Posted on 06/26/2007 4:45:53 AM PDT by Clive
Why are Middle East experts so unfailingly wrong? The lesson of history is that men never learn from history, but Middle East experts, like the rest of us, should at least learn from their past mistakes. Instead, they just keep repeating them.
The first mistake is "five minutes to midnight" catastrophism. The late King Hussein of Jordan was the undisputed master of this genre. Wearing his gravest aspect, he would warn us that with patience finally exhausted the Arab-Israeli conflict was about to explode, that all past conflicts would be dwarfed by what was about to happen unless, unless? And then came the remedy -- usually something rather tame when compared with the immense catastrophe predicted, such as resuming this or that stalled negotiation, or getting an American envoy to the scene to make the usual promises to the Palestinians and apply the usual pressures on Israel.
What actually happens at each of these "moments of truth" -- and we may be approaching another one -- is nothing much; only the same old cyclical conflict which always restarts when peace is about to break out, and always dampens down when the violence becomes intense enough. The ease of filming and reporting out of safe and comfortable Israeli hotels inflates the media coverage of every minor affray. But humanitarians should note that the dead from Jewish-Palestinian fighting since 1921 amount to fewer than 100,000 --about as many as are killed in a season of conflict in Darfur.
Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the Cold War. As for the impact of the conflict on oil prices, it was powerful in 1973 when the Saudis declared embargoes and cut production, but that was the first and last time that the "oil weapon" was wielded. For decades now, the largest Arab oil producers have publicly foresworn any linkage between politics and pricing, for the excellent reason that an embargo would be disastrous for their oil-revenue dependent economies. In any case, the relationship between turmoil in the Middle East and oil prices is far from straightforward. As Philip Auerswald recently noted in the American Interest, between 1981 and 1999 -- a period when a fundamentalist regime consolidated power in Iran, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war within view of oil and gas installations, the Gulf War came and went and the first Palestinian intifada raged -- oil prices, adjusted for inflation, actually fell.
Moreover, geopolitical engagement in the region does nothing to safeguard the supply of oil. Yes oil is important but it seems that production is much smoother when it is left alone by both diplomacy and war. The U.S. is certainly heavily engaged in Iraq but that has not exactly increased the country's oil production -- at least two million barrels a day are lost because of the sabotage of well-heads, collectors, separation units and pipelines. Another two million barrels a day are lost because of the diplomatic isolation of Iran's government and its resulting reliance on local incompetents instead of Western oil-service companies. Those missing four million barrels a day would make all the difference to oil prices , because oil demand is very inelastic and it would be enough to have 86 million barrels a day of world-wide production instead of 82 to lower prices very sharply, all the way from US$60 plus to US$30 minus.
Besides, while attention is obsessively focused on the Middle East, oil supplies are more immediately threatened these days by political thievery in Nigeria, illiterate oil populism in Venezuela and Russia's kleptocratic oil nationalism, all of which reduce both current production and the installation of future capacity.
Yes, it would be nice if Israelis and Palestinians could settle their differences, but it would do little or nothing to calm the other conflicts in the Middle East from Algeria to Iraq, or to stop Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites, nor would it assuage the perfectly understandable hostility of convinced Islamists towards the transgressive west that relentlessly invades their minds, and sometimes their countries.
Arab-Israeli catastrophism is wrong twice over, first because the conflict is contained within rather narrow boundaries, and second because the Levant is just not that important any more.
The second repeated mistake is the Mussolini syndrome. Contemporary documents prove beyond any doubt what is now hard to credit: serious people, including British and French military chiefs, accepted Mussolini's claims to great power status because they believed that he had serious armed forces at his command. His army divisions, battleships and air squadrons were dutifully counted to assess Italian military power, making some allowance for their lack of the most modern weapons but not for their more fundamental refusal to fight in earnest. Having conceded Ethiopia to win over Mussolini, only to lose him to Hitler as soon as the fighting started, the British discovered that the Italian forces quickly crumbled in combat. It could not be otherwise, because most Italian soldiers were unwilling conscripts from the one-mule peasantry of the south or the almost equally miserable sharecropping villages of the north.
