It was AQ’s obsession for violence that was one of the major reasons why it lost whatever support it had inside a number of Muslim countries, at least in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.  The best example of that fact was the entire episode of the emergence of the Sahwa (awakening) movement in Iraq in 2005 and its decision to cooperate with the U.S. occupation forces in order to defeat AQ.

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can now state that the major reason for AQ’s downfall was that it had no long-term strategy or plan.  It succeeded in carrying out the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and was stunned not only by its success but especially by the magnitude of the U.S. response.  Even if had the luxury of staying put in one country and continue to train its terrorist forces, it could not have come up with an effective plan of taking over any Arab regime, because all it knew during the heyday of its existence was destruction, murder, and mayhem.

AQ’s success in carrying out the 9/11 attacks had a lot to do with the fact that, as an open society, America was always vulnerable for such a possibility.  However, after the United States went on the defensive in terms of protecting its homeland from any such future attacks, it was next to impossible for AQ, or any other organization, to succeed again, at least not in terms of carrying out another attack of the scale of 9/11.  So, especially during the last two or three years of his life — when he became increasingly convinced of the irreversible nature of the diminishing popularity of AQ — Bin Laden was fixated about carrying out such an attack as the only hope of escalating the popularity, if not increasing the relevance, of his organization.  His obsession underscored not only his desperation to make his organization relevant once again, but it was also a reflection of how cut off he really was during those years about the irreversibility of the growing irrelevance of AQ.

The United States’ decision to relentlessly pursue the eradication of AQ played a major role in that organization’s inability to adjust fast enough for the changed realities of the post-9/11 world.  Even though the AQ “experts” in the West kept using their imagination to underscore the alleged growing effectiveness of a “leaderless Jihad,” in reality, AQ was only living off of its reputation stemming from its success of carrying out the 9/11 attacks on the United States.  The Bush administration might have been successful in eradicating AQ right after the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 if not for its foolish adventurism of invading Iraq.  Still, given the enormous resources that the United States invested in destroying AQ, even while it was bogged down in Iraq, that objective had to bear fruit over the long haul.  Only AQ’s mindless use of violence, even against the Sunnis in Iraq, turned out to be a major blow to it when the U.S. military leaders, quite deftly, accepted the Sahwa’s offer of fighting and defeating AQ in Iraq.

No one did more damage to the long-term effectiveness and popularity of AQ than Musab al-Zarqawi himself.  His use of mindless violence from 2004 until his death in June 2006 was so potentially damaging for AQ that even UBL and Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote letters to Zarqawi from their hiding places advising him to tone down his sectarian (anti-Shia) agenda.  It was the legacy of AQ violence against the Sunni insurgents that led to the creation of the Sahwa movement and the decision of that movement to approach the U.S. forces with a view to forming the anti-AQ nexus.  In this sense, even though AQ had an excellent opportunity to emerge as an anti-American and pro-Arab entity in Iraq, it not only blew that opportunity but also became the chief tool for its own major defeat.

There was also a special attribute of AQ as an Islamist entity that almost guaranteed its destruction in the long run.  It never was a fighting force that was driven by political objectives in the pursuit of which it was capable of using pragmatism as its major operating tool.  At least the most deadly leaders of that organization were suffering from visions of grandeur as the true heir apparent of the Salafis.  As such, they could not lose their self-styled religiosity long enough to become opportunistic in their modus operandi.  What they also did not realize — and might never realize — is that no matter how convinced they were of that “fact,” they were never accepted as Salafis by the global Muslim community at large.

Between 2003 and 2011, the operational maneuverability of AQ’s leadership was incessantly shrinking.  The spectacular role played by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) in tracking the AQ leaders and then eradicating them through the use of drone attacks at will during the second term of the Bush administration and throughout the current term of President Barack Obama reduced AQ into a virtual non-entity, at least within the geographical boundaries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Even though other AQ-affiliated organizations flourished in the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa, the main organization could never emerge as an entity that could carry out another attack on the United States on the scale of 9/11. The U.S. global campaign to dry up terrorist financing should be given a major credit for that.

