32. Arab Spring

Fill in the blanks: __________ has brought __________ to the Middle East.

Is it (a) “democratic revolution” and “political freedom,” (b) “American imperialism” and “tremendous bloodshed and suffering,” or somehow, wonderfully, (c) all of the above?

Table of Contents

1. Prologue
2. Democracy Promotion
3. Protection Racket
4. Minority Rights
5. Colonial Rule
6. to be continued
7. Letters to the Editor

The War for Democracy rages on (images: 1, 2)

Prologue

For your consideration:

Article 21

1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom, as much as any Body whomsoever; but I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their Goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in Government (Sir) that is nothing pertaining to them. A Subject and a Soveraign, are clean different things; […]

His Majesty King Charles I of England (1648)
on the Occasion of his Execution for Human-Rights Violations

The Thomas Carlyle Club for Young Reactionaries (Students Against a Democratic Society) is pleased (-ish) to present: some notes on an Arab Spring Surprise.

Democracy Promotion

Judging by his resume, if anyone can bring democracy and peace to the Middle East, it must be Daniel Brumberg: director of Democracy and Governance Studies at Georgetown University; special advisor to the Muslim World Initiative at the United States Institute of Peace; senior associate of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and advisory committee of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, both at the National Endowment for Democracy; distinctions too numerous to mention.

As an academic, Professor Brumberg explains, “I have worked hard to be the objective, studious scholar rather than the preacher, the activist or the advocate” (Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, 2008); whereas, at the Muslim World Initiative, “I must think, write and speak with the head and the heart of an advocate and an activist.”

This doesn’t mean giving up the scholarly side. But it does require a tricky balancing act whereby I point whatever scholarly instinct and skills I have towards advancing such lofty goals such as conflict resolution, peace processes and the like.

Call it An Undeveloped Function (1902):

Our platform [the American Historical Association] at once becomes a rostrum, and a rostrum from which a speaker of reputation and character is insured a wide hearing. His audience too is there to listen, and repeat. From such a rostrum, the observer, the professor, the student — be it of economy, of history, or of philosophy — might readily be brought into immediate contact with the issues of the day. So bringing him is but a step. He would appear, also, in his proper character and place, — the scholar having his say in politics; but always as a scholar, not as an office-holder or an aspirant for office. His appeal would be to intelligence and judgment, not to passion or self-interest, or even to patriotism. The elements are all there; the question is only as to a method of effective concentration. It must, I submit, be sought for here on the floor of the academy, and not in the confusion of the caucus.
[…]
Congress has all along been but a clumsy recording machine of conclusions worked out in the laboratory and machine-shop; and yet the idea is still deeply seated in the minds of men otherwise intelligent that, to effect political results, it is necessary to hold office, or at least to be a politician and to be heard from the hustings. Is not the exact reverse more truly the case? […] On all the issues of real moment, — issues affecting anything more than a division of the spoils or the concession of some privilege of exaction from the community, — it is the student, the man of affairs and the scientist who to-day, in last resort, closes debate and shapes public policy. His, the last word. How to organize and develop his means of influence is the question.

Professor Brumberg continues:

Indeed, I’ve been doing peacenik work for decades — as an early adviser to a host of democracy promotion outfits such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute, and as a partner with, or adviser to, democracy advocates in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. […]

So, I am going to mobilize the two Brumbergs — scholar and activist — to give our readers a take on Islamist politics that is both intensely personal and deeply dispassionate. That is not an easy balancing act.

I’ll bet. On the other hand, it’s got to be easier than reconciling “peacenik work” with “democracy promotion” — especially when the Carnegie crew gets involved. Remember the first time Carnegie took a shot at “conflict resolution”? In their own words:

Soon after the Great War broke out in Europe, State Department Counselor Robert Lansing recruited James Brown Scott, director of Carnegie’s Division of International Law, to serve as head of the Joint State and Navy Neutrality Board. As a result of Scott’s deep knowledge of the law, he became, in the words of one prominent historian, “a trusted and influential adviser to the Secretary of State on all questions relating to American neutrality.”

The Neutrality Board met every day at 10:00 a.m. at the Carnegie Endowment office at 2 Jackson Pl. NW, just across from the White House. The State Department requested the Board’s opinion on all major issues pertaining to American neutrality, including the sale of arms to belligerents, interference with neutral trade, the use of submarines and mines, the delineation of war zones, the definitions of contraband, and construction of ships for either side. Robert Lansing would later serve as both secretary of state and Carnegie Endowment trustee.

As we know, American neutrality took a hit shortly thereafter. From Woodrow Wilson’s ‘War Message to Congress’ on April 2, 1917 (with annotations by M. Moldbug):

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. […]

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life.