Exactly the same mistake keeps being made by the fraternity of Middle East experts. They persistently attribute real military strength to backward societies whose populations can sustain excellent insurgencies but not modern military forces.
In the 1960s, it was Nasser's Egypt that was mistaken for a real military power just because it had received many aircraft, tanks and guns from the Soviet Union, and had many army divisions and air squadrons.
In 1990 it was the turn of Iraq to be hugely overestimated as a military power. Saddam Hussein had more equipment than Nasser ever accumulated, and could boast of having defeated much more populous Iran after eight years of war. In the months before the Gulf war, there was much anxious speculation about the size of the Iraqi army -- again, the divisions and regiments were dutifully counted as if they were German divisions on the eve of D-Day, with a separate count of the "elite" Republican Guards, not to mention the "super-elite" Special Republican Guards--and it was feared that Iraq's bombproof aircraft shelters and deep bunkers would survive any air attack.
That much of this was believed at some level we know from the magnitude of the coalition armies that were laboriously assembled, including 575,000 U.S. troops, 43,000 British, 14,663 French and 4,500 Canadian, and which incidentally constituted the sacrilegious infidel presence on Arabian soil that set off Osama bin Laden on his quest for revenge. In the event, two weeks of precision bombing were enough to paralyze Saddam's entire war machine, which scarcely tried to resist the ponderous ground offensive when it came. At no point did the Iraqi air force try to fight, and all those tanks that were painstakingly counted served mostly for target practice. A real army would have continued to resist for weeks or months in the dug-in positions in Kuwait, even without air cover, but Saddam's army was the usual Middle Eastern facade without fighting substance.
Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name.
Then there is the new light cavalry of Iranian terrorism that is invoked to frighten us if all else fails. The usual Middle East experts now explain that if we annoy the ayatollahs, they will unleash terrorists who will devastate our lives, even though 30 years of "death to America" invocations and vast sums spent on maintaining a special international terrorism department have produced only one major bombing in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, and two in the most permissive environment of Buenos Aires, in 1992 and 1994, along with some assassinations of exiles in Europe.
It is true enough that if Iran's nuclear installations are bombed in some overnight raid, there is likely to be some retaliation, but we live in fortunate times in which we have only the irritant of terrorism instead of world wars to worry about -- and Iran's added contribution is not likely to leave much of an impression. There may be good reasons for not attacking Iran's nuclear sites --including the very slow and uncertain progress of its uranium enrichment effort -- but its ability to strike back is not one of them.
As for the claim that the "Iranians" are united in patriotic support for the nuclear program, no such nationality even exists. Out of Iran's population of 70 million or so, 51% are ethnically Persian, 24% are Turks ("Azeris" is the regime's term), with other minorities comprising the remaining quarter. Many of Iran's 16-17 million Turks are in revolt against Persian cultural imperialism; its five to six million Kurds have started a serious insurgency; the Arab minority detonates bombs in Ahvaz; and Baluch tribesmen attack gendarmes and revolutionary guards. If some 40% of the British population were engaged in separatist struggles of varying intensity, nobody would claim that it was firmly united around the London government. On top of this, many of the Persian majority oppose the theocratic regime, either because they have become post-Islamic in reaction to its many prohibitions, or because they are Sufis, whom the regime now persecutes almost as much as the small Baha'i minority.
The third and greatest error repeated by Middle East experts of all persuasions, by Arabophiles and Arabophobes alike, by Turcologists and by Iranists, is also the simplest to define. It is the very odd belief that these ancient nations are highly malleable. Hardliners keep suggesting that with a bit of well-aimed violence ("the Arabs only understand force") compliance will be obtained. But what happens every time is an increase in hostility; defeat is followed not by collaboration, but by sullen non-cooperation and active resistance too. It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behaviour.
