What Happens / POSTWAR? : TO THE GULF : The Best-Laid Plans of Global Dreamers Are No Match for the Realpolitiks of the Middle East--So Resist Them

You really have to hand it to us Americans. Not two weeks into full-scale aerial and missile combat against Saddam Hussein, and many of our leaders and foreign-policy experts are drawing up plans for a new, improved postwar Middle East. With the help of a Marshall Plan-like Western aid program and a NATO-like collective-security structure, they expect the Middle East’s quarrelsome, politically backward peoples to see the error of their ways, join the worldwide democratic revolution and beat their swords into plowshares.

A supposedly more hard-headed scenario for the region foresees a U.S.-encouraged renewal of Arab-Israeli dialogue growing out of the tacit anti-Iraq alliance formed between Israel and leading Arab regimes and U.S.-fostered defense cooperation between manpower-rich Egypt and the just-plain-rich oil kingdoms. These developments, along with international curbs on arms sales to the Middle East, would create the means to deter future Husseins.

But in the aftermath of this gulf war, what will be most striking about the Middle East will be what has not changed. The depressingly long list of problems that have kept the region a hotbed of violence, hatred and repression will remain: the conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, among Arabs, Kurds and other ethnic minorities and between Sunni and Shiite Muslims; the bitter resentment of Arab populations in resource-poor countries of their oil-saturated gulf cousins; the classic power rivalries embroiling Syria, Iran, Iraq and even Egypt; the competition among the forces of Arab socialism, quasi-Western modernization and Islamic fundamentalism, and, perhaps most important, what might be called the Arab world’s pervasive crisis of political legitimacy.

The problem is that the gulf’s secular governments have been unable to attract domestic support except by invoking a dream that could undermine them--a unified Arab nation.

Thanks to the usually violent, usually unpredictable interplay of these forces and actors, the Middle East resembles nothing so much as a kaleidoscope. Address one problem, and everything else changes. Unintended and often disastrous consequences frequently result. Indeed, U.S. attempts to make the Middle East stable and safe for democracy, or encourage regional versions of glasnost and perestroika may well plunge the region into chaos.

The question of Iraq’s fate illustrates the obstacles for any master plan for reshaping the region. As we all now ruefully recall, Washington and the rest of the West tilted toward Iraq in its war with Iran. A victory by Iran’s fanatical mullahs was averted, but the power of an even worse menace was greatly boosted. Yet Hussein’s inevitable defeat by the United States--and the destruction of Iraq’s offensive military capability--will surely lead to the rise of Syria and Iran as threats to America’s leading Middle East clients, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The military power amassed by Hussein did serve as an important pillar in the gulf balance of power--and helped shield Saudi Arabia and the other conservative oil monarchies from equally nasty, ambitious characters. Without a crude regional equilibrium or Western protection, the survival prospects for the gulf monarchs will be slim. The current war has proved that all the fancy military hardware they have purchased since the early 1970s could not produce viable defenses against their likeliest enemies. The kingdoms simply lack the manpower and the political legitimacy they need to become serious military powers, and these weaknesses will surely hamstring collective-security efforts.

Hussein’s defeat and possible elimination will create numerous other problems. The only thing we know for sure about his successor is that he--or she--will not be an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson. Representative government is as unknown in Iraq as the Dodgers’ starting rotation.

But far more important to the region will be postwar Iraq’s ability to stay in one piece. Powerful as it now seems, the Iraqi state is still a new and politically fragile arrival on the Middle East scene. A devastating defeat could well create a political vacuum and turn the country into a new Lebanon. Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would doubtless struggle for power and attempt to divide Iraq among them, while Iran, Syria and even our NATO ally Turkey would each try to grab long-disputed chunks of Iraqi territory.

Indeed, the United States may ultimately regret encouraging the re-entry of Turkey--heir to the Ottoman Empire--into Middle East politics. Turkey has territorial disputes with both Iraq and Syria. It worries that external Kurdish rebellions could incite its own Kurdish population. And it feels closely tied to the large ethnic Turkish populations in the Soviet Union. These pressures could all strengthen nationalist and expansionist voices in Ankara calling for the establishment of a “Greater Turkey.”

No matter how it ends, the Persian Gulf War will also worsen the already explosive situation in Jordan and among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories. Americans and Israelis are celebrating the eroding fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has lost much official Arab support thanks to Yasser Arafat’s alignment with Hussein.

But the group most likely to pick up the pieces is not one composed of more moderate Palestinian leaders, but the radical fundamentalist movement, Hammas. Hankering for Israel’s destruction, for the expulsion of the United States from the Middle East and for the establishment of a regionwide Islamic empire, Hammas makes the PLO mainstream look like the Salvation Army.

Even before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, public opinion polls taken in the West Bank and Gaza indicated that Hammas would have won any election on the West Bank. Moreover, Palestinian fundamentalists are enjoying growing popularity among Arabs in Israel proper, winning several local elections.

A similar situation exists in Jordan, where fundamentalists attracted broad support in that country’s first free parliamentary elections two years ago. The war is likely to strengthen already powerful domestic pressures on King Hussein to adopt a more radical anti-Israel and anti-U.S. agenda, or simply abdicate. The end result might be a Palestinian regime in Jordan, but the country could also be dismembered by Israel, Syria and Iraq if today’s war lasts long enough and spreads wide enough.

Among Israeli Jews, the clear winner from the Persian Gulf War will be the right-wing Likud government. More moderate politicians will find themselves on the defensive, and even members of Israel’s peace movement will be less inclined to reach out to a Palestinian leadership that has cheered Hussein’s missile strikes on Tel Aviv.

Have-not Arab states may well receive a foreign-aid windfall from the war, but the record to date indicates that no likely amount of aid will enable them to develop quickly and equitably enough to meet their citizens’ rising expectations. Consequently, growing domestic instability will plague such countries as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. The political strength displayed by fundamentalist groups in Algeria’s recent elections and the enthusiastic support for Hussein shown in public demonstrations in Tunisia indicate the potential instability.

The problem faced by the United States in the Middle East is the problem it faces throughout the Third World. The local actors have all the external trappings of genuine nation-states--U.N.-endorsed borders, armies, foreign ministries, flags, national airlines. But they are nothing of the kind. They lack social cohesion, political legitimacy and, most important, the institutional infrastructures to be dependable partners or even to use foreign aid productively.

In other words, like the rest of the Third World, the Middle East remains in the Dark Ages. America’s prime goal should not be to make this morass something it has never been, but to marginalize it. This means treating our addiction to Middle East oil. But until we do, America should concentrate on withdrawing the vast bulk of its forces after the war--for their long-term presence can only heighten Arab-Western friction. We can also encourage other powers--the Europeans, the Japanese, the local actors we are sadly stuck with--to take the lead in keeping the regional lid on, and cautiously explore ways to renew Arab-Israeli political dialogue.

Americans’ heads will be filled with globalist, reformist dreams after this war is won. Our success in the treacherous Middle East, however, will depend largely on our ability to resist them.