After months of hand wringing the White House has finally started stirring. In breaking front page news, the newspaper of record reported US efforts to get Russia on board for a solution to the Syrian crises on the Yemen model. What is the Yemen model? It is the same strategy that was tried in Egypt: replace the boss with his second-in-command and keep the regime intact. The policy tensor pointed this out in the post The dog who only knew one trick. The title of that post was spot on. The White House really seems to have only one trick up its sleeve.

The conundrum

The Assad regime is a hard nut to crack. As the Times article points out: “Mr. Assad oversees a security state in which his minority Alawite sect fears that if his family is ousted, it will face annihilation at the hands of the Sunni majority. That has kept the government remarkably cohesive, cut down on military defections and left Mr. Assad in a less vulnerable position…” Unlike Yemen or even Egypt, Syria is a remarkably affluent. The large middle class–located in affluent neighborhoods of Damascus and American style suburbs–is dominated by Alawites and the Sunni business community that the Assad regime has astutely cultivated. As the conflict has taken on increasingly sectarian overtones and raised the spectre of chaos, this dominant strata has coalesced around the Assad regime. In that sense, it is similar to Bahrain with the same nexus of class and sectarian axes pitting the rich and the privileged sectarian minority against a poor, enfeebled, and restive sectarian majority. Because the regime has firm control over the entire coercive apparatus and a monopoly on heavy weapons, the opposition cannot possibly wrestle power away from it without external support even if it were united and cohesive.

At first sight, one would think that this support would be readily available. The Assad regime has no friends in the West or the Arab world. The Arab regimes see it as a part of the Shi’i crescent and allied with Iran. Indeed, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army, a motley group of army defectors and radicalized Sunni activists. The regime has been regarded as a pariah state by US policymakers. In fact, back in 2002, the neocons were wondering if after a triumphant invasion of Iraq they should turn right to Iran or left into Syria. The Syrian regime is a primary conduit for the supply of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, there being no other land route for these supplies. It is a major sponsor of Hezbollah itself, and exerts enormous influence in Lebanon which it regards as a vassal state. It also housed Hamas and cultivated it to the chagrin of the Israelis, that is, until three months ago when–under pressure from domestic opposition in the occupied territories–Hamas declared its opposition to the Assad regime. It participated in all the Arab-Israeli wars and Israel securitizes it, not as much as Iran but pretty intensely. In 2007, Israel conducted an airstrike and destroyed a nuclear reactor that it suspected was being used for developing nuclear weapons. There was not a peep from any Arab or Western powers.

But however much a nuisance the Assad regime has been it has kept the peace in the Levant. This is because it is too weak to take on Israel without other powers (basically Egypt). It has presided over a dynamic economy with an expanding middle class and been good for business. In the interest of stability, the United States has refrained from backing efforts to topple the regime. Furthermore, as Adam Garfinkle pointed out weeks ago:

“Assuming for a moment that for strategic reasons (that is, not just for aesthetic or moral reasons) the United States wants the Assad regime to fall, we cannot readily send an expeditionary military force to turn the trick. Syria is a country of diverse and sometimes difficult terrain, with about four times the population of Libya. Unlike Libya, it is not for practical military purposes an island (bordered, as is Libya, by barren desert to its south and the sea to the north), where all major targets can be attacked from sea-based airpower. It has a relatively sophisticated air defense system. It has something of an ally in a major power—Russia—although one should not exaggerate the closeness of the relationship these days. Russia would not go to war to protect the Syrian regime from an American- or NATO-led invasion.”

The Russian connection

The Assad regime is a Russian client. Its geopolitical usefulness to Russia should not be trivialized. Per the Times, “Syria is Moscow’s main Middle East ally, home to a Russian naval base and extensive Russian oil and gas investments. It is also a major trading partner and buyer of Russian arms.” The Obama administration is therefore trying to assure Russia that its interests would be guaranteed. In any case, it is not like Russia will go to war over Syria. But staunch Russian opposition does increase the costs of a more interventionist US policy. This is a recurring problem with US-Russian relations. As Russian power has declined, it has tried in vain to maintain its influence when, in fact, the geopolitical ground has been shifting beneath it. All it can do is block UNSC action. It cannot credibly offer to protect its clients militarily like it used to. It just does not have the wherewithal for such a policy.

Russia has so far blocked UNSC resolutions aimed at Assad. It seems extremely unlikely that they would come around and support a UN intervention in Syria. Which brings us to the only option that might work.

Turkey to the rescue

Adam Garfinkle, an editor of The American Interest, has proposed a plan to let the Turks take the initiate. Turkey is the only power in the Levant that has the capability and the interests at stake to carry out a military/humanitarian intervention. Turkey fears a flood of refugees across the border, especially Kurds. This is already happening. Turkey has cultivated ties with the Assad regime over the past few years and the Erdogan government has invested quite a bit of political capital into it. But as the situation has become more gruesome and Syria has spiraled out of control, Turkey has backed off and started making plans for Assad’s ouster. In particular, they have made plans to create a safe zone for opposition fighters to regroup and contain the refugees on the Syrian side of the border. They have even approached Washington to get support for a more interventionist policy, but the Obama administration has refused to even consider it.