The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.
[…]
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

In short, “a new world order” (Britannica). Carnegie adds this helpful remark:

On April 6, 1917, both houses of Congress voted to declare war on Germany. Two weeks later, on April 19, the Carnegie Endowment’s Board of Trustees gathered for its annual meeting. The trustees unanimously declared that “the most effective means of promoting durable international peace is to prosecute the war against the Imperial Government of Germany to final victory for democracy.” Endowment Secretary James Brown Scott subsequently sent a letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing offering to place the Endowment’s staff and facilities at the disposal of the federal government.

To which we might add the discoveries of Kathryn Casey, as related by Norman Dodd, research director for the Reece Committee (film and transcript):

I went back to Washington, and I selected the member of my staff who [had] been a practicing attorney in Washington. […] In addition to which, she was unsympathetic to the purpose of the investigation. She was a level-headed and a very reasonably brilliant, capable lady, and her attitude toward the investigation was: What could possibly be wrong with foundations? They do so much good.
[…]
Off she went to New York. She came back at the end of two weeks, with the following […] on dictaphone belts.

We are now at the year nineteen hundred and eight, which was the year that the Carnegie [Foundation] began operations. And in that year, the trustees, meeting for the first time, raise a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year in a very learned fashion. And the question is: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that no more effective means than war to that end is known to humanity. So then in 1909 they raise the second question and discuss it, namely: How do we involve the United States in a war?

Well, I doubt at that time if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans was. And finally, they answer that question as follows: We must control the State Department.

And then that very naturally raises the question: How do we do that? They answer it by saying: We must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country. And finally they resolve to aim at that as an objective. […]

I might tell you, this experience, as far as its impact on Kathryn Casey is concerned — well, she never was able to return to her law practice. If it hadn’t been for Carroll Reece’s ability to tuck her away in a job with the Federal Trade Commission, I don’t know what would have happened to Kathryn. But ultimately she lost her mind as a result of it. Terrible shock to her. It’s a very rough experience to encounter proof of these kinds.

(The reader who does not subscribe to “conspiracy” theories of history is invited to explain the untimely demise of Julius Caesar, the proximate cause of the First World War, the plot of Valkyrie — and, of course, the collapse of the World Trade Center.

What I mean is: perhaps your quarrel is with ill-founded theories of history — whether or not they happen to involve a criminal conspiracy or some other kind of secret.)

Protection Racket

In his dual capacity as an activist and a scholar (above), Professor Brumberg has been keeping an eye on Egypt — and he doesn’t like what he sees (Berkley Center, 2009):

Egypt, a country of some 82 million people, once was the intellectual, strategic and political hub of the Arab world. But today, Egypt is adrift. Cairo seems more crowded, more polluted and more chaotic than ever. The country is suffocating under a cloud of political ineptitude, apathy and cynicism, the likes of which I have never seen in Egypt.

Egypt’s first and foremost problem is identified as weak government; “a lack of effective leadership.” (For leader, read ruler.)

Let’s start with the government — or the lack thereof. As I mentioned to a long-time Egyptian colleague, the only thing worse than the absence of democratic or accountable government is the absence of governance itself. President Hosni Mubarak […] is viewed by many Egyptians as a kind of absentee leader.

Professor Brumberg’s solution, of course, is to overthrow the government: “democracy promotion.” For that, he needs help from “abroad.” Argentina, perhaps.

Well aware of the country’s deepening crisis, a new generation of young Egyptian activists is trying to forge a fresh vision of political activism that transcends the old ideological, social and religious divides.

During my recent visit to Cairo, I heard some of these young people during a conference on “Emerging Leaders for Democracy.” Listening to them, I realized just how many had been inspired by President Barack Obama’s election. Indeed, most looked to his June 4 Cairo University speech as a harbinger of a new U.S. policy, one that they hoped would be based, at least in part, on a frank dialogue about human rights and democracy in Egypt.

Five months later, not a few of these aspiring leaders are now asking whether the President’s fine words will be matched by fine actions. […] So far, they can be forgiven for thinking that U.S. policymakers do not seem troubled by the growing chasm between a fragmenting state and a fractious society, many of whose young people yearn to be heard both at home and abroad.

