Unsettled civilizations: How the US can
handle Iraq By Reuven Brenner
There is an old clause in the law codes that
King Ine of Wessex established in the 8th century. If
fewer than seven men attack private property, they are
thieves; if between seven and 35 attack, they are a
gang, and if more than 35, they are a military
expedition. According to these criteria, billionaire
philanthropist and financier George Soros' view of the
September 11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than an
act of war - stating that "crime requires police work,
not military action" - is erroneous. After all, the 19
people carrying out the attack were backed by
well-organized groups of thousands of other people and
by a financing network too. Al-Qaeda's goal has been to
fight the United States, and declare war on it. Why
shouldn't one take such declarations seriously?
Whereas Soros believes that the police and the
US giving more foreign aid are the solutions for dealing
with terrorism, others view the events unfolding since
September 11, 2001 in a different light. Samuel
Huntington sees these events as part of a "clash of
civilizations", and suggests remedies such as
strengthening the US's military power and increasing
coordination with Western Europe, Russia, Japan, and
Latin America. Most important, Huntington concludes, is
"to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs
of other civilizations is probably the single-most
dangerous source of instability and potential global
conflict in a multicivilizational world". Though this
last observation from Huntington's Clash of
Civilizations is often quoted, closer inspection
reveals that it is either meaningless or wrong.
It is not clear how Huntington perceives a world
where - to keep things stable - the West would "not
intervene". Channels of communications being what they
are, how can the West not influence other civilizations?
Prohibit broadcasting, wireless communications and
trading, perhaps? Stop selling or giving medicine? Cease
buying oil? As to the second part of the statement,
Huntington is wrong. Defeating "emerging civilizations"
such as Nazi Germany's or communist Russia's have
diminished conflicts and increased people's well-being.
It is easy to criticize both grandiose thesis
and narrow ones. To come up with a different way of
perceiving the events and offer solutions is a bit
harder. Yet this brief does just that. It shows that
today's conflict between Islamic groups and the West, as
well as within Islamic societies, can be viewed as one
between "mobile" and "immobile" civilizations, whose
members can be found in every society. What
distinguishes the US is that it has far more people
sharing the outlook of a "mobile civilization" than any
other country. And what characterizes many Islamic
countries is that they have a large number of people
sharing the values of an "immobile" civilization.
"Relativist" orthodoxy notwithstanding, one point I make
is that although one can understand the values and
ideals of "immobile societies", as fitting certain
situations, there cannot be a compromise between these
two civilizations. Today's circumstances - demographic
in particular - require moves toward "mobility".
Perceived from this angle, September 11 and the
other terrorist attacks reflect the power struggle
within the Islamic world, a type of struggle that
Western Europe went through for centuries. As in Europe,
the conflict within Islam, played out both within the
countries and on the world stage, is an attempt of their
"immobile", tradition-based constituents to prevent
members of their "mobile" constituents - and whom the US
supports - to gain the upper hand. And as in Europe over
the centuries, it is the rapid increase in population in
Islamic countries that brought about the ever-increasing
mismatch between the expectations of the many guided by
traditional institutions, and reality. But, to quote
Mark Twain, though history rhymes, it does not quite
repeat itself, and today's situation is also unique in
many respects. The concluding section discusses ways in
which the US could deal with this unprecedented
situation.
Two civilizations The main
feature of agrarian societies has been their immobility.
In these societies - as in almost all societies until
the Industrial Revolution, and in much of the world
still today - wealth was derived from the land. Farmers
learned the minute details of cultivating their lands,
of adjusting to changes in weather conditions and of the
soil. This knowledge is so place-specific that it is no
surprise that farmers were severely taxed by a maze of
institutions, whose role centered around the idea of
defending "one's land". It's always the least mobile who
bear such burdens. What can a farmer specialized in
tropical plants and knowing the nuances of weather
patterns in the tropics do in a snowy, agrarian Northern
Europe?
In a world where wealth is derived from
agriculture and natural resources (whether forests,
coal, gold, diamonds, oil), the control of the territory
must be insured. Controlling them means protecting,
administering, exploiting and occasionally capturing
lands. Without such controls, another land or
resource-based country's army would capture the place.
