Marc Lynch's Blog, page 108

July/August 2012

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194

That's It For Egypt's So-Called Transition

Egyptian politics is prone to exaggeration and panic, fueled by deeply felt frustration, endless political maneuvering, partial information spread through dense and contentious news media, and profound political uncertainty. Things are
often not as desperate as they appear. Indeed, I was joking on Twitter yesterday that the expert consensus that today would be a big crisis day in Cairo probably meant nothing would happen, since everybody (including me) is always wrong. But today's moves by the Constitutional Court on behalf of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) seem difficult
to overcome and likely to push Egypt onto a dangerous new path. With Egypt looking ahead to no parliament, no constitution, and a deeply divisive new president, it's fair to say the experiment in military-led transition has come to its disappointing end.    [[BREAK]]

A few weeks ago, I dared to hope that despite "the stupidest transition in history," Egypt might still end up backing into a minimally workable political outcome as long as the SCAF lived up to its promise to transfer power to an elected civilian government. Then, the first round of the presidential election went about as badly as it could have, leaving voters with a choice between the champion of the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, after the failure of the political center to unite on a candidate and the arbitrary disqualification of several top candidates from the race. Then, Egypt's political forces failed, and after a last-minute deal failed again, to come up with a way to draft a legitimate constitution. And then, the SCAF discarded one of the real accomplishments of the transition, the end of emergency law, by restoring vast powers to security services to arrest civilians.

Today, Egypt's constitutional court delivered the coup de grace by refusing to disqualify Mubarak's former prime minister Ahmed Shafik from the race and effectively dissolving the elected parliament by declaring the individual election of one-third of its members illegal. The former decision was probably the right one, to be frank, though it was a missed opportunity for a "hail Mary" political reset. But the latter was absurd, destructive, and essentially voids Egypt's last year of politics of meaning. Weeks before the SCAF's scheduled handover of power, Egypt now finds itself with no parliament, no constitution (or even a process for drafting one), and a divisive presidential election with no hope of producing a legitimate, consensus-elected leadership. Its judiciary has become a bad joke, with any pretence of political independence from the military shattered beyond repair. 

The SCAF's power grab in the final days looks more like panic than the execution of a carefully prepared master scheme. It likely reflected a combination of fear of rising Islamist power, self-preservation, and growing confidence in its ability to control street protests.  The prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood controlling Parliament and the presidency likely scared them more than many people conditioned by speculation about a MB-SCAF alliance recognized -- a dynamic that Robert Springborg captured extremely well for Foreign Policy a few months ago. Of course it wanted to preserve its economic empire and political protections. But both of those were constant over the course of the transition, and don't explain its heavy-handed moves at the climax of the process. 

What was new, and which likely emboldened this reckless behavior at the end of the transition, was its belief that it had effectively neutered revolutionary movements and protestors. The SCAF likely believes that a renewal of massive, sustained protest is no longer in the cards through a combination of its own repression and relentless propaganda, along with the strategic mistakes by protestors themselves. It doesn't feel threatened by a few thousand isolated protestors in Tahrir, and probably is gambling that they won't be joined by the masses that made the Jan. 25 revolution last year.  They may also feel that the intense rifts of suspicion and rage dividing the Muslim Brotherhood from non-Islamist political trends are now so deep that they won't be able to cooperate effectively to respond. Or they may feel that the MB would rather cut a deal, even now, than take it to the next level. They may be right, they may be wrong. But I wouldn't bet on stability. 

Anyone who sees this as the culmination of a devious, effective SCAF master plan needs to take a step back and look at what they have "won," however.  The SCAF could have been approaching the end of a process that created reasonably legitimate, elected political institutions and restored confidence and security to the country without fundamentally threatening their core interests. Instead, their great success stands to be placing Shafik on an empty, wobbling throne.  He will preside over a country in economic collapse, with little prospect of restoring investor confidence any time soon. The legitimacy of the judiciary has been burned, probably decisively. The dissolution of Parliament would remove any possible alternative source of democratic legitimacy. And the process by which Shafik comes to power ensures that he will provide no buffer for the SCAF since he is transparently their creature.  This is "victory"?

The SCAF, in other words, may look to have won this seemingly decisive round. But it's not the endgame. It's only the beginning of a new phase of a horribly mismanaged "transition" that is coming to its well-earned end. What's next? A replay of Algeria in 1991? A return to Jan. 25, 2011? Back to 1954? A return to the petulant slow fail of latter-days Mubarak? An alien invasion using nano-weapons and transgalactic wormholes in the Pyramids?  Nobody really seems to know...  but I'm pretty sure we're not going to see a return to stable CloneNDP-SCAF rule. Of course, this being Egypt, maybe tomorrow the Court will just overrule itself and we can all go back to normal...

Political Science and the Arab Uprisings

The uprisings that swept the Arab world following the fall of Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 represented a stunning moment in the region’s political history. For political scientists specializing in the region, the events of the last year and a half represented not just an exhilarating moment of potential change, but also an important opportunity to develop new research questions, engage in new comparisons, and exploit new data and information. The Arab uprisings challenged long-held theories dominant in the field, particularly about the resilience of authoritarian regimes, while opening up entirely new areas of legitimate social scientific inquiry.

The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) was created in 2010 in part to build the capacity of Middle East experts to engage and inform policy-makers, the public sphere, and other political scientists about the region. On May 29-30, 2012, POMEPS convened a group of leading political scientists who specialize in the Middle East for its third annual conference at George Washington University to discuss the opportunities and challenges that the Arab uprisings pose to the subfield. Participants were asked: “What new and innovative research questions do you think have become particularly urgent, feasible, or relevant? How would those research questions fit into wider debates in the field of political science?” I am thrilled to announce the publication of a new special POMEPS Briefing collecting nearly two dozen of the memos written for the conference (free PDF download here).

The authors are all academic political scientists and Middle East specialists who speak Arabic and have lived in and studied Arab countries for extended periods. They include scholars at all career levels, from senior faculty at top universities to advanced graduate students still writing their dissertations. The memos reflect on a wide range of debates and paradigms within political science, and taken together lay out an impressive set of marching orders for the subfield. Graduate students looking for dissertation topics and junior faculty looking for articles that might make a big splash take note. [[BREAK]]

One important theme is the importance of keeping current developments in perspective. There is widespread agreement that, as Jillian Schwedler puts it, “it’s just too early to really make substantive headway of the sort that would allow us to either challenge or support existing theories of revolutions and regime change.” At the 2011 POMEPS annual conference, held at the height of the still-surging Arab Spring, political scientists long keenly attuned to the machinations of Arab authoritarian regimes had warned about exaggerated expectations for change. They were right. Popular theories hastily put forward at the height of the Egyptian revolution about inevitable, irreversible change looked foolish within months as the military regime clawed back power, Islamists surged at the polls, and activist groups struggled to adapt. The rise of sectarianism, driven in part by the ugly developments in Bahrain and Syria, divided momentarily united Arab publics, while the descent into violent stalemate in several countries deflated outsized expectations. But one easily forgotten change should not be underestimated, as Nathan Brown eloquently argues in his memo: “politics — in the sense of public discussion and contestation about issues of common concern — now unmistakably exists.” And that matters.



Eighteen months on, the field is now better positioned to ask the right questions and to capture both broad trends and significant variation across and within cases. The questions raised by the Arab uprisings are not parochial. They go to the heart of the most important and relevant debates in the social sciences, to say nothing about the concerns of foreign policy and the broader public. Appropriate caution about leaping to conclusions should not prevent scholars from grappling with these developments head-on. Area experts with deep knowledge of the Middle East cannot cede the field to those who lack such background. But they also cannot simply assume that their expertise will grant them a privileged voice in public or scholarly debate. More than ever before, this is a moment for political scientists specializing in the Middle East to prove that particular expertise makes a real difference. Good articles are beginning to appear in leading academic journals, and more are in the pipeline -- but there is clearly far more to be done.

Surveying the emerging region today reveals an uneasy mix of change and continuity -- which may be politically frustrating, but is producing the kind of variation that should allow political scientists to gain purchase on crucial questions. Mobilization has receded in many places, but remains real and vibrant in others. Some regimes have fallen but others have proven resilient. Some countries have been consumed by violence, while others have avoided such a trajectory. Islamists have leapt into the political arena, performing better in some countries than others. Few Arab countries seem to be following the “transitions to democracy” template familiar to generations of graduate students. Public opinion surveys have proliferated, but have done poorly in predicting electoral outcomes. Such variation should be red meat for political scientists. 

What are the key questions emerged at the POMEPS conference, then? There is obviously a great deal of research to be done to explain the variation in regime survival. The fall of long-sitting leaders such as Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi each took a different path -- and should Syria’s Bashar al-Assad be next, this would be yet another distinct course. Meanwhile, other regimes that might a priori have appeared to be in line for serious trouble survived. Even where leaders have fallen, the continuity with the old regime in some cases seems dramatic (Egypt, Yemen) compared with others (Libya, Tunisia). Explaining this variation in regime survival and which strategies and structures proved more effective in the face of popular challenge will likely be a major preoccupation of the field in the coming years.

One common answer has been particularly contentious among academics: monarchy. Is there a monarchical exception, or some reason to believe that monarchies are more resilient in the face of popular grievances? For some, the answer is obvious: none of the fallen regimes were monarchies, while non-monarchies have struggled or fallen at historic rates. As Michael Herb argues,“the regimes most seriously affected by the Arab Spring were not monarchies, with the exception of Bahrain.” But others are far more skeptical that monarchy makes the difference. After all, Gulf monarchies such as Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman all experienced significant mobilization, as did non-oil monarchies such as Jordan and Morocco, which gives lie to any sense of their greater innate legitimacy.  Other factors such as oil wealth, ethnic polarization or external support may be more important than monarchy as such. The significance of monarchy in regime stability should be a vibrant debate in academic journals in the coming years.



