Addicted to Oil
By THOMAS L.
FRIEDMAN, Op-Ed Columnist
NYTimes on the Web,
February 1, 2006
So far the democracy wave the Bush
team has helped to unleash in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11 has brought to
power hard-line Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq, Palestine and Iran, and paved
the way for a record showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. If we
keep this up, in a few years Muslim clerics will be in power from Morocco to the
border of India. God bless America.
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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L.
Friedman
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But is this all
America's doing? Not really. It's actually the product of 50 years
of petrolism — or petroleum-based politics — in the Arab-Muslim world. The
Bush team's fault was believing that it could change that — that it could break
the Middle East's addiction to authoritarianism without also breaking America's
addiction to oil. That's the illusion here. In the Arab world, oil
and authoritarianism are inextricably linked.
How so? Let's start with Iron Rule No. 1 of Arab-Muslim political life
today: You cannot go from Saddam to Jefferson without going through
Khomeini — without going through a phase of mosque-led politics.
Why? Because once you sweep away the dictator or king at the top of any
Middle East state, you go into free fall until you hit the mosque — as the U.S.
discovered in Iraq. There is nothing between the ruling palace and the
mosque. The secular autocratic regimes, like those in Egypt, Libya, Syria
and Iraq, never allowed anything to grow under their feet. They never
allowed the emergence of any truly independent judiciary, media, progressive
secular parties or civil society groups — from women's organizations to trade
associations.
The mosque became an alternative power center because it was the only place the
government's iron fist could not fully penetrate. As such, it became a
place where people were able to associate freely, incubate local leaders and
generate a shared opposition ideology.
That is why the minute any of these Arab countries hold free and fair elections,
the Islamists burst ahead. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 percent
of the seats; Hamas went from nowhere to a governing majority. In both
societies the ruling secular parties — the N.D.P. in the case of Egypt and Fatah
in the case of Palestine — were spurned as corrupt appendages of the
authoritarian state, which they were.
Why are there not more independent, secular, progressive opposition parties
running in these places? Because the Arab leaders won't allow them to
sprout. They prefer that the only choice their people have is between the
state parties and religious extremists, so as to always make the authoritarian
state look indispensable. When Ayman Nour, a liberal independent in Egypt,
ran against President Hosni Mubarak, he was thrown in prison as soon as the
election was over. Thanks for playing "Democracy" — now go to jail.
It is not this way everywhere. In East Asia, when the military regimes in
countries like Taiwan and South Korea broke up, these countries quickly moved
toward civilian democracies. Why? Because they had vibrant free
markets, with independent economic centers of power, and no oil. Whoever
ruled had to nurture a society that would empower its men and women to get
educated and start companies to compete globally, because that was the only way
they could thrive.
In the Arab-Muslim world, however, the mullah dictators in Iran and the secular
dictators elsewhere have been able to sustain themselves in power much longer,
without ever empowering their people, without ever allowing progressive parties
to emerge, because they had oil or its equivalent — massive foreign aid.
Hence Iron Rule No. 2: Removing authoritarian leaders in the Arab-Muslim
world, either by revolution, invasion or election, is necessary for the
emergence of stable democracies there — but it is not sufficient. The only
way the new leaders will allow for real political parties, institutions, free
press, competitive free markets and proper education — a civil society — is if
we also bring down the price of oil and make internal reform the only way for
these societies to sustain themselves. People change when they have to,
not when we tell them to.
If you just remove the dictators, and don't also bring down the price of oil,
you end up with Iran — with mullah dictators replacing military dictators and
using the same oil wealth to keep their people quiet and themselves in power.
Only when oil is back down to $20 a barrel will the transition from Saddam to
Jefferson not get stuck in "Khomeini Land."
In the Middle East, oil and democracy do not mix. It's not an accident
that the Arab world's first and only true democracy — Lebanon — never had a drop
of oil.
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