The institutions, values, culture, indeed the whole
outlook of these societies, is shaped by being wedded to
the territory. And though there are variations across
such cultures, they give birth to one type of
civilization - call it the "immobile" one.
Feudal lords, aristocracies and landed gentry,
armed forces and police, government ministries,
priesthood and bureaucracies provided protection to a
place and, at times, imposed threats on neighboring,
similarly immobile societies. A weak king or a weak
ruler left his subjects at the mercy of his rivals.
That's why people paid taxes - call it protection money,
if you wish. The amount people willingly pay for such
protection bears relationship to the costs of moving to
a different area, out of both the plunderer's and the
tax authorities' reaches. When people could not thus
escape, and taxes became exorbitant, the immobile people
occasionally rebelled.
Kings, feudal lords and
dictators of various persuasion understood these
features of immobile civilization. They saw the
relationship between the areas they controlled and those
controlled by others as hostile. One's gain of territory
was another's loss. It was a zero-sum game world.
Anything that would allow people to move more easily
from one place to another was perceived as clear and
present danger. It weakened one's power - and the tax
base. Over time, people specialized in the myriad
institutions of "immobile" civilizations and had a large
stake in its survival. Whether their belief that this
civilization continued to be "the best" when population
grew was sincere or not, is irrelevant: delusions can be
powerful when they serve one's interests. And deeds
matter more than words.
It is not surprising,
therefore, to observe throughout history and up to now
that many rulers and governments have done everything in
their power to condemn any trade or any group that drew
its power from mobility. They were suspicious of
merchants, traders, bankers and financiers, even people
dabbling in technology, unless these technologies
addressed solving the immediate problems of the immobile
population. Some or all of these occupations had
inferior status - usury laws being an early means of
rationalizing such status. And although initially
traders did not have such inferior status in Islam -
Mohammed after all was a merchant before becoming a
prophet - by the 10th century business become
marginalized. This happened with the closing "of the
gates of Ijtihad" (independent reasoning as
applied to the sharia) in the 10th century, with some
sects taking the Koran far more literally than others.
The priesthood helped conserve the status quo by
teaching mythologies in the Middle East and later in
Europe. India's caste system reflected a similar frame
of mind. The bania, or businessman, is placed
third in the four caste hierarchy, behind the
brahmins (priests, teachers, intellectuals - the
myth-justifying and preserving group) and the
kshatryias (landholders, warriors, rulers), and
one step ahead of the shudras (untouchables).
Consider the clash between "immobile" and
"mobile" civilizations (at times within the same society
or nation) from another angle. In agrarian societies,
some work the land, some go to the army, a fraction goes
into either government or the Church, and a small
fraction gets to trade. People are defined by their
status: as serfs, as landowners, as soldiers, as
priests, as traders. Rights and obligations are
connected to one's status, are inherited, and are not
subject to negotiation.
The idea of "individual
rights" - meaning the idea of negotiating rights and
obligations that are unconnected to the status one was
born in life - does not exist. True, occasionally rulers
have changed one's status in life - but as a favor from
"above". It is the idea of contractual law - equality
before the laws, and the freedom to contract unless
explicitly prohibited - that eventually allowed people
from all walks of life to use their talents, abandon the
status they were born to, and commercialize ideas
without rulers' favors. Access to finance is crucial to
achieve the latter goal. Unless one has access to
different, competing sources of capital, "freedom of
contract" is a slogan with no meaning.
Alternatives come from having access to capital,
from being able to borrow against imagined futures. In a
world where government stays the sole source of capital
there can only be one "official future" - the one
imagined, and financed - by the political power. In
other words, freedom to contract, backed by a variety of
possible sources of capital, makes one "mobile" -
upward, or if one fails, downward - and also sideways,
moving to other places and trying one's luck there,
occasionally abandoning one's "immobile tribe" or one's
religion. This is what "mobile civilization" means.