The real significance of the rentier state is emerging as another extremely interesting area of debate. If monarchy does not provide the answer to regime resilience, what about oil wealth and the ability to distribute patronage as an important buffer to regime collapse? For Glenn Robinson, the verdict is clear: “While oil-poor Arab countries have been riven by turmoil, the hydrocarbon rich countries (enjoying high oil and gas prices throughout 2011) have suffered relatively little turmoil by comparison, and have used their significant rents to placate most potential dissent.” David Waldner, by contrast, warns that “our understanding of the political economy of the Middle East has for too long rested, somewhat complacently, on a relatively vague notion of the rentier state.” How this wealth is used in pursuit of particular political strategies may matter more than the mere fact of its availability. Gwenn Okruhlik further notes, “the oft-utilized rentier framework vastly overstated economic determinism. In reality, money does not spend itself.” Oil rich Libya, for example, did not find itself particularly protected from popular challenge. Peter Moore points to variation in the fiscal capacity of states as a crucial variable, while others point to ethnic or family dominated regimes. And, asks Shana Marshall, what of the financial interests of the militaries themselves, about which far more is now publicly known than ever before?

Beyond oil-fueled patronage, several participants point to questions about the real political impact of social welfare provision in the region as key emerging questions. Melani Cammett directs attention to how little is known empirically about the implementation and effects of social welfare programs. Eleanor Gao asks the pertinent empirical question of “whether governments can purchase loyalty through increasing public sector employment and salaries, reducing taxes, and augmenting food subsidies.” And what of Islamist movements and their vaunted social service sectors -- do those reliably buy votes when the moment comes? For David Patel, shifts in existing patronage networks in the face of crisis -- including, he notes, global financial crisis and pressures toward austerity as well as the turbulence of popular mobilization -- may well be more important than the macro questions of regime survival for explaining new patterns in Arab politics.

The wave of mass mobilization is obviously another primary area for new political science research. Scholars are already doing important work on the protest movements in various countries, unpacking the role of different actors (youth, internet activists, labor unions, political parties, and so forth) and different political contexts. The conceptualization of a "political opportunity structure," so important in the contentious politics literature, appears ripe for rethinking. There is a vibrant debate unfolding about the micro-level foundations and mechanisms driving the sudden explosion of mass mobilization that will be of obvious relevance to the broader political science literature. Some focus on the revelation of private information and updated expectations of success (an argument I developed here). Rex Brynen notes, for instance, that, “compliance with authoritarian rule was sustained, in part, by a regime’s ability to project spectacular omnipotence. Populations, for the most part, genuinely believed that resistance was futile. What the Tunisian revolution did, of course, was to shatter that perception. The consequent demonstration effect then led other Arab populations to reevaluate both the power of popular protest and the strength of regimes.”

Others, such as Wendy Pearlman, focus on the role of emotions in fueling protest, as opposed to rational calculations of the prospects of success. An astonishing array of evidence can now be explored about the state of mind of protestors, as well as those who refrained from joining protests, should researchers find ways to usefully exploit it. And still other scholars focus on the dynamic relationship between repression and protest. Eva Bellin argues, “Syria dramatically challenges [Mark] Lichbach’s analysis given the persistent mobilization of protest even in the face of the state’s use of consistent lethal force against the protesters.” What is the “right” level of repression, that which keeps subjects in line without triggering a cascade of outraged protest?

Several of the memos urge scholars to look beyond the immediate action for deeper causes. Adria Lawrence urges more historical comparisons, noting that this is not the first time such protest waves have caught the outside world unprepared: “in the mid twentieth century, colonial powers were shocked when their subjects took to the streets to demand independence.” Charles Kurzman refers back to his earlier book about the Iranian revolution which similarly emphasized the element of surprise. 

There are also ways to further increase the observable variation. Some, such as David Patel and Quinn Mecham, want more extra-regional comparisons, while Jillian Schwedler urges attention to “in-case variation.We know a lot about what has and is happening in urban centers, and little about the rural mobilizations.” Janine Clark calls on scholars to pay attention to “slow change: the gradual social, economic and political changes at the local level that underlie rapid political change and make it possible.” Like Schwedler, she suggests that researchers “look beyond the capitals and large urban cities of the region and pay attention to the region’s peripheries: the rural areas, small towns and small cities with relatively little national economic significance.”

The regional dimension of the protests and the elicited regime responses should force greater attention to the oft-neglected international relations literature. Curtis Ryan argues forcefully “the outcome of almost every case within the Arab uprisings has turned at least in part on the actions and decisions of external powers.” This is a problem for a comparative literature, which tends to focus on domestic variables and treat each country as a discrete case, which led many to miss the contagious power of the early Arab uprisings. As Gwenn Okruhlik points out, “these were not coincidentally simultaneous parallel revolts but somehow a single collective phenomenon.” Sheila Carapico notes “the sharing of slogans in classical Arabic like al-sha’ab yuridh isqat al-nizam and Irhal invite us to think again about the terrain of an Arab ‘region’ which, for all its diversities and contradictions, has more coherence than either the Middle East or the Muslim world.” My memo points to the role of the media, both broadcast and online, in disseminating information, framing the uprisings, and fueling the protests.

There are also vexing but exciting questions of new evidence. My memo, like this recent essay I published with the SSRC, emphasizes the exciting possibilities offered by social media for research.  Scholars studying an uprising a century ago would be thrilled to find a handful of diaries of participants and observers, but today we have access to millions. Participants in the uprisings have often collected vast amounts of relevant materials, from pamphlets and statements to photos and videos. There are vastly greater numbers and types of public opinion surveys being conducted, but of wildly varying quality and reliability. In some cases, the fall of authoritarian regimes may open access to military or government archives which had always been closed off to outside view, though those hopes are less bright than they appeared in the early days of the Egyptian uprising. These new sources of information should offer great opportunities to ambitious, creative young scholars.  

These are only some of the many research agendas that unfold in the memos to follow. They lay out a rich overview of the current thinking of a cross-section of leading scholars who are deeply engaged in thinking about how the Arab uprisings should change the scholarly field. This is an exciting time for scholars, a time for theoretical creativity and empirical. It is a time when our ideas can actually matter for shaping policy, for informing public debate, and for addressing the mainstream of the field of political science. It should not be missed. This special POMEPS Briefing represents our modest effort to help the field seize these opportunities. 

Political Science and the New Arab Public Sphere

The Social Science Research Council's Transformations of the Public Sphere Initiative has been publishing an outstanding series of  reflections by leading academics on the transformative effects of the evolving public sphere.  Some of the key contributions to the series thus far by political scientists include "Too Much Information," by Lisa Anderson;  "Political Science and the Public Sphere in the 21st Century" and "The Public Responsibilities of Political Science," by Rogers Smith; "International Affairs and the Public Sphere," by Stephen Walt; and "Intellectuals and their Public," by Jurgen Habermas.  I was honored to be invited to contribute to such a stellar series.  My new essay in the series, "Political Science and the New Arab Public Sphere," appears here with the permission of the SSRC. [[BREAK]]

Political Science and the New Arab Public Sphere

Marc Lynch, The George Washington University

The uprisings which surged through the Arab world in 2011 did
not come from nowhere. They represented in part the manifestation of a
long, structural transformation in the region's public sphere which
radically undermined the ability of states to control or shape
information. Challenges to authoritarian regimes, on the streets and
online, had been growing visibly for over a decade before the
region-wide explosion which followed the fall of Tunisia's President
Zine el-Abedin Ben Ali. The transforming information environment alone
did not cause these revolutions - there are far deeper legacies of
authoritarian rule, economic mismanagement, and social frustrations at
their root. But the new public sphere helped make these uprisings
possible, gave them their distinct characteristics, and in some ways
limited their revolutionary potential.

The new Arab public sphere also offers potentially revolutionary
opportunities to scholars of the Arab world, who were suddenly presented
with an avalanche of potentially usable data about the attitudes,
relationships, opinions and actions of millions of citizens increasingly
living their lives online. If a scholar found a dozen diaries
discussing the ‘Urabi revolt of the 1890s or the personal correspondence
of two early Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the 1940s in a dusty attic
in Cairo, entire dissertations would follow. Today, on Facebook and
Twitter we have millions of such real time diaries and correspondence
which are fundamentally transforming how we can and should study the
region's politics and societies. Information, images, documents and
semi-public discussions from everything from disaffected Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood youth to activists in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province which
once would have been found only through arduous fieldwork (if at all)
is now easily available online. Most Middle East experts are poorly
equipped to exploit such information, however.

The new Arab public sphere is more than a driver of change on the
ground or a source of new information for scholars, however. It also
offers profound new opportunities to engage with scholars,
activists, and ordinary citizens from the Arab world, allowing them to
enter into Western public spheres on their own terms. This should
profoundly undermine traditions of privileged Western academic or
journalistic interlocutors speaking on behalf of their subjects. These
Arab voices are actively debating their own political identities and
strategies, not only on Facebook but in an ever more diverse and
contentious political press (online and offline), on satellite
television, and in proliferating sites of political and social
contention. Those encounters may prove unsettling, as they expose deep
resentments of Western privilege, deep political critiques and
challenges to claimed expertise. What do American scholars uniquely
contribute to the study of Arab politics compared with Arab scholars and
political analysts?