“Aspiring leaders” with a “fresh vision” for “political activism,” not to be confused with scheming for power, “yearn to be heard” — by the U.S. State Department. But the Egyptian regime, “fragmenting” or being fragmented, refuses to surrender to the irresistible forces of history! They cling to power, exploiting a “fractious society.” Professor Brumberg is on to you, autocrats! In his wonderfully titled ‘Defying Middle East autocrats,’ he outlines “the capacity of autocracies to survive, not merely by using brute force, but also by protecting key constituencies” (Berkley Center, 2010):

Hard-line Shi’ite ideologues in Iran, Alawites in Syria, Berbers in Algeria, and secularists in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia all rely — to one degree or another — on autocracy to defend them. The regimes that rule their fractious societies are nothing less than protection rackets that use (and magnify) the fears provoked by the uncertainties of democratic politics to maintain their power.
[…]
How then to undermine this protection racket in a manner that advances domestic peace-making and reconciliation? […]

In the Arab world, opportunities for negotiating a different political future remain alive in some states, while they may be dying in others. Yemen — and perhaps even Palestine — could be slipping into the near-hopeless category. But in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait, a new generation of political activists is looking for an exit from the cul-de-sac of autocracy.
[…]
This is first and foremost a task that the citizens of the Middle East must undertake. But if they lead, then surely Washington can help by encouraging genuine political dialogues — particularly in those Arab states whose rulers assume that their geo-strategic relations with the U.S. provide a blank check for sustaining the old protection racket.

Here Professor Brumberg comes dangerously close to making two good points.

First, a protection racket is “a scheme whereby a criminal group provides protection to businesses through violence outside the sanction of the law” (Wik). A regime, or sovereign state, provides the same service (in this context known as property rights) in the same way — except that a regime, being sovereign, gets to define and enforce “the sanction of the law,” thereby reducing any militarily inferior racket in the area to a mere “criminal group.” Within its own territory, the regime is above the law, as Sir Robert Filmer explains in Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings (1680):

There can be no Laws without a Supreme Power to command or make them. In all Aristocraties the Nobles are above the Laws, and in all Democraties the People. By the like Reason, in a Monarchy the King must of necessity be above the Laws; there can be no Soveraign Majesty in him that is under them; that which giveth the very Being to a King, is the Power to give Laws; without this Power he is but an Equivocal King. It skills not which way Kings come by their Power, whether by Election, Donation, Succession, or by any other means; for it is still the manner of the Government by Supreme Power that makes them properly Kings, and not the means of obtaining their Crowns. Neither doth the Diversity of Laws, nor contrary Customs, whereby each Kingdom differs from another, make the Forms of Common-Weal different, unless the Power of making Laws be in several Subjects.

For the Confirmation of this point, Aristotle saith, That a perfect Kingdom is that wherein the King rules all things according to his Own Will, for he that is called a King according to the Law, makes no kind of Kingdom at all. This it seems also the Romans well understood to be most necessary in a Monarchy; for though they were a People most greedy of Liberty, yet the Senate did free Augustus from all Necessity of Laws, that he might be free of his own Authority, and of absolute Power over himself and over the Laws, to do what he pleased, and leave undone what he list, and this Decree was made while Augustus was yet absent. Accordingly we find, that Ulpian the great Lawyer delivers it for a Rule of the Civil Law; Princeps, Legibus solutus est, The Prince is not bound by the Laws.

As David Brat recently pointed out, “The government holds a monopoly on violence.” Regimes, like rackets, “negotiate territories in which they can monopolize the use of violence in settling disputes” (Wik), through processes known (in the sovereign context) as diplomacy and war. In Europe, these negotiations were once conducted according to classical international law. See, for example, Vattel’s 1758 Law of Nations (2008):

Since nations are free, independent, and equal, — and since each possesses the right of judging, according to the dictates of her conscience, what conduct she is to pursue in order to fulfil her duties, — the effect of the whole is, to produce, at least externally and in the eyes of mankind, a perfect equality of rights between nations, in the administration of their affairs and the pursuit of their pretensions, without regard to the intrinsic justice of their conduct, of which others have no right to form a definitive judgment; so that whatever may be done by any one nation, may be done by any other; and they ought, in human society, to be considered as possessing equal rights.

Each nation in fact maintains that she has justice on her side in every dispute that happens to arise: and it does not belong to either of the parties interested, or to other nations, to pronounce a judgment on the contested question. The party who is in the wrong is guilty of a crime against her own conscience: but as there exists a possibility that she may perhaps have justice on her side, we cannot accuse her of violating the laws of society.

It is therefore necessary, on many occasions, that nations should suffer certain things to be done, though in their own nature unjust and condemnable; because they cannot oppose them by open force, without violating the liberty of some particular state, and destroying the foundations of their natural society. And since they are bound to cultivate that society, it is of course presumed that all nations have consented to the principle we have just established. The rules that are deduced from it, constitute what Monsieur Wolf calls “the voluntary law of nations”; and there is no reason why we should not use the same term, although we thought it necessary to deviate from that great man in our manner of establishing the foundation of that law.

