In countries such as Jordan and Bahrain, kings may survive the region-wide turmoil that has toppled two presidents
Arab monarchies were long thought to be more favorable to democratization than republics. Monarchs who enjoyed popular legitimacy and political security are on balance more willing to take risks, the argument went, gradually letting go of power and embarking on potentially destabilizing reforms. Since kings do not depend on elections to maintain power, they have less to fear from holding them. But the region's uprisings seem to demonstrate that republics are the most promising candidates for systemic change. Egypt and Tunisia, both led by unpopular presidents, were the first to go. The other likely candidates for revolutions -- Libya, Yemen, and possibly Algeria -- are all republics.
Two distinct models for change are emerging. In republics, the person of the president, because of his dominating, partisan role, provides a rallying point for an otherwise fractious opposition. The protesters may disagree on how their country should be run and by whom, but they at least agree one thing: the president must go. The goal isn't political change, which can mean many different things in execution, but regime change.
Protesters in monarchies lack a similarly clear mission. They face a more formidable opponent -- kings can be just as repressive as presidents but can draw on greater religious and historical legitimacy, often allowing them to retain some popularity. Kings, in other words, manage to still be autocrats but in a less overt way, which is in part what makes their reign more acceptable to their people. Where Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya resorted to flagrantly rigged elections, monarchs in Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Kuwait hold reasonably free polls and permit legal opposition. It just so happens that these elections determine relatively little of real importance. Decision-making authority remains with the king and the cabinets that he appoints. These regimes have been able to create the illusion of reform even as they strengthened their grip on power. Jordan went from having, in 1992, the best ever Freedom House scores for an Arab country to full-blown authoritarianism fifteen years later.
Nearly two months after Tunisia's revolution, monarchs have emerged largely unscathed. Protest movements and opposition groups have largely respected regime red lines, avoiding direct attacks on the monarchy. In late January, Jordanian protesters called for the downfall of Prime Minister Samir al-Rifai's government, though they knew that Rifai openly served at the king's pleasure. Rifai stepped down, but King Abdullah -- the leader -- stayed on, as powerful as before.
Opposition groups in Arab monarchies, however, are beginning to shake off their longstanding caution. The king's prerogatives, if not the fact of his rule, have made the lists of protester grievances in Jordan as well as Bahrain, Morocco, and even Saudi Arabia. Protesters have taken to calling for "constitutional monarchy." This would likely mean that the king transfer some of his considerable powers to elected governments. Of course, monarchs are not known for voluntarily giving up power. As Jordan's new prime minister, presumably channeling the king's vision, explained to skeptics, "I'm not opting for a temporary containment policy, but real reform is a gradual process." Egyptians and Tunisians, whose presidents made similarly vague promises days before their ousters, would probably beg to differ.
Self-democratizing monarchies are rare in recent history. More often, they're overthrown. In the case of Europe, the transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy took decades or centuries and usually involved bloodshed or even, as in Portugal, assassination. Spain's King Juan Carlos oversaw the country's transition to democracy in the 1970s, but he had never ruled as an absolute monarch in the first place. Indeed, Juan Carlos lived in exile until just a few years before the death of Spain's dictator for 36 years, Francisco Franco, who enacted a law of succession that would restore the monarchy-in-exile after he died. Perhaps the most relevant case of recent years is Bhutan, where the monarchy began a "democratic transition" in 2002. But that transition has since stalled, with the king retaining important powers and criticism of the monarchy still a punishable crime. Kings, even the most benevolent, don't often give up their power willingly.
Assuming Jordanians are unwilling to wait decades for "gradual" reform, there are no obvious models to copy, except perhaps their own. In 1989, King Hussein initiated democratic reforms, holding free elections that returned an opposition majority. In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood joined a coalition government with five ministries in one of the first and only times an Islamist group has held executive power in the Arab world. But the optimism soon turned to disappointment in 1993 as the regime began a concerted process of de-liberalization, which left the country in its current less-than-democratic state.
Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifa family led their own reform initiative in 2001, which included the establishment of an elected parliament. But the reforms did not alter the system of Sunni minority rule over the poorer Shia majority, part of the underlying structure of inequality driving the ongoing demonstrations there.
The growing unrest in these two strategically vital, U.S.-backed autocracies is, in part, a ,result and reaction to failed transition processes. Still, most Arab monarchs stand a good chance of weathering the mounting discontent. When things go wrong, kings can always claim plausible deniability. They can blame their governments and then dismiss them. Kings like to see themselves as above the fray -- umpires rather than partisans. As the late King Hassan II of Morocco famously said, "I will never be put into an equation." His successors, however, are finding that the equation is changing.