Softliners make exactly the same mistake in reverse. They keep arguing that if only this or that concession were made, if only their policies were followed through to the end and respect shown, or simulated, hostility would cease and a warm Mediterranean amity would emerge. Yet even the most thinly qualified of Middle East experts must know that Islam, as with any other civilization, comprehends the sum total of human life, and that unlike some others it promises superiority in all things for its believers, so that the scientific and technological and cultural backwardness of the lands of Islam generates a constantly renewed sense of humiliation and of civilizational defeat. That fully explains the ubiquity of Muslim violence, and reveals the futility of the palliatives urged by the soft-liners.
The operational mistake that Middle East experts keep making is the failure to recognize that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily, once they recognized that maxi-trials merely handed over control to a newer and smarter Mafia of doctors and lawyers. With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the Middle East should finally be allowed to have their own history -- the one thing that Middle East experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.
That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the Middle East, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts -- excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the Middle East is one-fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the Middle East (only about 5% of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all.
The Middle East was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the United Nations' 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63%. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17% of exports, compared to a global average of 78%. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire Middle East generated under 4% of global GDP in 2006 --less than Germany.
Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and East Asia -- places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.
- Edward N. Luttwak is senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C.
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Seems like the doctrine of Ron Paul.
They leave out one important caveat: don’t let them emigrate to your country in large numbers.
It’s best to ignore Edward N. Luttwak.
Maybe it has escaped Mr Luttwak’s attention or he conveniently ignores it (I suspect the latter) that Islam doesn’t confine itself to the “Middle East” (North Africa and parts of East-Asia are islamic aswell Mr Luttwak...). Islam was, is and will always be expansionist. What does he think is happening in Europe, Russia, Latin-American and even here? Islam is expanding in every aspect. They prosytelize, extend terrorist networks and make political demands under their religious disguise.
They have attacked us REPEATEDLY on our own soil.
The evil forces coming from the Islamic world need to be engaged and defeated THERE.
Sticking the head into the sand and pretending all will go along is cowardly or idiotic. Mostly both of them.
Shhhh, don’t mention the dreaded “RP” word, or his minions will come flocking to the thread like hungry locusts.
One important reason we care is because Christians and Jews worldwide revere the land and history of Israel. As they should.
Ignoring the Middle East is like ignoring cancer. You can but it won’t go away.
I don’t disagree with the article, but I think the world is different since 9/11. We have been attacked several times without provocation. What makes the writer believe that this will stop?
I also think that we have avoided wiping out Iran and Syria for the reasons given in the article, ie there is no reason to do so at this point.
On the other hand, there has been a growing active movement among Muslims world wide to attack the west. I say kill the snake now istead of leaving it alone. Eventually it will bite.
nick
Lunacy, total lunacy. All our problems and threats to our national security and our economy come from the Middle East and this lunatic want us to ignore it.
It’s difficult to understand the middle east, since most Americans were brought up in civilization, not barbarism where school buses are bombed and 6 year olds are told to ignite bomb vests and that they will see wonderful things if they do.
As I read this piece, I kept thinking of of the burning twin towers in New York City, and the words of Leon Trotsky — “You may not be looking for war, but war is looking for you.” Luttwak says ‘ignore those losers, because they don’t matter.’ The trouble is, those losers refuse to ignore us...
To US$30 minus? They'd pay us to take their oil?
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Yup... you're supposed to learn from the past... not live in it.
They would be too busy killing each other if we weren't over there preventing them from doing so. Our attempts to establish "Peace in the Middle East" are freeing up the region's hate-steeped youth to seek out softer targets. Mohammed Atta might have been home in Egypt fighting against an invasion by the Saudi army on 9/11 if we had let Middle Eastern politics take its natural course over the years - and paid closer attention to who we were letting into the country, and why.
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