Great events are occurring in the Muslim North African and Middle East World. There are many factors to understand what is happening and what will happen in these nations. Over the centuries regimes have risen and fallen. Change is the essence of politics.
Is it a clash of 21st Century communication technologies with traditional, totalitarian regimes?
Libya and Qaddafi among many likely to see change.
In many of these Muslim nations there has been a rapid population growth, without a comparable rise in job formation. There is a massive young generation which has rising expectations turned into rising frustrations. This is a chaos uprising lead by youths.
In many of these nations there has been an economic system of socialism which promises health services, housing, education, employment, and security for the masses. In essence the economic system transfers individual responsibilities to the state.
With increased government regulation and state control of factors of production corruption increases.
The Black market is in essence often a free market outside government taxes and regulations. The paradox is that when states control the bureaucracy, the taxes and the regulations increase. They all stifle capital formation and creation of wealth.
The trade off is to increase government controls which often decrease individual freedoms with the purpose to create an illusion of social and economic stability.
What is predictable in the short term there will be states which successfully resist regime change; states which will be forced into regime change; and states which will pretend to enact regime change.
Many of these states will have a period of chaos. There may be a period of “demobracy” or mob rule in some nations. People will be killed, regime supporters will be exiled, regime assets will be destroyed or confiscated, and regime symbols will be violently attacked. Much of this change will be televised internationally.
After a period the key issue is who will control the new regime? Will it be a Phoenix which rises from the ashes of the old regime? Will it be a police state more totalitarian than the previous state with the military overtly or covertly in charge? It may be impossible to predict the future of these individual states in flux today.
To understand the future of these states it may help to read a book by Alireza Jafarzadeh, THE IRAN THREAT, 2007, LIBRARY # 355 .0217 095 323. The author is an Iranian exile, totally opposed to the current regime in Iran. He describes how the Ayatollah Khomeini in exile totally understood the aspirations of the Iranians under the Shah. In exile he proposed a program which the masses embraced. But when he gained power, he created a totalitarian regime which in reality is the opposite of what he originally proposed. Part of the Iran threat is the stated goal to export the regime politics, not limited to the Muslim world, but to Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.
In Ireland, Spain, and other nations we learned that it takes a small, well organized terrorist or what they call a “liberation group” to create chaos. The IRA and the ETA are tiny comparable to the national populations, but they have made a national and international impact.
What we are learning is that with modern technology it is relatively easy to create chaos. We will see many more states experiencing public protests and mass movements to be viewed by the international communities. The illusions of stability will be shattered regimes.
The only way to predict the future is to create the degrees of often conflicting positive, negative, and probable scenarios. Currently it is impossible to predict what will happen in the short term and long term in many of these Muslim nations. In Iran the short term embraced for many the negative totalitarian scenario, but that can change if the regime falls in the coming years.
Expect the unexpected and you will better understand events in the Middle East and North Africa.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.