Tunisia, Arabs, and Israel
Today’s Spiegel-online has a piece on the revolution in Tunisia and its possible consequences for other Arab countries and even for Israel, whose Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom is quoted as fearing that “Tunisia might ‘set a precedent that could be repeated in other countries, possibly affecting directly the stability of our system.’ If democratic governments take over Israel’s neighboring states, the vice prime minister said, the days of the Arab-Israeli security alliance will be over.”
A couple of key paragraphs from the piece:
The populations of these countries are young and unhappy. Indeed, 53.4 percent — or roughly 190 million out of a current population of 352 million Arabs — are younger than 24 years old, and nearly three-quarters of them are unemployed. In many cases, the education these young people receive doesn’t do them any good because there are no jobs in the fields they trained for. Many are 35 or even 40 before they can afford to marry. In essence, this is a violation of a basic human right perpetrated against millions in countries such as Egypt, where life expectancy is nine years less than it is in Germany, or in Yemen, where the figure is almost 15 years lower.
Governments in these countries, on the other hand, are corrupt and outdated. Indeed, before Ben Ali’s ouster, the leaders of North Africa’s five countries had enjoyed a combined total of 115 years in office. The countries’ youth ministers are generally old men.
In countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, demographics, governments run by old men and widespread malaise are forming a dangerous mix. Although it is aware of the situation, the West continues to support the old rulers.
It wil be interesting to see what the aftermath of today”s “day of rage” protest brings in Egypt -if any.
Sounds like the chickens are coming home to roost. It is a paradox that the West supports dictatorships for stability. It is a fleeting solution which now is showing the effects of that bad policy.
The last sentence in part 2 speaks with authority: “They [Arab leaders] care a lot about stability and very little about democracy. And, so far, no one in the West has told them to act any differently.”
Is it the case that the most powerful organizing force in most of these coutries are Islamicists who probably aren’t going to favor democracy either?
When the European countries under Communist domination overthrew the Soviets, there were people in those countries who remembered and knew how to govern democratically. Do any of the Muslim countries besides Turkey have any history of real democratic government at all?
Pardon my ignorance, but I thought that Israel would be safer in the middle east if it was surrounded by democratic governments.
I may be wrong, but it seems as though the ‘hot-heads’ in Muslim countries were not the common people, but the governments…
Maybe Israel’s real fear is that, with democratically elected governments all around them, they would not find it so easy to be inflexible, demanding, and such a frequent violator of human rights.
I would hardly call Iran a ‘democracy’, so we have little experience in the area, and it looks as though Turkey is being taken over by the Iranian-fed Muslim extremists.
Maybe we could entice Israel to purchase some large portion of Utah (they’d feel right at home) and move here as an official 51st State. Lord know that with all the money we’ve given them, they could afford it! The bonus is that they’d be a lot easier to influence surrounded by US.
Nu?
Another day of rage in Egypt apparently.
In the State of the Union, The president constrasted our (messy0 democracy with the rest of the world and stated we’ll support democratic movements.
Egypt? Mubarak?
His thought would be a real progressive movement from our support of lots of dictators in the past.
(Perhaps we need a new thread on progress and the State of the Union and foreign relations – more than than the forthcoming spending/deficit reduction arguments that wil perdure for the next two years at least.)
Since reading William Pfaff’s “The Irony of Manifest Destiny” and in the light of the history of the Western powers’ ways of dealing with the Arab world, I find no reason to think that ” democracy building” is a sound policy either for the U. S. or for the European powers to embrace. It does not follow that the U. S. and Europe have no legitimate interests in what happens in the Middle East. But neither does it follow that having these interests entitles these foreign powers to promote forms of government that they happen to prefer. Western democracies have no unblemished record either in their foreign policies or in their domestic ones.
I do not where Tunisia is important to us one way or the other, and I sure hope we keep our nose out of their business.
Since Tunisia is a former French colony, we should steer clear and let the French handle anything international that might need doing.
Democracy building is worth thinking about in the Middle East precisely because we have been so allied iwth dictators who ar ecorrupt -as we have in other parts of the world.
So as a Nobel Prize winner returns to Egypt to lead the democracy movement and protests continue on day three, where should we stand there?
The Mubarak government says it’s negotiating with the protestors, but what does this mean?
If Mubarak’s son can’t take over next year, do we have a plan to relate there that’s sound?
In Tunisia, if the Islamists take over, will we stand with the women who bravely fought for a change of government?
I think deep change is brewing on the horizon in that neck of the world and we need something better than stay clear or put our heads in the sand to what may be faster change than we think.
Bob N. ==
I suspect you’re right. When Communism fell it came as a big surprise how fast it came. Apparently it had been brewing a long, long time, but people didn’t speak what they really believed — even Communists in power! — because they were afraid to criticize the totalitarian governments. When everyone realized that nobody thought Communism was working in imploded very fast.
But the problem in the Muslim world is that it doesn’t have a history of democratic institutions.
Day 4, and the Mubarak government didn’t listen to Obama on UTube last night – but, in Suez and Alexabdria. it appears the police are joining forces with the protestors.
Fascinating.
How our posture will be viewed there when the dust settles is of some critical import as the discussion on the PBS Newshour last night pointed up.
It strikes me on a broader level that ease of information/communication in our technology age made a lot of this possible and that, if that’s right, we’ll see more and need to have some real appreciation of how important it is that the guy in the street feels his government needs to hgelp him live a decent life.
And what our example is! (see the growing gap thread above.)