In short, the rise of the new Arab public sphere is transforming not
only the politics of the Arab world but also the ways in which scholars
must understand and engage with the region. As Lisa Anderson recently argued in this forum,
scholars who opt out of social media or who don't keep up with local
press and media debates will be missing something fundamentally
important about the new politics. In this brief essay, I will touch
briefly on each of these three levels of change - and argue that it must
fundamentally change how we as academics do our jobs.

 

The New Arab Public as a Driver of Change

The New Arab Public Sphere has been emerging for over a decade,
gradually but palpably changing the very stuff of politics. During the
heyday of Arab authoritarianism in the 1970s and 1980s, regimes were
able to impose stifling conformity upon almost all national media and
public debate. This control over the flow of information and ideas
represented an essential, but underappreciated, component of their
authoritarian domination. It is difficult to exaggerate how much of a
black hole most Arab media had become in this period, with almost all
national media tightly controlled by regimes and the slightly freer
transnational newspapers read only by elites and financed by oil-rich
states for political ends. By the early 2000s this overwhelming control
had been largely - and incredibly rapidly - eroded in many Arab
countries.

The rise of a new Arab public sphere was facilitated by new
technologies, but the new media only became a public sphere through the
emergence of new kinds of debates, identity claims, and political trends
which evolved within those new spaces. Technology, in other words, was a
necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of a new public
sphere. Satellite television had become increasingly prevalent across
the region (as in much of the world) over the course of the 1990s, but
most of its content remained primarily entertainment-oriented along with
tame, tightly limited news. It was only with the rise of the Qatari
station al-Jazeera towards the end of the 1990s that the technological
potential of satellite television was converted into a political
significant regional public sphere.

Al-Jazeera, as I argued in my 2006 book Voices of the New Arab Public,
helped to create a genuinely Arab public sphere through its choices of
coverage, framing, and content. Al-Jazeera approached news coverage
through an explicit lens of shared Arab identity, framing developments
around the region within a common narrative of Arab concerns and shared
interests. Regional issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
the war in Iraq were naturally treated as areas of concern to all Arabs,
which was nothing new. More novel was a narrative of regional
discontent with authoritarian rule which tied together dissent and
protests across the Arab world, with events in Morocco treated as
naturally related to similar protests in Yemen. Its professional,
taboo-shattering news coverage shattered the ability of any regime to
conceal sensitive information from its own people, or to prevent them
from hearing critical discussion of its meaning. The powerful framing of
these popular struggles as a common Arab battle over the course of a
decade then manifested itself in the early Arab spring, as protest
repertoires rapidly moved from one Arab country to another. The five way
al-Jazeera split screen showing simultaneous, nearly identical protests
in multiple Arab capitals is the iconic image of the Arab spring.

Rather than simply imposing a single master narrative, however,
al-Jazeera privileged argument and contentious debate about those shared
interests. Its talk shows turned an Arab narrative into a common Arab public sphere
through argument. It helped that al-Jazeera was by the early 2000s
viewed almost universally across the region, creating a sort of common
knowledge and shared platform. When carried out in a shared forum,
rather than in a balkanized information environment of partisan media,
the act of argument and acrimonious debate reinforces a sense of common
identity and shared fate.

That unified focal point could not easily survive the pressures of
market and political competition. Over the course of the 2000s a parade
of imitators and competitors emerged, creating a fragmented public
sphere which cumulatively created the expectation of the availability of
such media. During periods of ordinary politics, Arab viewers
increasingly switched between a dizzying variety of television stations,
some local and some regional. But they generally turned back to
al-Jazeera en masse during moments of regional crisis, whether the 2006
Israeli war with Hezbollah or the 2011 Arab spring.

The rapid rise of internet penetration and social media layered
additional opportunities for the dissemination of information and ideas
onto this top-down broadcasting model. Originally concentrated in urban
elite youth, the internet and SMS texting or sharing of videos over
mobile phones rapidly became accessible to growing sectors of society.
Social media allowed for connections across society, the rapid sharing
of information, the coordination of activism, and the expression of
political beliefs - even through actions as cheap as the adoption of a
revolutionary Twitter avatar. Social media had both unifying and
fragmenting effects on the new Arab public. It turbocharged the
evolution of a public sphere sensibility, as hundreds of thousands of
individual Arabs joined into public arguments and debates on these new
forums. Social media could also push towards localization and
polarization, however, as the like-minded sought each other out in what
seems to be close to an iron law of online behavior.

The new Arab public sphere played an absolutely vital role in
building the networks among activists themselves, both inside of
countries (i.e. Egyptian protest organizers were veterans of a decade of
experiments with protest and information activism) and across the
region (i.e. key protest organizers came to know each other personally
and virtually and cooperated in sharing information and ideas). This new
public sphere supported wide ranging debates and generated new ideas,
forged new relationships, framed the rush of events within a coherent
shared narrative and manifestly drove the regional and international
political agenda. It is simply not possible to account for the intensity
and speed of the spread of protests, their immediate absorption into a
common Arab identity frame, or their rapid regional dissemination
without this new public. Protestors across the region chanted identical
slogans and held up identical posters, shared Twitter hashtags, and hung
on every twist and curve in any Arab country. Arab social media users
eagerly shared user-generated videos mocking Moammar Qaddafi's "Zenga
Zenga" speech or mashing up Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh with a
Katy Perry song.

But this newly mobilized Arab public sphere also proved vulnerable.

First, the ownership of the key regional satellite television
stations al-Jazeera (Qatar) and al-Arabiya (Saudi Arabia) proved to be a
liability. Those stations increasingly shaped their coverage to fit the
interests of their owners, with badly distorting effects. Thus, the
uprising in Bahrain, which at its height had more than half the citizen
population in the streets, largely disappeared from the television
screens as Qatar and Saudi Arabia moved to help the monarchy crush its
opponents. The leaders of those Gulf countries used their television
stations in increasingly blatant ways in supporting military
intervention and fomenting protest against governments in Libya and
Syria - a self-defeating exercise of power, as those stations lost
credibility through their propaganda efforts. The instrumentalization of
television stations wholly owned by wealthy Gulf leaders had always
been a potential problem for the new Arab public, and now it became
real.

The decline of al-Jazeera as a seemingly independent voice of the
Arab street is not on its own the lethal blow to a new Arab public
sphere which it might have been a decade earlier. The Arab public sphere
has long since transcended reliance on any one forum. But the degraded
status of the one site viewed by virtually all politically attuned Arabs
eliminated a unique source of common knowledge and unified attention.
The intense, often furious arguments which dominated al-Jazeera's talk
shows during its glory days highlighted disagreement and diversity of
views, but unified the public around shared concern about the issues
being debated. The shift towards more overtly partisan media, where
viewers tend to seek out like-minded sources, promotes the polarization
of Arab discourse into increasingly entrenched, mutually hostile camps.
This privileges ever more extreme and exclusionary rhetoric over efforts
to find middle ground, reducing both common identification and the
prospect for meaningful public debate.

Second, the crushing of the uprising in Bahrain and then the turn to
violent civil war in Syria helped to spread an increasingly nasty
sectarianism through the region, dividing a once unified narrative and
giving lie to any notion that the new Arab public sphere would be
uniquely supportive of inclusive or non-violent discourses. It is
difficult to exaggerate the importance of Bahrain's ability with
military support from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council to
crush a massively mobilized popular protest movement (as mentioned, at
its height, more than half the citizen population was estimated to have
been on the streets). Bahrain did not only rely on force, or even on the
shocking wave of sectarian repression which followed. It also fully
invaded the public sphere. Saudi and Qatari television stations
(including al-Jazeera) largely ignored Bahrain in order to remove that
struggle from the popular regional narrative, while the Bahraini regime
launched a massive public relations campaign designed to tarnish
peaceful human rights protestors as radical Iranian proxies. Bahraini
regime supporters flooded social media sites to promote the regime
narrative and relentlessly hound anyone expressing support for the
opposition.

The sectarian Sunni-Shi'a dynamic and the vicious colonization of the
public sphere by regime counter-protest forces unleashed by Bahrain
were magnified a thousand-fold by the struggle for Syria. More than any
other Arab arena, Syria proved extraordinarily divisive along both
sectarian and political lines as many Arabs who valued the anti-Israeli
"resistance" of the regime in Damascus pushed back against opposition
narratives. The Syrian opposition relied heavily on the media, as with
the promotion of videos of protests, fighting and alleged regime
atrocities uploaded to YouTube. The Syrian regime pushed back with
relentless propaganda of its own and a fiercely cultivated narrative of
foreign conspiracy. The public sphere became a scorched-earth
battlefield of arguments over the credibility of information and
competing accusations of complicity in conspiracies against one side or
the other. As the conflict ground on and the body count grew, many grew
skeptical of almost all information about events in Syria disseminated
by either the regime or the opposition, while discourse about the crisis
divided and polarized sharply. If the early days of the Arab spring
represented the best in a mobilized regional public sphere, the struggle
for Syria manifested the worst.

Finally, Egypt's troubled transition exposed the limitations of the
mechanisms which allowed new political forces to punch above their
weight in contentious politics when the action shifted to electoral
politics. While the Egyptian public sphere became a vibrant arena of new
voices, with active and deeply thoughtful debates about the
constitution, elections, reform and revolutionary action, this did not
easily translate into successfully navigating the democratic game.
Elections privileged the choices of mass publics, not the efforts of
empowered individual voices. Liberal and revolutionary groups found
themselves unable to translate their self-declared revolutionary
legitimacy into electoral success and increasingly found themselves back
on the streets protesting a profoundly unsatisfying transition. The
fault did not lie exclusively with the machinations of the military
leadership. Too often, the allure of online presence and the thrill of
street protest distracted from the tedious, plebian work of forming
political parties or building civil society. Meanwhile, existing
well-organized and popular movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood
proved far better adapted to quickly preparing for election campaigns
and institutional politics.

