Marc Lynch's Blog, page 99

Syria Debate (C-Span)

Here's a link to the video of my discussion today with Andrew Tabler at the Washington Institute about U.S. policy towards Syria, which was broadcast on C-Span. My comments begin at around the 25 minute mark. I enjoyed the discussion. No time right now to write any of it up, and can't find a working embed code to post it here, but for now feel free to check it out on C-Span.  

Predictions are Hard: MEC Week in Review, June 28

If a group of Middle East analysts had been asked two years ago to rank which Arab heads of state were most likely to still be in power by the end of June 2013, the Emir of Qatar would almost certainly have been ranked #1.  And for good reason: relatively young and exceedingly energetic diplomatically, unfathomably wealthy, facing no real domestic challenges or grave international threats.  My column this week, which despite my best efforts was not entitled "Game of Qatari Thrones", explores some of the mysteries surrounding his stunning decision to hand over power to his son Tamim.

The Emir's surprising move recalls many of the fascinating discussions and debates about the possibility of prediction in political science in the wake of the Arab uprisings.  You'll recall that the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, and all which followed, spawned a tidal wave of indictments of political science and of area studies for failing to predict the mass mobilization. This never seemed exactly right. The predictive failure wasn't one of information: many, if not most, scholars of Arab politics over the 2000s catalogued the political, economic, and institutional failures of Arab regimes and the rising wave of popular protest. The analytical failure, such as it was, came from the (not unreasonable) assumption that the survival strategies which had kept those authoritarian regimes in power for decades despite their many failures would continue to work. That assumption was widely shared. As Charlie Kurzman and others have often pointed out, even the participants in protest movements are often surprised by their success. It is only in retrospect that the unthinkable comes to seem inevitable.

The Emir's decision to hand over power was arguably even more unpredictable than the Arab uprisings.  As Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist who has worked for a long time on forecasting and prediction (including with the Political Instability Task Force), points out, the eruption of mass mobilization and its political outcomes can be modeled within a broad comparative universe. All sorts of data might go into the predictive analysis. But what would allow you to predict an intra-family decision behind closed doors for inscrutable reasons, other than actually being in that room? Even hearing the many rumors about the closed doors meeting doesn't really help, since rumors flow freely in a place like Doha and 99 out of 100 turn out to be bunk.  At any rate, I'd love to hear more from Jay and others on the relative challenges of predicting leadership changes in the Gulf against, say, what might happen in Egypt on June 30. 

This Week on the  Middle East Channel

Speaking of Egypt's June 30 protests, the Middle East Channel posted several outstanding articles previewing the runup to those potentially fateful -- and potentially an overhyped fizzle -- protests. Nathan Brown returned from a week in Cairo extremely worried about the polarization and expectations in the days leading up to June 30.  Tarek Radwan recounted the political road to June 30 and the thinking behind how it might unfold.  Hisham Hellyer warned of the atmosphere which produced the horrifying lynching of four Shi'ite Egyptians. And over on the FP main page, Mohammed el-Baradei warned that Egypt is already a failed state and "you can't eat sharia."

Elsewhere on the Channel, Paola Rivetti and Farideh Farhi and Daniel Brumberg interpreted the politics of Iran's Presidential election; Aaron Zelin and Charles Lister presented one of the most detailed analyses to date on the emergence of the Syrian Islamic Front; Curtis Ryan examined Jordan's ongoing struggles with political reform and the controversy over its blocking of websites; Jake Hess went into Iraq to interview a leader of Turkey's PKK about the very tenuous prospects for a real peace agreement; and I talked to Mark Tessler about the evolution of Arab public opinion research.

Finally: POMEPS is hiring!  If you want to work with us here at the Middle East Channel, along with a wide range of academic programming, check out this opportunity. Since it was originally posted last week the position has been upgraded to a full time position.  If you're interested be sure to apply! 

