THE CASE FOR PESSIMISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ROBERT WEISSBERG
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9229/pub_detail.asp
As events in the Middle East unfold (the “Arab Spring”), the obvious question is whether the changes in leadership will bring what the demonstrators demand. Will Egypt or Tunisia of tomorrow resemble the Egypt or Tunisia of yesteryear? Will the carnage in Libya and Syria be worth it if the old despots are kicked out? Might millions of those riot-inclined unemployed young men find jobs? Will democracy finally flourish? Though being pessimistic is hardly fun, everything points to disappointment, and in a world where prior expectations define “success” or “failure,” having clear-eyed expectations is critical. We certainly do not need any more expensive foreign policy disappointments.
Predicting political futures is always difficult but let me offer my own approach– the garbage/idleness index, and I personally guarantee its accuracy.
Here’s how it works. Travel around the Arab Middle East (as I have) and just observe the ever-present garbage (including epidemic friendly organic waste) while scores of young men idle in cafes smoking water pipes or drinking tea. Meanwhile, clusters of men stand amidst piles of trash patiently waiting to pounce on tour buses. Yes, the oil-rich kingdoms look clean but only thanks to armies of imported workers since Arab locals refuse these jobs. Add miles of run-down buildings that would take only a few hours and some paint to fix up.
More is involved than a tolerance for filth and a penchant for disorder. These scenes offer a key insight into a fatalistic culture that will survive regardless of shifting leaders or free elections. After all, what could be simpler than putting one’s empty plastic water bottle in a nearby trash receptacle? This task hardly requires democracy let alone an expensive program. But, and here’s the bottom line, nothing is done since nobody commands the clean up. Everybody waits for “somebody else” to act. This display of dependency on exterior authority virtually guarantees the re-emergence of autocracy.
This mentality became apparent to me in Mexico where I observed housing built for workers employed at nearby American firms taking advantage of NAFTA. Trash underfoot was everywhere and my Mexican guide explained the mess—people were waiting for government help. In other words, nobody would even bend down to pick up a plastic bag since this was “the government’s responsibility.” By contrast, I used to visit regularly a small public housing facility in Germany largely populated by elderly disabled veterans. They had organized maintenance and had a posted sign-up sheet of scheduled duties. The building sparkled. The one exception to this clean-up crew was a Turkish family who refused to participate so each German resident had to make a little extra effort. This “take-charge” mentality is true everywhere in Germany—even in small villages the sidewalk is routinely swept (and you can always tell a Kurdish neighborhood in Germany by the graffiti and filth).
To be blunt, all those demonstrations in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Tunisia and elsewhere resemble primitive religious rites in which desperate believers implore “the gods” for relief. Demonstrators demand freedom, democracy, and jobs as if these were objects that can be handed out as a relief agency would dispense food in a famine (and one can only wonder that “democracy” means to people lacking any democratic experience). Tellingly, demonstrators do not ask why they are governed by home-grown autocrats. In effect, the protestors admit that their organizational skills, entrepreneurial drive and personal initiative are so weak that they must be rescued from above. An old political adage applies perfectly: those that cannot govern themselves will be governed by others.
It is no accident that aggressively begging Westerners is a popular occupation in this region. Yes, public buses are decrepit and dangerous, but it never seems to occur to these idle tea-drinkers that profitable jobs might come from a safer, cleaner alternative. When I was in Cairo finding and getting to a decent restaurant outside the hotel was nearly impossible. Apparently, it did not occur to anyone to print up a multilingual guide, fill it with paid advertising and a map, and give it gratis to tourists, a practice common in more prosperous countries. The list of missed opportunities was endless but nobody seemed to care.
This widespread lethargy bodes poorly for those who anticipate a reinvigorated Arab Middle East. The scenario will be predictable. First, the new rulers will promise economic and political reforms, the long awaited “freedom.” Measures will be taken. Old monopolistic laws may even be altered and the call will go out for outside expertise. A few foreign firms needing cheap semi-skilled labor might even be enticed to build facilities. NGO’s by the score will arrive, just as they flourish in Africa, Haiti and other impoverished nations, and soon Yemenites and Syrians will be taught to manage a modern poultry farm or how to built sewage treatment facilities. Generous International Monetary Fund loans will keep the economy going. Foreign aid from the US and EU will be solicited for make-work projects. Since these helping organization have PR departments, upbeat stories will soon appear—group pictures of Egyptian farmers admiring their brand new irrigation equipment.
But, all of these intervention are top-down, “parachuted” in, nearly all of it decided by “experts” indifferent to the enduring indigenous culture. This is, to be frank, a temporary life-support system, not the foundations for a permanent productive economy. The new irrigation equipment will become junk in a year or two for lack of proper government-supplied maintenance; the cash infusions will probably breed yet more dependency and corruption. One only has to examine dismal economic progress in Africa after decades of this type of “help.” Development in these newly “free” Arab nations will be painfully slow and the disappointment will grow angrier, especially as democracy brings political paralysis, not hoped for miracles. Tired of waste and corruption, outside benefactors will leave. Make-work jobs will evaporate and as before, young men will loiter in the cafes waiting for work while the garbage piles up.
Faced with growing despair (and the threats of new demonstrations) the once banished autocratic approach, complete with a secret police repressing malcontents, slowly creeps back in (this already seems to be occurring in Egypt). Former demonstrators might quietly grow nostalgic for Hosni Mubarak or, in Tunisia, Ben Ali. How else will anything get done? How can we get jobs if the democratic parliament just talks and talks and talks? In the final analysis, it is far easier to expel an autocrat than for a dependency-inclined population to transform itself into one prizing individual initiative and entrepreneurship.
Few American will be happy with this pessimistic prophecy. By nature we are optimists, a people with a “can do” spirit who sincerely believe that with education and hard work, almost anything can be accomplished. These are admirable traits but we sometimes can be blinded by our fantasies and all the alluring rhetoric about freedom and democracy. We are also a politically correct people—we don’t ask why “Asian tigers” like South Korea and Singapore thrive with minimal foreign aid while many African nations awash in outside help slide backwards economically.
Keep in mind that if we knew the secret of creating prosperity we would have long cured the problems of American cities like Detroit andEast St. Louis, all of which have democratically elected governments. As a single robin does not mean the onset of spring, a few raucous Arab demonstrations, even the banishing a tyrant, does not necessarily signify change.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York University Department of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent being: The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to “accept differences” undermines civil society and Bad Students, Not Bad Schools. Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.
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