Regional Perspectives

The general introduction is oriented around regional developments during the period covered by the blog posts in this section, and those broader issues will not be again addressed here. The themes emphasized can be briefly identified. They include a reminder of the unpredictability that exists throughout the region, and gives rise to a series of 'black swans,' that is, transformative events that are unanticipated until they happen, and then are laboriously explained by "the experts." The complexity of the region has become apparent in recent years. More than other parts of the world the Greater Middle East (Arab world + Iran + Turkey + North Africa) is crosscut by a series of transnational conflicts and ideological passions that are additionally complicated as a result of their linkages to extraregional global patterns of intervention and rivalry.

Attention is also given to the Arab Spring as a regional phenomenon, and as an expression of distinctive challenges to the established order in each of the countries in the Greater Middle East. As we now know, the democratic promise unleashed by the extraordinary developments in early 2011 generated a phase two that mingled promises of democratic reform with authoritarian pushback, producing a variety of coopting and counterrevolutionary reactions that have caused the further hardening of authoritarian regimes, instances of persisting civil strife, and some cosmetic reforms.

Among the situational factors that has proved so significant has been various types of political polarization, perhaps most starkly observed in Egypt, but also evident in Turkey, Tunisia, and elsewhere. Several of the posts published here try to comprehend the specific contours and toxic effects of polarization, and how it diminishes prospects for democratization and respect for human rights. From the outset of the Arab Spring, reinforced by my several visits in recent years to the Middle East, I became more and more aware of the intensity of polarization, and its effect of delegitimizing opposing views whether it takes the form of majoritarian democracy that is contemptuous of the outlook of the opposition or the form of a discontented citizenry that withdraws legitimacy from the political leadership, whether or not it has been elected.

In addition to polarization are problems of sectarianism within Islam, the tensions that exist between Sunni and Shi'a Islam, as politicized through the patronage of their principal rival proponents in Riyadh and Tehran. There are intensifying interactions between political polarization, sectarianism, and dynastic anxieties about grassroots political Islam, best exhibited by extreme hostility toward the various country branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. The United States played the sectarian card during its decade of occupation of Iraq with disastrous results, and then belatedly has tried to urge the Shi'a leadership in Baghdad to be more inclusive.

Finally, the emergence of dreaded forms of political extremism are examined as consequences of external intervention and occupation, most especially the ramifications of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq and the ongoing civil war raging in Syria since 2011. The challenges posed by these outbreaks of extremism prompt yet another cycle of extraregional intervention justified on counter-terrorist and humanitarian grounds, being addressed militarily with no willingness to explore diplomatic paths to regional stability. The U.S. government is particularly responsible for this dysfunctional reliance on military intervention implemented mainly by way of air strikes. The picture of the Greater Middle East that emerges from these posts is not encouraging, but as is stressed, the turbulence in the region is likely to cause unexpected eruptions in the years ahead that might bring more positive tendencies to the surface in more durable forms than what emerged in 2011. What lies ahead is obscure, but likely to alter dramatically our present expectations for political developments in the region and how these relate to world politics.

The posts in this section exhibit my early concerns as to whether the upheavals in the region, especially Egypt and Tunisia, could attain their democratizing goals, given the fact that only the rulers and immediate entourage were removed from power. The entrenched bureaucracy remained the core of the governing regime whether they approved of the upheaval or not. Furthermore, trusting the armed forces to manage a transition to a more democratic governing process seemed naïve, given their privileged role and material interest in stabilizing the former authoritarian regime.

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Can Humanitarian Intervention Ever Be Humanitarian?

August 4, 2011

Not since the debate about the Kosovo war of 1999 has there been such widespread discussion of humanitarian intervention, including the semantics of coupling "humanitarian" with the word "intervention." At one extreme of this debate about language stands Gareth Evans, former foreign minister of Australia and a staunch advocate of displacing the discourse on "humanitarian intervention" by relying on the concept of "responsibility to protect" (R2P). Evans was, in fact, co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which came up with the idea of R2P a decade ago. This approach to intervention was skillfully marketed to the international community, including the United Nations. Evans writes that they made the conceptual case for R2P "by changing the focus from the 'right' to 'responsibility,' and from 'intervene' to 'protect,' by making clear that there needed to be as much attention paid to prevention as to reaction and non-coercive measures, and by emphasizing that military coercion — which needed to be mandated by the UN Security Council — was an absolute last resort in civilian protection cases."

Insisting that the coercive actions in the Ivory Coast and Libya show the benefits of this approach, as contrasted with the supposed failures in the 1990s to take action in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, Evans feels so vindicated by recent events as to plead that we "please lay 'humanitarian intervention' language to rest once and for all." This raises three questions: Should we? Will we? And does it really matter? My answer to the first two is "no," and to the third, "not much." My basic problem with the R2P approach is that it downplays the role of geopolitics in the diplomacy of decisions both to intervene and not to intervene. By hiding this fundamental element in the decision process behind a screen of moralizing language, talking of R2P rather than humanitarian intervention invites misunderstanding as well as encouraging imperial ambitions.

At the other semantic extreme is Michael Walzer, who, writing in Foreign Affairs, insists that the idea of humanitarianism has become a central feature of world politics in the early twenty-first century. He starts his article with some hyperbolic language to this effect: "Humanitarianism is probably the most important 'ism' in the world today, given the collapse...