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>> I'm now going to introduce our speaker today. Professor Jon Pevehouse is the
department of Political Science at UW-Madison, where he's been
got him back. He's both a scholar in the area of international relations, but Healso he's is a pretty highlywe
acclaimed teacher, having won the Distinguished Teaching Award
in 2005. And one of our colleagues,
before I came up here, is a former student of his and described him as "amazing," so a lot to live up to there.
I hear that over and over again having never gotten to take one of his classes, but he's done some speaking before, and I
think you'll really enjoy what he has to say. His research area is in the topic of international
relations.
He has co-authored the leading textbook that undergraduates use
the study of looking at political or governmental organizations, and economic onand socio-political impacts in
of those. I'm not quite sure what that
means. It sounds fancy.
I'm sure he'll explain it within
Kansas, and his PhD at The Ohio thState University.y. BuWe're awfully glad he's ourss bachelor's at University of
I am very pleased to introduce now, on our campus.
Professor Jon Pevehouse. ( applause )
Sarah. >> Jon Pevehouse: Thanks a lot,
My work is cut out for me now. The first thing we're going to
I debated and did speaking do is lower expectations.
your side right away. So I'm going to do that in the debate coach in high school always said get the audience on
cheapest, easiest way possible and say, go, Badgers!
( laughter )
that's good. If you noticed the schools I've been, all three of my teams are still in the tournament, so
I'm going to get my watch out now, my phone/watch, so I don't talk too long, because I want to about.
questions and answers about what's been going on in the Middle East. leave a lot of time for
notes. It's funny, I was looking at my
I'm not going to review the details, you know, that was so obviously, about Egypt. But what my note for Egypt says,
six weeks ago. Things have just moved
so quickly. I think it has left everyone's
head spinning. I can tell you for a fact, it's
left academics' heads spinning. It's left the pundits' heads
conversations with people in spinning. And having a number of phone
Washington, it's left heads spinning in the State Department and elsewhere, as well.
Everyone is still trying to make
sense of what's going on. Part of that is also a caveat to say, any prediction I make may
well be wrong, you know, five hours from now. With that said, what I want to
transitions in the Middle East, and what's been going on. I want to tell you a little bit about, kind of say none of this
had happened, and I was asked to
give a talk about political transitions, how do they happen, I'm going to tell you what
political scientists and
international relations scholars have thought in a very general
happen, what are the important way about how transitions
factors. Secondly, what I'll do is kind
little bit about, kind of what of go through and talk to you a
of these were present in some of these cases, in the ongoing case
in Bahrain, in Yemen, etc. of Libya, in Egypt, in Tunisia,
Then what I want to talk about is the potential of the democratic revolution to
succeed, both in the Libyan case, will the revolution get rid of Gaddafi, but also in cases like Egypt and Tunisia.
Will we, five years from now, be talking about a democratic government in those countries?
question. I want to emphasize that. Yes, there has been a transition That is still a very open
many of these countries. away from authoritarianism in
as we speak. We do not yet know what we're transitioning to. We're in the middle of it,
We can talk about, again, my off the cuff predictions, and where that might go, but it's a
prediction. It's just that. Then finally, I want to conclude
of these transitions and what I think it means for American foreign policy, and talking wabout Libya and the situationns
that's going on as we speak.
So to start out with, what do we know about the democratization
transitions and government? There are about five things that process, about political
to thinking about what's going I think are important findings, that are particularly relevant
on in the Middle East. This is true writ large, and
counterintuitive to people. We think of democratization, this is somewhat surprising and
The truth of the matter is, historically, popular uprisings almost never succeed on their own, I mean literally almost
never.
The key condition, that political scientists anyway, have identified are splits
within the elite. When an authoritarian, or single
people in the street. It has to be that there are some party system in a dictatorship, it can't just be that there are
elite, who decide that they're people within the power structure, within the power
going to ally, or that they empathize with the people in the street.
Or, that they can get something better out of a future
It seems a little cynical. government if they transition away from the dictatorship.
But again, if you look historically, people in the street, you have the power of
the democratic revolution.
Yes, it's found in the people. It's often a necessary
of cases it's not been. For example, in the late 1980s, Paraguay moved from a military condition, although in a handful
no street protests, just the dictatorship to a democracy with
general leading the country decided we should have elections.
And they had elections and
became a democracy. You know, history, unfortunately is littered with many other
examples of the opposite, right,
when people have been in the streets.
You've seen no democratic transition. What's the difference between those that succeed and fail?
It's when some part of the
dictatorship, whether it's the business elites or the military,
government coalition decides whether it's somewhere in the
they're going to ally with the people, and they're going to
political opening. create a split, which creates a
This happened in Egypt, and I'll come back to this more than once.
The minute the military said we are not going to shoot the
protesters, those of us who were watching Egypt at the time,
about four days into the
protests, the Egyptian military said they were not going to turn on the people, it was over.
Yes, it took longer and there was still uncertainty.
But for those of us watching that, we knew Egypt was done at
that point, and the revolution
was going to succeed. Because when the military will not protect the dictatorship,
something's bound to change.
