Ring a-ring o' roses, A
pocketful of posies. a-tishoo!, a-tishoo!
We all fall down. Nursery rhyme (or is
it?)
A new year begins now in earnest,
with the dotards who run the crumbling monarchies
of the Middle East all quaking in their Gucci
shoes as one of their brethren gets the ritual,
abrupt boot that has been a hallmark of regime
change in the region for over three generations.
Not entirely without logic, the geriatric
rulers looking at Tunisia recall the first steps
of the downfall of the communist regimes that
began in 1989 with an epochal tearing down of the
Berlin Wall
This isn't
either the first or the last such regime change in
the region. As the Financial Times reported on
January 17, 2011:
A wave of self-immolations by North
Africans apparently copying Mohamed Bouazizi,
the human symbol of the Tunisian uprising,
increased questions last night over whether
civil unrest would continue to spread through
the region. Analysts said the burnings in Egypt,
Algeria and Mauritania - all poor countries with
repressive regimes -showed the extent of
frustration among many Arabs and the heart they
had taken from the fall of Zein al-Abidine Ben
Ali, Tunisia's president. ...
Mustafa
Hamarneh, a Jordanian publisher and commentator,
said events in Tunisia were "not necessarily
repeatable" but added that the self-immolations
highlighted the powerlessness felt by many Arabs
faced with repressive states and scant life
opportunities. He said: "... What people really
need is more reform ... to sustain these
societies and make them more equitable."
One man set himself alight close to the
parliament in Egypt, where there have been
protests in solidarity with Tunisians. In
Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, a man set
himself on fire, in front of the presidential
palace on Monday, police officials said, in
another echo of the action by Mr Bouazizi, the
Tunisian vegetable seller, whose death is seen
as a trigger of last week's
revolt.
Richer people in the rest of
the Middle East, buffered from the effects of the
global financial crisis by the rising price of
oil, probably have empathy with the demands of the
Tunisians and now the Egyptians and Algerians but
are far too comfortable in their air-conditioned
apartments being waited on by quasi-slave labor
imported from South Asia to actually get off their
expanded posteriors to secure meaningful reforms
at home, let alone regime change.
Just
because the core Arab states with oil will not
topple, it doesn't mean that the Arab world can
escape unscathed from the fragrance released by
Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution". There is already a
regime change afoot in Lebanon, where Hezbollah
have pulled the rug from under the Wahhabi-favored
Hariri government. Unemployed youth in the country
belong to both the Shia and Sunni communities, but
general disgruntlement is felt more by the Shia
due to the favoritism in jobs and subsidies being
showered by Saudi authorities in the country on
resident Sunni clans.
In neighboring
Syria, years of economic stagnation will mean that
the Assad government may well see its days
numbered, to no particular regret from the US,
Europe and of course, Israel.
Jordan,
which houses millions of Palestinians in its camps
and therefore benefits from United Nations
subsidies that help to keep the "conflict" with
Israel alive, will also feel some pressure from
the dire economic conditions of its citizens as
inflation bites on essential goods.
Egypt,
over-reliant on finicky tourist dollars, will now
see the adverse economic effect of Europe's
sovereign debt crisis that has sparked wave upon
wave of government belt-tightening in countries
ranging from Greece and Ireland to Portugal and
Spain (of which more later). That its creaking
infrastructure and jobs for life are linked
directly to the longstanding dictatorship of Hosni
Mubarak only serves as an additional point of
comparison with the Tunisian situation.
A
truly scary (and not of negligible probability)
scenario for the Middle East would be for a series
of governments to fall in countries where the
fundamentalist lobbies are stronger - Algeria
(which has witnessed an Islamist insurrection for
the past 20 years), Egypt (from where al-Qaeda
derives some of its ideological roots, as well as
a large body of support among ill-educated Sunni
youth), Lebanon (where a civil war between Shia
and Sunni seems just around the corner), Syria
(where heads could roll very soon after any mass
protest movement commences) and Jordan (which is
currently stable but may not enjoy that position
for too long).
In many such places -
Algeria, Egypt and Syria particularly - the
incoming governments would likely be populated
almost exclusively by Sunni fundamentalists who
have benefited from the funding lavished upon them
by the Wahhabi establishment of Saudi Arabia. They
will chant anti-Israel and anti-American slogans
on taking office, exactly the kind of reward that
the second-tier of Saudi royals and hangers-on
have hankered after for the past few decades.
Outside of the Middle East, there isn't
much to write about regime change in Afghanistan
(you need a regime in place to discern any
change). Ditto for Pakistan, nuclear weapons or
not. One can thus easily see an arc of
revolutionary fire all the way from North Africa
to the borders of India.
Rolling heads
in Europe The business of governments
being thrown out of power isn't a problem just for
the Arab world. In the genteel corners of Europe,
the very same whiff is in the air; as the cadavers
of government finance arising from years of
neglect are brought out of their coffins and laid
bare in the sunlight of market discipline (see The
saving grace of markets Asia Times Online,
December 11, 2010).
The populace of
peripheral Europe is antsy - Greece, Spain,
Ireland and Portugal all suffer from high
unemployment and crumbling asset prices - even as
government efforts to paper over financing cracks
have been exposed as cruel hoaxes.
The
latest political crisis is in Ireland, where the
ruling party has encountered internal divisions
even as (or more likely, because) its poll numbers
have shriveled ahead of March elections that seem
at the moment assured to provide regime change.