The evolution of Arab public opinion research

How reliable is public opinion survey research in the Arab world?  What lessons should we draw from its findings for policy or for academic hypothesis testing? Has the proliferation of new research, of varying quality, improved the state of our knowledge? In last week's POMEPS Conversation, I talked to Shibley Telhami about his new book, The World Through Arab Eyes, based on a decade's worth of survey research in the region. In this week's POMEPS Conversation, I talk with the University of Michigan's Mark Tessler, one of the founders and leading scholars in the field of Arab public opinion research:

Tessler recently collected decades worth of essays based on survey research in the region into a book, Public Opinion in the Middle East.  He has trained many of the leading figures in the younger generation of political scientists using such survey research in their work.  I know that I've learned an incredible amount about how to evaluate such research from talking with Tessler over the years and reading his work. 

Tessler is also the lead researcher for the ambitious Arab Barometer project, which has been doing in-depth, rigorous surveys of attitudes across the region in line with the other regional Barometer projects -- and, crucially, making the data openly available to academic researchers. They have resisted being driven primarily by U.S. foreign policy concerns, going deeper than "how do Arabs feel about the United States?  How do they feel about Bush/Obama?  What most explains how they feel about America?" The survey work and analysis which he's done with collaborators such as Amaney Jamal, Michael Robbins and Eleanor Gao has been crucial for our understanding of Arab attitudes towards democracy, religion, and much else.  In this conversation, Tessler talks about how public opinion survey research in the Middle East has evolved over the decades, the new research vistas which this data opens, and the continuing problems which such research faces. 

Remember, all the Middle East Channel's POMEPS Conversations with leading Middle East scholars can be found here, and you can subscribe to the podcast here. 

Sliding Down the Syrian Slope

President Obama's move to increase the public flow of arms
to selected Syrian rebels is probably his worst foreign policy decision since taking
office. It is basically the Afghan surge decision redux: long months of
grueling internal deliberation about whether to escalate military commitments resulting in an "Option C" policy
choice which pleases nobody and which few think will work.  At least the Afghan surge came with an
expiration date.

Nobody in the administration seems to have any illusions that arming the rebels is likely to work. The argument over arming the FSA has been raging for well over a year, driven by the horrific levels of death and devastation, fears of regional
destabilization, the inadequacy of existing policies, concerns about
credibility over the ill-conceived chemical weapons red line, and a
relentless campaign for intervention led by hawkish media, think
tanks, Congress, and some European and regional allies. Through all of this, Obama (who has not forgotten the lessons of Iraq) has by all accounts opposed deeper intervention, and rightly so, along with much of the Pentagon and many others across the administration. The
most direct cause for the switch likely was Hezbollah's
open entry in the fighting and fears that the fall of Qusair could lead
to a
rapid rebel collapse.

Obama's move is likely meant as a way to "do something", and perhaps to give
Secretary John Kerry something to work with diplomatically on the way
to Geneva II, while deflecting pressure for more aggressive steps.  The logic behind the steps has been thoroughly aired by now. The dominant idea is that these arms will help to pressure Assad to the
bargaining table, strengthen the "moderate" groups within the opposition
while marginalizing the jihadists in
the rebellion's ranks, and assert stronger U.S. leadership over the
international and regional proxy war.  Much of it sounds like magical thinking. History does not suggest that this will work out as planned. 

On its own, the decision will have only a marginal impact on the
Syrian war -- the real risks lie in what steps might follow when it fails. The significant moves to arm the rebels began last year, with or
without open American participation. Assad's brutal campaign of
military repression and savage slaughters and the foreign arming of various rebel
groups has long since thoroughly militarized the conflict. The U.S. is modifying its public role in a proxy war in progress, providing more and different forms of support to certain rebel groups, rather than entering into something completely new.

The real problem with Obama's announcement is that it
shatters one of the primary psychological and political footholds in the grim
effort to prevent the slide down the slippery slope to war. He may have chosen the
arming option in order to block pressure for other, more direct
moves, like a no-fly zone or an air campaign. But instead, as the immediate
push for "robust intervention" makes obvious, the decision will only embolden the relentless campaign for
more and deeper U.S. involvement in the war.  The Syrian opposition's spokesmen
and advocates barely paused to say thank you before immediately beginning to
push for more and heavier weapons, no-fly zones, air campaigns, and so on.  The
arming of the rebels may buy a few months, but when it fails to produce either
victory or a breakthrough at the negotiating table the pressure to do more will
build. Capitulating to the pressure this time will make it that much harder to
resist in a few months when the push builds to escalate. 