Garfinkle thinks that a limited Turkish operation would be enough to prompt a coup against Assad: “It could also invite Syrian soldiers and police to join the Turkish effort (one need not use the word “defect” in public)—a far better option for said soldiers and police than being killed by Turkish arms, one would think. An operation premised on humanitarian grounds but that nonetheless had the appearance of a threat to the regime could very well prompt the coup. The tactical logic of such an operation is simple: Its message to the hesitant Syrian elite would be, “The sooner you remove the Assads from power, the less Syrian territory we will occupy, and the less territory we will consequently need to evacuate as a new government is built and achieves a capacity to restore and maintain order.”

I think its naive to think that anything short of an assault to overwhelm Assad’s military is going to work. Elites in Syria will need to be fairly certain that the Assad regime is going to get toppled before they would throw their support behind the opposition. If Turkey leads a large scale operation with the support of NATO and the Arab league, and the credibility of the Assad regime collapses, then we can expect a coup. More likely, we will see not a coup and orderly transition but rather an intensely chaotic situation with a potential for genocide and mayhem. Which is why we need peacekeeping forces ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

Also, a coup against Assad might quell the uprising, especially if there is political dialogue. Or it might not, especially if it is seen as one gang of Alawite thugs replacing another and there is no let up in the crackdown. Obama has basically waited too long for such a strategy to work. By now, the opposition is totally radicalized and Syria is on the brink of an all out sectarian civil war.

A NATO-blessed Turkish operation aimed at the removal of the Assad regime is the only workable option. Policymakers in Washington need to take their head out of the sand and stop trying strategies which have no chance of working. My expectation is that we will need to see another pile of little bodies with holes in their heads before the Obama administration will be pressured to lead from behind.

The winter break is a time for reading for the Policy Tensor. The list this year has been particularly interesting. I started off with Oil Monarchies by F. Gregory Gause, III. I had been really looking forward to it and I wasn’t disappointed. The surest sign of a good book is when it convinces you to change your opinion on the merit of its arguments. In this case, the question was the following.

Why were there no uprisings in the Arab Gulf monarchies?  

My original answer to this question basically boiled down to US interests in the region. Namely, that Washington wasn’t going to allow challenges to any of its client regimes in the Persian Gulf. The agitation in Bahrain and Eastern Saudi Arabia were brutally crushed with US acquiescence. Whilst the White House allowed regimes to be overthrown in the Eastern Mediterranean RSC, it wouldn’t gamble with stability in the Gulf, the Gulf being one of the three strategic regions that the US cannot allow any others powers to dominate. [The other two being Western Europe and East Asia.] While this explains US policy, it fails to account for the relative absence of domestic challenges to the Arab Gulf regimes. This is where this seminal work changed my thinking.

The rentier state is one where the revenues come directly from the international economy into the coffers of the state in the form of rents from natural resources or investment income. A priori, a state that does not tax the populace enjoys a degree of autonomy from civil society. Indeed, democratic pressures historically came about as a response to the extraction by the state. Moreover, the rentier character of the Arab Gulf monarchies has very specific consequences for the political economy of these countries.

First, the state has become overwhelmingly dominant over the body-politic of these countries. Not only does the public sector account for the lion’s share of the economy, it employs well over half of the entire workforce of each of the GCC states (an astonishing 75% in the UAE). Most of the citizenry depends on the largesse of the government in the form of heavily subsidized education, health care, housing, employment and business contracts. This allows the regimes to retain political loyalty and discourage dissidence through denial of patronage. 

Second, the enormous apparatus of the state provides the regimes with a number of levers to control society. These range from the large civil bureaucracies to the military, police and the secret services. The enormous windfall from the oil price revolution has allowed these states to create strong coercive apparatuses quite unlike anywhere else in the Third World.

Third, and most importantly in my opinion, the rentier character of these states have allowed them to eliminate, co-opt or prevent the emergence of all autonomous centres of power. Labor unions are non existent. The religious establishment is on the government payroll and strictly controlled by the regimes, especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In fact, the House of Saud derives its legitimacy from its historic partnership with the Wahhabi ideologues and defines itself as the protector of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. There are hardly any civil society groups like community organizations and teachers unions. Political parties are strictly banned in all Gulf states except Kuwait. Perhaps most important for the prospect of liberal democracy, business groups are completely dependent on the favour of the ruling families.

All of this has allowed an unprecedented concentration of power in the ruling families. Note that power is concentrated not in the office of the King or the Emir but rather in the corporate body of the ruling family. Princes enjoy a degree of autonomy and compete with each other for influence and power even as they remain unified in maintaining their absolute control. Succession struggles thereby become the biggest threat to regime security.