Something's going to happen. So that's one.
or heard a lot about income, Two, you've probably read a lot
economic difficulties. That's important. I'll come back to that in a
minute. The one finding we thought we had, the one research finding we
the last five or six years was thought was very strong until
that if you look through history, there had never been a country with a per capita GDP of
over 7500, a country where the
average person makes over $7500 a year, that was a democracy and moved away, right, so we've used
this to think about well, what
So very poor countries, yes, kind of income levels do states need to be at on a per capita basis.
there are some very poor democracies.
There are wealthy, high per capita dictatorships. Kuwait, right, $35,000-$39,000 Bangladesh, for example.
Far exceeds the United States. a year per capita.
A dictatorship, right, monarchy. But nonetheless, if you become
income, you usually stay a democracy, and you have high
a democracy. None of these regimes have that high of a per capita income.
Some of them are quite low. Although, this finding itself has had some doubt cast on it with the events of Thailand
three summers ago, when a military coup took place there. They clearly were above that
and transitioned away from threshold of per capita income,
democracy. So income matters, and I'll come
mattered in Egypt. back to exactly it probably
military is going to side with. What do we know about militaries this, the role of the military. You have to understand who the
and dictatorships? They're very cozy, obviously,
usually, with the regime, because they're used not for
as well. external protection only, they're for internal protection
They're not just used to protect the borders.
revolts. They're used to put down
So, the government needs to be able to rely on the militaries
states to put down the people if they rise up. in dictatorships or single-party
That said, some militaries are more happy to do this, some are
less happy to do this.
What are the ethnic breakdowns And a lot of things within that matter, right, what are their relationships?
within the military? What are the income breakdowns
How old is the officer corps? Initially, people were saying about Egypt, well, you know, within the military?
What are the generals thinking what do the generals think?
about Mubarak and what's going to happen?
The question is, what are the midlevel officers in the That's the wrong question.
military thinking. The generals are always going to
be bought in, right, the
generals have been in the military their whole life. They're going to be pals with
the powers that be. Every military coup that
happens, it's always the colonels.
It's the midlevel officers, right, that always undertake
these things, for the most part. So, what's the odds that the
military keeps democratization
I can make a pretty good going in Egypt? If you can tell me what the colonels are thinking right now,
prediction about that. But we don't know.
interesting about the situation. I think that's what's
Fourth, ethnic division. This is one thing that really differentiates, say, Libya from
Egypt.
Egypt, for the most part, is a largely homogenous society. Everyone speaks the same
language. Yes, there are Coptic Christians, especially in the south, that make up a percentage
of the population.
But for the most part, Egyptians view themselves as Egyptians. Nasser's nationalist project,
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader
of Egypt for many years, undertook a nationalist project to build the national pride in
being Egyptian. Not in being Muslim, not in being from a particular tribe,
Gaddafi in Libya had done the exact opposite, anyway. He tried a national project. but in being Egyptian.
appeared he was trying to make And from the outside, it
everyone be Libyan. But in practice, what he had been doing for decades is paying
off different tribes, right, and
sort of reinforcing these tribal rivalries in a way, to keep them
one would challenge him. worried about one another so no
So if you don't trust the people in the village next to you
tribe, and Gaddafi says he'll protect you, right, you're not because they're from a different
going to then go try to bite the hand that feeds you, right,
because he's protecting you from
these bad people. And of course, then he goes over to the other village and says,
these are bad people over there,
you need me to protect you. So he furthered these ethnic-- They weren't really ethnic, they
were more tribal differences
within Libya in some ways. He used those strategically to stay in power.
Again, those divisions did not
exist in the same way in Egypt, for example as they did in Libya.
But again, ethnic divisions matter. In highly ethnically divided
difficult. societies, democracy is more
It's not impossible. Clear cases, like India, where
ethnically and religiously in that country. Nonetheless, they're a you have deep divisions
But on the whole, you just look across time and across space, across the map, ethnic divisions successful democracy.
and democratization. do not bode well for democracy
that political scientists have Finally, something called the resource curse. This is sort of a fancy phrase
come up with, and a lot of research done on this in the
It turns out that states with a lot of oil, states with a lot of last decade.
diamonds, states with a lot of natural gas, tend to have two
problems. Ironically, they have low economic growth usually, which
You'd think that all this money is going into Saudi Arabia and is surprising.
They're also rarely democracies. Libya, but they oftentimes have very low economic growth.
I mean, think about the states that have a lot of petroleum
For the most part they're dictatorships. resources.
although that's a recent change in the last decade. WithMost states are eitheray, with the exception of Mexico,
states, or they're what I would call pseudo democracies, not dictatorships, single-party
Why is this the case? Well, I won't bore you with the details, but a lot of economists democracies, like Venezuela.
thought this through. The two things we know are that the oil money coming in, right, anit doesn't get distributede
evenly. This is going into the pockets
of the few, which leads to corruptions.
It's easier to keep corruption
dictatorships than democracies. If you're from Illinois-- ( laughter )ship. Corruption works better under
That may be news. So you tend to have authoritarianism, single-party Fair enough.
reinforced by this oil. The other thing it does, is the reason it stops growth, again, states, again, kind of
is as all this money comes in, not to get into the economics,
you now have all this money to spend, think petrodollars in the
went to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. '70s, or the Euro dollars that
This actually exerts an upward pressure on your exchange rate.