I don't think anyone in
the administration really has any great confidence that arming the
rebels will
end Syria's civil war or work in any other meaningful way, though many likely feel that it's worth trying something different after so many months of horrors and want to believe that this will work. Obviously, I am deeply skeptical. I hope I'm wrong, and that against the odds the new policy can make a
difference, and help to resolve the Syrian catastrophe. But more likely it just drags the U.S. further down the road to another disastrous war -- one which has just become harder to prevent. 

New: the Syria intervention debate and an MB review

 Just some links to some new articles of mine which you may find of interest:

  The Syria (Intervention) Strategy Vaccuum:  my weekly FP column looks at the policy implications of defining Syria's conflict as either a front in a regional war against Iran or a civil war and humanitarian catastrophe to resolve. If Washington were to decide to arm Syria's rebels, would (and should) the goal be to defeat Assad and his allies or to get them to the negotiating table?

  Winter in Cairo:  my review essay in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas about Carrie Wickham's fascinating forthcoming book about Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which I describe as "an epitaph for what the Muslim Brotherhood might have become."

  Finally, as promised, Foreign Affairs is hosting a discussion between me and Amaney Jamal about the sources of Arab attitudes towards the United States.  My original review essay from last month's issue is here, Jamal's response is here, and my response to her comments will be posted soon. 

  I expect to be discussing both issues in more depth soon, but for now I just wanted to post the links for those interested in reading them.  

The World Through Arab Eyes

 

Shibley Telhami has long been interested not only in what mass Arab publics think, but how their attitudes affect the foreign policies of Arab regimes and how they should affect American policy in the Middle East. His new book The World Through Arab Eyes  offers a masterful summation of more than a decade of his systematic public opinion research across the Arab world.  A few weeks ago I sat down with my former dissertation adviser in the latest episode of the POMEPS Conversation series to chat about the book, his decade of public opinion polling, and the rapidly unfolding changes in the patterns and impact of Arab public opinion.

Telhami's work is part of the last decade's broader move towards the systematic production of real public opinion survey research in the Middle East (such as, for instance, the Arab Barometer survey, which will be the subject of the next POMEPS Conversation).  Many problems remain with such survey research, of course, from the challenge of asking politically sensitive questions in authoritarian regimes to the difficulty of generating representative sample to the risk of creating false narratives through the wording or sequence of questions. But Arab survey research has come a long way over the last decade, and can no longer be breezily dismissed as "go[ing] so far away from home only to count the cats in Zanzibar."

The Arab uprisings have simultaneously made regional public opinion both more important politically and far less predictable. The uprisings shattered the false confidence that authoritarian regimes could simply ignore, manipulate or crush inconvenient public attitudes.  But it is less obvious what follows. The Arab uprisings might make governments more responsive to public opinion on foreign policy issues, but the lesson of Mohammed el-Morsi's continued adherence to the Camp David treaty with Israel and the blockade of Gaza suggests that uncertain regimes might be even more keen to continue domestically unpopular policies in order to maintain international support during difficult internal political struggles.

Meanwhile, Arab attitudes which followed fairly predictable patterns
for years now seem radically in flux. Perhaps the most interesting question here is the long-term effect on regional public opinion of the Syrian war.  Telhami's book expands on his influential concept of the Palestinian issue as the "prism of pain" through which Arabs tend to interpret regional and international politics. I wonder whether Syria has become, or might become, a new such prism of pain, giving meaning and definition to regional identities and divisions. When Israel launched its war against Hezbollah in 2006 most Arabs rallied to Hezbollah's side despite the sectarian divide or the best efforts of the Saudi media and its other regional rivals. Can anyone predict with confidence whether the same would happen today, given the intense (and well-cultivated) anger over Hezbollah's role in support of Bashar al-Assad?  But while some celebrate this crystallization of regional battle lines
hostile to Iran and Hezbollah, it seems unlikely that new identities
birthed in the
fires of sectarian jihad and regional proxy war will be tolerant or liberal.