At times, observers confuse the existence of
trading with a predisposition to move toward "market
economies". Not so. Every society had its share of
traders. But there is not much common between the
trading in Middle Eastern bazaars (or, for that matter
France's little shop-owners), where the government
granted little local monopolies to traders and small
merchants (and in France's case it also imposed complex
price controls), and the principle of negotiating
rights.
However, there is nothing more
threatening to the institutions of immobile societies -
based on the idea that contracts are a matter of status
and hierarchy, and that everything is prohibited unless
explicitly permitted - than a move toward contractual
law. It takes time to escape perceptions shaped over
centuries by institutions fitting an immobile world, and
move from "status" to "contract". Whether the slow
adjustment happens because of self-interest or confusion
due to the long-taught mythologies fitting an immobile
world is a marginal issue. Deeds are far more important
than motives, and myths and the veil of language can
disguise the motives wonderfully, anyway.
Before
taking a closer look at some past and present conflicts
through this "mobile/immobile" angle, let's address a
few questions. One is: Why have so few societies
succeeded in developing deep and open capital markets,
necessary to become a "mobile civilization", and without
which the term "freedom" - freedom to contract in
particular - has no meaning? The second question is: How
did the West stumble on the maze of institutions that
laid the foundations for its "mobile" civilization?
Chance and necessity The answer to the
first question is that capital markets depend on a
certain kind of trust - namely, the trust that the law
will be applied equitably to parties to contractual
agreements in the long term. A maze of complex
institutions is required to generate and sustain this
trust, and it took centuries, accompanied by prolonged
conflicts and a long sequence of trial and error, to
stumble on them. Democritus, the Greek philosopher, once
said: "Everything in the universe is the fruit of chance
and necessity," (and, I would add that this is true for
the internal universe of the human minds, too, where the
two cannot be separated either). Indeed, chance and
necessity shaped the institutions that eventually
allowed "mobile" civilizations to emerge.
One
such chance event stands apart: it was the Gregorian
Reformation. This event in the West separated the Church
from the secular world of politics and governance,
freeing the clergy from the domination of lord, kings
and emperors, and putting in place first two, and later
more, competing powers. Pope Gregory VII reshaped the
Catholic Church into a centralized bureaucracy of
educated clergy, independent of local political control.
This separation, as Harold Berman noted, "gave rise to
the formation of the first modern Western legal system,
the 'new canon law' ... of the Roman Catholic Church and
eventually to new secular legal systems as well - royal,
urban and others" (and did not happen in Byzantium). For
centuries, the Church remained the only institution
capable of standing up to royal and feudal authority,
and, for a while, becoming one of the few channels of
upward mobility for those born poor.
In addition
to rediscovering Roman law, and Greek philosophy, the
new legal spheres created by Church, kings, cities,
merchants and the competition among these institutions,
allowed individuals to carve out more rights than
before. The notions of rule of law, of accountability,
of balance of power, freedom from arbitrariness, the
elaboration of the concept of "corporation", be it
monasteries, merchant guild, universities, and
eventually companies, all came to stand between the
individual and the state, allowing a "mobile"
civilization to develop. The long history of struggle,
of rivalry between the highest political authorities and
the Church, and eventually, with the Reformation, within
the Church, is a distinguishing feature of Western
European history.
Places where this separation
did not happen, and no competing powers emerged, fell
behind, whether it was Spain under the Inquisition,
Islam, the Orthodox part of the Church, and later in
Russia. James Franklin remarks in his book Science of
Conjecture, that in Islamic law both the concept of
"institution" is missing and that "the idea of contracts
involving risk survived - but only for the purpose of
prohibiting them". He adds, "the Prophet forbade games
of chance and, according to authoritative traditions,
also any contract that involved gharar - any
risk, uncertainty or speculation". Under Islamic law,
people could not sell birds while in the air, even if it
was expected that these birds return to their nest.
Neither could they sell future crops, or fish in the
water - unless its catching was certain because the
water was shallow and the water belonged to the vendor.
