28 November 2011

1. "In the Arab World, It’s the Past vs. the Future" by Thomas L. Friedman - Syria is the keystone of the Levant. It borders and balances a variety of states, sects and ethnic groups. If civil war erupts there, every one of Syria’s neighbors will cultivate, and be cultivated by, different Syrian factions — Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds, Druse, Christians, pro-Iranians, pro-Hezbollahites, pro-Palestinians, pro-Saudis - The new Lexus-like values of “democracy,” “free elections,” “citizen rights” and “modernity” will have to compete with some very old Olive Tree ideas and passions. These include the age-old civil wars within Islam between Sunnis and Shiites, over who should dominate the faith, the heated struggle between Salafists and modernists over whether the 21st century should be embraced or rejected, as well as the ancient tribal and regional struggles playing out within each of these societies. Last, but not least, you have the struggle between the entrenched military/crony elites and the masses 2. "Cairo: Paris of the East?" by Walter Russell Mead - struggle between the protesters in Tahrir Square and the armed forces echoes political patterns that turned up over and over in the rich history of French revolutions and revolts from 1789 right up through 1968 - Tahrir rebles, like French revolutionary wannabes in the past must accomplish two tasks: the revolutionaries in Paris had to unite with the poor and the workers in the capital, and the capital had to win the allegiance of the rest of the country - In the first French Revolution the radical Jacobins and their allies in the poor Paris suburbs drove the conservative Girondins and their allies scattered across the country - conservative instincts of the provincial cities and the rural masses to keep the ‘progressives’ and the revolutionaries in check - Rooting its appeal in a religion that 90 percent or more of Egyptians profess, shunning the radicalism of even more fundamentalist ‘Salafis’, standing for the protection of property rights and sporting a longer track record than many of the newly active parties emerging from the recent turmoil, the Muslim Brotherhood looks like the safety play for many Egyptian voters - In 1789-92 the combination of hunger and crop failure in the countryside and ignorance about the dangers of revolutionary radicalism helped the most extreme forces of the revolutionary movement gain power in France - Something similar happened in Russia in 1917-18