The laws of natural society are of such importance to the safety of all states, that, if the custom once prevailed of trampling them under foot, no nation could flatter herself with the hope of preserving her national existence, and enjoying domestic tranquillity, however attentive to pursue every measure dictated by the most consummate prudence, justice, and moderation. Now all men and all states have a perfect right to those things that are necessary for their preservation, since that right corresponds to an indispensable obligation. All nations have therefore a right to resort to forcible means for the purpose of repressing any one particular nation who openly violates the laws of the society which nature has established between them, or who directly attacks the welfare and safety of that society.

International law includes the laws of war. See, for example, Davis’s Elements of International Law (1908) for a straightforward explanation:

As there is no superior authority to which a state can appeal for redress when any of its sovereign rights have been trespassed upon, denied, or impeded in their exercise, it is compelled, as a last resort, to redress its own injury or wrong. This it does by a suspension of all friendly relations with the offending state, and by a resort to such acts of hostility as are authorized by the laws of war. Again, in the performance of its duty of protecting its citizens and their property from acts of domestic violence, a government sometimes finds its ordinary legal machinery inadequate to the purpose, and is compelled to make use of the public armed force in order to compel obedience to the law, to quell insurrection and rebellion, or to enforce respect for its neutral obligations. In one case the state uses force against another state; in the other its force is directed against a portion of its own population and the military operations are carried within its territory.
[…]
With the inherent rightfulness of war international law has nothing to do. War exists as a fact of international relations, and, as such, it is accepted and discussed. In defining the law of war, at any time, the attempt is made to formulate its rules and practices, and to secure the general consent of nations to such modifications of its usages as will tend towards greater humanity, or will shorten its duration, restrict its operations, and hasten the return of peace and the restoration of the belligerent states to their normal relations.

Neutrality

Let us be specific: consider the concept of neutrality in war under classical international law. Our source: Grotius’s 1623 Rights of War and Peace (1901).

Again, according to what was said in a preceding part of this book, it is the duty of those, who profess neutrality in a war to do nothing towards increasing the strength of a party maintaining an unjust cause, nor to impede the measures of a power engaged in a just and righteous cause. But in doubtful cases, they ought to shew themselves impartial to both sides, and to give no succour to besieged places, but should allow the troops of each to march through the country, and to purchase forage, and other supplies.

This concept clearly informs George Washington’s farewell address (1796):

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

As well as the famous foreign policy doctrine of James Monroe (1823):

Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the Government de facto as the legitimate Government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy; meeting, in all instances, the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none.

Mandatory Thomas Carlyle (writing, of course, in a time of British dominance): Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. IV: ‘The New Downing Street’ (1855).

When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of their Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternal facts again, our Foreign Office may again have extensive concerns with them. And at all times, and even now, there will remain the question to be sincerely put and wisely answered, What essential concern has the British Nation with them and their enterprises? Any concern at all, except that of handsomely keeping apart from them? If so, what are the methods of best managing it? — At present, as was said, while Red Republic but clashes with foul Bureaucracy; and Nations, sunk in blind ignavia, demand a universal-suffrage Parliament to heal their wretchedness; and wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle with Sham-Kingship and extinct or galvanized Catholicism; and in the Cave of the Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled against each other, — our English interest in the controversy, however huge said controversy grow, is quite trifling; we have only in a handsome manner to say to it: “Tumble and rage along, ye rotten waifs and wrecks; clash and collide as seems fittest to you; and smite each other into annihilation at your own good pleasure. In that huge conflict, dismal but unavoidable, we, thanks to our heroic ancestors, having got so far ahead of you, have now no interest at all. Our decided notion is, the dead ought to bury their dead in such a case: and so we have the honor to be, with distinguished consideration, your entirely devoted, — FLIMNAP, SEC. FOREIGN DEPARTMENT.” — I really think Flimnap, till truer times come, ought to treat much of his work in this way: cautious to give offence to his neighbors; resolute not to concern himself in any of their self-annihilating operations whatsoever.

Compare Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Meaning of the Declaration of Independence’ (1914):

Our independence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatest nations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it is another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to do with your life and your energies; and one of the most serious questions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the United States is this: What are we going to do with the influence and power of this great Nation? […]

My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal; that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.

What other great people has devoted itself to this exalted ideal? To what other nation in the world can all eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting for their rights?

Which is… inconsistent with President Washington. To say the least. (“Her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity” — not to be confused with world domination.)

Now we can fully appreciate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks (28 Jan. 2011):

Before discussing the important matters that were part of our meeting, I would like to say something about the unfolding events in Egypt.

We continue to monitor the situation very closely. We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protestors, and we call on the Egyptian Government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces. At the same time, protestors should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully.