Given this thick description of the Arab Gulf monarchies the absence of uprisings there becomes explicable. In a private correspondence with the Policy Tensor, Professor Gause affirmed that he had not expected the uprisings to spread to the Arab Gulf states for precisely the reasons identified above. Bahrain and Eastern Saudi Arabia have to understood as a special case. The Shi’i majority has been systematically excluded from the patronage of the state and have remained much less dependent on it. Moreover, they have maintained an independent community centred around their links to the clerics in Najaf and mobilized themselves around the politics of exclusion. Whence, it was the only site of mass uprisings in the Persian Gulf. 

My initial misunderstanding is referred to as the realist fallacy of privileging the global level even when the appropriate level of analysis is a lower one–interregional, regional, or as in this case–domestic. This brings us to the second book, Regions and Powers by Buzan and Waever, which will be the subject of the next post.                          

Al-Jazeera has made a moving documentary about the protests and the reign of terror that followed. There is growing pressure on the channel to stop its broadcast, after all Qatar is part of the GCC. Hopefully it will survive on YouTube.

What is completely missing from this documentary is any geopolitical context. The fact of the matter is that the White House authorized the Saudi invasion and the brutal crackdown by the al Khalifa regime. I have covered these matters at length, for example here and here. This is routinely depicted as ‘Obama’s hands are tied’ in the paper of record. 

Policymakers are convinced that a Shi’ite majority democratic regime will ally itself with Iran due to sectarian gravity. Its utter nonsense of course. A prosperous Shi’ite-majority democracy right on the doorstep of Iran will undermine the Islamic regime’s efforts to crush its own democracy protestors. Policymakers are scared of any change in the status quo and any threat to stability in this strategically most important region. In foreign policy literature, stability is a technical word–a regime is considered stable if it is pro-Western and pro-Business. Noam Chomsky explains it much better.

Yemen

People danced in the streets as news spread of President Saleh’s departure from Yemen. He was wounded in a bomb attack at the Presidential compound. The severity of his injuries ensure that he is out of play, prompting a power struggle. The protestors have been demanding his ouster for months. The Saudis and the Americans want him replaced by his vice president and put in place a unity government with the reigning party and the throughly discredited loyal opposition, the so called Joint Meetings Party. The protestors have rejected any such efforts at cosmetic change. According to the Economist, they risk exclusion from formal politics and marginalization. Meanwhile, civil strife continues to plague this godforsaken place. 

The New York Times has an article on the protestors in Yemen, misleadingly titled Opposition is Split on How to Reshape Yemen.  They accurately describe the widespread opposition to the US-Saudi proposal:

“Most of those who form the original core of the protest movement say they want to preserve the transforming vision of civility and tolerance they have glimpsed in public squares since the uprising began, much like their peers in Egypt. They deeply oppose the political solution advocated by Saudi Arabia and the United States, which grants Mr. Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution and is likely to preserve more of the status quo.”

The editors then use a classic narrative device to create a sense that there is widespread disagreement in the opposition. Since there is virtually unanimous opposition to the GCC solution, they highlight a triviality on which there is disagreement: immunity for Saleh’s family. It does not matter. The chief demand echoed by jubilant crowds across Sana and other Yemeni cities on Friday was: “The people want a transitional council!”, i.e., a civilian council of technocrats to run the state while the stage is set for free and fair elections. 

We need to watch how this goes:

“Mr. Anisi and his allies say they will name a transitional council in days, after first giving some of the country’s mainstream politicians a chance to join them. They then plan to call for huge demonstrations to press their cause, invoking “revolutionary legitimacy” as the grounds for abandoning precedent and the Yemeni Constitution.”

Things are just about to get extremely exciting.

Syria

The Assad regime has really started tottering. The balance of power is shifting. Angry crowds are thronging all over Syria. The big question is what is going on in Damascus and Aleppo, the second largest city. There is plenty of evidence that unrest is spreading there as well. Although the protests and crackdown have been not as intense as the hinterland. More promisingly, there have been reports of a mutiny in the security forces at Jisr al-Shughour which the regime is painting as an ambush by an armed gang. Most of the rank of file of the security forces are Sunni while the officer corps is dominated by the Alawite minority.

The regime is of course an Alawite dominated one. This has never come into play because they are regarded as Arab, and there is a strong constituency in Syrian society that has this view including parts of the business elites in Damascus. But I am confident that the protestors in the rest of Syria are not targeting the Alawites as a sect, there is virtually no evidence of sectarian conflict although it may yet arise. [It has already begun.] One has to worry about the advent of sectarian conflict every time a rigid power structure is broken. Each regime that falls unleashes hitherto buried rivalries and groups that compete for power. Ethno-religious and sectarian mobilization are routinely used by many actors bidding for power. Their ability to persuade communities however depends on the level of indoctrination.

The regime has also stepped up the crackdown, sending tanks and artillary to the north and east. The BBC estimates that more than 1300 people have been killed by the regime so far.

