30 January, 2011

Sunday Thinkpiece: interference

‘It is not for us to interfere’, I wrote at the end of a post on Egypt, but of course that is not how everyone will see it. There is a certain type of politician who sees interference in other countries’ troubles as quite acceptable. Tony Blair was one such, and indeed often said he saw it as his moral duty. A bit patronising, but he’s not alone. So what will be going on in the emergency committees of the Great Powers (Britain’s committee goes by the spy-thriller name of COBRA, which stands for the more mundane Cabinet Office Briefing Room A)?

There is an interesting parallel between the Second Gulf War and the Vietnam War. Both left the public slightly sickened at what military intervention could do, and both left the public depressed at what interference could not do. There was the feeling that an inordinate amount of damage had been caused and we lost; either one of those might be acceptable, but not both. I exclude the First Gulf War because its purpose was to rescue an ally from invasion and it succeeded in that (I personally had grave doubts, believing that we went in to rescue the al-Sabah family rather than the people of Kuwait, and still wonder if they were worth rescuing).

But the Vietnam War and the Second Gulf War left the West in the position that no further international adventures would be tolerated by its people (at least not for a while). Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron, representing the great Western military powers, know that whatever they think personally, it will all have to be done by the book. ‘Soft Power’ would be best.

The Maghreb is going through one of its periodic transformations, as serious for its people, in my view, as the decline of the Roman Empire and the takeover of the forces of Islam in the 7th century. In more recent times the area went from colonial subjugation to government by the anti-colonial rebels, and now these partisans are old and corrupt and are having the reins taken from them. The problem is we don’t know by whom or what.

Some decry the domino theory, that this is spreading across the region, but I do not. The almost simultaneous popular uprisings and the access to new media threaten a new phenomenon. Executing a coup d’état on Facebook is, if nothing else, something new. Demographics play a part: The Arab World numbers around 300 million, around the population of America, or of the five largest European countries. But of those, 200 million are under 24 - two thirds, against around one third in America and less in Europe. The struggles for independence in the 1950s and 1960s are far, far away for most people. They are better educated, richer and want something better for themselves.

Our emergency committee will note all this and try to plot the direction of travel. In the 1950s, when a change in government in Egypt caused the nationalisation of the Suez canal and another failed intervention, the fear was that the new rulers would go over to Russia. Now the fear is that they will go over to militant Islam.

But does it matter? They will see it like this: firstly all these countries are already Muslim. It’s just a question of how Muslim. Morocco has a young king and may well not be a party to this. Algeria is a hotbed of Islamic militancy and is a risk. But against that its gas stocks are running out and it will see declining income over the next five years. It is not another Iran with almost infinite supplies. Libya is already ruled by an unreliable character and is already not a dependable ally. Tunisia is too small to make any difference. Egypt, by contrast, has a population of 80 million, and governs the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, between them transporting around 2m barrels of oil a day (global demand is around 90m b/d). But there are alternative routes for this oil, albeit 6,000 miles longer. And why should a new government of any complexion cut itself off from this revenue?

Our committee will conclude that there is no case for intervention, and scarcely any for even soft interference. All the West has to do is to make sure China doesn’t interfere (Russia, being a net exporter of energy, won’t mind the odd competitor imploding). Let them get on with it. Let’s hope that's the conclusion. anyway

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