The title to today's post comes from a song by Tom Lehrer. I spend some of rainy Sunday watching Fareed Zakaria on CNN. For those of you who have not see this program or read his articles in Newsweek Magazine, Zakaria is one of the most intelligent, balanced and well informed correspondents in the news business. His comments on the African/Middle East social unrest have been spot on. Add to this Tom Friedman in the Times and a picture of this region begins to emerge. As for Egypt, the consensus is that, without the US's contacts in the Egyptian army, Mubarak would not have stepped down. The US military involvement in Yemen will yield the same results. In other areas such as Libya and Syria there will be similar results but over a longer period of time. There is no pan-Islamic pressure although for most of the countries Islam will continue to play an important but subordinate role. The population is not going to have one form of totalitarianism substituted for another. Iran's ayatollahs are plain for all to see. One interesting comment is that China is the power to watch. China is a political dictatorship but has allowed enough wealth to trickle down so that there is a substantial middle class that has much to lose by creating social unrest. None of the Arab dictators will allow a substantial middle class to emerge.
Some of this unrest has already begun to be felt in Israel. Thugs have stormed the borders in the name of political redress. This is nothing more than the usual incitement that occurs when local governments want to shift blame from itself to Israel. While domestic violence must be met with some reserve and local militia are sometimes unwilling to shoot their countrymen, Israel has no such problem. Any incursions on its borders will be met with lethal force reserved for any unlawful invader. This state of affairs is further evidence of just how nervous Israel's neighbors are.
Some of the unrest may come to Israel itself. While there are no issues of despotism, there are issues concerning the power that a few right winged religious parties have gained with the help of successive Likud governments. This kind of unrest was recently described by a world class Israeli writer who feared that this kind of unrest was only too possible.
How will this all play out? A body in motion tends to stay in motion. The recent unrest in the region will have a lasting effect. Whether that effect will be cataclysmic is questionable. Will Egypt become a Jeffersonian democracy? Hardly. However, Egypt, over time, will see a substantial transfer of wealth from the very few to the many. This may not effect the abjectly poor but it is likely to effect a growing middle class who will have a stake in the country that they want to protect. China has done this brilliantly. When I asked my interpreter about China's dismal civil rights record her reply was that so long as she got a university education, a job, a car and an apartment what did she care what the government did? To her, civil rights was an abstract idea. She had a stake in the country and was not about to give it up.
In all of this Islam will play less and less of a role. There is constitutional government in Southeast Asia where there is the largest concentration of Muslims in the world. With the killing of Osama bin Laden organized hatred of the West will become the province of a lunatic (but dangerous) fringe. We all forget that terrorism has been with us for a long time. Well before organized Islam reinvented it. Islam will come more and more into the mainstream and, like most fundamentalist religions, will come under the pressure of the progressives.
Which leaves us with Pakistan. According to the pundits, Pakistan presents the world with the greatest danger. Not only because it owns many nuclear bombs that could seriously harm the rest of the world. But because Pakistan remains the seat of radical Islam. The question is who will organize it. The Taliban have restricted themselves to that part of the world and do not have a world view. However the madrases are churning out children filled with hatred of American and Jews. Therefore, Pakistan is the joker in the deck. Without some focal point for radical Islam it will either die or become diluted by moderates. Or one hopes
Bernie
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