As we have repeatedly said, we support the universal human rights of the Egyptian people, including the right to freedom of expression, of association and of assembly. We urge the Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and to reverse the unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications. These protests underscore that there are deep grievances within Egyptian society, and the Egyptian Government needs to understand that violence will not make these grievances go away.

Not to mention the victory speech of Barack Obama (2008):

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

Ah, global leadership — not be confused…

Peace

Besides neutrality, we must consider treaties of peace. From Grotius again:

As in making peace, it scarcely ever happens that either party will acknowledge the injustice of his cause, or of his claims, such a construction must be given, as will equalize the pretensions of each side, which may be accomplished, either by restoring the disputed possessions to their former situation, or by leaving them in the state to which the war has reduced them.

Of these two methods, in a doubtful case, the latter is preferred, as being the more easily adjusted, and occasioning no further change.

Note that neither method describes the Treaty of Versailles.

Under classical international law, peace treaties are different from private contracts in one crucial respect. From Davis again:

Treaties of Peace resemble ordinary treaties in form, in the detailed method of preparation, and in binding force. They differ from ordinary treaties, and from private contracts, in respect to the position of the contracting parties, who, from the necessities of the case, do not enter them upon equal terms. This in no respect detracts from their obligatory character, which cannot be too strongly insisted upon. “Agreements entered into by an individual while under duress are void, because it is for the welfare of society that they should be so. If they were binding, the timid would be constantly forced by threats or violence into a surrender of their rights, and even into secrecy as to the oppression under which they were suffering. The [knowledge] that such engagements are void makes the attempt to extort them one of the rarest of human crimes. On the other hand, the welfare of society requires that the engagements entered into by a nation under duress should be binding; for, if they were not so, wars would terminate only by the utter subjugation and ruin of the weaker party” [Senior, Edinburgh Review].

“The utter subjugation and ruin of the weaker party” — note that this describes the termination of both outbreaks of the War for Democracy. We might well say that America’s entry into the First World War marks the death of classical international law. From Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed (2001):

World War I began as an old-fashioned territorial dispute. However, with the early involvement and the ultimate official entry into the war by the United States in April 1917, the war took on a new ideological dimension. The United States had been founded as a republic, and the democratic principle, inherent in the idea of a republic, had only recently been carried to victory as the result of the violent defeat and devastation of the secessionist Confederacy by the centralist Union government. At the time of World War I, this triumphant ideology of an expansionist democratic republicanism had found its very personification in then U.S. President Wilson. Under Wilson’s administration, the European war became an ideological mission — to make the world safe for democracy and free of dynastic rulers. […]

As an increasingly ideologically motivated conflict, the war quickly degenerated into a total war. Everywhere, the entire national economy was militarized (war socialism), and the time-honored distinction between combatants and non-combatants and military and civilian life fell by the way-side. For this reason, World War I resulted in many more civilian casualties — victims of starvation and disease — than of soldiers killed on the battlefields. Moreover, due to the ideological character of the war, at its end no compromise peace but only total surrender, humiliation, and punishment was possible. Germany had to give up her monarchy, and Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France as before the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. The new German republic was burdened with heavy long-term reparations. Germany was demilitarized, the German Saarland was occupied by the French, and in the East large territories had to be ceded to Poland (West Prussia and Silesia). However, Germany was not dismembered and destroyed. Wilson had reserved this fate for Austria. With the deposition of the Habsburgs the entire Austrian-Hungarian Empire was dismembered. As the crowning achievement of Wilson’s foreign policy, two new and artificial states: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were carved out of the former Empire.

Well… at least we got Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia out of it.

Minority Rights

Hard-line Shi’ite ideologues in Iran, Alawites in Syria, Berbers in Algeria, and secularists in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia all rely — to one degree or another — on autocracy to defend them. The regimes that rule their fractious societies are nothing less than protection rackets that use (and magnify) the fears provoked by the uncertainties of democratic politics to maintain their power.

As for the second good point Professor Brumberg didn’t make (above), autocracies have indeed proved to be relatively competent at protecting various “key constituencies” in “fractious” (that is, multicultural) societies — which, if you think about it, might just explain “the fears provoked by the uncertainties of democratic politics.”

Speaking of Austria-Hungary, Robert Merry reviews John Gray’s book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (The American Interest, 2013):

Gray pulls from the past Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) and Joseph Roth (1894–1939), noted Austrian authors and journalists, both of Jewish origin, who wrote extensively about what Austria had been like under the Hapsburg crown. […]

Torture had been abolished under the Hapsburgs. Bigotry and hatred, while evident in society, were kept in check by an authoritarian monarchy that didn’t have to respond to mass movements spawned in the name of self-government. “Only with the struggle for national self-determination,” writes Gray, “did it come to be believed that every human being had to belong to a group defined in opposition to others.”
[…]
Both Roth and Zweig died before they could see the full magnitude of this barbarity. But, whatever one may think of the Hapsburg Empire and what came after, it is difficult to see that train of events as representing human progress.