For the Arab spring to succeed, the protestors need to come together to form a political party, and compete in the up coming elections. Otherwise they are going to replace Mubarak with Suleiman and presidents for vice presidents. Nothing will change without a change of guard.

Things are very fluid and the Arab Spring may yet turn into summer. Remember the observers who said there are no more dominoes to fall? They were wrong. 

When Mubarak’s position became untenable in Egypt, the United States tried to replace him by his second-in-command, Omar Suleiman. It was anathema to the protestors and it quickly became apparent that it was not going to work. The exact same sequence of events is being followed in Yemen. The paper of record has filed this report.

The United States has been in negotiations with the regime in Yemen for more than a week. It has been discussing the terms of Saleh’s departure. The White House wants him replaced by his second-in-command. The Joint Meetings Parties came up with a proposal on Saturday that calls for power to be transferred immediately to Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi until presidential elections are held. Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC gave their approval on Sunday. But the protestors have rejected the proposal, or any that would leave a leading Saleh official in charge.

The Joint Meetings Parties is a discredited opposition group that the 32-year old Saleh regime has tolerated. It has as little credibility as Egypt’s loyal opposition. The agitation will not end just because you changed the name at the door. Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi has been the Vice President of Yemen since 1994. Not much is known about him but what is completely clear is that he is at the absolute core of the tyrannical regime. No one can trust such an insider to initiate democratic reforms and hold free and fair elections.

What is also clear is that support for the fight against al-Qaeda is deeper than the top leadership of the regime. Washington should be worried about the turmoil jeopardizing their counter terror operations in this most important front. But that is not helped by replacing one untenable dictator with another, it will just prolong the agitation. By now, we are getting bored of White House miscalculations.

President Obama, you can’t use the same joker twice.

Pearl square was not just the focal point of democracy protests in the tiny Kingdom of Bahrain. The Pearl statue was a symbol of the nation. It became a symbol of the regime’s tolerance for dissent and mass demonstrations. And it was of course a symbol of the yearning for democracy and mass participation, a la Tahrir Square.

When the protests escalated to the point where protestors shut down the financial district, the regime decided to shut down the non-violent movement by force. They tried to paint the protestors as Shi’ite rabble rousers who were being instigated and supported by Hezbollah and Iran. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab petro-dictatorships in the peninsula sent in a two thousand troops to support the security crackdown. All this was, of course, authorized by the Obama administration. At least six people were killed in street battles between the hired guns of the regime and the protestors. In a seminal action of psychological warfare against its own population, the regime destroyed the statue. The message was crystal clear: dissent will not be tolerated anymore.

Despite the terror of the police state, the movement for democracy has not completely lost steam. The regime feels so threatened by online mobilization that they have arrested hundreds of online activists. This includes the prominent anti-sectarian blogger Mahmood al-Yousif. His website is still up and running: mahmood.tv.

Activists have called for a ‘Day of Rage’ this Friday, i.e., tomorrow. I don’t know what we will witness. Will there be a total security lockdown, preventing any significant protests in Manama? Will there be a huge turnout followed by a bloody crackdown? Will the regime allow peaceful protests at all??

All we know for sure is that the status quo disappeared with the Pearl statue and Bahrain will remain in purgatory till there is regime change. The sooner the United States comes to grips with this reality the better.

[Update: The New York Times has finally decided to file a report on the chilling state terror underway in Bahrain.

"... a 60-year-old plumber, was found dead in a garbage bag, 100 feet away from his car."

"With Saudi troops now in the country to support King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and, on Sunday, the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper."

"26 people have been killed, most in the past three weeks since Pearl Square was cleared. More than 300 have been imprisoned, and at least 35 people are missing.

Two political prisoners who were released have said that many detainees have been tortured with electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, said Mohammed al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights. As many as 800 workers have been fired from the government and companies partly owned by the government, apparently on the suspicion that they had attended the rallies, said the lawmakers who resigned in protest. And scores of university students have lost government-sponsored scholarships."

Pax Americana indeed.]

Syria

Every major news organization has some coverage of the protests and crackdown happening today in Syria. The Guardian has a page devoted to Syria. Qatar based al Jazeera is fast becoming the best place for news on the upheaval. Neither the New York Times nor the BBC has a Syria page, weird. Reuters has a good report.

The protests have spread out from Deraa to almost every major city in the country. More than 38 people have been shot and killed by the security forces. Although the protests have so far been secular, its almost certain to turn into a sectarian conflict. The al-Asssad regime, which is from the minority Alawite sect of Shi’ite Islam, is supposed to be allied with the Islamic regime in Iran. They certainly support Hezbollah in Beirut and Hamas in the occupied territories.  But the claim that Syria is allied with Iran is not tenable. Just because they both support Hezbollah and oppose Israeli aggression (Israel annexed Golan Heights from Syria and counters Syrian influence in Lebanon), does not make them allies. Syria is fully integrated into the global economy, shares in the spoils of Western dominance of the region and is nowhere close to being as isolated as Iran. But as seen from the lens of the US foreign policy establishment, Syria is certainly an enemy. Just watch how Washington reacts to events here, and contrast it with their pronouncements on Yemen or Bahrain.

