Domino democracy
By Saul Singer
(April 7) - Bernard Lewis, the world renowned scholar of Islamic history and the Middle East, explains to Saul Singer why hopes for peace and democracy in the region are still viable even in one of its darkest hours
Princeton professor Bernard Lewis has been a recognized leader in his field for a generation, but since September 11, he has become something of a media superstar. He has written 20 books on Islam and the Middle East, but his latest, What Went Wrong? - an examination of how a Muslim civilization that once rivaled the West declined into "poor, weak, and ignorant" nations ruled by "shabby tyrannies... modern only in their apparatus of repression and terror" - is enjoying its tenth week on The New York Times best-seller list.
Suddenly the world wants to understand the culture that produced those who one fine day chose to incinerate themselves along with some 3,000 innocent Americans. "If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present path," writes Lewis, "the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression."
Though some reviewers complained that the book, written before September 11, does not give any concrete insight on what is to be done now, a conversation with Lewis illustrates just how timely a deep grasp of history can be. A British Jew who has lived for years in the United States and a frequent visitor to Israel, he arrived here last month to attend a conference held at the Hebrew University in honor of his 86th birthday.
Lewis seems to be in his prime. Not only does he speak in perfectly formed, British-accented cadences, but with the relish of a scholar who is enjoying the dramatic expansion of his already oracle-like status. In these grim times, his survey of prospects for the region in the near future is at once sober and uplifting.
In a prescient article in the September 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," Lewis expressed the mystery of Islam in a way that is particularly poignant now, as Palestinians blow themselves up with alarming regularity.
"There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired," Lewis wrote, "in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country - even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion - to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions."
As Westerners, we tend to think of reverence for life and peace as natural and ubiquitous as the air we breath. Yet, in our conversation, Lewis had a matter-of-fact explanation for the striking duality he described over a decade ago.
"I think it is part of human nature. You find that in all cultures in all religions at one time or another. It is our misfortune that we have to deal with the Islamic world when it is going through this, just as our remote ancestors had to deal with the Crusaders in a similar mood. Islam and Christianity have an enormous amount in common - that is I think the main reason why they have been fighting each other for 14 centuries: not because of their difference but because of their resemblances."
One would think that this enmity brought by proximity might be as intense between Islam and Judaism, given that these two religions are perhaps the most dogmatically monotheistic in the world. Lewis, however, argues that "there is an important difference" between Judaism and the two newer religions.
"The Jewish position was that there is only one God. This was seen with horror by the polytheistic world of the time. But the Christians and then the Muslims went one step further: they said that not only is there only one God but there is only one way to that God - our way. Now that was not the Jewish position, which was expressed in the Talmudic dictum that the righteous of all peoples have a place in paradise. That is not the Christian or the Islamic view, traditionally. Their view is that there is only one true religion and the others are either false or at best incomplete."
REGARDLESS of its sources, the most urgent question in Israeli and American minds is how the "rage" of the Muslim world can be tamed. Since September 11, America has declared a war against terrorism that has so far seen the demise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and seems to have Iraq's President Saddam Hussein in its sights. In the Iraqi case, however, while no one doubts Saddam's despotism, America's European and Arab allies seem hesitant to rid themselves of "the devil they know." Lewis, by contrast, is "very optimistic" about a post-Saddam Iraq.
"I think Iraq is in many ways the most advanced, most developed of the Arab countries. The Iraqi government of the time probably did a better job than any other of putting its oil revenues to constructive use. They built an infrastructure, they built a good educational system. I have personal dealings with Iraqi universities through their graduate students who came to study with me, and they were in general much better prepared, much better trained, than those of other universities in the region.
"Although all this has suffered terrible damage at the hands of Saddam Hussein, it has not been entirely destroyed. I see the possibility of a genuinely enlightened and progressive and - yes, I will say the word - democratic regime arising in a post-Saddam Iraq. They will have been fully inoculated against the Fascist-style governments that otherwise seem to prevail."
Nor is Lewis concerned regarding the great bug-a-boo that evidently prevented the United States from seeing to Saddam's ouster the first time around: the prospect of Iraq breaking up.
"That possibility has been put forward and that was why ten years ago when Saddam was defeated, the choice apparently was not for a change of regime - but a change of tyrant. The idea was to replace a hostile tyrant by a friendly tyrant, the kind of policy that worked so well in Central America.
"I think that calculation was mistaken. I don't think that there was a danger of Iraq breaking up. For one reason, any government of Iraq will dispose of substantial resources - you don't get a problem of separatism under such circumstances. For another, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which is the organized opposition movement, does contain representatives of all groups in Iraq - Arabs and Kurds, Sunni and Shia. If they form a successor government in Iraq, I don't doubt that they could hold the country together."
To Lewis, the apparent explanation for why the US has found it easier to adopt the Northern Alliance - whose only advantage seemed to be that they were not the Taliban - than the Iraqi National Congress with its impressive democratic credentials, is a damning one.
