Contrary to current conventional wisdom, Bush’s Big Bang strategy will be treated very favorably by history
Quite a headline from Barnett. Here are some excerpts from a terrific essay. He says,
I will admit it: for all my bitching and carping for how badly the Bush team bungled the immediate postwar situation in Iraq (slowing recovering thanks to the generals, not the diplomats or civilian overseers), the strategy of laying a Big Bang on the Middle East is going amazing well.
Well, that is, if you find the notion that Hamas replacing Fatah is good and you like Hizbollah’s rise in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood giving Mubarek electoral fits in Egypt--all of which, quite frankly, I do welcome.
I welcome all these developments because they will either scare the current crop of surviving autocrats and dictators into action or they will be swept away far more rapidly than they anticipate, and I would rather take Islamists in power across the board than stay with the status quo, which I know begets transnational terrorism and social rigidity and poor economic connectivity for the masses throughout the region.
So either we go somewhere or we stay stuck where we are, and I see far more freedom of action in motion than stagnation.
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Yes, we could wait on the “third path” of enlightened democrats, but all those years of dictatorship across the region has left those ranks depleted. Instead, the most able networkers are those who’ve suffered the most pressure and suppression: the radical Islamists. Unless you want to wait forever for change or are prepared to change regimes the region over, the radical Islamists are the only Option B out there, and evidence suggests that we’ll see plenty such radicals moderate their movements over time if that’s the price of retaining power in a Middle East where free elections aren’t just a dream but a growing reality.
Hell, as Brooks’ piece points out, even the Arab moderates are siding with the Islamists over the autocrats. If they are willing to take that risk, why should we Americans show such little faith in the concepts of democracy?
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Of course, the regionalists will despair that Iran is “becoming” the dominant regional power in the meantime, to which I give a hearty “DUHHHH!”
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I have criticized Bush plenty in the past for pushing democracy too hard, but I’m beginning to refine my criticism of that focus for those regions of the Gap where dictatorship has proven far too resistant to globalization’s embrace. There, like in the Middle East, I have to admit that Bush’s simplicity in vision may yet prove to be his greatest strength.
We will never push the autocrats to reform on our own, and we will never co-opt the Salafi jihadists. Both of those groups are hunted down by history. But co-opting the nationalist Islamists is a legitimate choice: the least of three evils and the vessel through which the Big Bang reaches its near-term fruition.
Read it all!
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