The emergence of a public sphere is a systemic transformation driven
by powerful technological, demographic and political forces, not a
fragile moment rooted in the success of any particular movement. It is
unlikely that any Arab country will be able to avoid its insistent
pressures. Perhaps the Saudi regime can repress and co-opt protestors in
the short term, but there is no way it can avoid the contradictions
between a young, deeply media-saturated public and a ruthless policing
of public space. Its effects will not be uniformly positive, however,
nor will the pace of change be even. As Syria has shown, the public
sphere can all too easily be overwhelmed by sectarian and partisan
passions or transformed into a zone of naked political warfare. Any
public sphere detached from meaningfully democratic institutions,
whether a transnational one with no authoritative actor to make
decisions on its behalf or a domestically repressive one unwilling to do
so will remain a weak public. If systematically frustrated, such
publics can easily turn ugly.

These notes of caution should not lead us to miss the deeper
significance of the structural transformation taking place. Empowered
publics and new flows of information are fundamentally rewriting the
rules of regional politics. What today seems natural and obvious -
Facebook groups devoted to mocking kings, television talk show hosts
grilling military leaders or top Muslim Brotherhood figures, electoral
choices being openly debated everywhere from online to taxicabs - was
unthinkable two decades ago. Authoritarian regimes will adapt, as will
Islamist movements and liberal civil society actors, and no specific
political outcome is preordained. But the new public sphere has already
radically changed the basic stuff of political life across the region
and its disruptive effects have only begun.

 

New Arab Public Sphere as a Source of Data

The discussion thus far has focused on what the new Arab public
sphere is doing to Arab politics. But it also has to change the study of
Arab politics. The wealth of new evidence available on the internet
should not only transform Arab media studies, it should be integrated
into almost all political science research programs. Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube and other social media platforms offer enormous quantities of
publicly available data which can be accessed to varying degrees. There
are many live-blogs and daily Storify collections, along with YouTube
videos and Flickr images, which collect useful content which could be
used to illustrate arguments or test hypotheses. Almost all Arabic
newspapers now maintain online archives of news coverage and op-eds
which eliminate the need for back-breaking hours with microfiche.

These data present unprecendented opportunities - but also dangers. This data has been most often used to track information flows,
for instance through linking and retweeting patterns or through
analysis of the quantity and rhythms of particular phrases and hashtags.
These can be used to test propositions about everything from collective
action to political polarization to regional diffusion effects to the
impact of videos revealing graphic violence on international
intervention. Other important potential uses remain less developed, such
as sentiment analysis of Facebook or Twitter postings and comments
(which might be used to evaluate expectations or attitudes in real time)
and linkages between online social media and mass media content.
Facebook postings, blogs and other social media could be used in
historiographical fashion as online diaries rather than as large-n data
sources.

But in all forms, researchers must be extremely careful about
systematic bias in the data sources. Twitter, for instance, is likely
the best suited data set for Big Data analysis since it is a
self-contained universe in a research friendly format, but is among the
least-often used social media platforms in countries such as Egypt (only
0.26% of Egyptians and 0.04% of Syrians use Twitter, according to a recent survey).
Facebook is far more popular across the region, with Egypt's 10 million
accounts not even placing it in the top ten per capita among Arab
countries, but it is less amenable to the needs of systematic research.
Individual Facebook accounts are harder to access systematically for
research purposes due to privacy concerns, although politically-oriented
Facebook groups have become essential for research and for political
action alike. Broadcast media tends to be less amenable to systematic
quantitative analysis, and after all this time we still lack for the
most part even rudimentary systematic content analysis, audience
research, or careful tracing of impact on political attitudes or
behavior.

In short, methodology matters. We do not want to become the
proverbial drunks looking for keys under the streetlight because that's
the only illuminated place. This is not necessarily a fatal flaw, since
the relevant population is defined by the question: if one's question is
about online activism, then online activists are a legitimate
population to study. But if the goal is to generalize to mass publics,
then caveat emptor. Unfortunately, the tendency to date is for
researchers to acknowledge these limitations... and then to proceed with
the data analysis nevertheless. If everybody interviews the same ten
Egyptian activists because they are easily found tweeting in English,
then we may end up knowing less about Egyptian politics than we did
before.

 

New Publics, New Forms of Engagement

The new Arab publics should not be treated only as causal variables
or sources of data, of course. They have brought forward a deluge of new
voices who must be heeded, engaged, and incorporated into everything
which scholars of the region do. Could anyone really attempt to discuss
the Egyptian revolution without listening to the readily available
accounts, thoughts, and beliefs of the many individuals who helped to
create it? What, if anything, do American scholars uniquely contribute
to the analysis of Arab politics now that the Arab public sphere has
brought forward so many eloquent, informed and often brilliant local
voices? The case can be made that they do... but the case must more than
ever be made.

The participants in the Arab public sphere should be seen as fully
equal partners in the production of knowledge about the region. This can
not simply be the exploitation of these new voices as native
informants, or the idolization of celebrity activists - two habits of
which we have seen far too much already. Nor does it mean simply
accepting what the locals say as gospel. Instead, it should mean the
regular incorporation of Arab scholars, activists, writers, political
figures and ordinary people into all stages of the production and
dissemination of knowledge. It means treating them as fully equal
actors, not simply objects to be analyzed. Their ideas, like ours,
should be challenged, discussed, debated and vetted... but they must be
included. I find myself unable to look approvingly these days at
manuscripts which do not generously cite Arab editorials and online
discussions of the relevant issues.

Scholars also will need to be on guard against abusing their own role
in the process. It is all too easy to over-identify with one faction in
a local struggle, to adopt their language and biases and blindspots and
to promote rather than critically analyze their political projects.
Such over-identification, whether with leftist Egyptian activists, the
Syrian opposition, or one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is
deeply problematic for the academic mission. In a recent essay (PDF) in Public Culture, outgoing SSRC President Craig Calhoun
brilliantly laid out the problems, some real and some imagined, with
the engagement by Western academics with Qaddafi's Libya. The problem
for individual scholars (as opposed to institutions seeking financial
support), Calhoun concludes, was not the decision to travel to Libya or
take part in dialogue with Qaddafi - both perfectly legitimate actions
for the engaged academic. Instead, the distinction lay in how the
scholar approached the encounter: "Critical public engagement and making
scholarly, research-based knowledge available to inform public
discussions are both different from being drawn into the efforts of
public actors to manage their public relations or reputations. The
boundary is of course not always clear." Can, and should, academics
apply that same standard to interactions with like-minded Arab
activists?

Engaging with this new Arab public sphere will not necessarily be
easy for academics. The need to keep up with dozens of online
newspapers, to say nothing of Facebook groups, blogs and Twitter feeds,
imposes a significant burden on already overworked scholars. So does the
urgent need to publish in online venues such as ForeignPolicy.com and
to maintain an online social media presence for those who hope to
actually influence public debate. This public sphere moves quickly, has
its own internal language and references, and has little regard for
formal credentials. It demands relentless, inexhaustible attention which
may cut against the instinct of many academics to retreat from the
immediate and look at the longer view. For some, this will prove wise.
But for those academics who hope to be relevant in the contemporary
public sphere, Lisa Anderson
is right that there is really no choice other than to recognize and
adapt to these new structural realities about how information flows and
ideas change.

Originally published by the Social Science Research Council's Transformation of the Public Sphere Initiative. 

What Middle East academic experts think

 

Political scientists specializing on the Middle East see Jordan as the Arab country most likely to experience major new mobilization during the coming year, but see Bashar al-Assad as the Arab leader most likely to lose power. They see the Obama administration as doing a pretty good job overall in its response to the Arab uprisings, but performing terribly on Bahrain and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are largely against military intervention in Syria, don't expect war between Egypt and Israel in the next two years, and don't expect a negotiated two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians in the next decade. And they are perfectly divided over who they think will win the upcoming Egyptian Presidential run-off election. 

Those are among the interesting findings of a pilot survey I conducted this week during the third annual meeting of the Project on Middle East Political Science, a network of academic political scientists specializing in the Middle East which I direct. The sample for this pilot survey included about forty political scientists at all career levels, all of whom have spent significant time doing research in the region and speak the relevant local languages, and are primarily based at a university or college (rather than a think tank or NGO). This survey is a pilot study for a larger expert panel I'm planning to put together for the Middle East Channel. I hope that expert panel will offer a regular barometer of views of regional issues -- and also be willing to offer predictions which might offer some meat for the Philip Tetlock-inspired debate about the value of expertise for prediction. 

Below the break are some of the key results of the POMEPS pilot survey: [[BREAK]]

-  Just below 10% support an American military intervention in Syria, and the same number expect one, though almost 20% would support the arming of the Syrian opposition in some form, and almost three-quarters expect Bashar al-Assad to still be in power one year from now.

- 50% of respondents willing to venture a prediction expect Mohammed al-Morsi to win the Egyptian Presidential runoff and 50% expect Ahmed Shafik to win.  In other words, for academic experts in the survey it's a coin-toss. 

- Less than 5% support an American or Israeli military strike against Iran in the next year, while 33% expect one. 

- 55% supported the NATO intervention in Libya at the time, and almost none have seen anything to change their mind since one way or the other. 

- 90% support a negotiated two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, but only 23% expect one in the next decade. 