So it turns out it makes your currency more expensive on
the only part of your country that grows is the oil sector. No other manufacturing can help. exports expensive, which means
Disease, because the Dutch, when Economists call this Dutch
they were selling so much oil from the Indies in the 1940s and '50s, were constantly in
recession, even though they had all this oil money coming in, because no one wanted to hold the Dutch currency and no one
could buy anything with Dutch currency, because things
had become so expensive. So the bottom line is, believe
it or not, oil rentier states as
we call them have bad experience with growth and they have bad experience with democracy.
So again, look at the countries we're talking about.
Tunisia, not heavily dependent Egypt, not heavily dependent on oil, and moving along.
on oil, moving along. Libya kind of stuck. Bahrain, stuck.
Yemen, not much oil.
Who knows where's that's going to go.
moving anywhere at this point. Saudi Arabia, clearly not
I don't want to make too much of that, because I think there's so
But I think at first blush, the amount of oil you have seems to be a pretty good predictor of how these revolutions have gone
so far. Okay, so how did this happen? Let's piece together a few of these events.
Where all of this really began
was when a YouTube clip surfaced in Tunisia from a merchant, a very middle class merchant, who
had been denied a state job.
So a piece of background here. In Tunisia and Egypt, in
if you have a college degree, and the only way you go to particular, those two countries,
college is if you're middle to upper class in these societies,
you are pretty much guaranteed a
pressures on the budgets of these governments so they Bcouldn't hire people anymore.e lThey didn't want to run age
deficit.
They couldn't run a deficit. The IMF and the World Bank have told them they couldn't run
deficits to hire these college
graduates anymore. So the college graduates were having to take menial jobs.
They were going into jobs that
they felt were beneath them. So the street vendor decided to make the ultimate sacrifice.
He committed suicide by burning himself alive when he could not get a job, and felt like he did not have the standard of living
that he deserved. This is not the first instance
this had happened. This had happened a couple of
times earlier in the year in
Tunisia. But this is the first one that
camera. It was immediately posted to was caught on a cell phone
YouTube. It went viral within Tunisia.
Tunisians started watching this.
If this would've been someone incredibly poor, if this would've been an ethic minority,
this might have just been sort
of well, you know, they're in a bad way, so of course we understand.
But this wasn't.
This was someone very middle class, who should've had a good life ahead of them, you know,
who was well-educated.
This really shook the Tunisians. Something else had really begun to come to light and had gone
viral in Tunisia at the same
here? If you remember this massive That was WikiLeaks. So how is WikiLeaks relevant
release of diplomatic cables from the United States, one
thing that was contained in these was a lot of private
countries, especially Tunisia, communication between the ambassadors in some of these
off, and they're fascinating and Washington, DC. I was lucky enough to get a lot of these before they were taken
reading. One of my colleagues said a lot of these FSOs are just, you
know, English majors from Yale, so they write very well.
like in Tunisia. So, they're these fascinating narratives about what life was
the government elite, you were What life is like in Tunisia, according to these WikiLeaks, was that if you were a member of
very well off. You had cars. You had access to goods that
otherwise the average person
didn't have, not the poor, the middle class. These governing elites
had access to a lifestyle that no one else had. It portrayed corruption as being
So, this was the context. So you have the WikiLeaks of, wait a minute, our government is absolutely rampant in Tunisia.
This was kind of real, hard evidence about how corrupt they were, from someone else's perspective, from an American
perspective.
Then you had this suicide. This was too much, right. This was when sort of the first
large-scale rioting began in
Tunisia. The government at first didn't
Then they went from not taking take it very seriously.
it seriously to way over reacting. This is a common thing you see
in almost all of these. They go from sort of patting on the head, okay, well we'll
shoot everyone. That kind of whipsaw only angered people more, right, rbecause it showed they weren't
serious in the first place about
About the same time, obviously, next door in Egypt, you get the You got thsame thing.in Tunisia and BeCorruption.n out.
High corruption.
High unemployment of the middle class, and a relatively educated population.
So here are the economic
difficulties coming in. And this demonstration effect of well, they did it, why can't we?
Again, the other thing we tend
to know about democratic revolutions is they often have a
There have been two within our demonstration effect.
you had one country after the recent meother shift.t, there have been two of these. Eastern Europe in 1989, where
But also in the early 1970s, Portugal,
the Carnation Revolution
in Portugal in 1974, over King Salazar.
Then next comes Greece. Then it spreads to Latin America Then next comes Spain, right?
and you get Brazil and Argentina, so you get this
series in the '70s. Samuel Huntington labeled it the
beginning of the third wave of democracy.
So you get these demonstration
effects, not uncommon. So that's Egypt.
Yemen, same thing. Then Bahrain, same thing.
These have all had different outcomes, but the demonstration effect is clearly there.
That's what's been going on.
In terms of the other underlying issues that have been kind of driving these, in Yemen, and
I'll talk about Yemen in a
minute. And in Bahrain, it's also a Shia Sunni split within Islam.
The vast majority of these
populations in all these countries are Islamic.
But they are from different sects, they are either Shia, They are Muslims.
is kind of a partial sect of the they are Sunni. In Syria, they are Aleoui, which
religious tensions between these Shia Islam. So, there also are underlying tensions, economic, social,
Less so in Egypt. Less so in Tunisia. IMore so in Bahrain.e More so in Yemen as well.
So you have this information
about corruption. You have the demonstration effect.
You had these class cleavages.