[Update: the New York Times reports

"Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday."

and

"Syria has a liability not found in the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt—it is a majority Sunni nation ruled by a religious minority."

Recall that at least three quarters of the Syrian population of about 4 million is Sunni and 15-20% are Shi'ite.]

Bahrain

Today was the “Day of Rage” in Bahrain. Helicopters buzzing overhead and checkpoints at every major highway and intersection prevented major demonstrations in Manama. Hundreds of protestors in rural Bahrain were driven off the streets by the riot police using tear gas and batons. Tensions have been escalating since Saudi Arabia sent in troops to quell the protests with full US authorization. Bahrain is 70% Shi’ite but ruled by a tiny Sunni elite centred around the royal family. Events are pointing to a prolonged sectarian conflict.

At least 18 protestors and 2 policemen have been killed so far.

[Update: EU chief wimp defended the violent suppression of the protestors, says he is worried about Iranian influence. Where are the Germans when you need them? Really, you are so liberal and anti-war that you abstain from authorizing intervention in Libya but support this??]

Yemen

Its endgame in Yemen as more generals join the protestors in demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Wall Street Journal has filed this report

“Yemen’s president and the country’s top general are hashing out a settlement in which both men would resign within days, people familiar with the situation said, raising crucial questions of who will end up leading a key, though embattled, U.S. counterterrorism ally.”

Yemen is the site of the largest shadow war as part of the larger war on terror. The United States has conducted hundreds of operations, mostly using predator drones to take out al-Qaeda insurgents. It has supported the Saleh regime and provided it with military support. If the regime is toppled, it will add a degree of uncertainty to US plans to fight terror in the peninsula. Yemen has a large Shi’ite minority, estimated to be between 35-45%. Add to this the tribal conflicts and Saudi meddling and you have a ready made disaster zone. Haaretz reports that at least 50 people have been killed and over 240 injured by government forces.

Yemen could very well end up in an Afghanistan like civil war.

Jordan

Protests have flared in Jordan as well. CNN is on it:

“Protesters gathered near Jamal Abed Alnasser square for the second consecutive day, calling for the dissolution of the parliament, an elected government, and constitutional reforms, according to Petra, the official Jordanian press agency.”

Washington is ostensibly pressing its friend King Abdullah II to initiate reforms and move the country to a constitutional monarchy.

As operation Odyssey Dawn unfolds in Libya, its time to watch American fireworks again. Hours after the passing of Security Council resolution 1973, more than a hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired into Libyan territory by the U.S. Navy. Foreign Policy has a hilarious article on how its open season on Libya: the resolution effectively authorizes any country to bomb it. Reports that a missile hit Qaddafi’s compound generated a lot of internal debate in Western governments on whether he was was legitimate target.

US mass media fiercely debated whether the cost is too much, given that each Tomahawk missile costs more than a million dollars. Talking heads worry about whether Obama has conceded leadership to the undependable Europeans. What survives of the left has argued endlessly that this is just another case of US imperialism.

There is much discussion on what the aims of the coalition ought to be. Should it effect a regime change? Many foreign policy observers have pointed out that we do not know what we are buying. No one really knows what a rebel government would look like. Critics are unhappy that the West rushed into a military campaign without delineating specific goals. The Economist lead story points out the time constraint on intervention given that the regime’s forces were closing in on rebel controlled Benghazi.

Its clear that the dynamics on the ground will dictate the course of events in Libya. Much depends on the fate of Misrata, which was being pounded by the regime until the allied air assault destroyed most of the governments heavy weaponry. According to the briefing, “If it [Misrata] cannot be saved, or the cost of doing so is deemed too high, the coalition would be sending a signal that there is not much it can do to prevent Colonel Qaddafi consolidating his position in the western half of the country”. We might be looking at a partition here.

I do not agree with my radical friends that the West should not intervene in Libya. [Mike makes an almost convincing argument in this genre.] Short of an occupation, almost any form of military intervention is better than letting the Colonel crush the democracy protestors. There is a lot of garbage about regime change not being an objective, and squeamishness about targeting Qaddafi himself. This is absolute nonsense. The CIA could use one of its thousands of predator drones to locate and take out the Colonel. The regime would crumble with the least amount of collateral damage. The current strategy of air assault on government forces and the imposition of no fly zones is not nearly as effective and certainly more deadly. There have been reports of dozens of civilian casualties already. [Update: Professor Juan Cole makes a much better case than I can possibly muster.]

On the other hand, this is certainly a distraction from the loci of greater relevance. The United States is fully supporting its client regimes in the Persian Gulf as they brutally crack down on democracy activists in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Hamas is crushing internal dissent and poking Israel, with Israel responding dutifully with air assaults; thus consolidating Hamas’ control of the Gaza strip.

The action has clearly moved to Syria where tens of thousands are protesting in Deraa. So far the Assad regime has opted for repression. Major demonstrations are happening today and the security forces are cracking down.

