“Stability” and the Post-Mubarak Regime Posted by Marek Vermin on February 10th, 2011
One should always be cautious of lofty-sounding jargon, but especially when considering political affairs in the Middle East. Concepts like the “Peace Process” and “liberation” tend to be loaded rhetorical tools masking a grotesque reality of war and criminal behaviour behind a fantasy discourse.
It should be no surprise that the “peace process” never bears any fruit. It isn’t designed to. Israel has never been able to acquire so much land through direct settlement as when it is in dialogue with Palestinian representatives. If the “peace process” ends, Israel has to either stop at the borders of a Palestinian state or go back to being a direct occupation force and wresting the land by force of arms one inch at a time against a population mobilized to support a guerilla war. The best thing that ever happened to the Israeli settler movement was to have the state of Israel enter into negotiations with the PLO. The longer the peace process drags on, the larger the state of Israel becomes by sheer force of “facts” established on the ground.
The same can be said for the notion of “liberation” vis a vis the US and European powers. Since the outbreak of the first World War the western colonial and neo-colonial powers (France, Britain and the US) have been “liberating” the poor, oppressed people of the Middle East from their dictators and their oil. In World War I Britain and France assisted the Arabs to rise up against the Ottoman Empire, stoking Arab nationalism the best they could. However, when Arab nationalism became a force to be reckoned with in the 50s and 60s (Nasser, the Ba’ath, etc.), Europe and the US panicked and allowed Israel to unleash its fury on its neighbours, striking a near-fatal blow to the heart of Arab nationalist sentiment. Ironically, this led to the rise of Islamism, which, cross-pollinated with notions of socialism and secular liberalism, has arguably become the meta discourse framing national liberation movements in the Middle East today. The most extreme variants of which the US utilized to justify its war on Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of “liberating” the people from their oppressive regimes (of course, Iraq was a nationalist secular regime with a nod of the hat to Islamic values, but somehow Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda, right?).
As of the 25th of January, inspired by the example of Tunisians ousting their dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets demanding constitutional reforms, an end to the emergency laws that made Egypt a torture state, and the immediate end to almost 30 years of dictatorial rule by Hosni Mubarak. The reaction by the “civilized” states of the west has been more than lackluster and betrays the blustery, whimsical espousing of love for democracy. In fact, instead of welcoming the eruption of democratic revolt as a testament to the power of the will to freedom, the only reaction that Europe and the US could muster after supporting Egypt’s despot to the tune of over $1.3 billion a year, was to issue a half-hearted whimper, while scrambling to find a way to keep their pet dictator in power during an “orderly” and “stable” transition and “reform” period. The United States of America, who every year celebrates its glorious revolution in which it bucked off the yoke of foreign domination and established its democracy in a bloody rebellion, cautioned the Egyptian people to be patient and to work with the very dictator and his new vice president, Omar Suleiman, a well-known torturer, in slowly working Egypt towards a more democratic status quo. From Hillary Clinton to the heads of the EU, the word that dominates the discourse on Egypt is “stability”.
Of course, this is an obvious sham. Egypt doesn’t need the type of stability that the “respectable” leaders of the western world are referring to. That type of stability is what the Egyptian people suffered through on their way to this moment and it is such stability that needs to be put to the wall and shot if the Arab street is to have an end to the petty, corrupt despots that have been shaping the political landscape since the end of the first world war. “Stability” in this case does not refer to the security and well-being of the millions of people who live in Egypt, but rather the “Stability” of the status quo; the ability to control the political climate in the interests of US hegemony. What is obvious to anyone who has given serious critical consideration to US policy towards the Middle East is that American concerns for democracy or the economic goodwill of the people has been entirely tertiary. The main focus of US policy, like that of the European colonial powers that came before them, has been to secure control over reliable and cheap oil resources. Incidentally, this has also been the main cause for almost all of the turmoil in the region – the curse of seemingly boundless wealth, if you will.
Granted, not all of the Middle Eastern countries, and especially those of the Maghrib like Egypt, are “blessed” with a tidal pool of oil wealth. But strategically speaking, the area geo-politically defined as the Middle East possesses a common political/cultural discourse. The states of the Middle East are culturally, economically, and politically tied together in a complex web of interrelations. No doubt that the threat of a unified regional movement loomed large throughout the cold war, as it was potentially capable of throwing off the encumbrances of both the Soviet and the American hegemons. Such a move might not have decisively crippled the industrial power of either of the world’s two superpowers, but at the very least a nascent Middle Eastern power might have been decisive in determining the outcome of the cold war. That’s why when Nasser started speaking of a non-aligned movement with Egypt as the head of a pan-Arab state, the Pentagon panicked and took every measure possible to isolate the short-lived Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic, including supporting the rise of the right wing of the Ba’ath in Iraq as a regional counter-point.