Religion becomes "fundamental": God can't be
wrong, and one can't even argue with Him. (Contrast such
an attitude with the Old Testament, where characters
argue and negotiate constantly with God, and debating
interpretations of the text is encouraged). Except in
Turkey in the 20th century, the lack of separation of
powers in Islamic countries has resulted in accepting
interpretations of the Koran as final arbiters on
commercial and financial matters. Debates fell little by
little into oblivion in the 10th century, with the
prohibition on independent reasoning concerning the
sharia, "the closing of the gates of Ijtihad", as the
event is called.
In sharp contrast, Christian
scholars in the West, in the 11th and 12th centuries,
took just the opposite direction, and rediscovered Greek
classics and earlier Islamic scholars. These
discoveries, combined with increased trade and legal
challenges, change the language of discourse in Western
Europe, reintroduced the terms "probably" and "like"
(from Greek), and to the conduction of sophisticated
discourses on probability, chance and risk, often
linking them to trade, profits and "usury". By the 18th
century, Joseph Butler could conclude, "probability is
the very guide of life".
Practice and language
shape habits of mind. The greater the role of business
and the more transactions, the more complex calculations
of probability become, and the notion of probabilities
change, imperceptibly, perhaps, all facets of life. To
describe transactions is far from a trivial exercise, as
even a casual look at any investment prospectus
illustrates. Prices, which are present values of goods
and services to be delivered in the future, are
approximations, reflecting expectations and
probabilities. Because of difficulties in fulfillment
when pricing uncertain quantities, price becomes just
one feature of a complex contractual agreement. It is
not surprising, that in mobile societies, with
developing capital markets, discussions about
probability, risk and uncertainty are linked to both
legal reasoning and the institutions needed to back
contractual agreements.
Islamic societies were
not the only ones that did not go through the Gregorian
Reformation, or the counter-Reformation, which did not
see the emergence of competing political powers, and
stayed "immobile". Consider Russia in the two centuries
before the October Revolution of 1917. For those 200
years, the Russian Orthodox Church was governed by
principles introduced by Peter the Great in 1721 in the
Ecclesiastical Regulation. According to this regulation,
the Church ceased to be an institution independent of
government, and its administration became a function of
the state. Peter's explicit goal was to abolish the
possibility of domestic challenges to his power. He
achieved his goal with far-reaching consequences,
bringing about - inadvertently perhaps - another
somewhat "immobile" civilization.
State control
over the Church had a devastating effect. Although
Russians could still find solace in orthodox services
and the sharing of suffering in a Church community, the
Church could not play the same roles in society as its
Western counterparts. This powerless Church occupied
itself with private spiritual matters and would not
stand up to the government on behalf of Judeo-Christian
values. As a consequence, it soon lost the allegiance of
the Russian groups who wished to move Russia toward a
"mobile" civilization. Two centuries later, Vladimir
Lenin merely tightened the screws: he established a
puppet patriarchate, controlled by the state rather than
the Holy Synod (the institution he abolished). This new
patriarchate never uttered a word of criticism against
the regime. Author Alexander Solzhnitsyn was right when
he declared that Russia would have developed a more
civil society over the past centuries had the Church not
surrendered its independence.
It is no accident
either that Russia and the Islamic countries, like any
others dominated for a long time by one authority, have
much in common, both displaying the characteristic
features of "immobile civilizations". These countries
have had large and corrupt bureaucracies. They share a
long history of arbitrary authority; of confiscation of
property; of forcing people to buy goods at high prices
and sell the products of their own labor cheaply
(unsurprisingly, since laws and regulations immobilized
the people), and, in general, forestalling the market -
all while maintaining relatively powerful police forces
and armies. They also share the custom of bribery, and a
general attitude of fatalism - with occasional outbursts
of revolutionary ardor.
What will eventually
move immobile civilizations toward adopting the
institutions of mobile ones - slowly, gradually and
likely after prolonged conflicts, will be a combination
of necessity and chance. The necessity is "demography" -
a large increase in population, and the bankruptcy that
occasionally accompanies such demographic change. The
reformer, on whose ideas a critical mass of followers
wishing to move Islamic countries toward a "mobile"
civilization, represents the "accidental", unpredictable
part of this transition - Turkey's Kamel Ataturk, who,
almost a century ago, separated Church and state, the
only Islamic country to do so, being an example.
