The Stakes: American in the Middle East

Shibley Telhami

Boulder: Westview Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-8133-4219-8. Pages: 214.

The first half of the book is a particularly wrong-headed approach to dealing with terrorist threats. The second half is an astute and exceptionally well-done analysis of American interests in the Middle East. On the balance, the book's positive sides outweigh its negative ones, and so it should be a good reading for anyone trying to understand the current explosive situation in the region.

Let's start with the good things. Telhami offers the best perspective of American policy in the Persian Gulf that I have ever seen. He sees it as remaining fairly consistent from the Eisenhower Doctrine through today, with major official statements by both Nixon and Carter. To summarize, once oil from the region became important to the world economy (even though it has always been less vital to the U.S. compared to Western Europe or China), America has had one goal in mind: prevent a hostile power from acquiring regional dominance. At first, the British could be relied upon for controlling the situation but once their 1956 fiasco exposed the corruption of their policies, America had to step in. During the Cold War, the U.S. tried to contain the penetration of the Soviets. The Russians were quite active and were not averse to buying the goodwill of any "progressive" Arab state like Egypt, Syria, or Iraq (once coups overthrew the illegitimate monarchies there). In the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. policy was analogous to what the West hoped Germany and the USSR would do to each other in 1941: bleed each other white to the benefit of the rest. The U.S. supported both Iran and Iraq to prevent any one of them from conquering the other. Excellent stuff, and his take on the importance of Middle Eastern oil in the next two decades is thought-provoking. Let's just say that we should not hold our breath for Russian or Latin American oil.

Another pleasant surprise was the author's summaries of various surveys he has conducted in the Middle East. While it won't come as a shock to specialists, the conclusion that Arabs do not hate our value system but our foreign policies should be of some interests to those contemplating various "crusades" in the area. Having said that, let me qualify it a bit by saying that Telhami does not dwell on the growing anti-Semitism, both state-sponsored and religiously-inspired. This anti-Semitism (which has begun spreading to Europe as well) is quite threatening precisely because it conflates America with the Jews, and ends up preaching hatred of both. Unless we deal with anti-Semitism we shall never be able to overcome hatred of America regardless of how surveys show our beliefs are evaluated.

Of course, this conflation comes from what Arabs perceive as American policies detrimental to their interests, and what they believe to be blind support for Israel. But we should not kid ourselves, the reason Arabs believe these things is because their undemocratic governments and their religious leaders are teaching them to. For example, the author cites how several marginal op-eds mentioning nuclear responses to terrorism (never taken seriously in the U.S.) "were highlighted in the Muslim and Arab worlds as if they were American policy" (25). But putting this nicely in passive voice, Telhami avoids saying who chose to amplify these statements and for what purpose. I doubt that the average Muslim or Arab follows The Wall Street Journal, so it must have been someone who would have been aware that these opinions are marginal in the U.S., someone who would have an interest in fueling anti-Americanism abroad. In the end, ignorance becomes a volatile tool in the hands of morally and politically bankrupt leaders whose regimes would crumble immediately if exposed to the light of free public debate and liberal institutions. Instead of battling for the hearts and minds, maybe we should pay more attention to how these hearts and minds are getting their information from our "friends."

This then marks the major reason for the failings in the first part of the book, in which Telhami proposes that the U.S. has erred in attacking the "supply-side" of terrorism instead of going after the "demand-side." On p. 10, Telhami ventures that if America focuses on "defeating `terrorist means' defined as deliberate targeting of civilians," then it would succeed in maintaining international legitimacy and support for its war on terror. Only of that were true. Quickly, is Israel guilty of deliberate targeting of civilians? Sure, according to U.N., some human rights organization, and the Arabs. But would serious scholars and knowledgeable people accept this assessment (especially given the bias of the sources)? If this is not enough, is Russia deliberately targeting civilians in Chechnya? Or China when it cracks down on Falun Gong? Would these two states be willing to sign a blank check endorsing anything remotely resembling the statement above? The point is that even such a seemingly uncontroversial statement is bound to end up in a morass of qualifications and debates.

This approach runs into further problems on the next page (11), where the author claims that a defense treaty that would be triggered by a deliberate attack on civilians would work as follows: "when you attack a state, you are at war with that state and its allies; when you deliberately attack civilians, you are at war with the entire international community and deserve an automatic international response." If things were so simple. Quickly, If Israel retaliates in Hebron and kills 10 Palestinian civilians, France would support an automatic reprisal against Israel. If Palestinians kill 10 Israeli civilians, France would probably not support automatic reprisal against the PA. Why? Because the countries have other interests that have nothing to do with innocent civilians dying. And who is going to retaliate against China and Russia? Telhami's argument assumes an consensus to act in response to terrorism, something that is simply not going to happen both because of collective action problems and because of conflicting interests.

Telhami gets it totally wrong when he claims that "the deterrent power of a mandatory collective response should be considerably stronger than the threat of unilateral action by a nation attacked by terrorists." If a nation is attacked by terrorists, it has a strong incentive to retaliate, and if it is not hampered by the need to obtain consent from others, it will do so swiftly. On the other hand, a "mandatory collective response" would simply result in a prolonged debate over means and ends, and will produce some feeble condemnation at best, and total deadlock and inaction at worst. Contrary to what the author would want us to believe, an immediate unilateral response by the injured party is most credible, and hence more likely to succeed as a deterrent. The reason Israel's deterrence posture has failed is precisely because the U.N. insists that its actions are illegitimate, which rewards the terrorists and encourages them to indulge in their violent tactics.