The Irish Independent reported on January
18:
... The challenge to Taoiseach Brian
Cowen's leadership was sparked by his handling
of crisis talks ahead of Ireland's multi-billion
bailout, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin
claimed today. Mr Cowen will test his support to
head his Fianna Fail party in a secret ballot
this evening with Micheal Martin leading the
revolt. Mr Martin claimed the lack of
communication around talks with the
International Monetary Fund and European chiefs
last November was a watershed.
"The
management of the IMF, the presentation of the
IMF coming into the country, that to me was a
watershed moment," Mr Martin said. "I think the
way that was managed and communicated and
ministers came out, from my information, without
the full knowledge of what actually was going on
at that time." ... Mr Cowen's infamous singing
and drinking session sparked a downward spiral
for Fianna Fail from which it has shown no signs
of recovery. Once the IMF and EU rolled into
town, the party hit rock bottom and morale died
off.
The party is currently on 14pc in
the latest opinion polls, with leading figures,
such as Micheal Martin, criticising a lack of
organisation and strategy heading into a general
election campaign.
Highly indebted
governments across Europe - Portugal, Spain and
others including Belgium - could all go the way of
democratic regime change in coming months as a
populace sick of externally-imposed strictures
eventually decides to at least change the figure
on the masthead for its entertainment if not
economic improvement.
The biggest problem
in Europe though isn't the regime change of debtor
nations but rather that of its creditor nations.
Discussing the failed efforts by European finance
ministers to agree on a new rescue fund, the Wall
Street Journal reported thus on January 18:
European finance ministers debated
Monday how to beef up their giant rescue fund
for troubled euro-zone countries but ended the
first day of a two-day meeting without reaching
a firm resolution on how to do it, amid German
reluctance to open the doors to more and bigger
bailouts.
... The bailouts are deeply
unpopular in Germany. The rescue fund took shape
last May, after the European Union bailed out
Greece with 110 billion euros [US$148 billion].
The fund was pegged at 750 billion euros, the
bulk of which - 440 billion euros - was to come
from a special financing vehicle called the
European Financial Stability Facility [EFSF]
formed by the countries that use the euro.
But it soon emerged that 440 billion
euros doesn't mean 440 billion euros. That's the
maximum amount of loan guarantees the euro-zone
countries will make. But guarantees of those
receiving aid must be excluded, and other
restrictions proved necessary to ensure that the
EFSF's bonds receive a triple-A rating. ...
increasing the so-called effective lending
capacity of the EFSF will require the strongest
euro-zone members - the six that have triple-A
credit ratings - to assume more responsibility.
... Germany, again, would take the largest
share.
That is a hard sell with the
German public.
Germany faces different
choices, all equally unpalatable. It needs to save
the European Union from itself, if for nothing
else because an imploding currency is even more
unpopular in Germany than bailouts, which are
unpopular because of the popular notion that the
country's leaders are being railroaded by the
leaders of countries with inferior finances
(precisely the opposite of what Germans would
expect to happen under the circumstances).
A shot in Tucson But at least
the Europeans aren't busy killing each other. In
the aftermath of last week's tragedy in Tucson,
Arizona, where a gunman killed six people and
wounded 13 others including Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords, much has been made about
heated rhetoric and exceptional fanaticism among
certain sections of the population that faces
(like people in North Africa and Europe) imploding
asset values against a backdrop of elevated
unemployment.
Whilst many Americans have
(perhaps rightfully) expressed confidence that the
shootings would spark a return to civil debate,
foreign media isn't so sanguine. Even within the
country, enough pointers exist to an underlying
malaise that isn't easily to be swept away with
bromides. One of the bloggers I read regularly,
James Howard Kunstler, wrote an interesting
article on the subject of the much acclaimed
speech of President Barack Obama at the (at times
remarkably and strangely jubilant) memorial
service held on the University of Arizona campus
for those killed in the shootings, a part of which
is extracted below:
I wasn't the only person in this
country who felt a little jarred by the strange
proceedings. As they wound down and the cameras
followed Mr Obama milling with the crowd, CNN's
anchor, John King came on air with a hastily
constructed narrative designed to explain all
the hooting and hollering. His thesis was that
the local folks of Tucson had been so
emotionally squashed for five days that they
just had to let it all hang out. This struck me
as something between an excuse and a cockamamie
story to paper over the awkward question: how
come we don't know how to act in the face of
tragedy?
Of course, we don't know how to
act in the face of reality, either, by which I
mean politics, our means for contending with
reality. So much of the Tucson story was whether
there is any remaining shred of something like
common purpose between the opposing political
wings and the answer resolving out of all the
grief and soothing gel is no. Common purpose is
AWOL in our politics lately because whatever
terrain of the issues is not occupied by sheer
lying is filled by cowardice and ignorance. We
lie to ourselves incessantly about the nation's
financial condition.
We've suspended
both the rules of accounting and the rule of law
in banking matters (lying). We're too frightened
to go into the vaults and find out exactly how
much we've swindled ourselves (cowardice). And
we aggressively misunderstand issues that will
shape our future, such as how much oil is really
in the ground, and how long people will be able
to live in places like Tucson the way they do
(ignorance) - all of this prompting us to march
off the edge of a political cliff where we hang
today, the cartoon coyote of nations, undone by
our Acme techno-fantasies.
Kunstler
may well be speaking for heads of states around
the world in his assessment of American
politicians. None of the political classes seem
able to absorb the sheer scale of challenges
ahead, and speak the dire truth in a gentle
fashion to their electorates. Therein lies the
seed of much political chaos in months and years
to come.
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