Demography is not destiny, but
.... There was a time when humanity was at the
"end of history", in the sense of arriving at very
similar, stable patterns of living around the world,
though not even having been in contact. People settled
in what we now call "primitive tribes", which stayed
stable for hundreds of thousands of years and, for a
while, as population grew, replicating the same patterns
as people settled in new territories. Family, kin, and
the tribe provided insurance - with small numbers, there
is no other alternative - and exchanges were based on
trust, honor and reputation, family, custom and rituals
providing the implicit collateral. The right to property
- which was well defined and respected in these
societies - was identified through personal
acquaintance. The elderly settled disputes resulting
from misunderstandings between parties. It was a
compact, immobile world of small numbers.
Population growth (due to climate change,
perhaps), and widely differing fluctuations in this
growth around the world disturbed this somehow achieved
stability. As populations grew and moved, trust was
lost. And as populations continued to grow, there were
limits to how many could stay on the land using
traditional methods of cultivation, agrarian innovations
notwithstanding. Or, how many more people could rulers
employ as soldiers used to capture new territories,
without going bankrupt, or how many could the Church
absorb.
Something had to give, since there was
no way to confer hereditary status for what turned to be
an increasing number of people in Western Europe,
starting in the 8th century and continued uninterrupted
until the Black Death in 1346. This increase transformed
the face of Europe - and the sequence of events
described in the previous section was part of that
transformation. A century later, somewhere between 1440
and 1480, Europe's population started growing again,
building persistently, though irregularly, the
institutions that established the groups which became
the core of the new "mobile civilization".
Until
about 100 years ago, Europe's population continued to
grow, explaining much of its unique series of events,
the emergence of "nation-states" and the ideas
underlying self determination for ethnic groups in
particular. First these nation states united the
increasing number of people, as religion ceased being a
unifying force. But recall that the term "religion"
comes from "re-ligare" which means to re-link. Western
Europe's rulers, facing rapidly rising populations both
within their "tribes" and among neighboring ones -
increases that religious leaders faced in earlier times
- sought that nationalism that could re-link members of
the tribe, and thus better face threats coming from the
increased numbers of the neighboring ones.
While
Europe was struggling to find solutions for re-uniting
its growing population, the rest of the world had a
relatively stable demographic history. The sudden
reversal of the past few decades, with Europe's
population stagnating and the rest of the world's
growing fast, has been due to the introduction of
medical and other Western innovations in the latter
societies. However, these societies - Islamic ones
prominent among them now, with their youth bulge - did
not have the luxury of a few hundred years of
experimentation with a variety of institutions to make
the adjustment.
This observation brings us back
to the present.
Where the stakes, phases and
solutions are Looked on from this angle, what is
happening today in Islamic countries is neither
surprising nor unprecedented. Indeed, history rhymes,
even if it does not quite repeat itself.
The
mismatch between customs, traditions, institutions,
skills and language - all still fitting a smaller,
relatively immobile population - and the institutions
needed to give an increasing number of young people hope
and a stake in the future brings about instability, much
as it happened in Europe for centuries. A fraction of
these societies' members understand what's at stake, are
ready to make the necessary adjustment and establish the
institutions that would allow making the transition
toward a "mobile civilization". This group looks to the
US for guidance and support, political, military and
financial. In contrast, members of the "immobile
civilization" within Islamic countries consider that
without the US's support, the "mobile" groups would lose
power. With traditional leaders at the helm, traditional
institutions would be sustained, and the glory of Islam
could be revived. These conflicting attitudes are a
familiar occurrence, and it is where history rhymes.
Where history does not rhyme, is where the
separation of the two civilizations - between the mobile
one in the US and the immobile ones around the world -
is concerned. Whereas in the past they existed
side-by-side, with little interaction, today, because of
both population growth and technology, the two
civilizations encroach on one another. And there is no
common ground between a society where the "MotherLAND",
"FatherLAND" or "Sacred Land" dictate status and values,
and one where equality before laws, and individual
rights, guaranteed by an American-type constitution, are
the dominating principle. Indeed, in a recent Foreign
Affairs article, Camille Pecastaing notes, "Among the
things that troubled [young Arab Muslims in France] was
the contradiction between the liberal, egalitarian
ideals of the West and the legacy of servitude they
carried over from northern Africa. In the New World
exiles could no longer rely on the comforting
predictability of a traditional, hierarchical society;
they were hit by the existential anxiety of choice and
responsibility and the formidable risk of failure."
