Many Swords but Few Plows Spell Despair

Some of the saddest pictures from the Gulf War of are young people, Jordanians and others cheering Scud missiles because they are hitting Israel, or Kuwaitis in Cairo dancing in discotheques.

Both reflect the economic underdevelopment that is the truly great problem in the Middle East, the problem that led to this war and that threatens to become a U.S. burden when all this is over.

Despite oil riches, the Middle East is comparatively poor. Egypt’s national income per person is only a third that of Malaysia which, like Egypt, is an Islamic country formerly ruled by Britain. Iraq--and Iran--have enormous oil reserves, yet their national incomes per person are a fourth that of Israel, which has no oil, and only a half to a third that of such poor European countries as Spain and Ireland.

Underdevelopment is not mere numbers. It is lack of opportunity for young people to have work, to have options. Many Saudi and Kuwaiti youth are rich but idle; youth in other countries are underemployed at home--college graduates in Egypt given do-nothing government jobs--or working at construction sites and offices in Iraq and other countries of the Persian Gulf.

With war, that work has been disrupted and millions of unemployed are flocking home, further burdening their already poor countries. Whether they’ll be going back to work depends on how the war ends--whether there is economic development afterward or continued chaos, as some Middle East experts are predicting.

The issue is of paramount importance to the United States. If the aftermath of war is chaos, U.S. troops could be tied down in the Middle East for a long time--they have spent four decades in Germany, Japan and South Korea, after all.

So it’s important for Americans to understand just why the Middle East, a collection of countries spawned in this century from remnants of the Turkish and British empires, remains underdeveloped--and whether there’s hope for improvement.

Oil money is no guarantee of progress. “Capital doesn’t ensure development; Japan developed from a base of no capital” says Professor Ibrahim Oweiss of Georgetown University’s Center for Arab Studies and author of “The Political Economy of Contemporary Egypt.”

And a colonial past is no excuse. In Asia, many countries are former colonies--Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Korea--and all have been visited by war or internal strife. Yet they are making progress, educating their young people, retaining agriculture while moving into industry. Malaysia, a rubber-producing colony only yesterday, now manufactures computer chips.

What went wrong in the Middle East? It squandered its money on guns. “The Middle East has less than 3% of the world’s population, yet it accounts for more than 8% of the world’s military spending,” writes Times staff writer David Lamb in his book, “The Arabs.” Where Asian nations spend 2% to 4% of gross national product on defense, Middle Eastern countries spend three to four times that: Egypt and Syria 13% of GNP, Saudi Arabia and Israel 16%.

No one should feel superior. The United States, Soviet Union, China, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, Colombia--all sold arms to the Middle East. Now we face that handiwork in action.

Saddam Hussein was a particularly good customer, spending half Iraq’s GNP on the military. Now U.S. troops must combat that arms buildup, which was ready to go nuclear. U.S. air attacks have put Iraq “out of the nuclear bomb building business for a long time to come,” President Bush said Wednesday.

Yet arms spending is not the whole story, says William Quandt, Middle East scholar at the Brookings Institution. The region’s addiction to easy money has hurt; oil has been more drug than vitamin. Rather than build industry and agriculture--as did Israel--most countries without oil have lived by tapping into the wealth of those with it. Tiny Jordan, for example, trained its own people to work as doctors and civil servants for the oil-rich sheikdoms while importing Filipinos and Egyptians to do its manual labor.

The kingdoms and sheikdoms, in turn, imported people, skills and materials from America, Europe and Asia to build their palaces. To the West they gave investment, to their Middle Eastern neighbors they gave charity.

A pattern of state economies--dubbed Arab Socialism--grew up. And now, says economist Alan Stoga, of Kissinger Associates, “just like Poland and others in Eastern Europe, the Middle East must bite the bullet of economic reform.” But reform is difficult. State-owned companies must be sold, bureaucracies reduced and subsidies dismantled everywhere, including Israel.

Will that happen? A lot depends, say experts, on restraint in the allied attack.

If Iraq is destroyed, the aftermath could be very grim, says James Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Iran would move for advantage, U.S. forces would have to permanently guard Saudi oil fields, there would be chaos.

Yet there is hope. If Hussein can be defeated but Iraq preserved, peaceful development has a chance. Israel’s ambassador to the United States said last week that Tel Aviv would join in regional arms control efforts and peace talks with the Palestinians.

Then maybe the ancient Middle East can turn from tanks and guns to tractors and computers; maybe its young people can turn from envy and despair to industry and purpose.