- Just under 10% expect the Camp David treaty between Egypt and Israel to be amended or abrogated within the next two years -- and not a single respondent expects a war between Egypt and Israel in that time frame.

- Bashar al-Assad is overwhelmingly the Arab leader the respondents thought would no longer be in power one year from now. But that reflected less a strong belief that he would fall (around 25% thought he would) than a general expectation that most leaders would survive their challenges in the coming year. No other leader was named more than twice.

- Jordan was the Arab country the respondents expected to witness a major increase in popular mobilization over the next year. 58% named Jordan in an open-ended question, though only a handful predicted that King Abdullah would fall from power within a year.  Other candidates for a new wave of mobilization? Algeria (26%) and Syria (26%), Bahrain (19%) and Egypt (16%).   Eight other countries were named at least once.  

- What is the regional balance of power?  Saudi Arabia is considered to be currently the most powerful Middle Eastern state by a wide margin, followed by Iran and Turkey (tied) and then Israel.  Interestingly, looking ahead five years, respondents expect Saudi Arabia to lose power and Egypt to rise in power, with Turkey, Iran and Israel likely to remain. 

- Finally, respondents were asked to rate American policy since December 2010 on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best.  The Obama administration rated a solid 5.8 for its response to the Arab uprisings as whole, and scored best on Tunisa (7.6), Libya (6.0), Iraq (5.7) and Egypt (5.6). Respondents had a slightly dimmer view of American policy towards Syria (4.7) and Yemen (4.4) and Iran (3.6). And they were downright brutal towards U.S. policy towards Bahrain (2.9) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (2.6) -- and those are with coding "-2500" as "0."

So that's a snapshot of how this slice of the academic Middle East expert community views the region right now according to the POMEPS pilot survey.  I'm looking forward to expanding the sample size and posing a variety of questions down the road -- and welcome your suggestions on how to make the most of it.

P.S. The POMEPS conference itself focused on new research opportunities for
political scientists after the Arab uprisings -- if you're interested
in the state of the academic field and looking for new research ideas,
then I highly recommend that you keep an eye out for the collection of
short memos written for the conference which will be published in a few
weeks!

Egypt's Depressing Run-Off

Given the turbulent path of Egypt's post-revolutionary transition, it somehow seems only right that last week's first round of the Presidential election managed to produce the worst of all the possible run-off combinations: the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed al-Morsi vs. the SCAF's Ahmed Shafik.  It's fair to say that the sky appears to many people, once again, to be falling.  That tantalizing glimpse of a successful transition to a civilian President who could represent the revolution and challenge the SCAF seems to once again be dancing from view.  So, basically, the Presidential election has gone just about as well as every other part of Egypt's disastrous transition.  What now?

It's important to keep the results in perspective.   The results look less surprising once it's recognized that the two most powerful forces in Egypt won the first round.  Neither did especially well.  The Muslim Brotherhood won 25%, which is just about exactly where most experts have pegged their popular support for years and is significantly lower than in the Parliamentary elections.  Another quarter of the vote went to the SCAF's candidate, Shafik, likely reflecting the widespread reality of popular exhaustion with the revolution.  Neither of those results should be a surprise.  The real tragedy is that the center, just as many had warned, destroyed itself by failing to unite around a single candidate and dividing the remaining 50% of the vote among three candidates.  This too, alas, should not be a surprise.

The results are mainly surprising given popular ideas about the elections in advance.  Polling was indeed almost completely useless, radically exaggerating Amr Moussa's share of the vote and missing the appeal of the actual front-runners.   Shafik was likely underestimated because people (on all sides) assumed that Moussa was the real candidate of the SCAF and that the fix was in on his behalf.  Morsi was dismissed because many observers confused the individual with the movement;  in fact, helped by the relatively low turnout, the Brotherhood's electoral machine probably performed just as well for him as it would have for the disqualified Khairet el-Shater.  Democratic elections often fail to produce desirable results -- it's the nature of the beast.  

So what now?  It's hard to judge how the electorate will shake out -- and given how few people got the first round remotely right, it's probably best to take all such predictions with much salt. (Will any pollsters dare release pre-election polls?) But there's going to be a season of political jockeying, with tough coalition formation and endorsement challenges for both candidates.    The Muslim Brotherhood should be the natural beneficiary of the "pro-revolution" vote, but its political mistakes over the last months -- especially its decision to field a Presidential candidate after vowing to not do so -- have helped generate enormous mistrust and resentment among the political class.  This political resentment, combined with growing polarization around Islamism and fear of one party dominated both branches of government, has pushed at least some forces towards Shafik.  But his uncompromising stance makes him an exceedingly unlikely partner.   

Most activists seem understandably stunned by the outcome.  If only they had recognized the strategic logic of the election earlier and united around a single candidate, this might have been averted.  But neither Moussa, given his past, nor Abou el-Fotouh given his awkward coalition of salafis and revolutionaries, quite fit the bill. The late surge for Sabbahi likely reflected frustration with those two candidates. In the next round, voting for either the Brotherhood or the SCAF is anathema to them, and I wouldn't be surprised if many stay home.  For some activists, this should be just fine actually -- they were likely to continue street activism regardless of the outcome, so this will in their view simply strip away the masks.  Some activists might actually find more to like in this outcome than had one of their preferred candidates won the election, depriving them of reason to protest.

It's hard to see a real upside to either of these candidates winning -- that ship has sailed.  But the threat posed by either remaining candidate is probably exaggerated.  The odds of persistent instability (thought not likely another January 25 style mass uprising) would go up with Shafik, especially if the election is seen to have been rigged even more than in the first round and he seeks to govern with the iron fist he's promised.  But more likely he would end up as a weak President, with little popular legitimacy and commanding little respect from a SCAF which would remain empowered. His policies would likely resemble the transitional status quo, which has produced poor economic performance and pervasive instability.  

Morsi has a greater chance of being willing and able to use the Presidency to contest SCAF authority, but still frightens many outside of the Brotherhood's orbit (including many salafis who retain a deeply ingrained hostility to their Islamist rivals).  I doubt that Morsi would actually move to impose sharia law, should he win, however.  Despite erratic political behavior over the last few months, the Brotherhood remains a pragmatic organization, and all of the leaders with whom I've spoken over the last year have emphasized the urgent need to prioritize economic reform.  Forming meaningful coalitions in the next few weeks ahead of the election, and making firm guarantees on the constitution, would help.... though such promises are difficult to make credible.  

Don't believe the idea that Washington is pleased with the choice.  The
odd idea of a convergence or alliance between the U.S. and the Muslim
Brotherhood is radically exaggerated in some circles, while Shafik
promises instability and an emboldened military which could resist
meaningful reform. My personal hunch is that the U.S. was quietly
rooting for Moussa, which shows how effectively it controls events in
Cairo.  It's actually a very good sign that the U.S. was so irrelevant to the  election campaign -- a successful campaign based primarily on anti-American rhetoric, or overt American intervention in the election being two dogs which didn't bark in an important way. 

The first round of the elections really did produce the worst possible outcome, even if it in retrospect seems rather inevitable in light of earlier decisions, such as the MB's fielding a candidate and the political center failing to unite around a single candidate.  The second round really can't produce a President who will command wide legitimacy or a popular mandate. Sadly, I suppose that's about what we should have expected from this disastrous transition.  But despair isn't an option.  The focus must remain on seeing through the transition to civilian authority and the drafting of an acceptable constitution. 

 (*) One additional point --- from what has thus far been reported, election day itself appeared to be reasonably fair despite the assorted complaints.  But the allegations of large numbers of additions to the voting rolls in the months before the election, and the even more worrying allegations that conscripts were allowed (and ordered) to vote, should have been thoroughly investigated.  There is no sign that they were.  In the context of deep, deserved suspicions about the neutrality of the state --- exacerbated by the repeated judicial interventions of the last few months, including the disqualifications of Shater, Abu Ismail and Sulaiman --- a cloud will hang over the legitimacy of the vote.  Which, once again, seems pretty much par for Egypt's transitional course. 

Egypt's Brilliant Mistakes

"The stupidest transition in history" is how my colleague
Nathan Brown recently described the last fifteen months in Egypt.  Few would disagree.  At virtually every step, it seems that almost every player has made the wrong choice: the SCAF, the activists, the Muslim Brotherhood, the judiciary, political leaders... and even political analysts.  When I've been in Cairo, or talking to Egyptian friends or following Egyptian media, the sky is pretty much always falling.  Every protest is the
next revolution,
every internet rumor the latest catastrophe, every erratic move by the SCAF the unfolding of its cunning conspiracy, every inflammatory Islamist statement the sign of impending apocalypse.  Indeed, predicting
disaster is virtually mandatory for Egypt analysts.   

And yet... if one had fallen asleep in February 2011 and
awoken over the weekend to see a country consumed with excitement by tomorrow's Presidential election, things might look different. Egypt now has an elected Parliament, which has underperfomed in some ways but does enjoy real electoral legitimacy. The Presidential election is hotly contested by mostly non-disastrous
leading candidates in which the outcome is very much unknown.  Politics, as
predicted, has shifted mostly from the streets to the ballot box, and election fever has gripped the country.  The military still seems intent on
carving out its own empire within the state, but has consistently refused abundant opportunities to postpone the transfer of power to an elected government.  Islamists, after sweeping Parliamentary elections, seem to be losing some ground with the public in part through their own political mistakes (such as fielding a presidential candidate after promising not to do so and poorly managing the Parliament they won).  Former regime fullul were wiped out in those same elections, and remain on the defensive.  Could it be that Egypt's disastrous transition might still end up pretty
much okay? [[BREAK]]

Don't get me wrong -- the transition really has been horribly managed in most respects.  I have never been persuaded by the "evil genius" theory of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, in which their every move represents the unfolding of a devious plot.   The SCAF has lurched from position to position, changing the rules in mid-game, communicating exceedingly poorly with the public, and generally contributing to the widespread uncertainty and political panic in Egypt's political class.  Their habit of making major concessions only after protests led to major violence created perverse incentives galore, and further contributed to the uncertainty.  They seem (unsurprisingly) intent on carving out protections for their economic empire and legal status. Their intention to announce an interim constitutional supplement before the election is only the latest example of such mismanagement (although in this case their hand was forced by the ill-conceived decision by non-Islamist political forces to boycott the constitutional assembly formed by the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Parliament).