There is a lot more in Telhami's new book to generate discussion, including his counter-intuitive reading of the logic of "incitement" in Israeli-Palestinian relations and the relationship between the region's national and transnational identities. He also discusses Arab attitudes towards the United States in considerable depth -- a debate which I will be continuing with Amaney Jamal in Foreign Affairs this week, for those interested.  For now, though, enjoy my POMEPS Convo with Telhami and check out his book. 

Qaradawi, Jebali, APSA and a Busy MEC Week

  The Middle East Channel Editor's Blog

My weekly column this week places Yusuf al-Qaradawi's call for a sectarian jihad in Syria into the broader context of the changing Arab political public sphere and the power politics of Sunni-Shi'a incitement. The long-running debate about whether Qaradawi's a "moderate or extremist" has always missed the point. More relevant by far is that Qaradawi has always been a political opportunist with an extremely finely honed sense for the Arab political mood, able to both reflect and to shape the views of the mainstream, not necessarily Islamist Arab public.  That makes all the more disturbing his calculation that this is the time to join the sectarian stampede. But he's also not as influential as he once was, thanks to the rapid and dramatic shifts in Arab politics including the backlash against Qatar, the decline of al-Jazeera, the rising polarization against the Muslim Brotherhood, and the general proliferation of new voices and new media outlets. Qaradawi's problematic efforts to position himself within this turbulent new public and the new lines of regional division are a microcosm of the shifting Arab political debate. I look forward to comments and discussions. 

Also this week on the blog, I reported on my conversation with former Tunisian Prime Minister and current Secretary General of Ennahda Hamadi el-Jebali, and reminisced about FP's departing editor Susan Glasser. Off the blog, I had some positive thoughts on the promotions of Susan Rice and Samantha Power (and doubts that this meant a major shift on Syria policy). solicited thoughts and comments for a meeting of an American Political Science Association Task Force on Publications, asking via Twitter for ideas about how the APSA journals could do better at public impact and engagement. There's a lot of good ideas out there, and I'm keen to collect more; I'm particularly excited about the efforts at the Monkey Cage and Duck of Minerva to work with publishers to temporarily ungate articles to let interested blog readers download them. 

There was a lot of great stuff on the Middle East Channel this week:

- Quinn Mecham explored the problem of democratic accountability in Erdogan's Turkey

-  Zaid al-Ali dug deep into the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court's thinking on the election law

- Robin Wright explored what we could learn even from deeply problematic Iranian elections

- Monica Marks reported on the politics of Turkish PM Erdogan's visit to Tunisia

-  Tamara Wittes sharply explained why the crackdown on Egypt's NGOs matters and what Washington should be doing about it 

- Danya Greenfield critiqued President Obama's big speech on drones, and what it missed about their role in Yemen 

- Sinan Ulgen looked at Turkey's Taksim Square protests and Erdogan's dilemma

And finally, some of the week's Middle East highlights from elsewhere on FP: Hassan Hassan on Saudi Arabia and Syria's fractured opposition; Micah Zenko on the fatal flaw of the arguments for a limited Syria intervention; David Kenner on NDI and the Egyptian NGO trial; and reflections on Turkish democracy by Steven Cook and Michael Koplow; Mustafa Akyol; Whit Mason; and Justin Vela. 

-- Marc Lynch, Middle East Channel editor

Jebali's Cautious Optimism for Tunisia

 

"Of course we made mistakes" isn't something you hear very often these days from Arab (or any other) political figures. So I found it refreshing to hear that frank admission from Hamadi al-Jebali, former Tunisian Prime Minister and current Secretary-General of the Ennahda Movement, during a small group conversation and subsequent private chat in Washington DC today. I've  always found Jebali to be one of the more thoughtful of Ennahda's leaders, so I looked forward to seeing him for the first time since he stepped down as Prime Minister in February.

