Jordan and Lebanon: The Next Dominoes in the Arab Spring/Winter?

Earlier this month I predicted that there will be more countries affected by the drive for freedom in the Arab world. I predicted that in my humble opinion Lebanon and Jordan are the two most likely candidates. This is not because I'm an expert in the internal workings of either country. My knowledge of Jordan relates mainly to its foreign policy and my knowledge of Lebanon is historical--from the period of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90. So on what basis do I make my predictions? 

Both countries are neighbors of Syria and both are affected by the civil war in Syria. A 2007 Jordanian estimate was that there were 450,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, and small numbers of refugees continue to arrive in Jordan each month due to continued fighting in Iraq. This puts strains on Jordanian resources and Jordan has never been a rich country in terms of natural resources. It lacks oil and natural gas unlike Iraq and the Gulf countries and even Syria, and its main natural resource is phosphates in the Dead Sea region. Jordan's economy is based primarily on agriculture, tourism as part of the Holy Land, and light industry. Jordan provides free health care and education for the Iraqi refugees. Now it has to provide for Syrian refugees as well who number more than 600,000 or almost a third of the more than two million Syrian refugees who have fled since 2011. The Jordanian Central Bank has already noted that their presence is a strain on the economy.  Here is a recent LA Times article that echoes the above analysis.

2014 Predictions for International Relations

Having previously enjoyed myself immensely on New Year's Eve when on ABC's Nightline various pundits had their political predictions played back to them before blithely charging once more into the breach of ignorance, I will now entertain anyone willing to read this blog with my own predictions for 2014.

1) Narendra Modi will defeat Rahul Gandhi in national elections in India later this year. This will be the third electoral defeat for a member of the Gandhi dynasty--Rahul's grandmother Indira was defeated in 1977 after having declared a state of emergency in 1975 and ruled for 18 months in a highly-autocratic fashion. She came back to win again and served as prime minister from 1980-84. Her son Rajiv, Rahul's father, followed her as prime minister following her assassination in October 1984. He was defeated in 1989 and campaigning for a come back when he was himself assassinated in 1991 only a week before the election. If the Congress Party in 1989 was like the Israeli Labor Party in 1977, today it is like the Labor Party in 2001. Merely having another Gandhi on the ticket will not be enough to save Congress from defeat this year. Here is why.

The many ideologies of Greater Syria!

In Ecclesiastes it is written that there is nothing new under the sun. This certainly seems to apply to ideology in the Middle East. Ed Husain writes at National Review Online (reposted at RealClearWorld) that the Al-Qaeda jihadis in Syria are now promoting the concept of Bilad al-Sham literally the country of the North (al-Sham is also another term for Damascus) or Greater Syria. Bilad al-Sham consists of all the countries of the Levant and the interior behind them: Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. Husain writes that Syria could wind up as Al-Qaeda's first Sunni Arab base in the Middle East if they are successful. 

It was first promoted as an ideology by King Abdullah I of Transjordan who dreamed of creating a Greater Syria under his control and so began by conquering the West Bank during the 1948 war and adding it to the East Bank to form the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This was after he made a pact with the Israeli government through Golda Meir, who traveled to Amman in disguise to meet with him. Journalist Sandra Mackey wrote in Passion and Politics that there was a joke in Amman that Abdullah's one-eyed cat would yawn every time he mentioned Greater Syria or Bilad al-Sham (maybe the cat like the Hashemite monarchs was bilingual).  He never got any further than that and the concept went out of favor with his grandson King Hussein, who did not want to alarm his Western patrons or Israel.

The Peace Treaty and Israeli Foreign Behavior

The latest post on Dan Fleshler's Realistic Dove (www.realisticdove.com) is a response to complaints elsewhere in the blogosphere that Egypt ending the peace treaty with Israel would be a good thing. The argument made at Mondoweiss and elsewhere is that the peace treaty allowed Israel to deploy its army and air force to make war on the Palestinians and Lebanese because it had a reasonable expectation that Egypt would keep the peace. This is no doubt true, but it is not the whole story.

Because of the lack of trust between Israel and its Arab neighbors, it has decided as a measure of prudence, because its margin of error is relatively low, to only make peace with those neighboring regimes that demonstrate that they will keep the peace. Because the Israeli electorate can only bear the burden of one peace process at a time, this has meant in practice that Israel began with the easiest negotiations i.e. those with the most trustworthy Arab regimes and the least strategic territory and worked its way down. So far it has made peace with two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, whose leaders at the time of the peace treaty had a reputation both within Israel and within the West for moderation and trustworthiness. But even with Egypt, the first peace treaty in 1979, Israel tested Egypt first by concluding two separation-of-forces agreements in January 1974 and September 1975. These allowed Israel to establish that the Sadat regime was trustworthy.