Despite the aforementioned setbacks, the worst nightmare of AQ was the Arab Awakening that arose in Tunisia in December of 2010 and caught on like wildfire in the entire Arab world.  Even though the future of Tunisia and Egypt — countries that successfully overthrew their dictators — is not known, in terms of their promise to become democratic, there is a lot of hope in that part of the world that such a reality is most likely to emerge in the next months.  As Muammar Qaddafi has become a fugitive former head of state in Libya, as Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen is recuperating in Saudi Arabia while threatening to return to Yemen to his job as president, and as Bishara Assad is likely to meet the same fate as Qaddafi, no one anywhere is thinking of AQ as a movement that holds any promise of political change in the Arab or any other Muslim country.

Even when one thinks of a new generation of AQ leaders in the coming years — assuming that AQ survives as a movement of any promise — the speculations are that they would be even deadlier than UBL or al-Zawahiri.  Such an ominous description, if anything, underscores the fact that AQ truly belongs in the dustbin of history.  It never was a true movement for change for the Arab or Muslim world.  On the contrary, most, if not all, observers of the Arab world hold high hopes in the Arab Awakening.

When the Hezbollah party was created by Iran in the early in 1980s, it was based on the ideology that carried out the Islamic revolution, which had ousted “America’s Shah.”  That ideology was brimming with Shia pride.  The establishment of an Islamic government in Iran was not only a revolutionary idea in its own right, but it also created the possibility that such a major change had also paved the way for creating Islamic governments in other Muslim countries.  As participants of the Islamic revolution, the representatives of Iran went to Lebanon in their zealotry to politicize the Shias of Lebanon, who were disenfranchised and marginalized by an anachronistic Sunni-Christian power system that was ruling Lebanon.  The Mustadafeen (the deprived or dispossessed ones in the vocabulary of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini) of Lebanon had to be empowered through a process of militant politicization.  Hezbollah was created out of that endeavor.  Iran’s politicization of the Shias of Lebanon gave them a new self image.  They were taught that the Sunni-Christian power arrangement was highly corrupt, and that, in order to acquire what is their right, the Shias of Lebanon had to fight for it.

Consequently, the Shias of Lebanon erupted on the political scene with a vengeance. They had had enough of being pushed around by the corrupt elites of their country.  They were also getting especially tired of becoming victims of Israeli retaliations in response to the attacks launched on the Jewish state by the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon.

Around the same time, the Israeli government invaded Lebanon to “finish off” the Palestinian “terrorist” attacks.  However, in the process of invading Lebanon, the Israeli leaders also decided to become the kingmakers of that country by forging an alliance with the Christian Phalangists.  In fact, according to one source, creating a Christian state in Lebanon has been a long dream of the Israeli leadership.  Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was of the view that Israel “should prepare to go over on the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria. The weak point of the Arab coalition is Lebanon for its regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established, with its southern border on the Litani River. We will make peace with it.”[1]

It was during the initial phase of the Israeli invasion and the occupation of Lebanon that Hezbollah intensified its activities.  Its shadowy predecessor was blamed for the mass assassination of the U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.  President Ronald Reagan, as much as he was interested in cooperating with the Israelis about promoting a Christian dominant regime in Lebanon, wisely decided to pull out the American forces from that country.  And Hezbollah continued its presence and dominance of the Lebanese political scenes.

