Arab Spring: A Columbia Forecast

The Columbia University Club of Minnesota sponsored a talk on "Change in the Ruling Systems of the Middle East." Richard W. Bulliett is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia University. Given that his discipline was history, Professor Bulliett's context for his outlook began in the 11th century, but I'll definitely telescope a lot of that material. He had some interesting remarks about foreign policy issues beyond the current turmoil in the Middle East.

Arab governments do not generally attack each other. In 1991, this fundamental principle was breached when several Arab states gave assistance to the U.S. coalition in invading Iraq. At the same time, Egypt made peace with Israel. Bulliett sees these events as laying the seeds for the current unrest.

In the eyes of the Arab populace, this violation also de-legitimized the ruling systems of the states that provided aid to another foreign infidel, namely the United States. The most stable ruling systems in the Middle East are those based on the "neo-Mamluk" model. The Mamuluks were the slave-soldiers of the Ottoman Empire, primarily Circassians, Kurds and Turks. In the military tradition that took hold in the Middle East, military leaders came from the lowest social and educational classes, a totally different model from the elite models of Britain and the U.S., where leaders come from Sandhurst and West Point.

Once the neo-Mamluks come into power, their goal is to tap deep roots, through appropriating assets, government monopolies, and widespread nepotism. A kleptocracy is their modus operandi. That is how, for example, the Egyptian military controls most of the prime residential and leisure real estate in Egypt. Once the neo-Mamluks are established, their ideology is very flexible. They are relatively indifferent about secularism, Islamism, socialism, capitalism, or fascism, as long as nothing affects their finances and life styles. While both U.S. political parties may long for an nineteenth century ideal of a secular democracies in the Middle East, this is not even in the political calculus of the neo-Mamluks.

Unlike our Wall Street Journal narrative, Bulliet says that Facebook and Twitter were marginal as far as their impact on the Arab street demonstrations. Good communication tools, no doubt, but they were not the axes of any real revolution.

Mubarak's fate in Egypt was determined by Egyptian generals in a smoky, Chicago-style backroom meeting, though probably in a luxurious palace. "Free and fair" elections will not occur, but rather "credible" elections in which Bulliet says that the Muslim Brotherhood may even achieve a plurality. However, they too understand the rules. Don't go overboard with any reforms that bring the eyes of the world on Egypt, take the counsel of the generals and protect their privileges.

In the many parenthetical sidebars that occur in an academic speech, Bulliet notes that U.S. foreign policy careerists, advisers, consultants, and academics have no idea what is going to transpire in Egypt, or Libya or Syria, for example. That is pretty distressing to hear. He also notes that the Israelis too have no clue what is happening, and they too were totally blindsided by the events leading to the street demonstrations and regime instabilities. This goes against the self-perpetuating mythology of the all-knowing and all-seeing Mossad.

This means that President Obama's call for fresh negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis is hopelessly misguided. Given that the Israelis have no idea what the future political map will look like, they would be ill-advised and irrational if they undertook any substantive negotiations in the current environment.

Professor Bulliet says that the Syrian regime has maintained the highest degree of legitimacy in the minds of Arab peoples, despite economic paralysis and political uncertainty. The reason is that the Syrian regime is the only that is consistently viewed as being anti-American and anti-Israeli from 1991 through the current turmoil. The younger Mr. Assad may likely survive, and then he may embark on some reforms, but nothing will effect the portfolios of the military leaders who lend him their legitimacy. He is not so optimistic about Libya, because, among other things, Mr. Quadaffi has brutally pruned his own military in order to secure his own interest and that of his chosen successor. It looks like it may not work, but what comes after no one knows.

There have been some gains in issues we like to read about, such as women's equality in places like Iran. Fifty percent of the university population in Iran are now women. Their role and power, though, will hardly have changed unless these graduates emigrate. Iranian university students have read classics of the Western canon because they have all been translated into Persian by university faculty looking for reasons to make themselves relevant during the Khomeini ascendancy. By contrast, Bulliet says that no Western works are being translated into Arabic at all, and so secondary and university students in their schools have absolutely no exposure to Western thoughts or ideas, except as filtered through propaganda sources.

So, there won't be many buds on the trees in the Arab spring, and the summer won't be lush. There won't be an outbreak of democratic, modernist states. Bulliet says it may take FIFTY years for any movement beyond the neo-Mamluke model, and even then it may not be the secular, tolerant democratic model that we crave in the West. Not great news, but it's something that our politicians, academicians, intelligence community and citizenry need to understand and study objectively, beyond the lens of the Cold War and anti-terror.