And again, to re-emphasize this, over reaction.
states, you had an initial, right, remember Bahrain. Again, in almost all of these
The minute the revolution started happening in Tunisia and Or you may not remember this, because it got lost.
Egypt, the government of Bahrain comes out and says we're going
to cut, I forget the exact
amount, but it was basically like a $5,000 check, right, the government of Bahrain says we're
going to give everyone $5,000.
stay in their homes, and it Staydidn't work.es. And they did. They gave everyone $5,000 to
But they were going to bribe their way into surviving and
trying to get through this. So they saw the handwriting on
The final point. the wall. It just didn't work.
shoot you if you leave your So this over home.ion, and then thAgain, it's this whipsaw ofay well, you really weren't serious
in the first place, which makes us all the more angry at you, and is more likely to get us out
The final thing to emphasize, and I'm happy to talk about more in the street.
great concern about Egypt. in Q&A, these are not Islamic revolutions, right, this was the
It was oh, it's the brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood is behind
They're going to create a new Iran. It's going to be terrible. this.
know, Islamic fundamentalism They're going to spread, you
throughout the region. And rather than being an
be at Israel's doorstep tomorrow, tearing up the Camp David accords, and all hell's Amerigoing to break loose.ng to
That's not what this is about.
The Muslim Brotherhood is just as clueless about this as most
was going on. They were not behind this. American observers were, as it
educated revolution. This has been a middle class, largely liberal, largely
Yes, they brought more, and more people have sort of globbed on
an Islamic revolution. at this point, but this was not
I'll make this point now, which is, you know, people have asked, kind of, why Obama so quickly
shifted to push Egypt, to push
Tunisia, and why we're doing what we're doing in Libya.
importance of Al Qaeda in this, in the following sense. The narrative of Al Qaeda, the Do not underestimate the
into the organization, is they way Al Qaeda gets people to come
have a narrative. Their narrative is as follows. The United States just wants oil
out of the region.
and keep you down, and keep these dictators in power, to They just want oil. And they're willing to kill you,
And look at what we've done in keep pumping the oil out of the ground.
the past, right, as an organization. We helped get the Soviets out of
Afghanistan.
And look, the United States And whacomes into Iraq. after the Soviets left Afghanistan? The Soviet Union fell apart.
We're active in Afghanistan, now We get active Iraq, they leave Iraq.
they're talking about leaving Afghanistan. So what's going to happen next?
The United States is going to fall as a super power.
But it's a narrative. It's a narrative that actually It's all, right, it's not accurate, right?
hangs together a little bit. But it's that part about
supporting the dictatorships, right, the reason you are miserable is the United States
these dictatorships, because is running around supporting
they want your oil, and they want to support Israel. So if you join us, we'll create
an Islamic revolution which will
So why haven't you heard from Al be the only way that we can get rid of these dictatorships, right?
Qaeda in the last two months? Because what's happened on the ground has shown the Arab street
that this narrative that they developed for a decade is false.
The United States has been supporting the democratic
revolutions.
We've accepted the fact that this is going to create uncertainty, and frankly, could
come back to bite us ten years
from now. Egypt could become a fundamentalist state.
It's probably not going to
our allies and letting them go, hand saying, look, you need toe qreform.. These governments are falling
without Islamic revolutions.
Islam has very little to do with some of these revolutions.
of eating into this narrative that they have. The Obama administration, not to So it's all just sort of, kind
here, but you know, they saw give them any particular credit
currency of Al Qaeda in the region. Whether it works, we don't know. to sort of undercut the social
about the Islamic issue, because But I want to make that point
I think, don't underestimate that, at least in the minds of
because they've thought about this as really a way to kind of stick it to Al Qaeda and stop that dimension of what's been,
happening in the region.
Okay, will these revolutions succeed?
by country and talk a little bit So now I'm going to go country
about a couple of these. Will other countries follow,
Egypt. will these succeed?
about January 25, but to my mind Again, this is where I say, I'm not going to review the history of what happened starting at
the important thing that's happened in Egypt in the last week was the election on Sunday.
If you noticed that in the news,
The election was a referendum. there was a major election on Sunday. It had very high turn out.
It was a referendum on whether or not there would be constitutional changes in Egypt
to move the elections forward,
happen in the fall. tNow, they're talking muchh earlier elections. The elections were going to
constitution. For example, putting term limits They also made changes to the
on the president, so you wouldn't get another Mubarak,
who could get term after term after term. They also made changes to some
This was approved, widely approved. It wasn't even close. That said, there was some
opposition to this. It's interesting to think about where the opposition to this
The opposition to this movement came from the small liberal, came from.
this. The National Democratic Party, small democratic movements. The Muslim Brotherhood supported
Why? which is Mubarak's old party, supported this.
Because they're already formed as political parties. They already have campaign
wings.
They already have infrastructure in the field to go campaign.
led this revolution have parties None of these other groups who
yet. They haven't even been
How are they going to compete in registered as political parties.
an election in a month? They're not, is the bottom line, they're not.
So this is why things like
Mohamed ElBaradei, the person we saw get a lot of attention, as being one of the focal points
of this revolution, is heavily
against this. In fact, he was stoned when he came out of the voting booth in
Cairo because he was against
not giving the opposition a true this. This was a very unpopular position because he says you're
chance to join. This is just going to be, right, the National Democratic Party,
which he perceives as the military party, and the Brotherhood, are going to be the
parties now. only competitive political
And the other person who is heavily against this is Amar Moussa, who we'll come back to.
