielle Pletka
1. What Defines Legitimacy in the Middle East and North Africa?
Michael Rubin
2. What Is the Role of Islam and Islamists in the Middle East?
A. Kadir Yildirim
3. How Are Ideologies and Cultures Changing in the Arab World?
Thanassis Cambanis
4. Are Middle Eastern Militaries Agents of Stability or Instability?
Florence Gaub
5. What Impact Does Education Have on Concepts of Citizenship?
Michael A. Fahy
6. What Will It Take to Repair Middle Eastern Economies?
Bilal Wahab
7. What Reforms Do Good Governance Require?
Brian Katulis
About the Authors

Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East? Danielle Pletka 1. What Defines Legitimacy in the Middle East and North Africa? Michael Rubin 2. What Is the Role of Islam and Islamists in the Middle East? A. Kadir Yildirim 3. How Are Ideologies and Cultures Changing in the Arab World? Thanassis Cambanis 4. Are Middle Eastern Militaries Agents of Stability or Instability? Florence Gaub 5. What Impact Does Education Have on Concepts of Citizenship? Michael A. Fahy 6. What Will It Take to Repair Middle Eastern Economies? Bilal Wahab 7. What Reforms Do Good Governance Require? Brian Katulis About the Authors i ii iii iv v vi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171
Guide Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Start of Content About the Authors
What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?
DANIELLE PLETKA
W riting in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, the late historian Bernard Lewis famously asked, “What Went Wrong?” as he and others attempted to explain how a region that was once a beacon for civilization and science had descended into such radicalism and anger. 1 Students, journalists, and policymakers can debate his and now thousands of other treatises on the malaise of the modern Middle East, but the validity of the question itself is beyond doubt. War, dictatorship, human misery, poverty, extremism, regression, and one foreign intervention after another are the modern tale of a world that was once at the pinnacle of human accomplishment. What went wrong indeed?
Too many areas of modern study are subject to the vagaries of fashion and theory, and the Arab world and Iran are not immune. Scholars of the Middle East have for decades tried to find the magic formula to “repair” the region: If only dictatorships were more benign, some argued, while others sang the virtues of democratization. The key was tolerating Islamism, unless, of course, the true path to modernity rested in promoting Atatürk-style secularism. If economic reform should precede political liberalization, then would a splash of socialism be necessary to alleviate poverty, or is foreign direct investment the key? Diplomats have long argued the road to peace and stability runs through Jerusalem, unless of course it runs instead through Baghdad, Damascus, or Tehran. Pan-Arabism, Gulf cooperation, women’s rights, and sundry other often contradictory panaceas could well soothe the ills that ail the Middle East. Each new theory or conclusion had one thing in common: The best laid plans could not trump reality. Scholars, policymakers, and military leaders, whether in the region or outside, have all too often been wrong.
With habits of mind like Marxist ideologues, some academics and policy practitioners lament that favored solutions do not work because they have not been faithfully implemented. Perhaps. Others prefer to quibble over semantics, forever arguing about how the Middle East should be defined and what modernity is. But it is also true that many good analysts are all too ready to deny the Middle East’s residents the agency they deserve. It is easy to hang the region’s ills on colonialism and borders, but sectarian divisions ebbed and flowed over the centuries. Social tensions, political instability, and economic woes all predate the coming of the Western armies or, for that matter, diplomats. Only one thing cannot be denied: It is quite a mess. But why?
While diplomats and politicians regularly propose a cure, they often fail to consider what causes the disease. At its core, what drives the instability of the modern Middle East? Platitudes about the ills of colonialism or the lack of a reformation within Islam are simply the latest fashions imposing themselves on what passes for trenchant analysis.
At a series of dinners early in the process of assembling this work, a large and diverse group of scholars of the Middle East came together in pursuit of answers. They came from a variety of disciplines: history, political science, anthropology, religious studies, and economics. And a variety of professional backgrounds: military and intelligence professionals, diplomats, journalists, and aid workers. Some served in Democratic administrations, and others in Republican ones. Surprisingly, even though many had studied the same region for decades, the artificial walls between academe and policy on the one hand and liberals and conservatives on the other meant that many had never before met, let alone sat over a dinner to discuss and debate fundamental perceptions. The challenge was straightforward: to tease out fundamental pillars of instability that affect the Middle East.
Indeed, while the so-called Arab Spring might have garnered headlines, and events in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen recriminations, the simple fact is the revolutions that began in 2011 are more symptoms of the afflictions that plague the region than driving forces. We identified seven such pillars, as much a play on T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom as an attempt to drive home that these “pillars” are the long poles in the tent of Middle Eastern turmoil.

Legitimacy
In Michael Rubin’s contribution, he peels away the oft-relied-upon trope about the illegitimacy of the modern Middle East, the hard to prove but all too often blindly accepted notion that colonialism and arbitrary borders have been the true force behind the many coups and ructions that have shaken governments across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet it is true that there is a crisis of legitimacy in the Arab world and Iran: “Historically,” Rubin explains, “questions about legitimacy do more to spark revolution than poverty or resistance against tyranny.”
The missing element in most cases is the most obvious source of legitimacy for any leader: the consent of the governed. As a result, leaders for decades have looked to alternative sources of legitimacy, religion being the most frequent refuge for those in search of a modicum of acceptance by their people. Almost all the region’s constitutions look to Islam as a source of legitimacy. Others go further, some with nuance, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, and others without, such as the Islamic State. Similarly, religious sectarian representation—most crudely designed in Lebanon’s national charter but also informally applied in Iraq—has become a force behind claims of legitimacy or lack thereof. Yet, even as religion becomes a crutch for those seeking legitimacy, many of these regimes lean on it at their own peril, lest they corrupt religion in the eyes of the people.
Perhaps effectiveness then is the true source of legitimacy? Not necessarily, according to Rubin. After all, monarchies in the region have proved a certain resilience, even as they have been, to varying degrees, deeply ineffective managers and custodians of power. And then again, citizens have often proved they will choose sectarian loyalty over effective leadership, undercutting the notion that good government is what can buy legitimacy. Ultimately, resilient institutions can provide the magic sauce that earns a leader legitimacy. But the road map toward building those institutions is unclear at best.

Islam and Islamists
It has become vogue to lament the failure of a reformation within Islam as the source of both the failings of the Middle East and the draw of Islamism. Egyptian President and strongman Abdel Fattah al Sisi said that it was necessary to “purge” religious discourse “of its flaws.” 2 But as A. Kadir Yildirim explains, “Ultimately, the legitimacy of religious discourse as a viable public policy options rests on the fail