Hezbollah’s finest hour was the 2006 war against Israel.  During that short war, the Jewish state swore to eradicate it, and unleashed a campaign of intense bombing of Lebanon.  However, when the dust settled, Hezbollah was bruised but still standing.  In the Arab world, the outcome of that campaign was interpreted as a “victory” for Hezbollah over Israel.  In the aftermath of that episode, the political popularity of Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, witnessed new heights in the Arab world.  No Arab leader had the reputation of challenging the military might of Israel and surviving it.  In fact, before the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war, Israel had the reputation of handing a crushing defeat to the Arab armed forces, thanks to its decisive victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Along with Hezbollah, Iran’s political reputation as the chief backer of that party also grew in the aftermath of the 2006 war, as the entire Sunni Arab leadership watched with a mixture of envy and frustration. Even the United States, whose occupation forces were then fighting an uphill battle with the Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida-related Islamists, appeared vulnerable to encountering a defeat in Iraq. While the Arab leaders were attempting to hide their envy of Iran and Hezbollah by coining highly pejorative phrases such as the threat of the rising so-called “Shia crescent,” Hezbollah proceeded to further dominate the internal
power distribution of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanese politics might have lasted for quite awhile, except for the Arab awakening that is currently sweeping through the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. One of the current targets of that movement is the growing revolt inside Syria – one of the chief backers of Hezbollah.  As Bishara Assad has turned loose his killing machine against his citizens, his regime, instead of getting strong, is looking increasingly desperate and weak. That is bad news for Hezbollah and Iran, which had been playing a major role in Lebanon, thanks to the Syrian occupation of that country since 1976. Even though that occupation happily ended in April 2005, Syria remained an influential actor inside Lebanon because of its geographical proximity to that country, and also because of the highly proactive resolve of both Iran and Syria to influence the internal power
dynamics of Lebanon through their support of Hezbollah.

As the future of Bishara Assad’s murderous rule appears bleak in Syria, Hezbollah, and its long-standing nexus with Syria and Iran, looks increasingly anachronistic.  If or when the Assad regime falls, Iran’s influence in Lebanon will also suffer a major setback.

One option for Hezbollah is to revise its strategy of dependence on Syria and Iran.  But there is no alternate strategy for Hezbollah to fall back on.  As a Shia entity, it was heavily reliant on Shia Iran and on the Alawite-ruled regime of Syria.  Even though the Alawites (a minority Shia sect) comprise no more than 10 percent of the Syrian population, they have been ruling that country for several decades.  Hezbollah has no other friendly state supporting it.  In fact, some rare good news for the Sunni Arab leaders — who have been highly wary about Iran’s rising influence in Lebanon and Iraq, and who were also manifesting their antipathy toward Iran by airing their concern through muttering the phrase “Shia crescent” — is that the future of Hezbollah’s continued dominance of Lebanon’s  internal politics also appears shaky and highly questionable.

The Arab awakening is the revolutionary movement of today.  How it will change the political face of the Middle East is not yet known or understood. But, like the aging monarchs and dictators of the Middle East, Hezbollah has little reason to be optimistic. The march of history in the Middle East promises to throw Hezbollah — the revolutionary of yesteryear — into the dustbin of history.

The world had almost given up on the chances of transformation in the plight of the Arabs.  They were supposed to rot under the burgeoning weight of authoritarian rule without much hope of  replacing it with a better way of being governed.  The butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, once infamously growled that the best way to deal with the Arab masses and leaders is to stomp on them mercilessly, and he followed that observation by stomping his foot hard to the ground.

The entire history of the Middle East has been full of notorious examples of that “stomping down hard,” and even elimination of political opposition, whether it arose in the Arab streets or in the galleries of power.  Protest has always been equated with “sedition,” the “punishment” for which was nothing less than death.

For the application of this type of brutalization or elimination of opposition in China, no one has to look hard or long.  Millions of Chinese perished in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (or by its grandiose phrasing: “the great proletarian cultural revolution”) that lasted from 1966 and 1976.  A more relevant example of the brutal face of Chinese repression of a freedom movement came to the attention of the world in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. 

One of the shameful legacies of the entire Asian continent is that human life has been so cheap.  Aside from the Cultural Revolution of China, one may also recall the loss of millions of human lives in the brutal riots that occurred during the partition of India in the 1940s, and the massacre of thousands of Chinese in Indonesia in the 1960s, and the “killing fields” of Cambodia in the 1970s.  Given this type of legacy, one can argue that the Chinese leaders might become ruthless once again if there is a “Chinese awakening,” whose purpose would be to democratize China.  It can also be argued that the rulers of China are not likely to see any difference between the 1989 student protest movement in Tiananmen Square and an uprising in the future.  

