The Global Center of Gravity Shifts to the Arab World
by: Dave Belden on February 27th, 2011 | 7 Comments »
“The people want to bring down the regime” is the cry of the people of Libya. But what will they create? Well, that’s always the question with democracies. Guess who said
Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.
No surprise, it was Plato. Even “the best people,” perhaps especially them, those high-minded patricians who want an ethical, moral government, tend to fear that the people will become a mob. There are plenty of examples from history to back them up, but plenty more that show how popular government muddles its way towards more just government. I don’t know of any country that made that transition fast or that isn’t still struggling with its oligarchies.
Kristoff has a good column today on the Western racism involved imagining that Arabs, Africans and Chinese are somehow unfit for democracy.
But the piece to read is by Mark LeVine (Tikkun‘s longest serving contributing editor): “History’s Shifting Sands, The revolutions sweeping the Arab world indicate a tectonic shift in the global balance of people power.”
In Kristoff’s piece you still feel a little bit of the self congratulation Americans feel about their own democracy, along with the magnanimity to believe others are capable of it too. In LeVine’s, you get the sense that many of us have watching these Arab uprisings, that their democratic energy is by far eclipsing ours at present. He doesn’t downplay the value of the example of Western democracy, but he is also clear-headed about what it has always lacked, not least in Western attitudes to the Arab world:
Ever since Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, the great Egyptian chronicler of the French invasion of Egypt, brilliantly dissected Napoleon’s epistle to Egyptians, the peoples of the Middle East have seen through the Western protestations of benevolence and altruism to the naked self-interest that has always laid at the heart of great power politics. But the hypocrisy behind Western policies never stopped millions of people across the region from admiring and fighting for the ideals of freedom, progress and democracy they promised.
Even with the rise of a swaggeringly belligerent American foreign policy after September 11 on the one hand, and of China as a viable economic alternative to US global dominance on the other, the US’ melting pot democracy and seemingly endless potential for renewal and growth offered a model for the future.
Trading places
But something has changed. An epochal shift of historical momentum has occurred whose implications have yet to be imagined, never mind assessed. In the space of a month, the intellectual, political and ideological centre of gravity in the world has shifted from the far West (America) and far East (China, whose unchecked growth and continued political oppression are clearly not a model for the region) back to the Middle – to Egypt, the mother of all civilization, and other young societies across the Middle East and North Africa.
Standing amidst hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in Tahrir Square seizing control of their destiny it suddenly seemed that our own leaders have become, if not quite pharaohs, then mamluks, more concerned with satisfying their greed for wealth and power than with bringing their countries together to achieve a measure of progress and modernity in the new century. Nor does China, which has offered its model of state-led authoritarian capitalist development coupled with social liberalisation as an alternative to the developing world, seem like a desirable option to the people risking death for democracy in the streets of capitals across the Arab world and Iran.
Instead, Egyptians, Tunisians and other peoples of the region fighting for revolutionary political and economic change have, without warning, leapfrogged over the US and China and grabbed history’s reins. Suddenly, it is the young activists of Tahrir who are the example for the world, while the great powers seem mired in old thinking and outdated systems. From the perspective of “independence” squares across the region, the US looks ideologically stagnant and even backwards, filled with irrational people and political and economic elites incapable of conceiving of changes that are so obvious to the rest of the world.
LeVine details specific ways that the U.S. is abandoning its democratic energy just as the young Arabs are building theirs. He concludes:
Luckily, inspiration has arrived, albeit from what to a ‘Western’ eye seems like the unlikeliest of sources. The question is: Can the US have a Tahrir moment, or as the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun would have predicted, hasit entered the irreversible downward spiral that is the fate of all great civilizations once they lose the social purpose and solidarity that helped make them great in the first place?It is still too early to say for sure, but as of today it seems that the reins of history have surely passed out of America’s hands.
Read it all here.
Thank you for the pleasant bedtime story. My sense is that in the underdeveloped world, China is a preferred model. I cite South America as proof. The U.S. is in the hands of leadership whose vision stops at the bottom line, where they will do whatever it takes to hold on to the unjust advantages they have acquired.
Should conditions worsen or fail to improve in the U.S. then perhaps some effort will be made to confront the American robber barons. The problem is that they learn from the past, so it gets harder each time to rein them in.