As such, during the period of the cold war and beyond, it has been standard US policy to back the person/party/monarch/autocrat who ensures the most “Stability” in the region, regardless of their stance on democracy, freedom of dissent, torture, etc. Since the end of the cold war, and arguably since 1973, an “Order of Things” has been painstakingly crafted, with the pragmatic ends of making profitability (for the US and Europe, but mostly the US) central to policy, and, ultimately and crucially, predictable and “Stable”. The Stability at stake here is the ability of the US to ensure ready access to resources and control over the region for such ends, in turn assuring US supremacy globally. This is macro policy that comes at the expense of the micro; the region’s “Stability” at the expense of the individual’s rights, freedoms, health and well-being.
So when the people of the Maghrib countries rise up and start casting out their dictators, it isn’t hard to see why the US, Israel and Europe, so long the “advocates” of democracy, failed to respond with a resounding “hurrah”. In fact, it is their own poison that they must now drink. While Israel opined that they were the only true democracy in the Middle East and the US touted “openness” and “freedom”, culturally exporting its films, literature, television and music that cherish the principles of freedom and choice, when faced with a people who take those values very literally, it becomes clear that there is a major divergence between perceived values and the actual values of an American and European capitalist culture with an orientalist fear of the Middle East. The actual practice of supporting “stable” dictatorships runs in complete contradiction to espousing the virtues of democracy and freedom.
So, the US state finds itself in a pickle. It doesn’t really want democracy in Egypt for a number of reasons. First, US planners are well aware that US economic and political hegemony is resented throughout the Middle East (as well as the world as a whole). Secondly, they know that Israel’s racist treatment of the Palestinians under occupation (and even Israel’s own 1.5 million Palestinian citizens), along with its ongoing seizure of land for expansionist settlement, and the continuous threat it poses to regional independence, has generated incalculable resentment towards Israel (as well as a growing anti-Semitism). Add to this the Egyptian people’s frustration with their government’s collusion in strangling the people of Gaza during Israel’s brutal embargo and invasions, as well as a new “domino theory”, which suggests that other US-backed dictatorships are next in line, and it isn’t hard to understand that a truly democratic Egypt poses a serious threat to the “Stability” of the region.
All of this explains why the US was so loathe to give up on Mubarak, but it also explains why the US is now dumping Mubarak on his ass and throwing its support behind the sinister Omar Suleiman. First off, Suleiman can be trusted to implement US-favoured discipline on his people and the region. Having run Egyptian intelligence under Mubarak, including the CIA torture export program (extraordinary rendition), he is a pro-American strongman with no scruples. In fact, according to recently exposed US cables via Wikileaks [1][2], Suleiman has been considered as a potential successor to Mubarak since at least 2007. With no hope of saving Mubarak from the demands of the Egyptian people, the US is attempting to groom his successor, but there is a balancing act in play. The US push is still to keep passively supporting Mubarak, giving him enough time to “retire”, rather than flee. The reason for this seems quite elementary: the US-supported dictators and monarchs throughout the Middle East (ie. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Libya, Jordan, etc.) need assurances that they will not be simply discarded when their citizens potentially follow the Egyptian and Tunisian example. Their outcry to the US to support Mubarak[3][4] was a subtle reminder to the US that it needs the collusion of its client regimes, lest the precious balance keeping Arab citizenry at bay collapses and the US finds itself ousted and Israel isolated and surrounded once again (I need to mention that a Palestinian/Jewish single-state solution, like that called for by Ali Abunimah and the late Edward Said, could potentially put an end to the Israeli existential crisis that is the bread and butter of right-wing Zionism, as there would no longer be any real will in the Arab world to see Israel destroyed).
But at the moment the Egyptian people revolt in the streets and in Cairo, Tahrir Square is a liberated zone. The US and Europe are maneuvering to ensure that this very real wave of liberatory zeal and initiative is curtailed and moulded into something the US can control, but the Egyptian people are on the brink of unmaking the order of the Middle East and delivering a massive region-wide death-knell to the dictator regimes that have ossified the region’s development and robbed the people of the opportunity to have a say in their destinies. If Egypt can break free from the shackles of US interference, this revolution stands a chance of becoming a major force for positive change throughout the region, but if history tells us anything, the level of US and Israeli involvement can derail the process, forcing it to either collapse or become a reactionary tyranny, paranoid of every external threat, real or imagined. Without the constant push to maintain the order by the US power brokers, the people of Egypt would be easily capable of establishing a sane, non-reactionary political order within their country. That is why the real threat to the process of democratization in the Middle East is “Stability”. If there’s anything Egypt needs most right now, it is certainly not that.