Since the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, Israeli actions have depended upon the nature of the coalition government in power. Three different parties have lead coalitions since 1979: the Likud, Labor, and Kadima. Under the Likud Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March 1978, bombed PLO headquarters in Lebanon in July 1981, bombed an Iraqi reactor in June 1981, and invaded Lebanon in June 1982 and occupied Beirut. Under Labor Israel withdraw from the areas of the Likud's conquest of 1982 in 1984-85, started a peace process with the PLO and Syria in 1992-95, and continued negotiations with Syria and the PLO in 1999-2000 and withdrew completely from Lebanon in July 2000. The Likud then reoccupied the West Bank's main cities in 2002 and withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005.

Kadima, elected to power in March 2006, was involved in two separate wars: in Lebanon in July 2006 and in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. Kadima was supported in these wars by Labor, which also supported Sharon in reoccupying the West Bank in 2002 and withdrawing from Gaza in 2005.

So the lesson one draws from this seems clear--Israeli behavior depends on which parties are in power. The most likely party to go to war is Kadima supported by Labor. The least likely is Labor supported by Meretz. Any Likud government in which Sharon was either defense or prime minister was likely to go to war.

But the Israeli actions also depended on the activity of the Palestinians and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah continued to maintain a provocative profile vis a vis Israel despite Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanese territory according to the UN definition. This was because Hezbollah needed a justification for the maintenance of its guns within Lebanese politics. Hamas also maintained a provocative profile vis a vis Israel throughout the 1990s and 2000s in order to distinguish itself from Yasir Arafat's Fatah and other members of the PLO. It wanted to demonstrate that it offered not only Islamic conformism and discipline but also struggle and steadfastness.

The Egypt-Israeli peace treaty allowed doves and pragmatists to argue convincingly to the Israeli electorate that a surrender of conquered territory could be in Israel's national interest in some circumstances. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat helped to demonstrate to the same electorate that such a surrender was not in Israel's national interest when dealing with the Palestinians or with the Lebanese government. The Israeli electorate is still divided about whether such a surrender of conquered Arab territory is in Israel's national interest when dealing with the Ba'athist regime in Damascus. If Egypt renounces the peace treaty that question will be decisively answered and decided, perhaps permanently.

Who is Next?

Now that the pundits have seen the writing on the wall indicating that Mubarak's days are numbered, and we've seen the hundreds of thousands of fingers doing the writing, who will be the next Arab autocrat to go?

To begin to examine that question intelligently, we must first examine the nature of the regimes in the Arab world. Broadly speaking Arab regimes can be divided into two categories--monarchies (kingdoms, emirates) and military dictatorships. The former can then be further divided into the Gulf States with their oil wealth and the monarchies that lack this--Morocco, Jordan and Oman. The military dictatorships can be divided into two groups: the hereditary republics and the ordinary dictatorships. While there is quite a bit of difference between the Gulf States on one hand and the traditional military dictatorships on the other, there is little effective difference between the non-oil monarchies and the hereditary republics. Both types are repressive and both types suffer from serious economic problems. And members of both groups are aligned with Western powers such as France and the United States.

There have been four Arab countries that fit the description of hereditary republic.(North Korea is the only non-Arab country in this category that comes to mind, which should tell everyone something about the Arab world.)  These are/were: Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya. Only in Syria has the first despot been able to transfer the imaginary crown to the head of his son and heir. This is not because Hafiz al-Assad was necessarily wiser than Kaddafi, Mubarak, and Saddam Hussein, but merely because he died first. None of the others wants to transfer power while they are still capable of ruling. Saddam Hussein and his sons are now dead. The senior dictator sentenced to death and hanged by the Shi'ites that he once persecuted; the dictators apparent, Udai and Qusay, killed by American troops that discovered their safe house. It is now too late for Hosni Mubarak to transfer power to his son Gamal. It is still possible that Muammar Kaddafi might yet transfer power to his son Saif--apparently the sole son who doesn't have a reputation as a playboy.

In the Arab world the secret to remaining in power is to buy off the potential classes that could cause problems, retain the confidence of the military, and either buy off, exile or murder any serious potential threats within the regime. The Gulf States buy off the population and especially the middle class with generous education benefits and make-work jobs. These are funded from oil revenues. The clergy is then bought off by funding Wahhabite missionary activities throughout the region and the Arab diaspora in Europe and the United States. The military dictatorships that are aligned with the U.S. use American aid to subsidize heating oil, food, and other basic staples for the lower classes. Formerly the Soviet Union also provided this function for its regional allies, but it is gone. This has forced Damascus to turn to Tehran for an alliance.

Potentially the two countries most immediately in danger are Yemen, which has already experienced political unrest following the fall of the regime in Tunis, and Syria. Syria has not experienced unrest yet and is trying to preempt it with new reforms that have been announced. Bashar al-Assad feels that unlike Mubarak he can breathe easier as he is on the right side of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not having signed a peace treaty with Israel. That is why the hope of getting Assad to switch alliances in order to make peace with Israel is probably a pipe dream--he needs the conflict in order to legitimize his heretical Alawite regime (the Alawis are an offshoot of the Shia).