It's been decades since any country in the world has met the challenge of peacefully transitioning from a non-democratic monarchy to a democracy. So the increasingly emboldened oppositions in the monarchies of North Africa or the Middle East will need to devise a new model for change. No matter what they do, it won't be easy. Let's just hope it won't be bloody.
A startling fact has emerged from the Arab Spring that few have remarked upon: despite the pining for democracy by the Muslim masses, it's comparatively safe to be a king or sultan. Royal families have survived better in this age of upheaval than secular autocrats, despite the latter's pretension to revolutionary traditions. No Arab royal family has been toppled, and most have made deft adjustments in the face of public unrest. Compare that with military dictators and security service thugs who have either been killed, driven into exile or who are fighting quite bloodily for their survival.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman and the various sheikhs of the Persian Gulf are, to be sure, more nervous on their thrones than a few years ago: in particular the monarchs of Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, they are not angels. Strong and regularly ruthless security services help keep these monarchs in power. Nevertheless, as comparison is the beginning of all serious scholarship, compared to other regimes in the region these monarchs have been both enlightened and Machiavellian in the best sense of the word.
Algeria's military-cum-revolutionary regime contended with a civil war in the 1990s; and, with the looming death of President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, stability there is seriously questionable. Tunisia's secular strongman Zine El Abdine Ben Ali was toppled in a popular uprising in 2011; so was military dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi was hunted down by a crowd and murdered, following another popular uprising. Mubarak was in a line of revolutionary military pharaohs and Gadhafi was an avowed radical: a self-declared enemy of the reactionary order of kings. Yet, the Egyptian and Libyan masses were not impressed.
Of course, the sturdiest revolutionary credentials were possessed by the Baathist socialist rulers of Iraq and Syria. Though the Americans toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, many in the country did not mourn his death. And had the Americans not invaded, the Arab Spring might have claimed Saddam, too, as a victim. Finally, there is Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who thus far has had to wage a civil war that has claimed 93,000 lives and created millions of refugees in order to stay in power.
Modernizing officer corps have bitten the desert dust; antiquated dynasties have held on, at least so far. Why?
It's legitimacy, stupid!
The fact is, monarchs are identified with their states to a degree that the officers and the dark-suited security heavies are not. Tunisia is an age-old cluster of civilization emanating from ancient Carthage, the incredibly corrupt, plain-clothed policeman (because that's what he was) Ben Ali was superfluous to Tunisia's identity. Egypt constitutes a river valley civilization going back thousands of years. Toppling Mubarak was not going to lead to the breakup of the country. Then there are the revolutionary leaders who governed no real states at all. Libya is but a vague geographical expression that was held together only by Gadhafi's tyranny -- a tyranny so suffocating that it sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Syria and Iraq are also artificial states, and their erstwhile rulers, al Assad and Hussein, have represented sectarian minority regimes with questionable legitimacy at best. In sum, either the rulers were not sufficiently identified with their states, or there weren't any states underneath them.
The contrast with Arab royalty could not be greater.
The monarchs and their states, in terms of identity, are inextricable. The Alaouite dynasty in Morocco has ruled longer than the United States has existed as a country: it was Alaouite Moulay al-Rashid who forged the country in the first place in the second half of the 17th century. Saudi Arabia is, well, Saudi Arabia, the kingdom of the al-Sauds: without them there is no country. Jordan's geographical artificialness, coupled with its uneasy mix of desert tribesmen and urban Palestinians, is held together by the unifying force of the monarch: whose Hashemite family -- claiming direct descent from the Prophet Mohammed -- was synonymous with the original founding of the state in the mid-20th century. In Oman, the sultan has united the disparate worlds of the desert interior and the cosmopolitan, Indian Ocean seaboard in order to forge a state. As for the Gulf sheikhdoms, they were created as such by the British, and have been further buttressed by combining small populations with significant hydrocarbon deposits. Only the royal family in Bahrain is in trouble, because of a Sunni-Shiitesplit that has also bedeviled Iraq.
Precisely because of this historical legitimacy, the royal families of the Arab world have not had to govern in an extremely brutal fashion -- relative to the likes of the Gadhafis, the al Assads and Husseins. Their very moderation, again, relative to their region, has made them at least tolerable to their populations -- if not downright popular, in some cases. Moreover, because of their inherited wealth, there is not the same impetus to be corrupt. The kings and sultans may live lavishly, but they lack to the same degree the money-grubbing aura of the Ben Alis and Mubaraks, with their vulgar, nouveau riche wives. The Arab royals represent "old money," after a fashion. This, too, has made them more acceptable to the masses.
