by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright March 2015
Since the end of World War Two (1945), the regions of the Middle East have been having a hard time making the nationalist government forms work well. They have tried many times, and failed many times. The failures have resulted in little material progress and much chaos and violence.
Why is this?
My most recent insight is that different governmental forms are well adapted to different cultural forms. In this case of the Middle East the mismatch is between the Agricultural Age culture and the nationalist government form.
Prior to World War I (1914-1920) the Middle East was successfully ruled by the Ottoman Empire for many centuries. This is part of a pattern: the imperialist government form seems to be well adapted to Agricultural Age cultures. Agricultural Age cultures are varied, but in all of them most of the people are farmers, farmers' wives, and farm family children. The governing structure immediately above this sea of farming types is a landed nobility of local origin. This landed nobility is a mix of tribal leaders and religious leaders, with a few prosperous merchants and artisans mixed in. Over this local leadership sits the imperial leadership. This consists of religious, bureaucratic and military leaders -- and at this level these leaders are usually "region-independent", they can come from anywhere. This independence includes the top person of the region -- king, chief, governor, whatever he or she is called.
This governing form worked well world-wide wherever agriculture was successful until the 1700's, when those crazy people in Western Europe started seriously messing with large quantities of industrial tools and starting putting lots of people to work in factories. They paid for it! The Industrial Revolution spread all over Western Europe and became the Industrial Age. This transformation into Industrial Age culture was accompanied by all kinds of violence and chaos, and one of the changes was discovering a new way to think about government -- this new form is called nationalism.
This would be just a curiosity, if industrializing didn't create such virulent prosperity. These "nations" of Western Europe found they could out trade their Agricultural Age imperial contemporaries throughout the rest of the world, and out fight them, and the desire to become industrialized started spreading around.
Many experiments were tried. But, it turned out that nationalism as a government form doesn't work well when planted over an Agricultural Age culture and economy. So, these industrialized nations adapted... and became imperialists over the Agricultural Age cultures they traded with.
Starting after World War I, and much more vigorously after World War II (1939-1945), these Western Imperialist Powers tried to set up nations in the regions where they had been imperialists. On the whole, these aspirations have not worked well. Where these regions have not industrialized, such as much of the Middle East, the result has been violence and chaos, not rapid progress or prosperity.
My conclusion: Nationalism is a government form to be aspired to, but for it to work well the culture must first become industrialized and prosperous. Until that happens, one of the various forms of imperialism or monarchy are going to work better -- better meaning: more stability, more understanding of what is happening by the farmers being ruled, and less chaotic, crazy-populist-style-ruling-mania which then leads to collapse, chaos and violence.
In sum, prosperity first, then nationalism.
In converse to all the problems the Middle East regions have been having finding successful ruling styles, we have Singapore.
In converse to ISIS and the chaos and violence, we have Lee Kuan Yew, the man who ran Singapore from 1959 through 1990. (He is in the news now because he died last week.) This man clearly did this ruling thing right. As this 27 Mar 15 WSJ article, Lee Kuan Yew, the Man Who Remade Asia He preached ‘Asian values’ and turned a tiny, poor city-state into an astonishing economic success. Is Lee’s ‘Singapore model’ the future of Asia? by Orville Schell, describes in one generation he catapulted Singapore from sleepy third world into bustling first world.
From the article, "When I arrived in Singapore one sultry summer evening in 1962 as a 22-year-old student, the Union Jack still fluttered over the British colony. Coolies unloaded wooden boats on the docks, per capita income was languishing under $500 and the young independence leader Lee Kuan Yew was still in his 30s. It was a far cry from today’s well-ordered cityscape of manicured parks, gleaming office towers, high-rise apartment blocks filled with middle-class families and glittering malls swarming with wealthy consumers.
...Modern Singapore boasts the world’s second-busiest port, its most celebrated airline and an airport that hosts 15 million visitors a year. With an annual average growth rate of almost 7% since 1976, it now has a per capita income of well over $50,000, making it the wealthiest country in Asia. And it has the second most entrepreneurs per capita in the world, trailing only the U.S."
By almost every measure, this has been a ruling success.
Class this week talked about the creation of Israel following World War Two. It was a rough, confusing and violent time for all those living in Palestine. Upon reflection: This is the same time that India was becoming independent and splitting into India and Pakistan. This event doesn't get as much coverage in history books, but it too was a rough, confusing and violent time, with hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims leaving their ancestral homes and moving to their new "home" nations. And, as in Palestine, the hard feelings surrounding the splitting process have lingered on for generations.
Upon further reflection: What a rough and discouraging time this must have been for the British military and civil service people that had been operating in both these areas. They had been top of the heap for decades (although it was a delicately balanced heap) and all of a sudden they were now trying to extricate themselves from the mobs, jeerings, riots, rocks, ambushes and bullets that were flying all around them in both these cases.