Amar Moussa is an Egyptian who
is the head of the Arab League right now, and would be the odds-on favorite, if you were to
hold an election for president
election. He's an interesting figure. We're going to come back to him the odds-oabout Libya.o win that
So, that's where it's at. There's going to be elections.
There's still constitutional reform going on.
My prediction on Egypt is that
Turkey, right, where you have elections, you have competitive short terelections.o medium term, it will look a lot like
democratic society, but you have You have, for the most part, a
And you know, the history of the military. You have the military sitting there.
Turkey is, since the time of Ataturk, it's been a secular, democratic society, one in which
the military has intervened,
1960, 1971, 1980, ostensibly 1991. They didn't call it a coup, but
it was. About every ten years, the
military comes in, they arrest everyone in parliament.
They take the Islamists out.
They say, you can't serve anymore, and they hold elections a year later.
Then they're back to a democracy
again. They clean house about every ten
So something like that would not years.
sure the Brotherhood doesn't get surprise me in Egypt, where you get the military just sort of watching over things to make
too strong, to make sure the Islamist parties don't come to
That's Egypt. Again, if you have questions power, etc.
in depth. Bahrain. about any of these countries, we'll talk about them more
Bahrain is a fascinating case. It's very unclear to me that
much of anything is going to
change in Bahrain. You know, the demands of the
that the monarch leave, that the Bahrainians were not so much
king leave, they just wanted more free elections.
What's feeding the dissent in Bahrain is that you've got an enormous ethnic split. They wanted reform.
and his family, kind of the power elite in Bahrain are The king in Bahrain is a Sunni,
Sunni. But the majority of the country
are Shia. The interesting thing here, you talk about social media and the power of WikiLeaks, etc.,
Tom Friedman pointed out, in a
real interesting column about a month ago, that one thing that has fed the dissatisfaction in
Bahrain and really brought this to a head was Google Maps.
That Bahrain allowed Google Maps to be viewed in Bahrain, what
difference does that make?
What you can see on Google Maps, if you get on a low enough
what land, and where fences are drawn on land. resolution, right, is who owns
didn't own any of the good land on Google Maps. Like, all the terrible land they out in Bahrain was that they
neighborhoods. noticed were the Shia
They had never sort of put all All the valuable land, they noticed, were the Sunni neighborhoods.
of that together before. This was a very kind of in your face way for them to see.
Like, whenever new land was parceled out, whenever new land was given a transfer or sold by the state, it always ended up in
Sunni hands.
This caused a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction in the Shia community, who has always felt
sort of under the thumb of the
Sunni minority government there. So you know, again, this is one of these issues where a week and
a half ago, I'd have said 50-50,
right, the Bahrain does something. The son of the king is, I would
argue, moderately reformist.
So if you recall Bahrain, they tried to pay them off.
They started shooting them, and then they backed off, and they It didn't work.
allowed them to occupy Pearl Square.
That was at the behest of the son.
He said, look, just let them there.
Don't shoot them. Give them a chance, and then
we'll see. Because again, his perception,
they didn't want the fall of the
So what then happens is the modemanders keep upping theirme demands. They wanted more voting.
They stay in the street. They up their demands.
The government tries to give them a little bit.
starts getting a little bit nervous that maybe he's opened a Then the government, the king,
can of worms, or that he can't get back together.
What you had last week was the
joint intervention of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia
This was a fascinating event. This did not get much attention. into Bahrain.
Japan and the terrible This did not get a lot of attention in the media, because
humanitarian disaster in Japan was taking place at the exact same time.
But what happens, right, is the decision by Bahrainians asked the Saudis to intervene on their
Now, the Saudis weren't doing much shooting. behalf.
At least from what I could tell, the Saudis weren't doing a lot
of the shooting, but they were
there on backup in case things got ugly. So the Bahrainian military goes
in, they clear out Pearl Square.
government. They knocked down the monument They knock down the monument, right, which was built by the
around. So in that regard, you know, to try to remove it as this place for people to rally
is why I say now I'd put it at that has kind of undercut the revolution at this point, which
much lower odds that it will succeed.
in Bahrain, but at this point, Maybe there will be some reform
it looks as it would have to become violent for it to
And of course, what are the two interesting factors about Bahrain? succeed.
American Airbase there, which we One, there's an enormously large
value as a huge listening post and operating forward deployment
which we value, which has led to station in the Middle East,
less, I would argue less criticism of the Bahrainian government than you would
otherwise see.
And two, the Saudi intervention. It's clear now whose side the Bahrainians are going to take.
It's going to be the Saudis.
It's going to be the Sunnis. So, my somewhat bold and crazy
This angered Iran. prediction on this--
This angered Iran immensely, because Iran, which is Shia,
population as being under the thumb of the Sunnis, as being under a minority government. views the Bahrainian Shia
expelled the Iranian diplomats, Iran has expelled the Bahrainian In the last few days, Bahrain
diplomats. I don't think this is going to
go anywhere, but I will tell
terrorist attack, probably on Saudi soil, and it will be able to be directly tied back to the to a year, Iranians.l be a major
They are not going to let this
this. They're not going to do it They are angry as hell that Saudi helped the Bahrainians do
overtly. But as long as Ahmadinejad is in
power, and we'll talk about whether Iran could be on the
list of revolutions, they will do something to take their pound
of flesh out of the Saudis. I fear it's going to be sort of a major terrorist attack in that
Okay, Yemen. country.