But there is a powerful distinction.  The most crucial difference between the protest in Tiananmen Square and the Chinese uprising of the future is that the latter will be very much in the sight of the international community, even though, as Fukuyama states, the Chinese government has been notorious about the impenetrability of its “firewalls” and about its success in clamping down on social networking.  However, one has to keep in mind that building a firewall against Google or keeping information from going in or out of China as a matter of policy is utterly different from building a firewall against a possible social movement – the Chinese awakening.  Besides, the level of tolerance on the part of the global community for a government’s massacre of its citizens will not go unpunished. 

The world is watching Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal treatment of the civilians who are struggling to bring an end to his tyrannical rule.  What is prolonging their torment is that China and Russia are likely to veto a military response to Qaddafi.  The United States cannot act alone, because the albatross of the invasion of Iraq on the basis of a pack of lies is keeping it from being proactive against the Libyan regime.  The most important variable that is working for Qaddafi, is that his country is an insignificant actor in the global hierarchy of nation-states.  As such, it can brutalize its people a little longer.  However, there is little doubt that the end of his regime is near.  China belongs to a different category. As a world topnotch rising power, it remains highly vulnerable to economic sanctions or other measures aimed at isolating it, if it were to brutalize its citizens along the same line as Qaddafi.  

Fukuyama and other students of Chinese authoritarian practices have no way of knowing how effective the Chinese leaders will be when they come face to face with the awesome power of the Chinese awakening, which will be a social movement a la the Arab awakening.  That is precisely what happened, especially in Egypt.  Its mighty Army was out in Tahrir Square; however, it had never witnessed such a throng of masses and – most significantly – had never encountered the passion of those masses to pay any price to oust Husni Mubarak.  Even if the Army leaders briefly toyed with the notion of using violence against the protestors, they might have started to shake in their boots about the global reaction to their possible massacre of thousands of Egyptians.  They opted for avoiding the bloodshed altogether, and settled on the option of showing Mubarak the exit.

One has to pause and ask how different the PLA is likely to be in the wake of a Chinese awakening.  Yes, as Fukuyama states, the PLA has enormous economic interests at stake in sustaining the current authoritarian system; and yes, the PLA is loyal to the current Chinese leadership’s commitment for the continuation of the authoritarian system.  However, would the PLA not consider the global reaction to its potential massacre of thousands of Chinese protestors along the same line as the Egyptian Army, and might it not arrive at the same conclusion?

Fukuyama rightly notes Samuel P. Huntington’s persuasive argument that “revolutions are made not by poor but by upwardly mobile middle class people who find their aspirations stymied, and there are a lot of them in China.”  But this argument might not be as relevant in the information age when people’s awareness about the unjust nature of their political system is constantly underscored by the mass media. If this observation is not relevant, then how can one explain the intensity of protests in societies like Yemen and Libya?  At least in Yemen, poverty is so prevalent (it is regarded as the poorest of the Arab countries) and the rate of literacy is low (51.4 percent).  It is also characterized by a high degree of tribal conflict and discord between the Shias and the Sunnis.  Yet the protestors have continued with their high pressure on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to “go.”

The most riveting potential characteristic of the awakening as a social movement is that it appears highly contagious.  And this feature should make the current Chinese government most apprehensive of it.  Even though it [the awakening] has not yet shown its face outside of the Middle East and North Africa, there are reports of its growing fascination inside China.  According to one report, “There has been a surge of online traffic, with Chinese activists sharing links to blog posts, photos and YouTube videos in order to show solidarity with protesters in the Middle East. When Hosni Mubarak stepped down, one Chinese Twitter feed declared, “Today, we’re all Egyptians!”’  One has to wonder whether such rising popularity of the awakening as a social movement inside China is a precursor of the sudden emergence of a similar movement within its borders.

Secondly, even though it has brought about regime change in Tunisia and Egypt, no one can tell at this point whether there is going to emerge a trend for the creation of democracy in those two countries, or even whether such a trend would emerge as a common force for the creation of a democratic system in the entire Middle East and North Africa.  The afore-cited report also notes, “For activists in China, the revolution in the Arab world has rendered obsolete the familiar argument that democracy is unsuited to certain cultures.”  