Egypt is another good example — but I’m not thinking of President Mubarak. Let’s turn the clock back to the bad old days of British colonial rule. Our tour guide is Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer: Consul-General of Egypt, 1883–1907. In Modern Egypt (1908), he invites us to take a stroll down a Cairo street. Whom do we meet?

The first passer-by is manifestly an Egyptian fellah who has come into the city to sell his garden produce. The headgear, dress, and aquiline nose of the second render it easy to recognise a Bedouin who is perhaps come to Cairo to buy ammunition for his flint-lock gun, but who is ill at ease amidst urban surroundings, and will hasten to return to the more congenial air of the desert. The small, thick-lipped man with dreamy eyes, who has a far-away look of one of the bas-reliefs on an ancient Egyptian tomb, but who Champollion and other savants tell us is not the lineal descendant of the ancient Egyptians, is presumably a Coptic clerk in some Government office. The face, which peers somewhat loweringly over a heavy moustache from the window of a passing brougham, is probably that of some Turco-Egyptian Pasha. The man with a bold, handsome, cruel face, who swaggers by in long boots and baggy trousers, must surely be a Circassian. The Syrian money-lender, who comes next, will get out of his way, albeit he may be about to sell up the Circassian’s property the next day to recover a loan of which the capital and interest, at any ordinary rate, have been already paid twenty times over. The green turban, dignified mien, and slow gait of the seventh passerby denote some pious Sheikh, perhaps on his way to the famous University of El-Azhar. The eighth must be a Jew, who has just returned from a tour in Asia Minor with a stock of embroideries, which he is about to sell to the winter tourists. The ninth would seem to be some Levantine nondescript, whose ethnological status defies diagnosis; and the tenth, though not easily distinguishable from the latter class, is in reality one of the petty traders of whom Greece is so prolific, and who are to be found dotted all over the Ottoman dominions. Nor is the list yet exhausted. Armenians, Tunisians, Algerians, Soudanese, Maltese, half-breeds of every description, and pure-blooded Europeans pass by in procession, and all go to swell the mass, if not of Egyptians, at all events of dwellers in Egypt.

Fast forward to 2007. Lucette Lagnado is an American journalist, born in Egypt to a Jewish family: ‘Searching for My Father’s Lost City’ (The Wall Street Journal).

As my car pulled into Suleiman Pasha Square in the heart of downtown Cairo, I spotted it immediately — Groppi’s, the patisserie that was really so much more: A palace of pleasure, the hub of elegant European social life, the city at its most vibrant and cosmopolitan. It seemed exactly as I remembered it when I’d last seen it as a little girl more than 40 years earlier, its name in that charming old-fashioned scrawl, the entrance covered by colorful mosaics and, inside, the same cool, high-ceilinged, marble elegance and pale pink walls.

Or maybe not the same.

The shelves were almost bare. No one stood in line at the ancient cash register. The few trays of pastries, which seemed neither French nor Middle Eastern, looked thoroughly unappetizing. The dining area had dozens of tables and almost no diners.

I was only six when my family left Egypt in 1963, among tens of thousands of Jews forced to leave in a modern-day exodus. After we fled, first to Paris then New York, I grew up on a diet of stories about our lost life. Many featured Groppi’s: Part pastry-shop, part paradise, a favorite of kings, colonialists and privileged Cairenes.

Now, Groppi’s was like the rest of Cairo — a museum to a bygone era.

All right: the city is indeed lost. And this happened because…

Egypt’s efforts to chart an economic and political course separate from old colonial powers was important, many Egyptians believe, for the country to purge itself of foreigners whose influence and power were seen as oppressive. It was necessary for the country to pursue its own destiny.

If you like this stuff, be sure to check out Mein Kampf.

In January 1952, in what became known as “Black Saturday,” angry crowds rushed through the streets of fashionable downtown Cairo torching all the symbols of luxury and foreign excess: department stores, cinemas, airline offices, banks, restaurants, private clubs and hotels. Among the victims: Shepheard’s, Groppi’s and Cinema Metro. They had made the average Cairene feel like stranger in his own land, because for those who were neither foreign nor rich nor Jewish much of the city — even a patisserie like Groppi’s — was off limits. The vast majority of Egyptians never felt welcome and most couldn’t afford it.

Welcome to Weimar.