Yemen is a mess. I tell my students, Yemen is a
It's one of these countries that basket case country.
probably shouldn't even be a country.
And it was multiple countries for quite some time. It should be multiple countries.
ally throughout the Cold War. South Yemen was a slightly more It waspro-Western ally.Yemen. NorThere have been proxy warsiet
fought in Yemen.
within Yemen. There is a big Al Qaeda presence in Yemen for several years. Nasser fought the Saud family
role here, right, the president of Yemen had been telling the people, the Yemenese military are going out and attacking Al
Qaeda, right, then what was revealed in the WikiLeaks?
It wasn't them, it was the CIA that's been doing it the whole
time. He out and out said there are these cables that he says, oh,
public the whole time, telling I've just been lying to my
them it was us, but really it's been the CIA.
Yemeni people realize this, and they are not happy about it. This comes to light and then the
You have a separatist movement You still have a southern separatist movement.
to try to create another country again.
north. You have a movement in the
There are Shia that live in the north on the Saudi border. Saudi Arabia intervened two
years ago militarily. Saudi, about every three months,
out cross border attacks into Saudi Arabia, and they've wkilled, probably about 200-300 Yemen, because these Shia carry
just sort or carrying out these bombing raids. Saudi troops in the last decade,
So then Saudi Arabia will bomb Yemen.
The Yemenese government has tried to put this down. They've been unable to. It's called the Houthi Rebellion
after the Shia leader of the
you've got separatist movements, group, al-Houthi. So, you've got the Houthi rebellion, you've got Al Qaeda,
right, and so it's just how much more could you put on the plate of a country.
Then of course, you've got the
there was a major crackdown. US coming in saying, do something about Al Qaeda. As you know, in the last week,
The Yemeni president has At least 40 Yemenis were killed in a public square. They were shot by the military.
He's promised to leave, but not dismisfor some time.ment. He's asked them to leave. He wants elections.
He wants to make sure there's an orderly transition.
And we'll see if he remains.
We'll see if actually he can last for a long enough time.
We'll see if there are going to be new elections. He may decide not to hold Salelections at all.net.
You know, this is a guy who's been in control for 30 years. Now, after Mubarak is gone, he's
leaders in the Arab world. been one of the longest running
But Yemen, I think, has a much higher likelihood to succeed. What it looks like after that,
I don't know. Quickly, a couple other cases.
ask some questions. I'll skip Jordan and Morocco. TIf you want know about Jordana anand Morocco, we can talk.to
But not much of a chance, in my opinion.
Syria. So, Syria.
If you followed the news in the last 48-72 hours, there have
been increasing uprisings in Syria in Daraa, which is a city
that is on the Jordan border in the south of Syria. This is an area within that is
That is, sort of the main allegiances are not to the heavily tribal.
Tribes that the Assad regime, both the current Assad regime and his father previous, had different tribes in the area.
co-opted into the government. Again, the background you need bought off and had sort of
the Aleoui, who are largely based in the north around --, to knare a Shia minority.a is that it is ruled by a minority,
the Shia community, who have run They're even a minority within
the country since Assad came to power in 1970, so again, a minority government ruling over
majorities of Sunni.
Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current President Assad, was incredibly brutal.
He was an incredibly brutal dictator. He came to power in 1970 in what
Correction. They didn't call it a coup, they was called the National
called it the National Correction.
After there had been many coups.
Syria, in the '60s, was infamous for about every two or three
Lots of uncertainty between the Ba'athists there, the Shia, the Aleoui, the Sunni. years having a military coup.
of the nationalist state You had this fight between sort
building camp of the Ba'athists, you know, some Islamic
much at that point. You know, between the late '50s and early '60s, Syria did not fundexist as a country.h not
If you remember this, Syria actually turned its sovereignty over to Egypt for three years.
three years when Nasser was in Syria was part of Egypt for
power. They lost their UN vote, they were a province of Egypt.
You get a revolt in '63 that
undoes this. So tremendous instability.
Puts people down. Incredibly brutal suppression. Assad comes in, puts it down.
there's this current sense in the media that oh, well, there The biggest instance of this, and I'm telling you this because
are lots of people protesting in Syria.
This is probably going to go
somewhere. If history is any guide,
say, most of these people are going to end up dead. In 1982, in Hama, if you've read unfortunately, incredibly sad to
to Jerusalem," he's got a whole chapter on Hama. Tom Friedman's book "From Beirut
in Hama. This was a massive uprising led by the Islam Brotherhood
They killed about a thousand Syrian Army officers, Ba'athist party figures in this town.
And in response, Hafez al-Assad just essentially bombed it to rubble, the whole thing, and
the rest of them to death. then encircled it and starved
It's estimated that anywhere between 10,000-25,000 civilians died in about a one-month period
in Hama, in 1982. This is a regime that is not at all shy about using incredible
killing indiscriminately, leveling entire villages, essentially, if need be. amounts of military force and
may be different, but so far His son may be more enlightened,
it's not clear why that would be the case to me. So I'm not hopeful about Syria.