If or when these two phenomena start to materialize in those two regions, then the Chinese leaders will have all the reason in the world to fear the emergence of a similar social movement inside their borders that would potentially sweep its current autocratic system into the trash can of history.

The essence of the foreign policy behavior of the administration of President Barack Obama to the emerging brave new world in the Middle East and North Africa was to remain largely at the tail end of the forces of change, and manifest a palpably uncertain attitude about how forceful it should remain about discouraging the potentially suppressive behavior of the falling regime of Hosni Mubarak toward his countrymen.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  declared that Egypt is a “stable” country; then, Vice President Joe Biden denied that Egypt is a dictatorship; and, finally, President Obama himself started talking publicly about his behind-the-scenes pressures on Mubarak to orchestrate a stable change.  That was interpreted by Arab autocrats as a code word for Mubarak to step down.  The Saudis were reported to be furious at the United States, and Ali Saleh of Yemen was discouraged about using his own club to thump the protestors inside his country.

When the regime fell, the Egyptian protestors were not at all impressed by America’s purported role in pressuring Mubarak.  A majority of them were convinced that only they were responsible for persuading the Pharaoh that the time for his type of rule was over.  So, while Mubarak “retired” to Sharm el-Sheikh with all his millions for now, the unpopularity of the United States inside Egypt remains high.

Then came anti-government protests in Bahrain, a country that has been very close to the U.S.  It is also the host of America’s naval forces – the Fifth Fleet – and is politically dependent on America’s support.  When the mostly mercenary security forces of the Emir of that tiny sheikhdom started to brutalize and even kill unarmed and peaceful protestors, President Obama was again forced to get on the phone to convey to the Emir to observe a policy of restraint.  However, as was in the case of Egypt, no citizen of Bahrain was in any mood to give credit to the United States for forcing the security thugs of Bahrain to back off.

In the case of Egypt, the ouster of Mubarak did not guarantee any gain – at least in the short run – for any anti-American element in that country.  However, Bahrain is an entirely different story.  Most of its citizens – about 70 percent or more – are Shias who are being ruled by a Sunni monarchy that refuses to allow the implementation of democratic rule.  Secondly, if, under an extreme scenario, there is a regime change, or even if a democratically elected government were to enter into office in Manama, the chances are high that America’s Fifth Fleet might be looking for a new home.  Bahrain is an important base, because the U.S. uses it to watch Iran’s naval maneuvers.  In case of a military conflict with Iran, that base is also likely to play a crucial role in conducting military operations.

Here is what worries the U.S. government most.  If the Bahraini naval base were to slip from American possession, there is also a possibility that Iran or even China might view it as an opportunity to approach the Bahraini government for gaining access, even if not as a permanent base.  In either of those two potential developments, it would be a major loss for the United States.

As much as the emerging brave new world is leading to mounting anxieties inside Washington, the only option at its disposal is to use its “smart power” – which means “developing an integrated strategy, resource base and tool kit to achieve American objectives, drawing on both hard and soft power.”  No one knows, however, whether the exercise of smart power would enable the United States to retain its previous influence or sustain its erstwhile clout in the Arab world.

What does the emergence of this brave new world mean for China?  At least superficially, the mandarins of its foreign policy might rejoice in the eroding effects of this awakening on America’s presence and strategic dominance in the Arab world.  However, such a discernible decline is not likely to create any major foreign policy openings for China for the following reason.

Assuming that Egypt, Bahrain, and other autocratic rulers are replaced by democratic governments, no major power is likely to be allowed the kind of access, dominance, or clout that the United States has enjoyed since the exit of Great Britain from dominating the Middle East in 1970.  If anything, the potential democratization of the Arab world will “equalize” the previously existing playing field, where America could establish principles of its dominance no matter how benignly.  Come to think of it, no country can even begin to master that benign hegemonic behavior of the post-World War II era, whereby the United States guaranteed autocratic rule in the Arab world; and the autocrats, in return, assured it uninterrupted access to their ports, to their air force bases, and, above all, to their strategic minerals.

