3 Good Pieces

Three Good Pieces, Part One:

Two via Arts & Letters Daily, and one via our friend Noel of Sharp Knife and Cold Fury. I'll post each of them separately.

The first is another piece by Mr. Luttwak. It is an argument for ignoring the Middle East. I post it for three reasons: because it strikes me as something that may somewhat redeem Mr. Luttwak's standing in the eyes of our Eric Blair; because it is well reasoned and contains interesting information; and because I almost agree with it.

Luttwak argues, correctly, that there are four basic mistakes intelligence and security analysts make with the Middle East. First, they assume that it has some actual power because its nations maintain large conscription armies; but in fact, all of these armies are effectively worthless.

[T]he [overestimation] 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....

[When calling Iran dangerous a]ll the symptoms [of that mistake] 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. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as "elite," who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one—against Iraq, which they lost. As for Iran's claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year's affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire.

I dissent with Luttwak on one point: the modern insurgent fights what is principally an information war. If "the publicity is excellent" to the degree that his aims are achieved in the political realm, the insurgent has won regardless of the facts on the battlefield.

Similarly, the American forces have won every single engagement at the platoon level or larger since 2003; yet there are many idiot politicians and unthinking citizens who have let the insurgent propaganda war convince them that we are losing. If that conviction continues to the point that those politicians and citizens move to withdraw our forces, we will in fact have lost the war -- by choosing to surrender to a foe who never won a single engagement.

The second mistake Luttwak speaks of is the mistake of assuming it is easy to change these societies. This speaks both to those who thought that force would do it, and those who think that diplomacy and concessions will do it. "Backwards societies must be left alone," Luttwak states.

Which is almost right. In 2003, I wrote a piece called The Black Mail, which argued that change can come only slowly, and because these societies choose it for themselves. What is necessary, however, is to create conditions whereby the tribal/older societies engage with the modern world -- so that the natural tendencies of capitalism and liberty will destabilize and force changes over time.

That leads us to a middle position between Luttwak's "leave them alone" and the fierce and continual engagement and meddling advocated by both the hawkiest hawks and the doviest doves. Neither invading nor negotiating with Syria is necessary, for example; what is necessary is to win in Iraq, since we are there, and let them rub against it.

This was an argument made in the runup to the Iraq war, and one on which the principled could fall on either side. The pro-invasion argument was that, if we could begin to see democratic changes in Iraq, the consequences of seeing it and having contact with a democratic Arab state would spread through the whole region. That would reduce the likelihood of further wars in the future, and bring the whole region (slowly) into alignment with the wider world.

The other argument would be that, if this principle can work, invasion should not be necessary at all -- only further, deeper economic engagement. Though slower, there would be no need to fight a war at all. Thus, this principle would not justify an invasion.

I believe Luttwak would make that point, which is quite right. Insofar as the process may be speeded by war, yet that can only be a side benefit for war, not a justification for war. If a war is justified, it must be on other grounds.

Meanwhile, concessions and negotiations with a given autocratic regime can be justified only if they permit the increased economic/social engagement. If the concessions are only being used to prop up an existing regime's credibility or stability, they are not justified. For example, no concessions to North Korea are justified. The regime should be isolated and allowed to collapse, because it cannot be meaningfully engaged. The government refuses to allow it.

In the Middle East, that is not the case. Even in Saudi Arabia, there is some economic/social interaction, and Muslims (particularly Muslim women) are drawing from the ideas they find in those interactions. The society is changing in positive ways, if slowly.

The last mistake Luttwak discusses -- I am combining his "first" and "fourth" into an overarching "third" -- is the mistake of assuming that what happens in the Middle East is important. By this, he explictly means "including the Israel/Palestine conflict." I've always agreed with this posture: the idea that this conflict is overriding in its implications for the world is simply wrong. That it is widely believed does not change the fact that it is wrong, as Luttwak demonstrates.

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. We read versions of the standard King Hussein speech in countless newspaper columns, hear identical invocations in the grindingly repetitive radio and television appearances of the usual middle east experts, and are now faced with Hussein's son Abdullah periodically repeating his father's speech almost verbatim.

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. And 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, and an embargo would be a disaster 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. And global dependence on middle eastern oil is declining: today the region produces under 30 per cent of the world's crude oil, compared to almost 40 per cent in 1974-75. In 2005 17 per cent of American oil imports came from the Gulf, compared to 28 per cent in 1975, and President Bush used his 2006 state of the union address to announce his intention of cutting US oil imports from the middle east by three quarters by 2025.

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 Shia, nor would it assuage the perfectly understandable hostility of convinced Islamists towards the transgressive west that relentlessly invades their minds, and sometimes their countries.

Quite right on every point. What does it all mean?

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 five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all.

Emphasis added. This has been the central problem with the model I advocate, that of change-through-economic involvement, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Many have no need to work because of oil revenue, and the government's use of that revenue to prop up the institutions of the existing tribal society. That has not prevented change, but it has slowed it to a remarkable degree.

I still endorse it, however, as slow change is better than no change at all; and better than fighting a region-wide war. We have committed to Iraq, for reasons beyond the reason of changing their society; and we must continue it for as long as necessary to win, because there is no set of options in defeat that is as good as the worst option that comes from success. America, having begun a war, must win it.

Luttwak here is on far more stable ground than in his last piece. His policy prescriptions are close to what I would advocate, even if I think he is drawn into error on a few points. I await your thoughts with interest.