But for all of that, the SCAF has gotten one really important thing right:  it has remained committed to the transfer of power to an elected government on schedule despite frequent opportunities to renege.  It could easily have pulled the plug on the transition, or at least delayed it indefinitely, on multiple occasions.  If the SCAF had hit the brakes after the violence late last year or after the Islamist victories in the Parliamentary elections, they probably would have garnered significant support from Egyptians tired of the political chaos or afraid of the Islamists.  They deserve some real credit for sticking to the timeline for elections, and should be strongly urged to live up to their promise to transfer power to an elected government following the Presidential election.   The protracted transition has only generated uncertainty and stagnation, and extending the period is not going to make things better -- Egypt needs to get on with it.  

Those inspired by the January 25 revolution have every reason to be disgusted by the course of events, from the brutal treatment of street protests to the ongoing military trials for civilian protestors to the rise of Islamist political power. But those disappointments always needed to be kept in perspective.  It was always clear that the shift from the street to the ballot box would not be kind to activists, who represented a small, mobilized minority which was always likely to be drowned out by mass movements such as the various Islamist trends.  Activists struggled to adapt to the diminishing returns of street protests, as public opinion turned against them and the numbers joining in the protests diminished.  But those activists have succeeded in transforming Egypt's political life and keeping the pressure on the SCAF, even if they are far from satisfied with their own accomplishments. 

What about the Presidential elections which begin tomorrow?  I'm not going to offer any predictions here. I have almost no confidence in the various public opinion surveys and don't think they offer a reliable guide to the Egyptian electorate.  The campaign has brought forward candidates who represent distinct trends in Egyptian political life, and almost any combination of Moussa-Morsi-Abou el-Fotouh-Shafik second round matchups seems plausible.   The election fever on the Egyptian street demonstrates the general legitimacy of the process and a popular desire to get on with the transition -- and will invest the eventual winner with real legitimacy with which to challenge the SCAF, should he choose to do so.  Some outcomes would be better than others, from my point of view, but Americans (including me) need to accept that supporting democracy means being willing to accept the choice of the Egyptian public.   It's just incredibly exciting to see a meaningful Egyptian election, in which nobody knows who will win and the outcome really matters.  

If Egypt does witness a transfer of power from the SCAF to an elected President
and Parliament with provisionally defined powers in the next few weeks, and those elected officials are able and willing to
assert their authority, Egypt could have a brighter future than most
believe. Perhaps, finally, its leaders can begin to confront the massive
economic, social and institutional challenges which have been so badly
neglected for so long (and not only during the transition).   I don't expect it to go smoothly -- this is Egypt, after all.  The new President will jockey for power with the SCAF and with the Parliament, the wonderfully contentious and unruly Egyptian media will challenge and scrutinize their every move, and many activists will likely continue to take to the streets in protest.  But on the eve of the election, Egypt suddenly seems tantalizingly close to something  like a successful transition. 

Don't worry, though.  I'm sure it won't last, and the regularly scheduled falling of the sky will commence as the election returns begin to roll in! 

Introducing The Editor's Reader

What should you be reading about the politics of today's Middle
East, beyond (of course) the outstanding daily content on the Middle East Channel and the news and
analysis featured in the MEC Daily Brief?   The Middle East Channel Editor's Reader -- or, "Abu Aardvark's guide to good reads on the Middle East" -- is a new regular feature which
will highlight what I consider to be the best of the academic journal articles,
long-form magazine articles, policy reports and books which come across my
desktop.  

The MEC Editor's
Reader will reflect what I'm actually reading and think merits your
attention.   Some weeks that might
mean an extended book review, others a selection of journal articles.  I may write about a ten year old book
if it's what I'm currently reading, or I may write about forthcoming academic
research.  I will particularly highlight publications by the talented
academic members of the Project on Middle East
Political Science, which I direct, but I will try to not neglect writers
from other fields.  I can't promise
to even try to be comprehensive -- which you'd thank me for if you actually saw my desktop.  This will be a selective guide to work I found interesting for some reason, reflecting my own ideosyncratic interests and reading habits.  But please do send
me your articles and books if you want me to consider them.  And with that, welcome to...

The Middle East Channel Editor's Reader #1 (May 16, 2012)

My Bookshelf:

The
Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life, by Roger Owen. (Harvard
University Press 2012).

Harvard
historian Roger Owen had almost completed a book on "Arab Presidents for Life"
in late 2010, just as several of those Presidents suddenly faced mortal
challenges.   Rather than
simply insert "and Fall" into the title, Owen chose to integrate the new developments
into a thoughtful and incisive evaluation of Arab political authoritarianism in
all its components.  Owen points
out the many ways in which Arab Presidents and Kings imitated one another, with
Presidential sons following - or attempting to follow - their fathers, and all
relying on extensive security services and webs of patronage.  His analysis of the personalization of
power challenges recent efforts to distinguish Arab monarchies from their
Presidential counterparts, and lays bare the internal logic of such
personalized security states. As an historian, Owen is sensitive, and admirably
transparent, about the limits of our knowledge about the inner workings of
these regimes.  But his brief
discussions of each country effectively convey both the commonalities and
differences across the cases.  Owen's highly readable book serves as a
fitting requiem for a system of rule which long seemed immovable, has now
been exposed in all of its flawed brutality, but seems likely to adapt to new structural conditions rather than simply fade away. 

My PDF Reader:

Voting
for Change:  The Pitfalls and
Possibilities of First Elections in Arab Transitions, by Ellen Lust
(Brookings Doha).  Yale University Political
Scientist Ellen Lust, who has written widely on political parties and elections
in authoritarian Arab regimes, lays out the challenges and opportunities in the
foundational elections in Egypt, Tunisia and beyond.   First elections, she warns, should be treated
differently from subsequent elections, with different objectives and obstacles,
with priority given to building a strong democratic system and addressing the
fears and uncertainty which plague any transition rather than on managing a
particular political outcome.  
Lust wrote about Syria's
recent pre-transitional Parliamentary election for the MEC here.

The
Rise of Islamist Actors: Formulating a Strategy for Engagement, by
Quinn Mecham (POMED).  Middlebury
College Political Scientist and former State Department Policy Planning staffer
Quinn Mecham argues for a more systematic strategy for engagement with Islamist
political parties.  It should surprise
nobody that Islamist parties do well in Arab elections or more open political
arenas.  Mecham expertly lays out
the benefits and risks of engagement, and urges the U.S. to engage broadly in
order to build understanding on both sides ---but to neither compromise on core
value commitments or to exaggerate their likely power. 

Tunisia's
Transition and the Twin Tolerations, by Alfred Stepan (Journal of
Democracy).  Columbia University
Political Scientist Alfred Stepan, one of the leading figures in the study of
democratic transitions globally, examines the relatively successful Tunisian
experience since 2011. "With secularists agreeing that Islamists could participate
fully in democratic politics, and Islamists agreeing that popular sovereignty
is the only source of legitimacy," he writes, Tunisia has been able to
avoid the violence and polarization found in some other cases.   Egyptians and others should take note.

 
Networks of Third-Party Interveners and Civil War Duration. Asyegul Aydin and Patrick Regan (European Journal of International Relations, 2011).  What is the likely impact of military assistance to the  opposition on the duration of Syria's civil war?  Aydin and Regan's 2011 article doesn't talk about Syria directly, but it does focus on the logic and historical record of external interventions in such conflicts.  The network analysis suggests that such interventions are likely to increase civil war duration and encourage opportunistic, rent-seeking behavior among the combatants unless there is a high degree of unity of purpose and shared interest among the intervening parties.  Well worth a read, even if you have a low tolerance for math, for trying to think through the likely implications of supporting armed opposition in Syria. 

... and don't miss these from the Project on Middle East
Political Science:

Jordan,
Forever on the Brink. 
Collection of essays on the shortcomings of political reform and growing
instability in Jordan.

Breaking
Bahrain.  Collection of
essays on the political stalemate in Bahrain.

Jordan, Forever on the Brink

The sudden,
unprecedented resignation by Jordan's Prime Minister Awn Khasawnah last
week threw
a sudden spotlight on the ongoing shortcomings of political reform in the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  The deficient
new election law rolled out last month, like every
step the King has taken over the last year and a half, did too little, too
late to respond to the concerns of Jordanian citizens.  Limited reforms have done little to stem a
rising tide of protest across the towns of the south, a deeply struggling
economy, loud complaints of corruption, and an intensifying edge of political
anger.  Add in the potential impact of
the ongoing crisis in Syria or of a new escalation in the West Bank, and
concerns for Jordan's political future seem merited.

Veteran observers of the region can be excused for rolling
their eyes ever so slightly at reports
of instability in Jordan, of course.  
The Kingdom has seemed on the political brink virtually constantly for
many decades, its stability always questioned and the monarchy's command
doubted (often, admittedly, by me).  And yet the Hashemite monarchy
has survived.  Warnings about political
crisis in Jordan therefore sound just enough like boys crying wolf or Chicken Littles
shouting about falling skies.  That long
history of frustrated protest and successfully navigated challenges should
caution anyone predicting a real explosion. 
But it would be equally wrong to dismiss the signs of a rapidly
escalating political crisis to which the Palace seems unable or unwilling to
respond. 