The discernable erosion of America’s dominance in the Arab world will not mean that another dominant power – certainly not the likes of the PRC – will have any opportunity to assess it in the context of a zero-sum game, i.e., as a gain for its own strategic presence.  At the same time, the democratization of the Arab world does not necessarily mean that China will have no opportunity to escalate its presence in that region.  The best option for the PRC is to sit back, assess the situation, and develop its new countermeasures, which have been its forte vis-à-vis the United States in the area of military modernization.

In the realm of diplomatic maneuvers, China can still use its “checkbook diplomacy” and attempt to do business with the democratic Arab governments.  The only difference would be that it would have to learn to be transparent about its dealings with those countries, something that will be hard, but not impossible, for China to learn.  If it has not yet learned that lesson, it does not mean that it will fail to do so in the near future.

The emergence of a brave new world in the Middle East and North Africa will not mean that all the previous rules of international relations – especially the traditional significance of the balance of power – will become null and void.  In fact, as the superpower of the future, one of the greatest challenges for China would be to learn how to deal with the widening world of democracies in a balance-of-power context.  It would be an exercise of the use of old tools on brand new realities.  In this sense, China is facing as many challenges as the United States, but the potential opportunities for China appear abundant if it succeeds.

The Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979 in Iran was the last revolutionary regime change in the Middle East.  It brought to an end America’s major ally in the region.  In its place, a stridently anti-American regime took power.  No American official can ever forget the humiliation that its diplomatic staff experienced when they were taken hostage by a group of radical students with the support of the Islamic government. 

The U.S. government did its best to oust the Islamic rulers from power, including through supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran that triggered the nine year-long war (1980-1988).  That war ended in the defeat of Iran when it accepted the ceasefire in 1988.  Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini compared that decision to drinking from the poisoned chalice.  Iran’s defeat in that war was largely the result of a massive American campaign of blocking arms supplies to Iran from Western sources while allowing Iraq to purchase weapons.  The administration of President Ronald Reagan provided intelligence reports on Iran’s troop movements. Western companies were even permitted to sell to Iraq chemicals that Saddam Hussein’s regime used in waging chemical attacks on Iran.  Iran lost the battle, but the regime remained in place.

What is significant to keep in mind is that the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran forever changed the political dynamics not only of the Middle East, but also of the entire Islamic world.  It was, for the first time in modern history, that an Islamic government was established.  The Arab rulers of the Persian Gulf region were shaking in their marble palaces, fearing that they would also face the plight of Mohammad Reza of Iran, who died ignominiously in Egypt and was buried there.

However, the United States came to the rescue of Arab sheikhs by drastically altering its military force structure and by creating the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) in 1983, whose chief purpose it was to forestall any repeat of an Islamic revolution anywhere in the Middle East.

The dictator of Tunisia, Zine el Abidine Bin Ali, was also ousted by a people’s revolution – a revolution that was entered into in the political arena of that country on the electronic shoulders of tweeting and text-messaging.  The WikiLeaks’ leaked dispatches sent by U.S. diplomats from Tunis to Washington gave enormous credibility to the long-prevailed description of Bin Ali’s regime in the streets of Tunisia as grotesquely corrupt. 

However, in the United States and France (and, of course, in other Western capitals) Bin Ali was described as a “friend,” a guarantor of stability, and a major force against a potential takeover by Islamist forces.  As a political storm was escalating in Tunisia, the French Foreign Minister even went to the extreme of suggesting that his country would send special police to quell the rioting in Tunisia, in order to stabilize the intensely anti-democratic and acutely corrupt (“Mafia-like” according to one leaked U.S. diplomatic cable) regime.

The Arab autocrats were once again shivering in their marble inner sanctums, wondering which dictator or monarch will be forced to catch a plane in a hurry to take refuge in Saudi Arabia, Washington, or Paris.  The Obama administration, which only belatedly praised the political change, is also holding its breath not only to see what happens next in Tunis, but also in other Arab capitals.

The political conditions in so many Arab states resemble so strongly those in Tunisia, with aging monarchs and dictators presiding over a powerful security state (Mukhabarat), whose sole purpose is to avoid any political change at all costs.  A great majority of almost all Arab country populations is below the age of 30; and a number of Arab states have a high unemployment rate, whose actual numbers are treated as a state secret.  There is no tolerance for any protest movement, which will be instantly branded as treason and be ruthlessly quelled, as Bin Ali desperately attempted to do. 