Again, hopefully I will be
proved wrong. And of course, the other link to Syria is of course, they're
heavily allied with Iran, at
think about well, what about least politically allied with Iran. You know, who then, so then you
on the region. Iran? Would a change of government in Iran happen or have any effect
that happened in Iran, for Remember, just two summers ago, we were talking about the Green Revolution, and the uprising
actually some of the same reasons. Widespread unemployment amongst
the middle class, widespread
unemployment amongst the youth. The other thing you have to know about many of these countries,
Iran is the classic example of
this. Well over half of the population of Iran is under 30.
It is a young country.
Most of these countries are young. The median age in Yemen,
I think, is something like 27.
These are incredibly young countries.
How has the cleric stayed in power? Well, how did the clerics come In Iran, that's important.
If you remember the '79 revolution, well, a lot of it was about the Shah, and the unpopularity of the Shah, and
many of the abuses, frankly,
that had happened under the Shah's regime. But remember '53, remember
Mohammad Mossodaq in '53, and the fact that the CIA essentially helped keep the Shah
the embassy was stormed in '79, if you remember that incident in in power in 1953, so that's why
days, because in 1953, the US history. The embassy was held for 444
embassy had been the nerve center for a coup, a military coup, that got rid of a civilian
president and brought the Shah
back to power. They weren't going to let that
Khomeini says we're not going to let that happen again. The students take over the happen again.
not up to any funny business. So that's been. But the '79 revolution has been this revolution that has sort of
advanced, you know, people power
in Iran. But remember, if half your
don't remember this. population is under 30, they
They weren't alive then. They sure the heck don't
They also don't remember the remember Mohammad Mossodaq.
Ayatollah. They don't remember the Shah. Right, they don't have any of
these historical memories.
this regime has been well, if you don't have us, you're going to get some western puppet Some of the basis of power of
Well, you've got a lot of young people in Iran now saying we regime.
wouldn't mind a western puppet regime, right, maybe they'd give
us jobs.
Or that we'd trade with them, we could buy Levi's. There's an island off the coast
of Iran that Iran actually lets some of the wealthy folks go to and shop in Ikea. There's an Ikea there.
It's like the busiest Ikea in the world, right, because when
these folks get out of Iran, it's like we've got to got to
Ikea, we've got to get stuff. So you know, this is a society
that, you know, despite what you read, death to America, etc.,
this is a society that the
average person, especially under 30, they have no hatred of the
They may not want to be a US United States.
ally, they may still want to develop nuclear weapons, but
and burn the American flag, that's just not something. they have no desire to run out
In '09, it obviously cracked So, is there a chance that this regime will fall?
down heavily on protesters. There have been sort of fits and starts of protests over the last
two months in Iran haven't
really gone anywhere. We'll see. I don't think it's going to go
anywhere in the short term. In the medium term, and this is a prediction I always make to my
tell my students within the next students, I think, you know, I
ten to 15 years, I think you will see change.
democratic change, but you will see regime change in Iran. I don't know if it will be
The clerics, if you remember from 2009, the repression,
right, it was young people in the streets, and it was sort of the Secret Service and the
clerics had set up. These were all people who remember '79. neighbThese were 50+.at the
And eventually, the clerics, who
are all, you know, more advanced in age, they've got to bring in new blood, right, so the
Khatamis, you know, the reformers, right, in the
take over unless they sort of invent new clerics and surpass clerical ranks are all younger. Eventually, they're going to
about who they let move up the them in the pecking order, or are just incredibly careful
pecking order to become the next grand Ayatollah.
is eventually going to be all the people in those mid to lower You know, the rise to Ayatollah
ranks. It's just like the military.
Who are the officers, right, who
are the colonels. Who are the mid-level clerics in Iran?
Well, a lot of them are the reformers.
Now, again, who knows what could happen to them.
The military is important in
Iran, too, and they're largely in bed with Ahmadinejad at this point.
That could change.
But I'm actually in medium term, hopeful for Iran. Not in the short term, but
certainly in the medium term. Okay, so let's come back to Libya.
So, let me say a bit about, well, I talked a little bit about Gaddafi's government We'll end with Libya.
Let's fast forward and give you my impression of what's been strategy.
happening in the last month in Libya.
This Libyan rebellion broke out and very much surprised both
undermined the Gaddafi regime. Gaddafi and the west, as to the speed with which it quickly
You got a lot of very early defections from the Libyan military, from the Libyan elite,
especially in ethnic groups or
kinship groups that were not tied to Gaddafi.
was one of us. They quickly said, Gaddafi never
We hate him. Let's move on.
Gaddafi so much so that he was That took everyone by surprise.
Of course, he has money. just unable to defend against it. What does Gaddafi have?
So he used a lot of this money to do a couple of things. He essentially bribed, continue
to bribe some of the tribes that
were sort of on the fence. Then he also used a bunch of
Mali, and recruit ethnic groups who were disaffected, the Tuaregs, for example, which he money to go out to places like
their rebellion in Mali or has a long history with, funding
Niger. I'm being very careful. I see Professor Young in the
audience, who is probably the most foundational scholar of
African politics in the country, so I have to be careful.
So, I'm going to keep looking at
him to make sure he's nodding. So, the Tuaregs, right, so, let me give you an example.