Looked on from this angle, European politicians'
perception that the two values are reconcilable is
surprising. After all, the European Community is itself
born from the memory of not letting the "Fatherland"
values of Germany that led to such destruction in
Europe, to surface again. Even Russia's disintegration
can be perceived as a move away from its "Motherland"
values, and toward the values of a "mobile" society. And
even though China makes noises about Taiwan, it seems
that the conflict there will be resolved through trade,
too, rather than military conflict.
It's in
Islamic, African, Latin American countries and - what's
new? - the Balkans, that "land" is still the dominating
principle, the "immobile" groups within them perceiving
every non-member of the "ethnic tribe", "the pure sect",
as polluting the "sacred" soil. It is not quite
surprising that the mobile civilization society condemns
suicide, whereas the immobile one celebrates martyrdom.
Unfortunately, this is even predictable. And much of the
dangerous European torturing of language
notwithstanding, there is no reconciliation between the
two values. There cannot be. In this sense, the Osama
bin Ladins of this world are right too: one of these
societies must give up their fundamental values - or
fight.
The curse of being resource
rich A fraction of the population finding itself
in the midst of an "immobile" civilization also
understands what is at stake, but believes it can stay
in power and sustain the ancient customs and
institutions by paying off the increasing number of
people, youngsters in particular. How can this elite
hold such beliefs? Why aren't these societies driven
into bankruptcy, and then forced then to adjust their
institutions? If only life was that simple. This is
where history does not repeat itself either.
Occasionally societies stumble on manna from
heaven - "natural resources" - of which the Middle East
has plenty. This windfall strengthens the hands of those
who happen to be in power - or are ruthless in pursuing
it. The money from natural resources provides the clout
to hire enough people for the military, for buying arms,
expand internal police, and bribe people into spying on
their fellows. It can also sustain a priesthood in style
either at home, or if they become too inflammatory,
provide the means to export them. As long as they can
sell oil and gas at good prices, Middle Eastern rulers
can pursue a combination of these strategies, and
prolong the life of their "immobile civilization".
Looked on from this perspective, it isn't quite
a surprise that resource-poor Turkey became the first
Islamic country to make the separation between Church
and state, build up the institutions of a mobile
civilization and prepare the grounds to join the
European community. The Turkish experience also serves
as a warning of just how slowly people's attitudes
change, and what may be needed to bring such transitions
about. Turkey's constitution empowers the military to
enforce the separation between Church and state. In the
1970s - half a century after Ataturk separated Church
and state - when the extreme right and left clashed, the
military ruled for two years, returning then the power
to civilians. The Turkish military has followed each of
three coups (the last in 1980) with a rapid return to
civilian rule. The fact that Turks hold the military in
high esteem has nothing to do with them liking being
ruled by generals. Rather, the military happens to be
for the moment the only institution capable of
sustaining the rights that a mobile civilization needs.
These events also help better explain why I
examine events through what may seem like an
over-simplified angle of immobile versus mobile
civilizations. Re-writing constitutions - as Ataturk did
- is relatively easy. Enforcing its spirit is something
entirely different. One needs strong and competing
institutions for that. If an army happens to collude
with either the political powers or the Church, society
stays an "immobile" civilization, constitutions and the
facade of democracy notwithstanding. It's such
collusions that characterize Islamic countries that on
the surface seem "democratic", Egypt being one example.
Steps What, then, are the steps to be
taken today? Let us arrive at them by elimination. As
noted at the beginning of the article, Soros'
recommendation of being "nice" seems hardly appropriate:
if anything it would be counterproductive, strengthening
the groups interested in sustaining the institutions of
their "immobile civilization".
Some of
Huntington's recommendations, as noted at the beginning
of this article, are at best unclear, at worst wrong.