There are other factors. Precisely because the monarchs are ceremonial -- encompassing all the pomp and circumstance of the state in their very persons -- they can often delegate the dirty work of actual daily governance to ministers, who, when things go wrong, can conveniently take the blame. Indeed, who says the Arab world does not have separation of powers? Some Arab monarchs utilize this feature all the time, to their benefit. Jordan's kings are famous for firing prime ministers during many an economic downturn. The problem with the Gadhafis and the Mubaraks was that, because they had no inherited legitimacy (nobody believed in their pomp and circumstance), they demanded absolute power as insurance against coups. And because they had absolute power, they got personally blamed when the economy produced uneven results.
Finally, there is something else, something harder to define. Yes, the Arab royals are legitimate in a way their non-royal counterparts are not. Nevertheless, preserving a family tradition of state power for generations and, in some cases, for centuries, is an enormous responsibility: much greater even than that of the scions of family-run corporations in the West. You don't want to be the last in a royal line! And so, in addition to being wily and occasionally ruthless, there is also the constant desire to do good works: to earn your throne, as it were. For that, ultimately, is what will keep you in power. So when we think of Arab leaders who are -- in a larger political sense -- humane, who comes to mind: Mohammed VI, Abdullah II, Sultan Qaboos. That is the key to being a real prince, as Machiavelli would say: combining ruthlessness withvirtu (virtue).
The democratic West should count itself lucky to have such autocrats in power.
Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, and author of the bestselling book The Revenge of Geography. Reprinted with permission.
American intelligence analysts, like most U.S. observers, have often referred to the process unfolding in the Middle East as the “Arab Spring,” with its implicit message of democratic birth and freedom. But some senior analysts are said to have argued for a more neutral term, such as “Arab transition” — which conveys the essential truth that nobody can predict just where this upheaval is heading.
The uncertain transition rumbled on last week in Syria: President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power appeared to weaken, with his military stretched to the breaking point in an attempt to control the protests. On Thursday, President Obama, evidently sensing that the endgame is near, called on Assad to step down.
Syria illustrates the paradox of the Arab transition. The courage of the Syrian people in defying Assad’s tanks is breathtaking. Yet this is a movement without clear leadership or an agenda beyond toppling Assad. It could bend toward the hard-line Sunni fundamentalists who have led the street fighting in Daraa and Homs, or to the sophisticated pro-democracy activists of Damascus. The truth is that nobody can predict the face of a post-Assad Syria.
The Syrian confrontation is already devolving into a regional proxy war. Iran has been rushing assistance to Assad, who is Tehran’s key Arab ally and provides a lifeline to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. To counter the Iranians, a newly emboldened Saudi Arabia has been pumping money to Sunni fighters in Syria. Damascus is the fault line — for Sunni-Shiite tensions, and for the confrontation between Iran and the United States and Israel.
Despite these uncertainties, Obama is right to demand that Assad must go. Some commentators have chided the White House’s hyper-caution. (Saudi Arabia, hardly a beacon of change, denounced Assad a week ago.) But I think Obama has been wise to move carefully — and avoid the facile embrace of a rebel movement whose trajectory is unknown. America’s goal should be an inclusive democracy that enfranchises the Sunni fighters in the streets, yes, but also protects Alawites, Christians and Druze who fear a bloodbath.
As the Arab transition moves through summer toward fall, it’s a good time to take stock — and to remind ourselves that there won’t be any automatic movement toward prosperity and rule of law. The citizen revolt that began in Tunisia is surely a positive trend — and it’s unstoppable, in any event. But analysts offer some important cautionary points:
●The Arab movements for change will probably retard the process of economic reform that was underway in nations such as Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak was an arrogant leader, but over the past decade he did encourage free-market policies that helped boost Egypt’s growth rate over 5 percent. Two architects of those pro-market policies were Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid. Both have now been charged with corruption. The populist anger is understandable, but it won’t help Egypt get much-needed international investment.
* Democracy is likely to disappoint the protesters. They went into the streets to demand a better life — jobs, freedom from the secret police, personal dignity — and they want these rights now. Hopefully, citizens in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and the rest will soon be able to vote for democratic governments. But struggling democracies often aren’t very good at meeting the basic demands that spawned the revolutions. Asia put economic reform first, with political reform gradually following. The Arabs have decided to go the other direction — with uncertain consequences.