The Tuaregs in Mali have always been disaffected, largely been
disaffected politically. The per capita income of Mali is
$1200 a year. Over the last few weeks, Gaddafi
has been sending in emissaries with rolls of $5,000, saying
come fight for me, here's $5,000, right, as a signing bonus.
later. Then we'll pay you a salary
That's five times their annual income, so of course. Many of these folks have
training. They fought in rebellions there.
to recruit fighters, and then he In the '60s, he set up what was called the Arab Legion, trying
would send them abroad to help in revolutions, whether it was
influence politics in Sudan. in Chad or Mali, or try to
His footprint was large in these conflicts in the region.
They get used as mercenaries. So he re-stockpiles with So these are mercenaries.
mercenaries. He kind of reconfigures his
forces, and then starts to turn the tide. Meanwhile, the west is debating,
help the rebels? do we do a no fly zone, do we
What do we do? We decide Gaddafi's time is over.
He's becoming increasingly
intransigent, and we think crazy.
then, right, he gets the And so, we turn against him, but
momentum, starts pushing back, and frankly, is within perhaps a
the revolt, I would say. week to two weeks of crushing
Then you get the intervention, you get the no fly zone.
the momentum back against Gaddafi. And now the attempt to reverse
What did the United States and Let me make a couple points and then I'll stop.
the western allies expect to happen? Their best hope was that the
no fly zone and attacking these targets, attacking these
military columns of Gaddafi, would immediately reverse the
momentum, right, that this would
point, right, you would get more inspire the revolution again, that they would counter attack, and that you would get a tipping
and more people who were sort of on the fence, we support
the west clearly doesn't like Gaddafi, so we'll abandon Gaddafi, too. That hasn't happened yet, right,
and in fact, the disappointing
counter attack very effectively. thing that's been happening the last 24 hours is the rebels can't seem to get it together to
It will take time. The French Foreign Minister today had a good line, right,
which was that wars are not won and lost in a 24-hour period, right, I mean, like this is going to take days, or weeks,
right, for this to really get fleshed out.
The question is does the west, does the UN, does the United
States have the wherewith all to
stay involved and bombing for that long? That's an open question.
But that's what they thought
would happen, that this would reverse quickly, you'd get the fall of Gaddafi.
Second thing, the Arab League and Amar Moussa, the president
of the Arab League, approved this.
That was the switch for the Obama administration, right.
Obama had said we're not going to do a no fly zone, and then he
changed his mind. Why did he change his mind? The perception of the White House is we did not want to get
involved in a third war against a Muslim country, right, just period. That is not good, right, just
from a pure public relations
perspective. Right, you're going to go bomb the hell out of a third
Muslim country in, you know,
seven years, not good. But then the Arab League, over
resolution saying, the last weekend, passes this
The Arab League and Moussa please do this. We want you to do this. Why did the Arab League do this?
pushed this, because they all hate Gaddafi, right. What did we just talk about?
Gaddafi has funded revolutions. He's sent mercenaries.
parties in many of these He's, you know, undertaken, you know, funding of opposition
countries. None of these guys have any love loss for Gaddafi.
They would like nothing more--
And yes, you see all these pictures of the Arab leaders
suits and his military suits, right, and it's seeming like with him, you know, in his disco
They don't like him. this love fest. They hate him.
They'd love to see him gone. He has been a pain in their side
So, --, you did, the non-cynical for 30 years.
part, there was this spectacle of the humanitarian disaster, right, I mean, once the--
I think this mattered both for
the UN, and for the Arab League, and frankly for the United
moving to encircle Benghazi. States, you know, Gaddafi was
He's encircled Misrata, right. And if you truly believe that Gaddafi has sort of lost it,
really lost it at this point, and him saying if you don't surrender, we're going to crush everyone, right, this is another
Hama, right, this is another
25,000 dead in a couple of weeks.
community always kvetching about What is the international
over the last decade? Why didn't we do anything in Rwanda?
Why did we take so long to go into Bosnia?
All these mass killings where no one did anything, and then Whyeveryone gets criticizedgo into Somalia?
Well, we're doing something now, for not doing anything.
You have to wrestle with that right, andquestion.he counter fWhether you're for or againsto this, you have to wrestle with
the fact that, would you have been happy letting Gaddafi
crush the revolution and going and killing 25,000-50,000 people
in a week, right. That's kind of the decision they
civilians. made. And yes, this bombing will kill
argument, is this had humanitarian disaster, mass killing, genocide, if you want But that's the opposite
it. And maybe it wouldn't have to go that far, written all over
his senses. Maybe it was just a threat. Maybe he was just rattling his Maybe Gaddafi would've come to
But you have to think about, saber.
that's a possibility. That's a real possibility. Okay, so what's the goal?
Here's the million dollar question. Obama is now under increasing pressure to say what's the goal.
The goal is very
straightforward. Get rid of Gaddafi. They can paper it up any way
they want, but they want to undercut Gaddafi's military forces enough so that the revolution will succeed, right,
we want this revolt to happen.
There are a lot of reasons why this could be dangerous,
I'm happy to talk about those. a lot of reasons.
We want to get rid of Gaddafi. But I think that is kind of the underlying dynamics of what's going on.
I think where you're seeing differences between the EU and the United States is how
aggressive we're going to be in trying to achieve that goal over
So, I apologize for that. ( applause )nths. Okay, I've tay too long.