Ruthless dictators, sitting on natural resources, who
have the power to keep their own people in fearful
resignation, buy arms and have the potential to engage
in wars and finance terror, impose a heavy burden on the
rest of the world. That's why discussing the present
situation in terms of "sovereignty" is hardly relevant.
One civilization encroaches on the other. Huntington
also recommends to "Westernize" Latin America, without
saying how. And he suggests to coordinate with Europe -
again, without addressing the question: What if France
and Germany seem more interested in pursuing dangerously
short-sighted power games, diminish US power - and,
inadvertently Western civilization's - rather than
diminish that of Middle Eastern despots?
If the
lasting remedy for preventing terror is then to speed up
the move toward establishing institutions conducive to a
"mobile" civilization within Islamic countries, what can
the US do? First, as can be inferred from the above, the
US had little choice but use power: the chances of
domestic forces getting rid of a ruthless despot sitting
on billions of gallons of oil are slim, if not nil. But
what should the US do now? As the historical evidence
summarized here suggests, expecting that one can create
democratic institutions in countries where large
segments of the population are still mired in mazes of
institutions fitting an immobile civilization, is a
dangerous delusion. Of course one can write beautiful
constitutions, set up courts, institute voting. But
remember, all Latin American countries, and some Middle
Eastern, did that, without bringing about much real
change. Who will enforce the spirit of these laws and
institutions? Ataturk, remember, did it with the backing
of the army, which followed him, having been the hero of
the Dardanelles during World War I, defeating the allies
at Gallipoli and being the only undefeated Ottoman
commander when the empire collapsed at the end of World
War I.
Iraq does not have either such a hero at
present, an army, or even a reliable police force, and
it is not clear how long it would take to build them.
Without the presence of a force capable and willing to
act, institutions promising "democracy", "rule of law",
and "right to property" are no more than facades, giving
rise to another "cargo cult". This term emerged on an
isolated island in New Guinea. During World War II,
airplanes would regularly arrive full of cargo, part of
which was distributed to the natives. After the war, the
planes stopped coming. Distressed, the natives built
thatched-roof hangers, a beacon tower made of bamboo,
and an airplane made of sticks and leaves. Priests
prayed for the cargoes to return. And they waited. Many
countries around the world, in the Middle East and Latin
America in particular, became such cargo cults. Yes, the
terms and institutions sound familiar: they have
constitutions, promise equality before laws, have
courts, and people vote. These societies have adopted
the facade of a mobile civilization, but for the moment,
leaving out its content. There cannot be such a thing as
"democracy" where there are no "democrats". There may be
a few in Iraq, but it does not seem that there are too
many.
There seems to be little choice but for
the United States and its allies to do two things: leave
no doubts among Iraqis that the army is there to stay to
back the emerging institutions. However, in order to
bring about a speedier transition toward long-term
stability, the US can encourage the move toward
institutions that are the backbone of mobile
civilizations: those that diminish corruption and
encourage trade.
To achieve this goal more
quickly, the US could suggest creating an international
public trust fund, which would offer each and every
Iraqi a fraction of oil-revenues, drawing on the Alaska
model (as explained in my previous article for Asia
Times, Oiling the wheels of a tribal
society November 20, 2003). The other portion
would be transferred to central and local governments,
through institutions held accountable for the spending.
This arrangement would ensure that people have an
immediate stake in the new Iraqi system (pretty much as
the giving of land and apartments had in post-communist
countries), and incentives to cooperate and prevent
sabotage, and offer collateral to up-start small
commercial entities. The act would also offer a clear
signal that the US is there not as an army plundering
the country's resources, but to enforce the
establishment of the type of institutions that an
oil-rich, ruthless dictator would not do, imposing heavy
costs on the rest of the world. It would give Iraqis
collateral and something to start a new life with. Also,
with less money flowing through a central government's
hands, there could be less corruption. These actions
combined would also allow the US to draw parallels with
the sequence of events that led to prosperity in Turkey.