This post previews a new POMEPS Briefing, "Jordan, Forever on the Brink,"
which collects twenty articles from the last three years explaining the nature of the
Kingdom's political crisis, the shortcomings of its attempted reforms, and the
current political state of play.(Link to free download to come soon.)[[BREAK]]

The context of last year's Arab uprisings adds urgency to
Jordan's problems, but its political stalemate has been developing for many
years.  The democratic opening, which
followed an outbreak of social protests in 1989, including press
liberalization, freely contested elections, and the crafting of a "National
Pact" for a democratic monarchical system, now seems a distant memory.  Then-King Hussein began rolling back the new
freedoms in the middle of the 1990s, as he moved to conclude an unpopular peace
with Israel.  A new
election law designed to curb the power of the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamic
Action Front Party produced a series of weak, ineffectual Parliaments too often
dissolved
early at the whim of the Palace.  

Since replacing his father, the current King Abdullah has
not behaved like a leader deeply committed to democratic procedures or credible
about reform.  Palace officials often
argue that he is a true reformer frustrated by the slow pace of change, but if
so then he has remarkably little to show for more than a decade's effort.  He suspended Parliament soon after taking the
throne and ruled by emergency law for several years. Reform initiatives such as the National
Agenda disappeared without a trace. The political history of the last decade
has been a depressing litany of failed governments, incompetent Parliaments,
and frustrated civil society.  The
last elections, in
November 2010, ranked among the
worst in the Kingdom's history.

That
frustration has been exacerbated by grinding economic problems, which have
largely wiped out the middle class and badly hurt the poor.  Cuts to government spending or the state
bureaucracy, meanwhile, tend to disproportionately hurt the East Bankers who
have generally been favored by the state for political reasons.  The ostentious new wealth on display in parts
of Amman only fueled the simmering resentment, as ever
more open talk of corruption at the top permeated political society... and circulated freely through new social media and in every day conversation. I still remember being shocked a few years back at being regaled in public by near strangers with stories of Queen Rania's new private jet and the backers of a new big dig in central Amman. Official efforts to censor and control such information are long since hopeless. 

The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings inspired
as much enthusiasm and popular
protest energy in Jordan as they did elsewhere in the region.  Jordanian youth mobilized large protests,
while traditional opposition movements also gathered strength.  Jordan's impressive community of online
activists pushed the boundaries of public debate, with unusual criticism of
corruption at the highest levels - even (or especially) Queen
Rania. Perhaps more troubling to the regime, discontent spread relentlessly
into the south as a protest culture took hold. 
Military
veterans spoke out in unprecedented ways, signaling potential problems at
the very heart of the regime.   And Jordanian-Palestinian
identity politics, always at the center of Jordanian politics and society,
played out in ever more intense forms.   

The King's responses have been consistently behind the
curve, suggesting a failure to appreciate the full extent of the regime's
problems.  The dismissal of several Prime
Ministers in succession were dismissed as the mere shuffling of deck chairs
with little practical significance. The King's
speech in June disappointed activists hoping for more concrete and far
reaching promises of political change.  Promised
constitutional reforms compared poorly to even those limited changes
offered in Morocco.   By November,
oft-promised reforms remained
largely "fictional," in Sean Yom's incisive verdict.  More effective has been the traditional moves to polarize society around Jordanian-Palestinian conflict to divide and distract opposition -- but even that strategy holds risks for the monarchy under current conditions. As Laurie Brand and Fayez Hammad recently
asked, "what exactly does the King understand?"  

Some hopes had been placed in the appointment of the
respected liberal jurist Khaswaneh as
Prime Minister.  With his departure, that
hope too has been frustrated.   The long
history of the regime's surviving such frustrated hopes and failed reforms would
suggest that this too shall pass.  But
Jordan's Palace should not be so confident. 
The spread of protest into new constituencies, the rising grievances of
the south, the intensifying identity politics, the struggling economy, and the
pervasive fury at perceived official corruption create a potent brew.  The violent dispersal of an attempted Amman
sit-in last March shocked activists and broke their momentum, but the protest
movement has proven resilient and creative. 
I would rank Jordan today only below Bahrain as at risk of a sudden
escalation of political crisis --- at which point the impossible would in
retrospect look inevitable indeed.

Keep an eye out for the new POMEPS Briefing on Jordan, which will be posted in the next day or two.

Give Annan's Syria Plan a Chance

I was invited to testify before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia to be a witness at the April 25, 2012 hearing "Confronting Damascus: U.S. Policy toward the Evolving Situation in Syria, Part II."  The other two witnesses where Andrew Tabler and Mara Karlin. My prepared statement is after the break. 

My prepared statement follows:

"It is time for the Obama Administration to acknowledge what
is obvious and indisputable in Syria: the Annan Plan has failed." This
declaration by Senators Lieberman, McCain and Graham on April 19, 2012, came
only one week after a United Nations-backed ceasefire came into effect, and two
days before the passage of a
unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing a 300 member
team to monitor the ceasefire.  The
urgent, and admirable, imperative to do something to help the people of Syria
should not rush the United States into a poorly conceived military
intervention. The painstakingly constructed international consensus in support
of diplomacy and pressure should not be abandoned before it has even had a
chance.

Nobody expects the current diplomatic path to quickly or
easily end the conflict in Syria, but military intervention does not offer a
compelling alternative.  There are
no cheap or easy forms of military intervention which would quickly bring down
the regime of Bashar al-Assad or effectively protect Syrian civilians. Military
half-measures, including safe zones, humanitarian corridors and arming the
Syrian opposition, would likely spread the violence and increase the numbers of
Syrian dead without increasing the likelihood of regime collapse.  An initially limited intervention would
most likely pave the way to more direct and expensive involvement comparable to
the experience in Iraq.

Rejecting military action does not mean doing nothing. The
United States has effectively taken the lead in constructing an international
consensus in support of diplomatic efforts, including two unanimous Security
Council resolutions and ever-tightening economic sanctions. The Six Point Plan
presented by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan offers a plausible, if still far from
certain, path towards a demilitarization of the conflict and political
transition. The ceasefire for which the United Nations called has not ended the
killing, but it has substantially reduced the violence even before the entry of
the full international monitoring mission. What is more, the number of peaceful
protests across Syria has significantly increased in the two weeks since the
ceasefire began.  Economic
sanctions are taking a real toll on an increasingly isolated Syrian regime.

It is far too soon to give up on a diplomatic process which
has just begun.  Rather than rush
into a risky, costly and potentially counter-productive military intervention,
the United States should give the current plan time to work.  It should continue to lead
international efforts at the United Nations, promote the demilitarization of
the conflict, continue to increase the pressure on the Assad regime, build on
the efforts underway with the "Friends of Syria" group, support the political
development of the Syrian opposition, and prepare the ground for future
accountability for war crimes.

Limited Military
Options

The calls for U.S. military intervention in Syria reflect an
understandable frustration with the ongoing crisis and with President Assad's
defiance of international consensus. But we must not forget the lessons of the
poorly conceived military intervention and occupation of Iraq, with its vast
human cost and unintended consequences. Even a limited military involvement in
Syria risks embroiling the United States into a far longer and more extensive
intervention than currently imagined, without protecting the Syrian people from
further atrocities or quickly changing the regime in Damascus. I discuss the problems
with limited military intervention in detail in Pressure Without War: a Principled and Pragmatic Strategy for Syria,
published by the Center for a New American Security on February 21, 2012.  I summarize here some of the key
points.

It is not enough to demonstrate that the cause of
intervention is just. The available military options do not have a reasonable
chance of improving the situation at an acceptable cost, and could easily make
matters worse. Syria is not Libya, where the United States acted with a clear
mandate from the UN Security Council and could use air power in support of a
well-organized opposition which controlled territory.  Syria's demographics, geography, divided population,
strategic location, military capabilities and international alliances pose a
far more daunting target.  We
should not rely on overly optimistic assumptions about the efficacy of an
intervention, the response of the Syrian regime and its international allies,
or our ability to manage the conflict. There are vanishingly few historical
examples of entrenched regimes embroiled in a civil war suddenly collapsing
after a symbolic show of force from outside. Most likely, limited military
intervention would alter but not end the dynamics of a long conflict,
embroiling the United States directly in a protracted and bloody insurgency and
civil war.

There are at least four different, and potentially
conflicting, objectives for military action against Syria which have been
articulated: civilian protection; regime change; weakening Iran; and political
credibility.  These goals are not
necessarily mutually compatible. 
Arming the Free Syrian Army, for instance, would likely lead to a dramatic
increase in lost civilian lives and have only dubious hopes of speeding regime
change, but increase the chances of embroiling Syria in a long crisis which
would harm Iran.  Those hoping
primarily to change the regime in Syria oppose diplomatic efforts which might
reduce civilian deaths. 

Finally, the United States must not intervene without
international legal authority. 
Acting without a UN Security Council resolution would undermine the
administration's efforts to restore international legitimacy to the center of
global politics, and would risk deeply undermining both international institutions
and American relations with Russia, China and the developing world.  A UN authorization of force against
Syria is exceedingly unlikely, however, barring a dramatic escalation of
violence.  The support of Arab
regional organizations and of NATO is important, but does not substitute for
the UN.