Rough times for all involved -- splitting states in two is not as simple and easy as it sounds like it should be, and neither is dissolving empires.
These days I find it curious: One of the things history text book selectors don't want to recommend is a text book which links economic downturns to social revolutions. Some examples:
o There was a bank panic in 1772 which preceded both the American and French Revolutions.
o There was a world wide bank panic in 1857, but few writers list that as one of the causes of the American Civil War in 1860.
o There was a bank panic in 1907 which lead to the heating up of fearfulness that triggered the Balkan Wars in 1912 and World War One in 1914.
o The hardships and frustrations that started with the Panic of 1929 and continued on through the subsequent Great Depression are rarely mentioned as a cause for World War II in 1939.
In this text book of Middle East history, there is no linkage between the Great Recession of 2008 and the Arab Spring of 2011. But this should be reconsidered. The Qualitative Easing (QE) the Federal Reserve did to save the US economy weakened the US dollar and in so doing brought down lots of hardship on the economies of the Middle East. This intensifying hardship had a lot to do with heating up the Middle East discontentment in 2011, which is why 2011 became the trigger time and not some other year.
This kind of linkage between finance and social unrest should be recognized in history text books.
And two related essays I wrote before I started this course that are as "pattern relevant" as this bank panic and social revolution connection is: One on Blood Letting Wars which is what both the Iran-Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War are in my eyes, and another on Proxy Wars. A proxy war is often a blood-letter as well, but blood-letters don't have to be proxy wars.
This history book talks about the disaster that the first Gulf War was for Iraq, and how it changed thinking throughout the Middle East as the power of the American hegemony that emerged with the fall of the USSR was vividly demonstrated by that first war.
But what it does not do is talk about how skillfully Bush Sr. conducted his side of that war. Compared to Bush Sr., Saddam Hussein came across looking like Bozo the Clown. Still in spite of that deep embarrassment, he survived. At the time that was a mystery. (I know because I sure saw the mystery at the time.)
And then ten years later we have Bush Jr. vividly demonstrating how not to conduct a similar war. This section talks about the differences.
Here are the applause-worthy elements of what Bush Sr. put together:
o He mustered sufficient force to make this into a "splendid little war". It was quick and decisive. ("Sufficient" in this usage means overwhelming.)
o He was masterful at gaining allies for the cause. This list included the UN. Hussein was delusional in starting the war in the first place, but Bush Sr. showed wonderful skill at taking advantage of his diplomatic blundering.
o He let the generals conduct the war. He didn't micro manage.
o He and the generals set specific and reachable goals for the war, and these didn't drift with time.
In sum, this war was well fought. It was so well fought, it came to be first taken for granted, and then steadily forgotten. It isn't often talked about in history books, but when this evolution of thinking about a war happens, it is one of the hallmarks of a well fought war. And this phenomenon has important consequences: It was this quick forgetting about his spectacular victory that cost Bush Sr. his reelection. (I was sure surprised when that happened.)
Bush Jr. did so much wrong compared to his father, it is almost as if he was trying to make a "do's and don'ts" statement that could be passed down through the generations.
Here is a quick list:
o The war was stared in response to the 9-11 panic. As a result it was hastily planned, and planned by people who were deeply scared at the time. It ended up becoming as much a blunder as Saddam's starting the first Gulf War.
o Bush Jr. did not spend much time or effort on lining up allies. He did not have the "excuse" of Saddam's blundering to get him started on this, and he took very little time to craft or spread some alternative message that other leaders could get behind and support.
o The goals set by Bush Jr. were grandiose, and they changed steadily with time. As a result there was no way to fight for a short time and then say, "We won." and send the troops home.
o He did not start the war with overwhelming force, and the military stayed on a tight budget for years thereafter.
o When the Iraqi governing structure vanished, it surprised him.
This is a great list of ways not to conduct a war.
But this is not pure and simple "Blame Bush". One of those forgotten elements in the story telling about Gulf War Two is that the sloppy planning was enthusiastically supported by a nation of people who were also deeply scared -- Americans were demanding quick revenge for the Twin Towers. "Blaming Bush" for this sloppily-conducted war is convenient, but a mistake. He had the will of the people firmly behind him when he started this affair.
Also, as noted above, the mystery of Saddam not falling from power after Gulf War One was a yellow flag waving concerning conditions in Iraq. What it meant was that no one suitable to replace him could be found by the behind-the-scenes Iraqi leaders who supported him. They knew, even in 1991, that it was either Saddam, someone even crazier than him, or complete chaos, so they continued to back him. But, given the deep, deep panic caused by 9-11, it is not too surprising that the Bush Jr. administration chose to ignore this waving yellow flag.
In sum, these two wars were fought over the same ground between the same contenders only a decade apart. But the conduct of the wars was night and day different. And in that difference is a great history lesson.
--The End--