"One would have thought that [adopting the Iraqi opposition] would be easier. The free zone in Iraq - the area that is not subject to control of Saddam Hussein - comprises one quarter of the land area of Iraq - a much more substantial basis than the Northern Alliance ever had in Afghanistan. There are other issues raised. There is the living memory of the decision that was made ten years ago to end the war, suddenly, leaving Saddam Hussein in power. As you may recall, President [George W.] Bush at the time called on the Iraqi people to revolt against their tyrant.
"They did revolt, and the coalition forces sat and watched as Saddam suppressed them region by region and group by group. That left a certain legacy of bitterness that one can understand. It also left people very anxious to justify what they did at the time. There are still people trying desperately to prove that it was the right decision at the time and by now I would have thought that it was perfectly manifest that it was a wrong decision."
Lewis finds in the fall of the totalitarian Afghan regime an important harbinger of things to come. To aid in understanding this future, Lewis makes an observation that is brilliant - precisely because it seems so obvious in retrospect. The countries of the Middle East can be divided into three types: those with an anti-American and pro-American people, those with governments considered pro-American in which anti-American hostility runs rampant, and those in which both government and people are pro-American.
The classic members of the first group are Iran and Iraq, "where the governments take up passionately anti-American positions and the people, therefore, look to America as their future liberators, hoping that America will do for them what it did for the people of Afghanistan. You remember the scenes of rejoicing in Afghanistan. I'm told by Iranian friends that those Afghan scenes of rejoicing would look like a funeral compared with what would happen in Iran if the present regime were overthrown."
Regarding the second group, whose most prominent members are Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Lewis notes wryly, "It is no accident, as they used to say in Moscow, that most of the [September 11] terrorists and hijackers come from those two countries. They live in very bad conditions; they at the very least mistrust, and often hate, their governments whom they see as responsible for their misery, and since those governments are seen as pro-American they see America as responsible for those governments. Hence, pro-American governments, or allegedly pro-American governments, and anti-American populations."
The third group, in which both the government and citizenry are pro-American, currently has only two members: Turkey and Israel. But even though it is clear to Lewis that democracy is what makes these two countries peaceful, prosperous, and pro-American, he is a very cautious evangelist when it comes to democratizing the Middle East.
"Democracy is dangerous anywhere. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered in small, gradually increasing doses: Otherwise you risk killing the patient. We talk sometimes as if democracy were the natural human condition, as if any deviation from it is a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. That is not true. Democracy, or what we call democracy nowadays, is the parochial custom of the English-speaking peoples for the conduct of their public affairs, which may or may not be suitable for others.
"I think the Turks," Lewis continued, "got it right in having gradual increases in democratic freedom. Turkey meets the definition of democracy in that it changes its government from time to time by elections. It also from time to time changes its government by other methods, but these are interruptions of the process, not terminations of the process. I think one must have a realistic approach without illusions and see democracy in terms of a gradual maturing, and that is possible, its been done in many places.
"I agree [elections in the Arab world] could easily lead to what happened in Germany. Hitler came to power by a free and democratic vote. Mussolini didn't, but Hitler did."
DESPITE this cautionary note, Lewis does not see either of the two Middle Eastern regimes Bush fingered in his "axis of evil" as permanent features of the international scene. The fall of either the Iraqi or Iranian regime, Lewis argues, would hasten the fall of the other.
Further, Lewis rates as "possible" that a post-Saddam Iraq would make peace with Israel, and "probable" that a post-theocracy Iran would do so.
"In that case," Lewis speculates, "you could expect a more lively response from the two countries that already have peace treaties and diplomatic relations, Jordan and Egypt."
How would all this affect our more immediate opponents, the Palestinians?
The loss of one or both of their largest radical allies would obviously weaken extremist Palestinian forces. But Lewis goes beyond this to a prospect that could not seem more remote at the moment: Palestinian democracy.
"The Palestinians have two, I hesitate to use the word 'advantages,' but it will do. One is the awful experience of being ruled by a corrupt tyranny. The other is the example of a lively vibrant democracy next door. I remember being told a couple of years ago by some Jordanian professors that a number of their students are learning Hebrew. This really surprised me. I said, 'why would your students in Jordan want to learn Hebrew?' They told me that they are fascinated by Israeli television. They see these great and famous figures screaming at each other and banging the table - something like that is totally unknown in their world - and they want to know what they are saying."
Lewis seems to be a proponent of what was derided as the "domino theory" when applied to southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. Despite the ridicule heaped upon it then, the idea that both positive and negative developments can prove contagious throughout a region has been strengthened by subsequent history. In southeast Asia, the fall of South Vietnam did lead to totalitarian dictatorships in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The collapse of the Soviet Union certainly triggered the wave of freedom that swept Central Europe.
If anything deserves ridicule, then it is the view that systematic change can be wrought without toppling the first domino of Arab tyrannies - Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The likely alternative to the West playing this game in earnest is not the status quo, but dominoes toppling the other direction.
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