I, too, want a hopeful scenario for the future. Only time will tell whether the near East chooses parliamentary democracy or state capitalism. From where I sit it looks bleak.
I did not believe that I would live to see what is happening in the Middle East. Yes, it is not perfect, because cultural attitudes in that part of the world about pluralism, about women, about sexual choice and expression are very polarized, but can we not see that this revolution is truly the power of youth and of the communicative praxis that modern internet technology has wrought? No country can entirely cut its youth off from the rest of the world. It is no longer possible. It is more inclusive that the 60′s were.
The Left has always been good at nitpicking and at adopting a rigid utopian perspective. Marx spoke of a minimum and maximum programs for achieving radical ends. The Hard Left has often dumped the minimum program as collaborationist and reactionary.
Saying that, what is the case in this situation? Has Israel lost its right to be a state by its treatment of the Palestinians? Sometimes the discussion in Israel sounds like the Palestinians are “Native Americans” who are not even fully human. This is, of course, evil. But how do you speak of transcultural dialogue when two cultures have major disagreements about technology, economy, cultural interaction, and even something as basic as the use of the land.
Yes, it does look bleak. I very much believe Human Sexuality is the exact issue to surface cultural division and antipathy. The right of humanity to express adult intimacy with freedom and joy is basic to any project for the future. Without it, we cease to use our bodies to explore the meaning of intimate freedom.
As for Israel, having volunteered to fight in the Yom Kippur War and been accepted, my heart is broken now with what is happening there. Truly. It hurts to look at what is going on there.
Thank you again, Dave Belden.
Rev. Williams I will simply believe in real change in Egypt, Tunisia and perhaps Libya when I see it. It is too early to tell. We have seen a few revolutions come and go in the Arab world and Kaddafi comes to mind. He had is so called “Green Revolution” he nationalized the oil industry and introduced the Green Book to the Arab world, a hybrid of socialism and Islam. What turned out was a despot enriching himself and his sons while leaving ordinary Libyans living a life of poverty. So let’s wait and see. Overthrowing a leader is not the only step in creating a democracy; it is the 1st step on a very long road.
Thank you Dave for calling Mark Levine’s article to our attention. It deserves wide distribution. While it is true that the Arab world revolt has leapt ahead of political developments elsewhere, it is not taking anything away from what they have achieved to note that their victories are not yet consolidated and it is not, as yet, certain, that they will be. Surely, the momentum of the last month counts for something. But the anti-democratic forces (and I do not have Islamic fundamentalists primarily in mind) have not disappeared. They are no doubt temporarily in retreat but looking for an opportunity to divide and conquer the movement.
We in the U.S. surely owe a debt to the example of solidarity that has ricocheted across the Arab World. I doubt that the outpouring of support for Wisconsin public workers elsewhere in the U.S. would have been as great if it had not been for the example of the solidarity practically expressed in the revolts in the Arab world.
Sorry Jan, don’t buy that. There is no common ground between the protester in Wisconsin and the protesters in te Arab world. Thankfully we do not live in a country where we can face a hail of bullets when standing up in protest to an in justice. Also the anger in the Arab world was simmering for year while the anger in Wisconsin was set of by one piece of legislation. I would call it a very shallow comparison.
“we are waiting for the American eagle to stand up and fly right; and we are perpetually awaiting the rebirth of wonder”
from a poem by Lawrence Ferlighetti– A Coney Island of the Mind.
It is fantastic, and hopeful and exciting to watch it happen, but then there will be the next stage– will the army quietly grab back the reins in Egypt? Will the gains of idealistic younger people with cell phones and the will to non-violent revolution be able to be solidified into a more tolerant government? Will people begin to allow some dissent, some dissidence, in the public sphere? Meanwhile, there are Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere doing their “level best” to destroy our democratic form of government, take the reins, be the bullies, and smile like Ronny the whole time. It is a time for prayer– may the BEST men win. may the women get to have a say. May the educators get to have a retirement pension which will not be removed by the cynical declaration of bankruptcy in state governments. May we care for “the least among us”.
It’s laborious to seek out educated people on this topic, but you sound like you realize what you’re speaking about! Thanks