We need to watch the events unfold across the region, especially in Yemen and Syria. The Arab spring is far from over.

[Update 3:42PM: Almost within the hour, Syria has grabbed the headlines.]

The New York Times reports on Obama’s pragmatism:

“So Mr. Obama has thrown his weight behind attempts by the royal family of Bahrain, the home of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, to survive, although protesters say their demands have not been met. He has said little about political grievances in Saudi Arabia, a major oil supplier, where there were reports on Thursday of a violent dispersal of Shiite protesters. And he has limited White House critiques of Yemen, where the government is helping the United States root out a terrorist threat, even after that government opened fire on demonstrators.”

Recall that Yemen is 35-40% Shi’ite. The report explains,

“… recognizing a stark reality that American national security interests weigh as heavily as idealistic impulses. That explains why Mr. Obama has dialed down the vocal support he gave demonstrators in Cairo to a more modulated call for peaceful protest and respect for universal rights elsewhere.” [Emphasis mine]

So what are these American strategic interests? Let’s spell it out, shall we?

The United States underwrites the global economic order by the force of its arms. The imperative is to ensure the global oil supply, and to keep the world strategically unipolar. Control of the Persian Gulf is crucial to U.S. planners, it is required to underwrite the veto. This makes the global order stable and is a force for good. The markets need it to stay over water. Everyone benefits from a growing global pie and so on and so forth. Fine, let us call it by the technical term ‘stability’, and agree to accept it for the remainder of this argument.

So what is the problem with U.S. strategy? The strategy is based on the incorrect assumption that Shi’ite mobilization for democratic rights in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon is antithetical to stability. Its based of the intuition that democratic regimes in Shi’ite majority countries will naturally ally themselves with Iran by sectarian gravity, or be ‘unstable’ in some other way. That it will destabilize surviving Arab petro-dictatorships with large Shi’ite minorities.

Democratic emancipation of Shi’ites outside Iran will, a priori, undermine the horrible Islamic regime and its efforts to crush its own democracy protestors. If done right, it can even nudge the regime over the precipice and usher in a green revolution in Iran. This of course depends on what kind of regimes emerge in these places. What kind of elected governments can we expect in the Shi’ite majority countries? Would Turkey style democracies, i.e., with the military firmly allied to the U.S. that guarantees policy bounds and understands U.S. strategic interests, be a problem? Not really. Certainly such regimes will be a boon to ‘stability’ in the region.

Note that it hardly matters whether the potential elected governments are Islamist or secular. What matters is whether they are stable or display too much autonomy. The Egyptian example here is illuminating. The United States ensured that the Egyptian military will remain on board. In particular, it would not tolerate a radical government. Its clear that the U.S. can ensure the same outcome in the Shi’ite majority countries short of the possibility of the emergence of a radial Islamist regime in one of these places. Here the numerical sectarian divisions in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon guarantee that their respective militaries will be able to ensure stable, multi-sectarian regimes. There is always the possibility of sectarian strife, but the U.S. can at least guarantee that no radical, anti-American regimes will emerge. In fact, note that the possibility of rising sectarian violence clearly goes up with U.S. supported Arab state terror.

The Shi’ite are natural cultural allies of the West, way more than the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. If the U.S. promotes the emergence of stable, democratic regimes in places where the Shi’ite are numerous, a democratic regime in Iran is more likely to be ‘stable’. On the other hand, if it continues to support the brutal suppression of Shi’ite democracy agitators by Arab dictators, the emerging Iranian regime is likely to be more antagonistic. Moreover, it will complicate U.S. exit plans in Iraq by increasing the support for Shi’ite radicals, and certainly be a boost for Hezbollah in Beirut, and rebels in Yemen.

Policy makers are understandably concerned about destabilizing surviving Arab petro-dictatorships with large Shi’ite minorities. By now it is clear that some amount of democratic participation is going to happen, even in Saudi Arabia. We will probably see more Turkeys emerge, certainly to be expected in the case of Egypt and Tunisia. Some observers think that there are no more dominos to fall. I do not think that things have settled down just yet. In any case, some concessions on democratic rights will have to be made in the other regimes as well. If the U.S. pressures the Arab regimes to ensure Shi’ite rights and participation, it will make these countries more not less stable.

Obviously, the Arab dictators will not like it. Tell them to hold their noses. Remind them how stability pays for their 500 foot yachts. The way things are going right now, we are going to see a repeat of the 1980s when the U.S. armed and backed Saddam in his war against Iran. But trust me, you do not want Saudi Arabia fighting Iran. $200 a barrel would be a steal. If they attack Iran without U.S. authorization and support, their oil fields are too exposed to a conventional Iranian response. They are bluffing, and all their belligerence will evaporate without U.S. support.

