Protests in the Middle East Part Two: In which I waffle between being a realist and neocon

The second point is what the Obama administration should do in the face of these protests. Obviously, it’s the same balancing act that American administrations have faced for the past 60 years – whether to side with strong-man dictators who offer support for our policies, or to side with the democratic protesters who are almost invariably more hostile toward U.S. interests (with the possible exception of in Iran).


Most commentators try to break these down into two camps: the realists, who support whichever side favors our interests more, and the ideologues who think the spread of democracy is a net good. In fact, policymakers almost always must balance the competing interests, and do so pragmatically. I think the post-Cold War presidents are generally supportive of pro-democracy movements so long as the downside for U.S. interests is not too steep. We lose a corrupt but supportive dictator in Egypt, and (generally) side with the protesters. This will doubtless make U.S. policy in the region at least temporarily more difficult, but our impulse to side with the pro-democratic movement trumps the realist argument.

But in places like Afghanistan or Yemen where we are actively fighting Al Qaida, we continue to prop up strong-men, even in the face of corruption, violence, and dictatorships. Indeed, while the State Department has offered words of support for the protesters in almost every other Middle Eastern country, they have been conspicuously silent for those in Yemen, where the likelihood of revolution seems high – most likely because of Yemen’s leader’s support of American bombings of suspected terrorist targets in the country. In Yemen, Obama’s realist calculations trump his democracy-supporting impulses, for better or worse. I mean that! I don’t know if it’s for better or worse. It is unknowable.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Guess what. We’re revamping the GART blog to stand for Geopolitical American Rhetorical Topics. Or something. Anyway, I’m going to be just writing about politics, so feel free to unsubscribe if that’s not your bag. Or you could stay and read and humor/heckle me.

Protests in the Middle East Part One: In which I kind of quote Rumsfeld

What is happening in the Middle East, and what should Obama do about it? The first question is almost as hard to answer as the second. No one knows. I doubt any foreign intelligence agencies know. The media doesn’t know. But standard questions like: how many people are protesting? How representative are the protesters of the general population? How stable is the regime in power (in the sense that most Middle Eastern nations rely upon the cooperation of fairly autonomous militaries)?


I think a big problem with media and political commentary in the modern era is we expect that intelligence agencies will know everything. Obviously, they don’t – and the things they “know,” they don’t know with any kind of certainty. People criticize the Obama administration for not knowing when and how Mubarak would ultimately step down. No one knew! Many things are unknowable, as Rumsfeld would remind us in what was his most astute formulation.

The few things we can know (we being the intelligence agencies and the public itself) in these dynamic and malleable protests are the underlying demographics of the country at large. Here’s a good example: Egypt has a median age of only 24 years old, a literacy rate of 66%, and a poverty rate of only 17% (according to BBC). Essentially, a young, fairly well-educated population. The povety rate is surprisingly low, but traditionally revolutions are the product of a middle-class uprising. I think it’s clear that’s what we saw there – secular-ish, young Egyptians demanding more economic and political freedoms.

Let’s compare to Yemen, another country apparently undergoing massive protests. Literacy rate is comparable at 61% and average age is only 17.9 (!) with poverty rate over 40%. Will this translate into enough force to overthrow the government? Demographically, the fact that there is such a large young population would strengthen that case, whereas the weak middle . Again, no one will know if the protests there will reach the magnitude to take down the government – but just logically, I’d be much more wary of a group of angry teenagers protesting than say an older population.

Still, this isn’t a science. The median age in Tunisia is one of the oldest in the region – 30. All we should hope for from our intelligence and diplomatic agencies is that they are appropriately weighing the things that we do know – the facts. Everything else is conjecture.