Since the distinct tribes that constitute Iraq
do not display strong national identification and live
in rather distinct areas (unsurprisingly, since it and
other Islamic states were formed relatively recently), a
number of political options would open once the revenues
from the distribution of oil revenues are settled. The
Iraqi tribes may decide to roughly remodel themselves
along the - for the moment - unique Swiss lines, where
the French, German and Italian-speaking groups have each
carved out territorial entities. There is one Italian
canton (Ticino), many German ones and a few French (the
last French one - Jura - having been carved out from the
German canton of Bern in 1974, through a series of votes
because of the French minority's dissatisfaction with
the German majority's misallocation of funds). With the
revenues from oil having been solved first, a major
potential obstacle for delegating powers to lower levels
has been eliminated, since there is less to redistribute
on the central government level.
With revenues
from oil being widely dispersed, the chances of much
funding going for rebuilding centralized military and
police powers are diminished. "Power" is dispersed and
brought closer to the people. Whether or not such
dispersion of financial clout will lead to developing
over decades, or maybe centuries - bottom up - a
canton-like federal arrangement as in Switzerland, or
lead to a breakup of Iraq along ethnic lines - time will
tell. Both solutions seem more stable than what the
world has been facing until now.
If the tribes
do not see eventual advantages of staying together, so
be it. The separation of Slovakia from the Czech
Republic did not end up in any great disaster. If the
ethnic groups now populating Iraq can't get along, and
end up fighting, the resulting instability can be more
easily contained, since none of the groups would have as
much financial (oil-generated) clout as Saddam Hussein
had. The best scenario would obviously be if these
tribes - having now stakes in stability because of
shared oil revenues - slowly find ways of making deals,
and build up trade. But even if one is prepared for the
worse case scenario of the three major tribes not
finding a modus vivendi and breaking up within
the anyway artificial borders of what now defines Iraq -
the harm is minimized. Once the fighting among the three
groups gets out of hand, the window of opportunity to
calm down tempers through the above scheme, would be
closed.
Ideas have long lives. Oil money flowing
through the hands of ruthless dictators sustains both
outdated institutions and character traits. This is why
the crucial first step in moving toward long-term
stability in the Middle East is to leave no doubt in the
minds of the leaders of the "immobile groups" that the
coalition armies are there to say. They are there to
stay to insure that the "mobile" groups within these
civilizations get the upper hand. To help these groups
gain credibility, move toward less corruption and more
trade, the US could start by dispersing the funds from
oil revenues, thus creating an increasing number of
people having a stake in the new civilization. Unless
the people within the present Iraq borders are given
such a tangible stake in the future, "democracy" and
"constitutions" will become nothing but empty promises
and worthless pieces of paper, with the vast majority of
people continuing to be mired in poverty and ignorance.
After all, keep in mind that for decades Latin
American countries had beautifully written constitutions
and people voted. Yet Latin America - especially those
endowed with natural resources - stayed poor and
unstable.
The US government will know when to
give the order for its troops to quit Iraq when a local
reformer is able to emulate Ataturk's gesture. He put up
a memorial in Gallipoli on which he had the following
text inscribed: "There is no difference between
the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, Where they lie side
by side here in this country of ours, You, the mothers
who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away
your tears; Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are
in peace after having lost their lives on this land,
They have become our sons as well."
Ataturk
survived, the memorial survived, and his reforms
survived. Decades later, Golda Meir, Israel's prime
minister, said something along similar lines: that peace
will come when Palestinians would love their children
more than they hate Israelis. When Iraqi tribes will
share similar sentiments, will create a similar memorial
and pass reforms - the US's job in Iraq would be done.
References Berman, Harold, Law and
Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1983.
Franklin, James, The Science of
Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Huntington, S P, The Clash of
Civilizations, New York: Free Press, 1996.
Pecastaing, Camille, The Secret Agents: Life
Inside an Al Qaeda Cell, Foreign Affairs,
January/February 2004.
Soros, George, The
Bubble of American Supremacy, Atlantic Monthly,
December, 2003.
Reuven Brenner holds
the Repap Chair at McGill University's Faculty of
Management. The article draws on his books, Force of
Finance (2002), History - the Human Gamble (1983) and
Betting on Ideas (1985).
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