The anger against British dominance and government corruption culminated with the overthrow of King Farouk in July, 1952 by a group of military officers. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, a leader of the coup, took over in 1954 and set out to remake Egypt. Neither foreigners nor Jews were welcome — even those who were born there or had lived there for decades. They were forced out as Nasser nationalized industries, sequestered businesses and put military people in charge. Driven in part by idealism, he instituted land reforms that took land away from the rich and imposed rent control laws to protect the poor. Positioning himself as leader of the Arab world, he allied himself with the Soviets, socialized Egypt’s economy and waged several wars against Israel.

Within a space of 19 years, nearly all of Egypt’s 80,000 Jews left. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans also fled — British and French who were ordered out, as well as others who held foreign passports and had no choice but to leave because they had been stripped of their businesses and livelihood.

So why, again, was all this torching and stripping necessary? Given that foreigners had “turned Cairo into a capital of all-night cafes and open-air cinemas.”

Many ordinary Egyptians were mired in poverty, cut off from the cafes and nightlife. Beggars roamed the streets.

Oh, right. And how did that work out?

Economically, the decline relative to other countries has been steep. In 1950, prior to the revolution, Egypt’s per capita income was 80% that of Greece’s and 45% of Italy’s; now, says Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonprofit think tank, Egypt has 11% of Greece’s per capita income, and 6% of Italy’s.

But doesn’t that suggest —

“No Egyptian would like the colonial powers to come back to Cairo — either British or French. We struggled for our independence,” says Yehia El-Gamal, an attorney and law professor in Cairo who first came to the city in the 1940s.

I see.

Egypt’s 2011 revolution (which began on January 25) occasioned further reflection on the country’s “lost splendor.” Handle writes at Foseti’s (3 Feb. 2011):

As for Egypt, a relative was born in Cairo to a reasonably prosperous Jewish family soon after WWII. This person remembers childhood fondly and speaks often of the greatness of “Old Egypt” as being quite the Liberal, Modern, Strongly Europeanized, and Cosmopolitan paradise. A place tolerant of innumerable intersections of art, commerce, ideas, culture, and even those from different ethnic and religious background.

And then came the war with Israel, and then the Free Officers movement, and then their coup and revolution against “Great King Ali,” and then the die was cast. The family stayed during Naguib’s reign as President, but when Nasser forced him out things began to deteriorate quickly, especially for European Christians and most especially for the formerly tolerated Jews. By the time of the Suez crisis, the writing was on the wall, and 15-year old rural rabble revolutionary conscripts were told they could steal what they wanted, rape who they wanted, and burn down their houses and farms and occupy and seize their lands. That should sound like a familiar pattern to us 21st century folk.

Leniency was being allowed to live and flee with only the shirt on your back to one of the few European countries chartering boat-lifts to save the lives of those in the forced exodus. My relative was a young child at the time, and the experience has never worn off.

And things are so much worse there now than they were in 1956.

And here is the Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy, whom we’ll meet again a little later, being interviewed by PBS (9 Feb. 2011):

I grew up hearing from my parents about a very different Egypt, an Egypt that was very open to the world, an Egypt that was very cosmopolitan. When you look at Egypt in the past century, despite class differences that we had, despite the fact that we lived under a monarchy, despite the fact that we lived under British occupation, we had this cosmopolitan air to Egypt. It was home to so many different ethnic and religious groups. We had a large Jewish community. [The] Christian community in Egypt did not feel as beleaguered or as discriminated against as it does today.

“Despite” autocracy. “Despite” the British.

The atmosphere, the space for political and religious discussions and intellectual discussions was much larger. Egypt was the cultural home for the Arab world. We were the Hollywood of the Arab world. If you wanted to launch a newspaper, if you wanted to publish a risque book, you came to Egypt. Egypt was this magnet to this amazing kind of Arab cultural, political and intellectual isms of all kinds.

And the Mubarak regime — actually, not just the Mubarak regime. Every single military dictatorship since the coup of 1952 has suffocated all of that out of Egypt.

Gee. No kidding. You don’t say. So… how do you feel about the new revolution?

What kind of an Egypt will come out of all this, in your opinion?

I think a much better Egypt. I think an Egypt that is finally able to breathe without this dictator who has suffocated the country for three decades; an Egypt that is able to recognize the country in its diversity. […]

This fear that’s out there that the Muslim Brotherhood will hijack the revolution, how much of a possibility is that?

I don’t think the Muslim Brotherhood will hijack the revolution.

Now, Professor Brumberg’s particular concern was Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, and a possible government conspiracy against their herds of pigs (Berkley Center, 2009):

“We remind Hosni Mubarak that we are all Egyptians. Where does he want us to go?” Gergis Faris, a 46-year-old pig farmer in Cairo who collects garbage to feed his animals, told the Associated Press. “We are uneducated people, just living day by day… and now if our pigs are taken from us without compensation, how are we supposed to live?”