* The Arab transition needs to embrace the tolerance of secular societies rather than the intolerance of theocracy. That’s one lesson this generation could learn from the “Arab Renaissance” movements of the last century. The Baath Party and the Nasserites are rightly rejected now, but in celebrating “Arab nationalism” they gave an identity to citizens that was broader than religion, sect or tribe. That spirit of inclusive identity will be essential for a happy Arab future.
Viewing events in the Arab world, President Obama has talked often of being “on the right side of history.” But frankly, that’s an incoherent concept. History doesn’t have a side; it isn’t a straight line that moves inexorably toward progress. Movements that start off calling for liberation often produce the opposite.
What should guide U.S. policy in this time of transition is to be on the right side of America’s own interests and values. Sometimes those two will conflict, requiring difficult choices, but they coincide powerfully in the departure of Syrian President Assad.
A fascinating aspect of the wave of citizen revolts that are toppling, challenging or reforming regimes across the Arab world is that people are using different words to describe the phenomenon. The term that seems to have gained currency across the Western world is “Arab Spring.” I find this totally inappropriate, and have banished it from my own writing. I urge fellow journalists across the world to consider doing the same.
The most important reason for this is that this term is not used by those brave men and women who have been on the streets demonstrating and dying for the past seven months. Every time I run into a Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, Syrian, Bahraini or Yemeni, I ask them how they refer to their own political actions. Their answer is almost universal: “revolution” (thawra, in Arabic). And when they refer to the collective activities of Arabs across the region, they often use the plural, “revolutions” (thawrat).
They also use descriptor collective nouns such as Arab “uprising” (intifada), Arab “awakening” (sahwa) or Arab renaissance (nahda), the latter mirroring the initial Arab awakening against Ottoman and European domination in the early years of the 20th century. I prefer the term “Arab citizen revolt,” which captures the common demand among Arab demonstrators to enjoy full citizenship rights with appropriate constitutional guarantees.
The words Arabs use to describe themselves are far stronger and more substantive than Arab “spring.” Inherent in the term “spring,” for sure, is the idea of awakening after winter’s slumber, but it also denotes a brief or limited transitional moment that soon gives way to the next season of summer. It mirrors Czechoslovakia’s brief “Prague Spring” liberalism of 1968, which the Russians quickly halted, and also the European revolutions of 1848. Tellingly, the “spring” metaphor was not applied to the revolutions that swept the Soviet Empire in the 1980s and early 1990s. When real change happens, the world tends to describe this as a “revolution,” not a “spring” – except, it seems, in the Arab world.
Perhaps I exaggerate, but I’m troubled by the unspoken connotations that accompany the word “spring,” which plays down the severity of the challenge to existing regimes and downgrades the intensity of the courage that ordinary men and women summon when they dare to take on their well-armed national security services.
“Spring” is a passive phenomenon, something that happens to people who have no power and no say in the process. The terms that Arabs use to describe themselves epitomize activism, empowerment and determination, denoting citizens who have the power to change their world and are going about that business with diligence and perseverance.
I suspect that the popularity of “Arab Spring” in the West mirrors some subtle Orientalism at work, lumping Arabs into a single mass of people who all think and behave the same way. It might also hide another troubling factor: Many quarters of many Western lands remain hesitant in fully acknowledging the implications of free and self-determinant Arabs who have the power to define their countries and shape their national policies.
For the past 150 years or so, the West has assumed it could shape and control most aspects of power and policy across the Arab world, whether due to imperial self-interest, energy issues or economic need. As Arab citizens now shed docility and threaten to take control of their own societies, many in the West aren’t sure how to deal with this possibility.
Perhaps they also don’t want to acknowledge the full reality of Arabs’ reconfiguring their power structures, because Western powers (including Russia) enthusiastically supported those old, failed authoritarian systems that are now being challenged and changed. An Arab “spring” conveniently removes the element of culpability and foreign complicity in the dark, bitter and endless “winter” that we endured for three generations of incompetent Arab police and family-mafia states.
Revolutionary, self-determinant, self-assertive Arabs frighten many people abroad. Softer Arabs who sway with the seasons and the winds may be more comforting. But if in their greatest moment of modern historical self-assertion and nationalist struggle, assorted Arab citizenries find that Western politicians and the media refer to them in the vocabulary of the wind and the tides, then we’re certain to continue feeling the impact of the great battle of colonialism versus nationalist resistance that still seems to define the Arab world’s relations with the West.
Language may be the easiest place to start reversing this troubling legacy. Dropping the term “Arab Spring” for something more accurate is a starting point.
Rami Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
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