Telhami then undermines his entire thesis on p. 13. Having argued that we should treat the means and not the ends of terrorism as the way to unite in response to it, he now switches to saying that the U.S. has erred in pursuing only supply-side war on terrorism: hunting down terrorist groups "without regard to their aims or to the reasons that they succeed in recruiting many willing members." To put it in other words, the U.S. must address the 'underlying causes' (tm) of the problem. That is, figure out why there is such strong support for it. This is a common argument that invariably ends in the thorny questions of whose goals are legitimate and whose goals are not, and who is to blame for the bad state of affairs that is generating the problem; moral questions that are exceedingly difficult to find answers to.

According to Telhami, the 'underlying cause' is "public despair and humiliation" (14) or "hopelessness and humiliation" (29). There is a lot about "legitimate anger and genuine political despair in the Middle East" (35). And the reason? Not surprisingly, America and Israel. Israel because of its immoral quest to expand, seize territories, and terrorize the poor Arabs. America because of its support for Israel and its failure to condemn "the moral wrong of the unjustified scale and scope of Israeli operations and the means Israel had used" (18). This gets Telhami into hot water for one cannot in good faith argue moral equivalence of innocent Palestinian citizens killed inadvertently by Israeli soldiers and innocent Israeli civilians killed deliberately by terrorists. If terrorists did not hide among civilians and if over 80% of these civilians did not support their efforts, then maybe there would have been even fewer casualties on the Palestinian side.

But let's leave aside the arguable moral questions. These will get us nowhere. Let's look instead pragmatically at the situation and see what we can do to avoid having to suffer more terrorist attacks.

"There is nothing wrong with religious fundamentalism," proclaims Telhami on p. 26, but he stands alone in this assertion against history. Show me a tolerant Islamic regime. Or a tolerant Christian one. Or a tolerant Communist one. Can't? Of course you can not: fundamentalism is defined by the absolute rejection of any accommodation with anything contrary to doctrine. That's why it invariably produces the most oppressive societies one can imagine. A regime built on hatred and rejection cannot survive without stifling dissent.

And herein lies the problem with Telhami's basic thesis: Arabs are not angry because America or Israel is oppressing them, they are angry because their pathetic, incompetent, and corrupt governments have repeatedly failed to deliver a life that is reasonably tolerable economically and politically. They lash out against Israel and America because the intense and pervasive state and religious propaganda vilifies the Great/Little Satan and blames all wrongs on them to deflect the anger from the real culprits. If America has erred anywhere, it is in its support for illegitimate conservative regimes. The Arab/Muslim Middle East is interesting: in countries where governments profess to love us, their people hate us (because they see us as upholding an illegitimate order); in countries where governments hate us, people like us (because, as Telhami finds, they have really nothing against our values). Yes,

It may be true that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a focal point because every failed ruler pays lip service to it, but the anger is not "legitimate" and we should not try to "address" it in any way that would actually lend credence to the voices that claim that violence is the only way Arabs could achieve their political objectives. This leads me to the other major problem with Telhami's take on terrorism: fixing the demand side simply means offering concessions that would resolve some of the grievances. But, as the PLO has repeatedly stated, if violence gets you heard, then terrorism becomes an entirely rational tool of policy.

It was not "the absence of a hopeful political process to alleviate public despair over the conditions of occupation" that provoked the spate of violence of the second intifada. It was the cool calculation by Arafat that terrorism would get him even more than Barak had offered. Instead of repeating the old canard that the intifada was caused by Sharon's visit to the Temple, Telhami would have done well to quote the Saudi Prince Bandar who called Arafat's rejection "a crime against the Palestinians---in fact a crime against the entire region," and then continue by quoting the Palestinian communications minister who called the intifada "a complementary stage to the Palestinian steadfastness in the negotiations, and not ... a specific protest against Sharon's visit to Al-Haram Al-Qudsi." In other words, Arafat calculated that violence would force more concessions from Israel.

Why would he think that? Because Palestinian terrorism pays. As the PLO observed when it was granted observer status at the U.N., such international recognition would not have happened without the worldwide orgy of terrorism that the Palestinians had engaged in. Every time they escalate, the international community reacts by granting them more concessions. Why wouldn't one conclude that terrorism works? If we follow Telhami's recommendation and "address" the underlying causes, then any such action would invariably be interpreted as concession caused by the fear of terrorism, and would thus increase, not decrease, the likelihood that we would get even more terrorism. Resolving the deep underlying causes can easily take decades, a long time during which terrorist groups would continue having ready access to willing recruits whom they can regale with tales of success in bringing the mighty imperialists to their knees.

Furthermore, it is quite unclear that there is anything that we can offer to satisfy these increasing appetites. As far as I can tell, Arafat has an unlimited goal in mind: the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews in Palestine. It is one thing what he tells the West in English and quite another what he tells the Palestinians in Arabic. And if not him, then Hamas and Islamic Jihad certainly have this goal. This we cannot let them have, and I hope I do not have to explain why. So we cannot negotiate with them both because we cannot satisfy their demands even if we wanted to and because it would have been wrong to do so under duress anyway.

In the end, addressing the demand side is bound to backfire. The only approach to dealing with terrorism is to hunt down and destroy the organizations that engage in it, and then make things worse for those who support it. One should not bribe people into renouncing terrorism, one should deter them from engaging in it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, a vigorous unilateral response is much more credible than vague collective action. If we want lasting change, we need to address the 'underlying causes' of backwardness and stagnation of the Middle East: the intolerant illiberal regimes that flirt with religious fundamentalism, repress their populations, and incite them to hatred of America, and the Jews. Nothing cures these tendencies as well as a democratic regime. Can it take hold in the region? I sure hope so.

March 10, 2004