Arab Spring 2011: a slightly different point of view

Comments and conclusions about the unprecedented wave of revolutions in the Arab world during the spring of 2011 are in abundance, though if we drain them down to essence, practically all of them will have petrol and growing islamism, in certain combinations, as a main reason. But is that true?

Yes and no.

Remember the 1975 Sydney Pollack movie “Three Days of the Condor” with Robert Redford as the main hero?

1975, two years after the first major world oil crisis, which has resulted in wave of petrol assets redistribution in the arab oil extracting countries, in a sharp multiple increase of international oil prices, and in a painful realization by the leading world powers of dependence of their future economic growth on stable deliveries of petrol from the main oil producing countries. Robert Redford under the code name “Condor” is a member of a group of CIA analysts, who quite accidentally unveil a CIA operational network of agents infiltrated into the Middle East and Arab world. As a result of a cleansing action, meant to contain the eventual leak of extremely sensitive and potentially damaging information, the whole group of researchers is killed, but Condor survives and for three days struggles to stay alive and figure out whom to trust. At the end of the movie he speaks with his CIA boss and asks “Are we preparing to conquer the Middle East?”. “Of course not,” was the answer,”we are just preparing for the future, assessing the situation and what and how much would be needed to destabilize the situation in the future”.

Even if it is a fiction based movie, it would be naive to discount the fact that the most powerful state in the world has managed in 35 years to build up a strong and influential operational network in the arab region. It’s normal, every big power is playing such games, besides, don’t forget that back in 1975 it was, above all, a fight between two systems, two camps: communists led by USSR and imperialists led by USA. So, at a certain moment this network has been activated, and it would be another naive thing to think, that in authoritarian countries like in the arab world, where organized opposition has never existed, these revolutions could have been done by the poor divided people. With USSR disintegrated, basically only US has remained as the sole superpower able to financially sustain such a huge international action. There is no dissent about that.

But the big question is why would the United States need these changes? USSR as a competitor is gone, oil has been always traded in US dollars and the market has been dominated and controlled mostly by US capitals, directly or indirectly, and, moreover, some of the arab regimes were if not open allies, then definitely American friendly. Why this shakeup, and would it be possible to control the consequences, especially if radical islamists would take over the power?

Here is the trick.

First of all, dictatorships can be allies only for a short period of time, when they are perceived as a step ahead and stable. Otherwise, dictatorships are always a risk. Besides, it is the third millennium out there, and having these odious regimes amassing huge fortunes, whereas the population is hardly surviving on the edge of famine, is never politically a good thing to cooperate with in future, even if economic interests do prevail. Democracy may not be ideal, but it is still the best what humanity has invented so far, and developing friendly relations with various politicians to influence them in the years ahead may be easier and less costly - divide and rule principle has always worked fine. On the other side, in todays globalized world, coups are also globalized! Google, Twitter, internet, mobile phones, NGOs - all can be easily put into motion to achieve a common goal. As a result, it’s better to change things now, today, when it can be done in yet a controlled explosion manner - tomorrow the situation may be different.

Secondly, oil trade and the US dollar are still dominating the region, so even after these shakeups, the new authorities won’t do anything without the good relationship with Uncle Sam. At this point of history, all arab countries affected by the 2011 revolutions won’t have the speculative choice of “if you don’t give me that, I will go to the commies”, like they had it in the 70-ies, the main interest option being US and the united Europe, which is a strategic US partner.

And finally, the last, but far not least thing, which actually is the main difference of this opinion, is about the ultimate purpose of it.

A couple of months ago there was an alarming report of the IMF, in which for the first time this renown international organization has set a date for the moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China. And it's a lot closer than you may think. According to the IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. This bombshell has passed practically unnoticed, but in fact it has extraordinary implications, worth of a separate analysis. Of course, it will be all peaceful and civilized, China has already surpassed Japan, which was the second economic superpower, and nothing really happened. But in the end, geopolitical influence and access to third countries’ assets, issues of trade controls, capital markets and currency rules, flows of international finances - all will be impacted by the new strong leader, which has an unprecedented potential for growth and expansion.

And given the quite shaky financial (budgetary) situation in the US itself, on one side, and the fact that China is far from being a democratic state with strong democratic traditions, on the other side, such a swap of world leadership may result in even more painful consequences that we are yet not able to anticipate.

If you can't compete one to one - you tend to create more reliable friends and teaming with allies. Hence, the simplest way to counterbalance the upcoming effects at least for the beginning and in order to avoid any devastating impact such as a Third World War, which would bring the whole humankind to an end, is to build serious long lasting strategic partnerships, implanting a strong presence around the world and around China. Hence, a famous “Reset” button approach should be used not only with Russia, but will be also probably used with Iran soon, and many other nations in the region. And since it is quite unreliable to reset relationships with dictatorships, as stated above, they are just being removed.

So, the truth is that petrol and radical islamism are not the main causes of the Arab spring of 2011, they are rather wisely used main driving forces. The main cause of these events is the emerging new geopolitical configuration of the globalized world. Hence, the United States, which is still a superpower no.1 and a leader among democratic states, is basically forced to act like that. Absence of any preventive operations may pose a greater risk to the near future of the world. Political inaction leads to failure, besides in life it’s better to regret about what has been done, rather than about what hasn’t been done.

Risk of radical islamists, which would be less susceptible to control? Wrong again (read above)! Quite often such governments prove to be more orderly and reliable partners than some amorphous democracies, besides the new islamist administrations that come to state power and managing state assets, would need fair trade and US bucks not less than their predecessors. Moreover, they might be more successful to proliferate revolutions further to the East, if needed! And it was not only Talibans and Osama bin Laden, with whom US successfully worked with long time ago. The elimination of the latter in May during the arab spring events, was, among other things, meant to show to the world that now there would be new rules and new main actors.