Jordan is also at risk as well over 60 percent of the country's population is made up of Palestinians--those who fled in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants. Jordan's King Abdullah II inherited from his father, King Hussein, the knowledge of how to periodically change prime ministers while running a show parliament and a facade of democracy. He has just put in place a "new" prime minister--who has ruled before. He, like the king, is a former major general in the army. The security of the regime rests on the army and secret police, which are both manned mostly by Jordanians of Beduin extraction from either Jordan or originally from the Red Sea coast of Arabia. The Hashemite monarchs claim legitimacy as direct descendants of Muhammad. But the king's biggest asset is a light ruling hand and good economic management over the decades that he inherited from his father.

The ruling house in Morocco could also potentially be at risk as there are tensions between the Arabs and Berbers in the country and it is rather poor. Europe is an escape valve for many poor Arabs throughout North Africa. Libya, located between Tunisia and Egypt, is also at risk. Muammar Kaddafi has been in power since 1969--41 years. He should either begin transferring power to his son or be prepared for political unrest.

Lebanon is sui generis. It is neither a monarchy nor a military dictatorship but a collection of mutually hostile sectarian groups of Christians and Muslims. It is sitting on a powder keg because of the UN investigation of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005.  Hezbollah, which maintains a large private militia in defiance of an agreement by all the political parties to disarm following the fifteen-year civil war, has threatened that it will regard anyone who supports the UN tribunal as an enemy. Its enemies usually experience premature deaths. Syria and Iran both back Hezbollah--it served both as a pressure on Israel and a client militia for the former and was trained by the latter. So far Shi'ite Lebanon is the most successful example of the export of Iranian revolution. Its powder keg has a fuse that is independent of the regional unrest, but could be sped up if Syria experiences significant unrest.

What are American interests in the Middle East?

In 2005 Palgrave Macmillan published a book by Leon Hadar, who like myself both has a doctorate in international relations and is a graduate of Hebrew University, called Sandstorm. The book appears to be largely a continuation of his earlier book, Quagmire, published in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War a year later. In Sandstorm Hadar argues that most of America's policies and difficulties in the region stem from a failure to reexamine the Cold War era Middle East Paradigm (MEP), which dominated from the time of the Truman Doctrine to the end of the Cold War. The MEP had three overriding American interests in the region: 1) Guaranteeing the supply of oil at a reasonable price; 2) combating Soviet expansion and influence in the region; 3) and ensuring the security of Israel. The only concession to reality since 1990 has been to substitute Al Qaeda and Iran for the Soviet Union.

Hadar reminded me of a fact that I knew but had forgotten: the United States gets ninety percent (90%) of its oil from outside the region. Protecting the oil flow from the region was largely a factor of the United States leading the anti-Soviet alliance during the Cold War. It allowed Europe and Japan to become free riders on the back of the American tax payer during the Cold War and has continued that policy since.

America's support for the peace process stems largely from an attempt to reconcile the incompatibility of the first two goals with the third i.e. American support for Israel hurts America's standing in the Muslim countries of the region. Hadar argues persuasively that it is really Europe and Japan (and South Korea) who have much more at stake in the region than the United States does. America's fixation with the region is really a symptom of Washington's imperial complex--its desire to function as a hegemon on the world stage. Europe is unwilling to back financially Washington's policies in the region without an equal input into determining those same policies. America's propensity to use military force and to back the policies of the Israeli Right in the occupied territories have been gradually causing a rift with Europe. The 2002-03 rift over the war in Iraq between "Old Europe" and America was almost a mirror image of the November 1956 Suez Crisis argument between Washington on one hand and London and Paris on the other.

I agree with Hadar that America can best reconcile its real opposing interests in the region by making a much smaller footprint. This can be accomplished through a gradual military withdrawal from the region. This would force the EU and Japan to play a greater role. It would also mean that Israel would have to make adjustments--funneling money away from settlements and into defense.

Now is a very opportune point to begin this process for two reasons. First, the publication of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera demonstrates how incompatible the Israelis and Palestinians still are. A Kadima-Labor coalition government was afraid of making concessions to match major Palestinian concessions out of fear of the Right. A Likud-led government of the Right is unlikely to be even as forthcoming, while the approach of the Palestinian Authority has been to deny that it made any concessions to Israel. Internal politics on both sides combined with the power gap prevent an implementation of the two-state solution at this time and for some years to come.

Second, the Arab world is in upheaval with autocratic Arab rulers from Tunisia to Yemen being challenged. Washington can either opt to sacrifice democracy for stability in the hope of delaying a major upheaval or risk dealing with unknown forces taking over in possibly two or three Arab countries including important American allies like Egypt and Jordan. Either result poses considerable risks for America. Better to lower our identification with the local regimes.

My own research into the peace process in Northern Ireland pointed to imitating the Anglo-Irish dual mediation in the Middle East with a peace process co-sponsored by the European Union and the U.S. Brussels has been trying to get into Mideast diplomacy since 1980 with the Venice Declaration. It played an observer role during the Oslo process. By shifting some of the burden on to Brussels, Washington can hope to accommodate its interests as well as cancel its own pro-Israel bias. Brussels can offer Jerusalem a bribe that Washington cannot match--membership in the EU in exchange for peace. But this is for the future.