In two states – Egypt and Libya – sons of the ruling dictators are being groomed to be anointed after the aging ruler dies.  In three states – Morocco, Jordan, and Syria – sons of dictators and monarchs have already succeeded their fathers, thereby ensuring the prevalence of highly inept, corrupt and unjust rule for a few more decades.  Of these, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan are two strong U.S. allies, but only as long as they do not challenge its hegemony in their part of the world.

The best thing that has favored political change in Tunisia is that it was not led by any Islamist group.  Otherwise, the West would have been quite daring in raising the stakes and ensuring the prolongation of Bin Ali’s rule.  If the Islamists gain the lead in the coming weeks and months in a predominantly Sunni state, the United States is most likely to reconsider its own options, which, everyone can rest assured, are being developed in Washington as these lines are being written.  And those options would include taking a whole gamut of action to minimize the emergence of another Islamist democracy, a la Iran, Iraq, and occupied Palestine.

In fact, a safe bet is that all Arab rulers are hoping, in their heart of hearts, that Islamists will take an upper-hand in Tunisia, so that they can be most proactive in safeguarding against the development of any movement for change inside their borders.  They are sure that Washington would fully endorse, and strongly support, such actions on their part.

So, for those who are dreaming for the repeat of a Jasmine Revolution in Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, my sole suggestion is, don’t hold your breath!

The United States is manifesting a similar amount of eagerness about imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which has remained much more defiant than Saddam Hussein ever was in terms of challenging the America’s dominance of the Middle East. It is important to ask whether Iran will meet a similar fate as Iraq, perhaps not a direct military invasion, but other actions whose purpose would still be to bring about regime change. President Obama has already stated that his administration would consider aggressive sanctions on Iran.

Iran remains the last major state that consistently rejects any proposition of kowtowing to American diktat or its hegemony in the Middle East. It has accumulated ample clout in that region in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The United States, either for propaganda reasons or merely in order to underscore the nature of Iran’s anti-Americanism, consistently harped on the growing Iranian influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, if the U.S. assertion of Iran’s role in the political turbulence in Iraq between 2005 and 2007 was true, it can be safely concluded that Iran played a crucial role in America’s decision to actively seek an exit strategy. After all, it was largely as a result of intense political instability emanating from the violent role played by the Iraqi insurgents and Islamists groups that forced Washington to calculate that it could not stay in Iraq for long. Iran had strong ties with a number of those insurgents. That was a coup de grace from the perspective of Iran’s interests in Iraq, because the neoconservatives – working as the brains of the Bush administration – had an elaborate plan to make the entire Middle East a part of pax-Americana.

Iran’s military and material support of Hezbollah was very crucial in that organization’s ability to withstand the punishing Israeli attack on Lebanon during the short war of July-August 2006. The resultant general perception in the Arab world was that Hezbollah won that round of the battle against the Jewish state. Iran’s strategic dominance in that region was emerging as a new phenomenon regarding which neither Washington nor Jerusalem could produce effective countermeasures. Consequently, U.S.-Iran ties became even more antagonistic than before.

A major strategic shift from the Bush administration to the Obama administration in the Middle East and South Asia is that, in terms of conducting military operations, the U.S. would rely on a multilateral approach. The military operations conducted under the auspices of NATO in Afghanistan emerged as the best multilateral vehicle. However, the constraining aspect of the role of NATO is that it cannot be used anywhere without the approval of the entire Alliance; and that approval is very hard to secure. That fact ties the hands of any future American president who would develop any notion of adventurism a la George W. Bush in Iraq. That reality also prevents the United States from taking any military action against Iran, even in the wake of its intransigence about abandoning its nuclear research program.

The preceding constraint might be a major reason why the United States would heavily rely on the use of covert operations. President Obama has become the most prolific user of such operations by regularly ordering drone attacks against Islamist groups in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. One can only guess how many other covert operations involving U.S. Special Forces are being carried out presently in South Asia, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries.