The U.S. is not really responsible for events in Libya. [Even though I could be persuaded to support a surgical beheading strategy]. It is most responsible for places where it exercises most control. The same goes for the attentions of public intellectuals. The overall emerging order in the Middle East and North Africa is certainly not controllable. In fact, the democracy wave seems to have been completely unanticipated. So it is perhaps natural that the Obama administration and U.S. planners are like deer caught in the headlights. They are sticking to old rules of the game out of sheer inertia or perhaps an inability to comprehend the implications of unforeseen events. The irrational fear of Shi’ite mobilization is hindering clear thinking. It might have something to do with the fact that all inhabitants of the White House have recurring nightmares about the events of 1979.

Things are complicated in Iraq and Yemen et cetera, but Bahrain is a pure case. There is zero potential of a regime antagonistic to U.S. interests because the dominant Sunni elite comprise a third of the population. The island is not even remotely a potential threat to global oil supply or U.S. dominance of the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, a prosperous Shi’ite-majority democracy right on their doorstep could possibly undermine the Islamic regime in Iran. There is very limited downside and a huge potential upside. Exactly the hedge you need President Obama.

[Update: Even as public attention is sharply focused on Japan and U.S. airstrikes in Libya, some observers are keeping track of Bahrain. At the Guardian, Shirin Sadeghi talks about the fabrication of Shi'ite-Sunni divide. Mark Lynch over at Foreign Policy, elaborates the Saudi strategy and sectarian framing of the issue at hand. Nicholas D. Kristof pulls a Kristof on his column. Don Zakheim at Shadow Government addresses politics of stability in Bahrain.

None of these observers address the obvious disconnect between U.S. strategic interests and those of the Arab petro-dictators in the Arabian peninsula. No one would say exactly why they think violent pacification of Shi'ite minorities in these regimes makes them more stable than accommodation. Apparently, playing the Iran card absolves one from thinking things through.]

As predicted, the escalating protests in Bahrain prompted Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council to send troops across the King Fahd Causeway into the tiny island Kingdom that is home to the U.S. Fifth fleet. Its clear that the move was authorized by Washington. What is unclear is whether it was requested by the regime or imposed on it by Saudi Arabia. But that is a second order issue at this point.

The New York Times reports that a convoy of more than 150 armoured troop carriers were observed. Al Jazeera reports that demonstrators had been camped out in the financial district for more than a week and threatened to form a human chain to block access to the financial Harbour site on Sunday. The NYT reported that they had effectively sealed off the financial district.

For now, the troops seem to have secured key locations, including oil facilities and the headquarters of the regime. Things may get out of hand if there are clashes between the protestors and the troops.

This follows the aborted mass demonstrations that were planned for last Friday in Saudi Arabia. There were reports of some demonstrations in the Shi’ite dominated Eastern cities but Riyadh itself was kept under heavy security presence. Riot police cut access to every major roundabout in the capital city. Protestors are planning for a prolonged agitation.

The United States is hedging its bets on the stability of the petro-dictatorships by calling for restraint and reforms. Not a very effective hedge.

[Update: The situation is escalating. Its too soon to judge whether the Saudi invasion can effectively control the agitation. Things are very fluid at the moment.]

The protest in Bahrain seems to be gathering steam even as the regime is cracking down with unusual brutality. According to Reuters

“U.S. President Barack Obama and Clinton, while calling for reforms in much of the Arab world, have also been careful not to back protests too explicitly out of concern that changes could undermine U.S. interests or pose new threats to Israel, Washington’s chief ally in the Middle East.”

The editors of the New York Times want the White House to pressure the regime to show restraint. The guys over at Foreign Policy fear that things are getting out of hand.  The Economist worries that the King is in trouble.

The overwhelming consensus across the spectrum of the policy making elite is that the United States has to support the monarchy at all costs. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain. According to this interesting Factbox on the Reuters website, with its aircraft carrier groups and responsibility for the entire region, the fleet is at the absolute core of US power projection capabilities in the Middle East. The Kingdom is also home to the land-based Patriot missile installations and looks across the Gulf to Iran. It happens to be 70% Shi’ite but dominated by a tiny ruling Sunni elite centred around the royal family.

This is not unusual, authoritarianism is the norm in all the Shi’ite majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. Most Arab dictatorships have significant Shi’ite minorities – Saudi Arabia 10-15%, Yemen 35-40%, Turkey 10-15%, Syria 15-20%, Kuwait 20-25%, Qatar and the U.A.E. 10%.

This is a seen as a potential source of unrest and instability. The big threat is of course the Islamic regime in Iran which sponsors Hezbollah, the gang of radical clerics who control much of Beirut. In Saudi Arabia, the Shi’ite are concentrated in the South along the border with Yemen with its large restive Shi’ite minority. Crucially, just like Iraq, the Shi’ite majority areas in Saudi Arabia are precisely where the major oil fields are.

Shi’ite political mobilization is seen as the primary threat to the Arab petro-dictatorships that flourish under the umbrella of U.S. power. It is feared that Shi’ite dominated regimes, or even those responsive to Shi’ite political demands, will be friendlier to the Islamic regime in Iran and antagonistic to the West.