All forms of limited intervention would likely begin with
significant initial air strikes to eliminate air defenses, establish control of the skies and allow freedom of action by the forces involved. Syrian anti-aircraft
capabilities may not be particularly formidable, but no country would risk
flying in Syrian air space until these capabilities are destroyed.  Yet many Syrian anti-aircraft
capabilities are located in or near urban areas, which means that significant
civilian casualties could result from any attempt to eliminate them.  There is little doubt that the U.S.
military could do this if called upon, but it would not be a costless
enterprise and would not alone likely end the conflict.

More likely, a no fly zone would pave the way towards a more
expansive air campaign targeting Syrian regime ground forces or defending
designated safe areas. Many argue that a bombing campaign might force the
regime to the bargaining table, boost the morale of the opposition and
demoralize regime supporters. Perhaps, but this would be a risky gamble with
fleeting benefits, and would likely evolve into a longer-term commitment. There
is little reason to believe that the regime would quickly crumble, or that more
opposition would rally, in the face of such strikes.  What is more, significant civilian casualties or
easily-stoked nationalist anger at a foreign bombing campaign have a poor record of success. Indeed, they may well rally Syrians around the regime rather than turn
them towards the opposition.  

Using air power to protect civilians and defend the
opposition within safe areas or humanitarian corridors is even more
complex.  Such safe areas could
most easily be established and protected along the Turkish border, but most of
the threatened civilians live in other parts of Syria. Humanitarian corridors
would be extremely difficult to protect, and could create a new refugee crisis
if desperate civilians rush into designated safe zones or neighboring
countries.  Protecting either would
require a serious commitment of resources.  Declaring a safe area without defending it effectively would
only repeat the painful mistakes of history.  In Bosnia, thousands of people were murdered in Srebrenica
and other designated safe areas when peacekeepers lacked the means to protect
them.  Even historical "successes"
are sobering.  Operation Provide
Comfort, established in northern Iraq after 1991, was envisioned as a
short-term crisis response, but turned into a 12-year commitment that ended
only when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.  Creating and protecting a safe area in Syria
would therefore require a significant and lengthy investment of troops and
resources, and would not likely hasten Assad's collapse.

The United States and its partners could conduct an extended
tactical air campaign, becoming a de facto air force for the FSA, targeting
Syrian regime forces and evening the military balance in favor of the
opposition. But in contrast to Libya, there are no front lines to police, few
tank convoys to destroy on desert highways and no offensives by rebel armies
for which an air campaign would clear a path. Regime
forces and the opposition are primarily clashing in densely packed urban
areas.  Civilian casualties would
inevitably result from a bombing campaign against ill-defined targets in urban
areas with extremely limited human intelligence.  And such a campaign in support of a fragmented and weak
opposition would almost certainly escalate.

Finally, some are calling on the United States government to
arm the opposition, providing advanced weapons, communications equipment and
other support to even the balance of power and would enable the Syrian
opposition to defend itself and take the fight to Assad.  This is often presented as the least
intrusive path.  But in fact it
might be the worst of all the options. Providing arms to the opposition would
not likely allow it to prevail over the Syrian military.  The regime would likely discard
whatever restraint it has thus far shown in order to avoid outside
intervention. What is more, the Syrian opposition remains fragmented,
disorganized and highly localized. Providing weapons will privilege favored
groups within the opposition, discredit advocates of non-military strategies,
and likely lead to ever more expansive goals. It could further frighten Syrians
who  continue to support the regime
out of fear for their own future, and make them less likely to switch sides.  Arming the FSA is a recipe for
protracted, violent and regionalized conflict. It would be foolish to assume
that an insurgency once launched can be easily controlled. It should also be
sobering that the best example offered of historical success of such a strategy
is the American support to the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union, which led
to the collapse of the Afghan state, the rise of the Taliban, and the evolution
of al-Qaeda.

In short, limited military options do not have a reasonable
chance of ending Assad's regime quickly or at an acceptable price. 

Give Annan Plan a
chance

Military options therefore do not offer a magic bullet for
protecting Syrian civilians or forcing a change in the Assad regime.   The current diplomatic strategy
faces long odds as well, but does at least have at least some prospect of success
and should not abandoned prematurely. 
It is highly unlikely that Bashar al-Assad or his regime will
voluntarily comply with a ceasefire, and even more unlikely that they will
surrender power.  But international
diplomacy does not depend on Assad's good intentions. Instead, it aims to
demilitarize the conflict and create the political space for change driven by
Syrians disgusted by the destruction of their country. Demilitarization through
a ceasefire and political opening would undermine Assad's survival strategy,
not save him from an otherwise certain defeat.

Syria today remains deeply divided between a growing and
resilient opposition and a still substantial pool of regime supporters.  The violence, relentless propaganda,
and deep fears about the future have polarized the country and helped to keep
significant portions of the Syrian population on the side of the regime.  At the same time, the resilience and
spread of opposition protests despite massive regime violence clearly
demonstrates that the regime has lost legitimacy with an equally significant
portion of the population. Assad has proven unable to kill his way to victory,
but his regime's survival is at the same time well-served by a violent and
polarized arena.

The ceasefire, as American officials have consistently
noted, is only one part of the Annan plan, but it is an extremely important one
which will test whether the regime can survive de-escalation and
demilitarization of the conflict. 
Unsurprisingly, Assad has complied only partially with the
ceasefire.  Deaths dropped
significantly after the ceasefire came into effect on April 12, but killing has
continued at a lower level and there have been many reports of violations and
attacks.  But the pressure to
comply will continue. The expanded UN monitoring team now entering the country
may have a restraining effect, though their limited numbers and mandate will
not alone be sufficient. There has been a noticeable upsurge in peaceful
protests across Syria since the ceasefire came into effect. The focus of its
efforts must still be to increase the odds of a "soft landing" after the fall
of the Assad regime, one which avoids a chaotic state collapse and instead
produces an inclusive and pluralistic political alternative.

The United States should continue to support these efforts
to demilitarize the conflict. It should continue to maintain the hard-won
international consensus at the Security Council and push Syria's allies who
have supported the current track to pressure Damascus to comply.  It should also continue to support
parallel efforts to pressure Assad and to help strengthen the fragmented and
weak Syrian opposition.  Economic
sanctions and the civil war itself have combined to badly hurt the Syrian
economy and to increasingly isolate the Syrian elite.  Such efforts should continue and expand, with more targeted
sanctions at both unilateral and multilateral efforts. These should be tied to
the other elements of the Annan plan beyond the ceasefire, including a strong
push towards a genuine political process. 
The Syrian opposition should continue to reach out to and attempt to
reassure minority communities and those still supporting Assad out of fear that
they will be included and protected in a new Syria.

Should the ceasefire take effect, the U.S. should not allow
a decrease in deaths to cause international focus on Syria to lag. There should
be constant, daily diplomatic pressure and the mobilization of international
condemnation.  It should continue
its effective efforts to disseminate credible information about regime
violations of the agreement, such as the satellite images posted by Embassy
Damascus. It should push for the regular release of the reports of the UN
monitors and accountability for violations of the mission's terms, and also
insist on other elements of the plan such as access for journalists.   It should make a particular
effort to convey credible information about regime violence to audiences inside
of Syria and to break through the propaganda which sustains the regime's hold
on core constituencies.

The U.S. should also continue to collect information about
regime atrocities for future war crimes trials.  The "Syria Accountability Clearing House" proposed at the
recent meeting of the "Friends of Syria" is an important starting point for
future accountability.  If it is
unable to secure Security Council support for a referral to the International
Criminal Court, the U.S. should push for the creation of an independent war
crimes tribunal for Syria. 

Overall, it is easy to share the frustration with
international efforts to respond to the atrocities in Syria.  Many thousands of Syrians have died as
the world has struggled to find an adequate response.  There are no guarantees that the current UN plan will
succeed either, but it must be given the opportunity to develop.  There are no good alternatives.  Limited military intervention is
unlikely to either protect civilians or hasten Assad's fall, and would signal
the end of the diplomatic alternatives currently unfolding.  For now, the United States must stick
with "Plan A" and give diplomacy a chance to succeed.

---

The discussion which followed was productive. We agreed about many points but disagreed about the potential
for the U.N.'s Annan plan and about the likely value of arming the
opposition or creating safe areas. 

While the other witnesses saw little
to no chance for the plan to work, I argued that the painfully
constructed international consensus in support of the Annan plan should
be maintained. I pointed to a number of positive signs, including the
leap in peaceful protests following the ceasefire, and argued that it
was important to allow time for a plan which was never meant to work
instantly.  I agreed, however, that the UN must continue to push the
Assad regime hard to comply with all elements of the plan, deploy the
full monitoring contingent immediately (which would help overcome the
problem of regime forces attacking after monitors leave an area), and
issue regular, public reports on compliance.  

As for arming the
Free Syrian Army and other forms of military intervention, I argued that there is little reason to believe that such moves  would help, and many strong reasons to believe that they would make
the situation considerably worse. Those arguments are covered in the prepared statement above, and despite the growing public demands for such intervention I've seen astonishingly little substantive argument which would change this strategic assessment. 

I also offered thoughts in response to interesting questions about the role of Turkey (its Kurd obsession complicates things), al-Qaeda (exaggerated for now, but in many ways that organization's best chance to regenerate itself in the Arab world by posing as a defender of Sunnis in a war zone should things continue as they are), the Saudis and Qataris (eager, as always, to fight Iran and Syria to the last American), and China (very different than Russia, few real interests in Syria but many in the oil-producers of the Gulf).  

It was good to have a substantive, respectful discussion of these excruciating issues in Congress, even if most likely no minds were changed. I will update with a full transcript when one is available.