10 Years After the Arab Spring Uprisings: How can Autocratic Regimes Be Constrained?

Donald Trump boasts of US arms sales to KSA, March 2018

This is the first in a series of posts on suggested initiatives which the West should develop to establish a new forward-looking foreign policy in the MENA region designed to meet the interests of citizens, not despotic and corrupt political and economic elites. 

It has been 10 years since the Arab Spring uprisings sent shock waves throughout the Arab world and the larger Middle East.  Expectations were high that the beginning of democratic governance was just around the corner, especially after the ease with which President Zain al-Din Ben 'Ali was toppled in Tunisia in early 2011.  The fall of Husni Mubarak in Egypt, and later Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi in Libya and 'Ali 'Abdallah Salih in Yemen, raised hopes still further that autocratic regimes might be relegated to the dustbin of history. 

 

A cursory survey of the Arab Spring in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Tunisia shows that only the latter has been able to establish some form of democratic rule.  More recent developments in Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria have witnessed youth uprisings which have forced the country’s leader to resign.  In the Sudan, the genocidal dictator, General 'Umar al-Bashir, was deposed by widespread national demonstrations. al-Bashir is on trial for crimes against humanity, and a military-civilian committee has been tasked with implementing a 3 year transition to democracy.   

 

Nevertheless, autocratic rule is still the norm in the Middle East which raises the question: Is the MENA region doomed to remain under the control of autocrats?  What can be done to curtail the power and repression of these regimes?  This post argues that the West can begin by ending arm sales to the MENA region. 

 

As many are aware, arguments have been proffered that Islam is intrinsically anti-democratic and fosters authoritarian rule. Interestingly, a similar argument once plagued American Roman Catholics who were said by American Protestants to be under the Pope control and voted according to his directives (e.g., see Paul Blanchard’s American Freedom and Catholic Power).   The problem with religion as antithetical to democracy is that public opinion polls demonstrate otherwise.  Muslims are as supportive of democracy as members of other world religions. 

 

To understand the stubborn persistence of autocratic rule in the Middle East, we have to look not at culture but at the origins of the regimes in which authoritarian rule has prevailed.  Pan-Arabism, which spread in the Arab world during the 1950s and 1960s was based in a corporatist model of society in which political divisions were not only forbidden but viewed as treasonous to society and the body politics.  

 

According to the Pan-Arab mantra, all Arabs are part of “One Arab nation, endowed with an immortal mission” (umma ‘Arabiya wahida, ma’ risala khalida).  Of course, Pan Arabism slogan of “unity, freedom and socialism” led to exact opposite of what autocratic rulers like Jamal Abd al-Nasir, Hafiz al-Asad, his son Bashar, and Saddam Husayn actually practiced. 

 

Western colonialism and the Cold War turned the MENA region into a battlefield between the US and the Soviet Union.  Pan Arab regimes, such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya, and other corporatist regimes such as Algeria, were supported by the Soviet Union.  MENA region monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf states, Jordan and Morocco, sided with the United States.  In this Cold War struggle,  arms flooded the region as both global powers worked to strengthen their proxies. 

Report to Congress on Middle East Arms Sales 

 

Beginning in 1948, a series of wars between Israel and its neighboring states destabilized the region, making the Israeli-Palestinian dispute a permanent fixture of Middle East politics.  The June 1967 Arab-Israeli War spelled the death knell for Pan-Arabism.  Its effects continue to be felt today as Palestinians still do not possess an independent country of their own. The 1973 October War in which Egypt attacked Israel to dislodge it from the Sinai Peninsula almost led to a nuclear confrontation between the US and the USSR.  In the 21^st century, with Israel possessing nuclear weapons and Iran on track to develop them, the threat of nuclear war still hangs as a cloud over the MENA region. 

To address the MENA region instability and curtail autocratic power, the key first step is for the Biden administration and the European Union to stop selling technologically advanced weapons systems to autocratic regimes in the Middle East.  Curtailing arms sales will both reduce the amount of conflict in the region while undermining autocracy as well.  Saudi Arabia and Egypt should be the the first candidates to no longer receive such arms from the West.   

 

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has used US supplied weapons to bomb Yemen, often indiscreetly.  The Saudi air war has killed thousands of civilians, and destroyed hospitals, schools, markets and homes.  According to the UN, the situation today in Yemen constitutes  what it calls “the worst human rights disaster in the world.”  Fortunately, the Biden administration has ended arms sales to Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), as well as logistical support for Saudi military efforts in Yemen. 

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are among top 3 arms importers

Like Saudi Arabia, Egypt has no need for additional advanced weapons systems.  The greatest security threat it faces is not the possibility of a conventional war but terrorist organizations, like the Da’ish affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula – the so-called Islamic State – Sinai Province (originally known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis) - and non-state militias, which have flooded Libya as a result of a failed state following the Qaddafi regime’s collapse in 2011. 

Sophisticated Western arms, such as high speed jet fighters, do not serve Egypt’s security needs.  Rather these weapons serve as a symbol of President 'Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi’s power within the Egyptian military, which controls an estimated 30-40% of the national budget (a matter of such sensitivity that it’s illegal to discuss it in Egypt).  It also sends a message to the Egyptian people not to challenge the regime’s prerogatives and authority because it has the might of the United States behind it. 

 http://new-middle-east.blogspot.com/2013/08/egyptian-armed-forces-inc-middle-easts.html  

 

Within American military, intelligence and diplomatic circles, it has been argued that arms sales help to maintain a close relationship between Egypt and the USA and constitute a “reward” for the regional intelligence Egypt supplies the US and the joint US-Egyptian military exercise conducted in the country.  But does the US really need Egyptian intelligence assistance in an era of cyber warfare when digital communications can provide the necessary intelligence to meet the US’ needs? 