Jebali painted a sobering but still optimistic picture of a Tunisian transition facing tremendous economic and social problems, as well as what he termed an artificial but nonetheless dangerous political polarization. I had been pressing Jebali to reflect on the prospects for the Tunisian constitution, the final draft of which is finally being circulated, to ultimately command a real societal and political consensus given the level of political polarization in the country. He insisted that it could, and indeed already did.  He emphasized all the areas of broad national consensus which the constitution would reflect: political freedoms, the peaceful circulation of power, mutual respect, a civil state, an independent judiciary, and the rejection of state hegemony or violence.

Jebali of course acknowledged and expressed deep concerns about Tunisia's political polarization, but described it as "manufactured" and superficial, driven by a small political elite and mostly manifesting in very small, extreme elements on the fringes of the political spectrum.  That, of course, made it no less potentially dangerous, especially given the deep, unresolved economic and social problems driving discontent.  But despite those mistakes, and polarization, he repeatedly rejected the idea
that it was too late to achieve a national consensus and a real Tunisian
democracy rooted in political freedoms, mutual respect and social
justice.[[BREAK]]

What mistakes would he acknowledge on behalf of Ennahda?  He ticked off three, specifically. First, he pointed to the extended length of the transition process and the failure to focus efforts on achieving consensus on the constitution, which allowed the polarization and fragmentation to take root.  Second, he noted the problems caused by the failure to resolve the ambiguous relationship between the state and the Ennahda party, and between the party and the broader Ennahda movement. Finally, he acknowledged that the new political elite collectively had raised expectations of rapid improvements in the quality of life too high, well beyond the ability of any new government to realistically deliver. 

Of the wide range of external challenges which Jebali discussed, three points in particular jumped out at me.  He presented Egypt as a challenge for Tunisia because of the example which a Muslim Brotherhood government might set for the rest of the region; while he wouldn't get very specific, let's just say that he didn't show any signs of viewing the Egyptian MB's model positively.  More surprisingly, he expressed serious concerns about Algeria's political future after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's inevitable passing, describing Tunisia's neighbor as on a path with no clear exit. Finally, he spoke strongly about the need to confront dictatorship in Syria -- and everywhere -- but also fretted about the risk posed by Tunisians fighting there who might someday return with their arms and jihadist fervor.

 Hopefully Jebali's visit, along with last week's more publicized appearances around town by Ennahda leader Rached al-Ghannouchi, will refocus some American attention on Tunisia's transition beyond its salafis and jihadists. I remain optimistic about Tunisia's prospects, even if everybody's early optimism has faded, especially if the constitution can be finalized with reasonably wide consensus and some progress can be made on its deep economic crisis.  Finding ways to help with that transition shouldn't get lost in the maelstrom of the region's other problems.

Thanks, Susan!

In late December 2008, Dan Drezner put me in touch with Susan Glasser about her plans to relaunch Foreign Policy's online presence. At that point, Susan and I had never met, but we agreed to get together for coffee and talk about her vision for FP.  Within half an hour, it had become clear that we shared a similar vision for what FP could become. I signed on to become one of the regular FP bloggers almost on the spot. A couple of years later, Susan enthusiastically supported my efforts to launch the Middle East Channel, and this year offered me a (mostly) weekly front page column. Now that the news of Susan's departure to launch a major new policy magazine at Politico is public knowledge, I wanted to briefly note how amazing it has been to work with her for the last four and a half  years -- and how much of a positive impact she has had on the quality of foreign policy debate in the United States and the world. 

Susan intituitively and deeply understood from the start how an online portal could enrich the quality of policy debate without sacrificing the playful spirit of the mid-decade's blogosphere.  For all the complaints you hear from the Very Serious about the PutinCats or the Sex Issue, the reality is that FP's bread and butter has been to combine fun and snark with deeply reported, well-written analytical essays. Susan, along with Blake Hounshell and the rest of FP's ace editorial team, pushed authors to make their arguments accessible and persuasive without sacrificing rigor or depth. 