The Persian Gulf is home to 40% of the world’s proven oil reserves. According to declassified NSC documents, Washington planners recognize it as a “stupendous source of strategic power”.  The idea is not just to ensure Western access to oil and ensure global oil supply on which the world economy depends so critically. If a potential challenger (China) threatens US interests, then its access to this oil can be cut off and its military and its economy would grind to a halt. It gives the United States unprecedented leverage over allies and enemies alike. It is effectively a veto. This is at the heart of global US hegemony. There is overwhelming consensus among corporate and policy elites that the United States must underwrite the global economic order with the force of its arms.

Given the imperatives of US power in the Persian Gulf, the perceived threat of Shi’ite mobilization and the distrust of democracy, the US will not allow the Bahraini regime to go the way of Egypt and Tunisia. All we will hear are calls for restraint.

Of course, this just demonstrates the elite contempt for democracy and lingering orientalism. The protestors in Bahrain may be mostly Shi’ite, but this is not a case of Shi’ite nationalism. They are demanding secular, political rights that have been denied to them by the regime. If the West continues to support the regime and ignore the legitimate political demands of the people, it will antagonize the population, making this a self fulfilling prophecy.

Let’s just say US policymakers are not very good at game theory.

The New York Times editors think that the White House has miscalculated in endorsing Omar Suleiman to take over the reins from Mubarak. To any observer of U.S. foreign policy it should be obvious that there has been no miscalculation. The United States has long preferred ‘stability’ over democracy in the South. The euphemism ‘stability’ is a technical word for describing the presence of a pro-Western, pro-Business regime in respectable discourse. No matter how unstable the situation in [insert client state], the U.S. has backed dictators against democratic nationalist movements seeking autonomy and participation consistently.

Towards the end of the first Gulf war, nationalist opposition forces sought U.S. arms and diplomatic support to depose Saddam Hussein.  They were rebuffed and left to be slaughtered by Saddam’s forces. The White House preferred stability.

I could take you on a grand tour of U.S. support for authoritarian regimes. From Suharto in Indonesia to General Musharraf in Pakistan, to the radical Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia and the string of Arab dictatorships across the region, the Shah in Iran, the brutal juntas in Central America and Latin America. But I want to stick to the topic. You can find much of this history here.

I want to make a point that Noam Chomsky recently made in the Guardian.

“A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The U.S. and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan’s dictators and President Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).”

Coming back to Egypt, there is hardly any danger of Islamists capturing power so the above argument is even less persuasive. Which is why the current U.S. strategy of supporting Omar Suleiman makes no sense whatsoever. And here is why I think it will backfire:

Its clear that a more democratic regime will replace the current one soon. Washington is pissing people off by supporting a regime insider,  someone who was  the boss of the dreaded intelligence services and despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself. When elections are held, parties competing for votes will be compelled to take a stridently independent stance. Many will campaign on a platform of making Egypt more autonomous. If the U.S. persists in supporting the regime, the next regime could quite possibly be antagonistic to the West in general and the U.S. in particular.

President Obama, if you really don’t want to lose Egypt, stop miscalculating.

The New York Times reports on White House machinations to kick out Mubarak and install the former head of intelligence as the interim president.

I think the secular grassroots opposition understands that it is not about Mubarak the person. The boss of the intelligence agency was at the heart of the national security state. Replacing Mubarak with another henchman is not a move towards democracy. According to the Times profile of Omar Suleiman

“. . . the former general is also the establishment’s candidate, not the public’s. Mr. Suleiman’s elevation to the presidency, if it were to occur, would represent not the democratic change called for on the street, but most likely a continuation of the kind of military-backed, authoritarian leadership that Mr. Mubarak has led for nearly 30 years.”

and even more tellingly, “In secret diplomatic memos sent from the United States Embassy in Cairo to Washington and made public by WikiLeaks, Mr. Suleiman is described as sharing Washington’s foreign policy agenda.”

Gotta go back to the drawing board President Obama. This is unacceptable. The biggest wave of democratic revolutions is underway in the Middle East and neither state terror nor US intrigue can stop this train.

Its rare for the veil to be lifted and the real mechanics of US control exposed. We have understood the patron-client relationship of the US and the Arab dictatorship as an abstraction. Now we can observe it in real time.

P.S. The bond market thinks its going to work. As an aside, the Economist has a incisive cover story on the protests in Egypt and else where in the Middle East. One of the more interesting stories is on the latest Arab guessing game, ‘Who will be next?’. Don’t miss it.

Almost all major news organizations are keeping a close tab on the highly volatile situation in Egypt. The usual suspects: the New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Democracy Now – all have decent coverage.

For closer to the ground coverage, Al Jazeera is great. For insight and analysis, I found informed comment particularly impressive. Its a blog by Juan Cole, who is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World, thankfully available on the Kindle.

If you stumble upon a particularly insightful commentator, let me know.

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P.S. How are we supposed to get any work done with such terribly exciting events going on???