Because of an inordinate technological gap between the United States and the Islamist forces in the aforementioned countries, the use of covert operations has emerged as the most convenient weapon of the strong. As long as American soldiers are not returning home in body bags, U.S. public opinion remains highly supportive of such operations. That is why the United States is likely – if it hasn’t already been doing so – to use covert tactics in Iran in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

According to a report prepared in July 2008 by the muckraking journalist, Seymour Hersh, the United States secretly allocated up to $400 million to underwrite covert operations against the Islamic Republic. Such operations “involved ‘working with opposition groups and passing money.’ The Finding provided a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong.”

The chief problem that President Barack Obama faced when he first became president is that there is no proven record of diplomatic encounters between the United States and Iran since the days of President Jimmy Carter. Even Carter – one of the most ardent promoters of justice and constitutionalism in the Middle East and the most successful former president – did his best to oust the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980, while he was still in office. All American presidents who followed him spent a lot time and capital in their attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic, even by going to the extreme of cooperating with Saddam Hussein during his brutal aggression against Iran in 1981.

In the wake of Iran’s refusal to buckle under the pressure of the United States to abandon its nuclear research program, Obama could have made a courageous decision to abandon the covert operations that Bush had started. However, the United States’ heavy reliance on covert operations in Pakistan tells us that Obama envisions such operations as safe alternatives to any bold new measures, which still might not persuade Iran to cooperate with the United States. In the meantime, the hyperactive Israeli lobby has made sure that any actions other than imposition of harsh economic sanctions are unfailingly condemned as “appeasement” of the Ayatollahs.

It should also be noted that the Iranian leaders did nothing to make their own case in the court of the world’s public opinion when they seem to have fraudulently stolen the election from the reformist candidate, Hussein Moussavi, last June. In the aftermath of those elections, it was interesting to watch how adamant the anti-Iranian forces inside the U.S. Congress were in their insistence that the President strongly condemn the Iranian leaders for allegedly stealing the elections. One should contrast that eagerness with the deafening silence inside the U.S. government following the murder of the Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, allegedly perpetrated by Mossad in Dubai.

Given the strategic environment that is marked with a high degree of hostilities and intense distrust on both sides, the chances of the resolution of the nuclear program-related crisis through peaceful means are slim, at best. The United States has even attempted to go to the extent of creating Arab endorsements for its harsh economic sanctions on Iran. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, went to Riyadh asking the government to persuade China to agree to sanctions on Iran, which Saudi Arabia wisely rejected. However, Gates was not about to give up. He proceeded on the same mission to the UAE. His chances of gaining a somewhat favorable reception from that country are pretty decent, given its long-term tensed relations with Iran. But the UAE is not Saudi Arabia. Even its endorsement of U.S. sanctions on Iran would not sway any other major Arab state.

As the United States’ diplomatic choices regarding Iran narrow, Israeli pressure for military action against that country is likely to intensify. The question is whether or how long Obama is likely to withstand it. A lot depends on whether he becomes politically stronger as a result of a potential passage of the healthcare bill in the next few weeks.

At least for now, the government of Benyamin Netanyahu has been digging a diplomatic hole for itself by allegedly orchestrating the murder of the Hamas leader in Dubai. To further deteriorate its case, Israel, during a visit of the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, announced the building of new housing projects in East Jerusalem. However, no one should underestimate the Israeli hubris concerning its strong support inside the U.S. Congress. The Jewish state has long understood the nature of its political support inside the U.S. and has assiduously worked through its tool, AIPAC, to solidify that support. Just based on that fact, chances are high that it would push President Obama hard to take military action against Iran. How wise is such an action likely to be from the viewpoint of American strategic interests in the Middle East? It would be very foolish, indeed. However, Israel has not been known to waste time thinking about what is best for America in the Middle East. Friends of Israel inside the United States incessantly, and without even giving it a second thought, confuse Israeli interests with American interests. So, the world should not rule out the high probability of U.S. military action against Iran in the coming months, which would create another hell for American strategic interests in that region.

President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.