Jordan's King Abdullah warns that there may soon be three civil wars in the Middle East, unless somebody steps in and does something (if we only knew what that something was). The potential wars are:
- In Iraq, between Shi'a and Sunni (and I suppose with the Kurds thrown in for good measure)
- In Lebanon, between Hizballah and the anti-Syrian groups
- In the Palestinian territories, between Fatah and Hamas
The core, Abdullah predictably says, is Israel. It isn't clear to me why the warlords in Iraq will get any less belligerent if Israel did anything differently; and I'm hard pressed to see the causal connection between Israel and the other conflicts, either, but let's let that go.
The issue is, what are the right policy choices for the US, Europe, and other wealthy democracies?
Slate has one broadside after the other against the Bush administration's foreign policy, and they're not far off. I don't think Bush has been all that wrong about the Arab-Israeli conflict, except that his categorical and self-righteous rhetoric has given Arab extremists the basis to demonize him as well as Israel within mainstream public opinion.
Each of these potential civil wars is enormously complex in its own right, and none lends itself to easy answers. I'm thinking a lot of Western observers are starting to believe that the best thing for these countries is a strong, benevolent dictator who can provide a more managed transition to democracy while keeping the external hounds at bay. That sounds like an appealing solution, except it ignores the fact that some of the most powerful factions in these countries are fundamentally anti-democratic. Some people might think that you can beat these down with a stick or something, but they're proving to be pretty determined.
Then there is the alternative of just letting it rip - leaving them to fight it out, because they're going to do it anyway. Of course, that would mean tacitly accepting at minimum untold misery and deaths among non-combatants caught in the middle; and at worst genocide. A cynical strategist might accept this, but it's morally unacceptable to any decent human being.
Containment of foreign powers is of course an option. Keep Iran out of all the wars (it's in all of them in one way or another), encourage Syria to finally start act like a grown-up, find ways to limit the fighting to battleground areas so that the rest of the people can pursue their lives. Like these radical groups would accept such confinement.
I don't know.
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