Susan also recognized the value of FP's remaining a genuine public sphere open to a diverse, non-partisan range of voices at a time when so many publications and websites spoke primarily to one ideological, identity or partisan trend. It was great that FP featured the thoughtful conservatives over at Shadow Government alongside a realist like Stephen Walt. It's essential that it published articles on all sides of hotly contentious debates rather than trying to impose some tedious ideological discipline. I often disagree with Middle East commentary published on FP -- and thank god for that!

I also admired Susan's enthusiasm for both the fun and the serious sides of FP. She loved the quirky, fun pieces like "We're Duke" or "Jay-Z's Hegemony in the Age of Kanye", but she was just as quick to comment and praise deep dive analytical pieces.  She leaped at my proposal to launch the Middle East Channel
to feature academics and analysts grounded in the region, and adamantly
supported its day-in, day-out analytical reporting and analysis even if
essays on Egypt's constitution or Bahrain's struggles would never do
War Dog numbers.  It was thanks to Susan's vision that the Middle East Channel was in place and ready to go when the Arab uprisings broke out - a vision vindicated by the Channel's nomination as a finalist for a Digital Magazine Award last year. 

The bottom line is that under Susan's guidance, FP helped to change the game for the better. I remember well how difficult it was back in the summer of
2002, in a pre-blogs environment dominated by
the editors of a few newspapers and the bookers of a few TV shows, to publish essays arguing
against the invasion of Iraq.
Today, it would be almost impossible for a well-informed academic or analyst to fail to find an opportunity to publish about, say, whether to intervene in Syria.

So thanks to Susan Glasser for all of her enthusiastic support, constructive
criticism and editorial guidance over the last four and a half years.   I'm thrilled for her new venture at Politico, and I have all confidence that the FP team will carry on brilliantly, but I will miss her at FP. We all will.

Yoda Theory

At the fourth annual conference of the Project on Middle East Political Science here at GW, I was discussant for an outstanding paper which in part explored how and why protestors "broke the barrier of fear" in hyper-repressive states such as Syria and Libya. It's a truly fascinating question for political science theory, one for which I still don't think we have any really good answers. But as a discussant, I was at least able to pull out my iPhone and demand to know why the author hadn't engaged with and cited this leading theorist of the causal dynamics of fear: 

 

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to... suffering."

That's a pretty clear articulation of one potential causal pathway by which violence and state failure produces the kind of horrors which we've seen in Iraq or Syria. But is it the full story? During the early days of the Arab uprising, the overcoming of fear was generally cited in a positive light, as brave protestors took unbelievable risks to rise up and demand their rights. But breaking the fear barrier isn't always and only a heroic narrative of personal liberation and the assertion of universal norms. It can sometimes be that. But fear of shaming, legal punishments, or retaliation can be a necessary component of social order, after all, and losing such fear can clearly unleash ugly new behaviors, identities, or hatreds. I expect to see the Yoda Theory fully cited in future academic work, and tested against alternative theories.   

That was just part of an amazing conference here at GW. We had twenty-five oustanding academics participating, with eleven
papers workshopped and four plenary discussions on big themes such as
democracy, mobilization, violence and gender.  Hopefully we will be
putting out a collection of conference memos over the summer, similar to this one we did last year on "New Opportunities for Political Science" - stay tuned! 

Also, my column this week is now up.  It argues against emerging the master narrative of Sunni-Shi'a conflict structuring regional politics. I argue that a lot of what appears to be Sunni-Shi'a conflict is actually "power politics dressed up in sectarian drag,"  and that intra-Sunni competition and local power struggles are actually more important. At the same time, I'm extremely worried that the cynical manipulation of sectarianism by these political forces, combined with the turbo-charged circulation of images of sectarian violence from Syria, and before that Iraq, is generating a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can read the column over at the FP main page. As always, I appreciate the feedback  already received and look forward to more discussion and debate!