In the past two days Egyptian authorities have slaughtered some 300,000 pigs. Never mind that health officials from Atlanta to Melbourne have asserted that Swine Flu is transmitted not by pigs but from people to people. As panic sets in on a global level, pork barrel politics of a very different kind is spreading fast, and with equal madness.

Egypt’s story, of course, is not solely about pigs or disease. Partly, it is a story about the status of Christian Copts, who make up ten percent of the population, and who have long complained of political and economic discrimination. If, as the Washington Post reports, some Islamist radical Web sites have asserted that the Swine Flu is God’s revenge against “infidels,” we can’t blame Egyptian Copts for feeling that there is more to the killing of their pigs than the arbitrary actions of an arbitrary regime.

I have not as yet found the above referenced militant Islamist Web site.

We pay a visit to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority post-Arab Spring (2013):

The ongoing political violence in Egypt has led to unprecedented attacks on the country’s Coptic Christian minority, the worst in their history. Copts, who make up roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population, were the target of revenge by Muslim mobs this summer after Egypt’s first Islamist president was overthrown in a military coup. Over 40 Christian churches all over Egypt were gutted by arson and looted — some over a thousand years old and full of priceless relics. Copts have also been murdered in ongoing sectarian violence.

Ah, well. At least we tried.

Colonial Rule

This will be continued. I’m sure you’re very much looking forward to meeting our next source: Michael Vlahos, Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College, regular foreign affairs and national security commentator on CNN, formerly of the State Department and CIA and Director of the Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (The Huffington Post, 9 Feb. 2011):

The British regime in Egypt lasted 70 years (1882–1952). A strong Consul-General ran the government. Paper Egyptian front men held the titles, while the ministries themselves were run by British officials. Solid Victorian rule-of-law rooted out corruption. In the “Veiled Protectorate” the British set about “building capacity.” A mutinous army was disbanded and a very modern model created, complete with pips and collar tabs. Finance was reformed, and a program of development and internal investment vigorously pursued.

[…]

Strict comparison would incline to prefer the British colonial to America’s client king model. But how can this be? European colonialism represented a truly repugnant, even loathsome paradigm of subjugation rationalized through racism. So how do we confront the truth that British rule in Egypt led to a far more positive and civilized outcome than the despotic parasitism nurtured by the U.S. “alliance relationship”?

How indeed can this be? It would help if we knew a little more about “colonialism.” Let’s break it down. First, colonialism is (a) “truly repugnant, even loathsome,” which, according to Oxford Dictionaries, makes it “extremely distasteful” or “causing hatred or disgust” — but this merely begs the question. Moving on.

Colonialism is also (b) a “paradigm of subjugation,” which makes it either “a typical example of” or (more likely) “a world view underlying” some force that brought Egypt “under domination or control.” In other words, colonialism is a political formula for some system of government, originating in Europe. That doesn’t sound so bad. Unless you’re an Egyptian nationalist, of course — but we saw how that formula worked out…

Finally, colonialism is (c) “rationalized through racism.” So a theory, called “racism,” whatever it might be, was used to “explain or justify” colonialism. Granted. But we’ve just learned that colonization “led to a far more positive and civilized outcome” than decolonization, which of course predicted the exact opposite result and, being officially anti-“racist,” went to great lengths to “explain or justify” itself according to… well, some other theory. Not “racism.” All of which suggests that the “racism” theory might be — oh no! We’ve gone too far! Forgive me, gentle reader. I must be mad (Issue 12).

Unlike Professor Vlahos. He is an expert (my emphasis):

Today’s spirit of the age is more about people than ever before, and the feeling against tyrants is greater that at any time in history.

You, world power — however big and awe-inspiring you are — cannot buck the spirit of the age. Consider the British in Egypt just for another moment. When the Victorian Force was with them they were unstoppable.

That’s a Star Wars reference. Nothing to do with cannons.

In 1919, after betraying this spirit in a war that nearly destroyed civilization, world consciousness shifted. Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points contained these electric words: “Political independence.” Mass demonstration of the Egyptian people — in 1919 like today — was a sign that the world zeitgeist had shifted forever.

Not to be confused with America’s military and economic power relative to Britain.

It shifted again at the end of World War II. But this time the British were strangely out of touch. When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 the British led an invasion of Egypt. But this was 1882 no longer.

That’s right! The Ghost of Time was on the move.

Today the spirit of the age has shifted yet again, moving yet further away from memories of a Victorian imperial age. […]

To persevere in our stately course of client kingship is to go over, inevitably, to the dark side — and in history’s course, this must also be the losing side.

Makes sense to me!

These notes on the Arab Spring will be continued.