 

Offsetting these purported benefits that the US derive from arm sales to the MENA region – as well as European countries which sell arms in the MENA region -  is maintaining close ties to the recipient country and an ability to influence it to pursue policies favorable to the West.  However, as a recent RAND report noted – making a point which is clear to even the most casual observer – the rise in conflict in the Middle East is an ever increasing danger.  Selling more arms to the region’s autocratic regimes only adds oil to an already hot fire. 

Reimagining U.S. Strategy in the Middle East: Middle East: Strategic Partnerships, Sustainable Investments

In the case of Egypt, there is the possibility of war breaking out between Egypt and Ethiopia, which has built the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile to increase irrigation and hydroelectric power.  Egypt views the dam as a mortal threat to its water supply provided by the Nile and has threatened to attack Ethiopia if it doesn’t refrain from operationalizing it.  

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam 

With Ethiopia currently embroiled in a bloody civil war taking place in its northern Tigre region, its ability to defend itself from an Egyptian air and special forces attack on the dam would seem to be limited.  Providing Egypt with more technologically advanced weaponry, especially fighter bombers, the US and European arms sales only encourage a military response to this conflict rather than encouraging a negotiated solution. 

The argument that weapon sales foster influence and good ties with allies in the MENA region is belied by Turkey, a NATO member, where the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Recip Tayyip Erdoğan has turned to Russia for arms.  Despite US protests against Turkey’s purchase of a Russian surface-to-air missile system, Erdogan went ahead with the purchase anyway.   

 

Further, the Erdoğan regime has become one of the most destabilizing elements in the MENA region.  Its intervention in Libya has only upped the ante by adding troops and weapons to an already highly volatile civil war.  Its efforts to control natural gas production in the eastern Mediterranean threaten conflict with Greece.  Worst of all, its treatment of its own Kurdish citizens and the Syrian Democratic forces, comprised primarily of Kurds from north eastern Syria, which the US military has pointed to as playing a critical role in defeating the Da’ish terrorists, has destabilized northern and eastern Syria.   

 

At home, Erdoğan’s régime has the dubious distinction of having the highest per capita number of journalists in prison.  Meanwhile, Turkish schoolteachers and university faculty, who are not considered supportive of Erdoğan’s policy of Islamizing Turkish society, are removed from their posts.  Erdoğan jails opposition political figures and has removed democratically elected mayors of Kurdish towns in Turkey from office.  

The disastrous consequences of arms proliferation in the MENA region can be seen in Libya where warehouse filled with arms were seized by competing tribes, militias and terrorist groups, such as the Da’ish, to engage in what now has become a highly volatile, violent and debilitatingly conflict.  In Iraq, weapons have proliferated, especially after the Intifada of March 1991 which involved an effort, almost successful had it not been for US allowing Saddam’s helicopter gunships to take to the air, to topple the Ba’thist regime.  Of course, the US invasion of 2003, and the insurgency and lawlessness that followed the chaotic Bush administration’s occupation policies, increased the number of weapons still further. 

 

In Syria, the civil war which emerged from the Arab Spring uprising of 2011 likewise has resulted in an huge influx of weapons, especially across its border from Turkey.  many of these weapons were captured by terrorist organizations by groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and then the so-called Islamic State (Da’ish).  The easy access to weapons means that any small group can use them to pursue extremist or criminal activity 

 

One of the most important policies which could developed by the Western alliance would be to ban the sales weapons systems to MENA region states.  Not only are they not needed by these states, but they only encourage autocrats to believe they can act with impunity because they have the support of the West as reflected in arms sales. 

 

Further, whenever the United State sells advanced weapons systems to Arab states, such as the 50 F-35 fighters it recently sold to the UAE, Israel demands that it receive the same or more advanced weapons so as not to “fall behind” other Arab countries.  This process, which has been consistent since the late 1950s, adds more arms to the MENA region. Meanwhile, Israel, with the most powerful military in the region, and its own arms industry, doesn’t need these weapons systems. 

US plans sale of F-35 fighter to UAE in $23 arms deal 

In other words, the US and Western countries should end arm sales to the Middle East and limited their military involvement to training and professionalizing local military forces. Suppressing terrorist organizations constitutes the main threat to MENA region regimes.   

 

Finally, we hear the cry of the lost jobs in the US and Europe as corporations which develop and build weapons systems are sudden lose markets.  A failed state, or semi-failed state, will not be able to

purchase arms.  Thus, by contributing to conflict in the region, Western arms producers are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

By diverting MENA region countries resources away from the development of human capital through the purchase of arms, these countries’ economic growth shrinks and they become poor markets for Western investments and goods.  Selling large amounts expensive weapons systems may be lucrative financially in the short-term, but self-defeating at the end of the day if such sales exacerbate local conflict and political instability.   

 

The next post in this series analyzes how the West can promote sustainable development in the MENA region which can benefit both foreign and local interests.