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War stalks revolution in Middle
East
By Sreeram Chaulia
Historically, there is a strong sequential correlation
between revolution and inter-state war. Radical overhaul of
a country's socio-economic or political system rarely
remains confined to that state and often triggers a wider
regional or international conflagration. This is because
revolution is a volcanic phenomenon that knows no artificial
borders. If ideas cannot be imprisoned the way bodies can,
then revolution is the most exhilarating or pernicious idea,
depending on where one stands.
The mobilization of counter-revolutionary forces to restore
status quo ante in a society undergoing revolution, or to
"teach a lesson" to other revolutionaries in the region and
beyond that their emulative efforts will be crushed, is a
time-tested tactic of conservative powers who have
everything to lose if the revolutionary fervor snowballs. In
tumultuous times, decisive show of strength and pre-emptive
violence is viewed by counter-revolutionary powers as
necessary to quell the spreading unrest and secure
themselves from the rushing tide of their own people.
This is exactly what occurred after the French Revolution,
when perilously threatened monarchies of Britain, Spain,
Portugal, the Netherlands, Prussia and
Austria acted collectively on behalf of
the dynastic principle of rule and declared war on
France in the 1790s. Western allies of
World War I ganged up against revolutionary
Russia from 1918 to 1923 in order to
"strangle Bolshevism in its cradle" (Winston Churchill). The
covert overthrow attempts and long undeclared war unleashed
by the US on Fidel Castro's regime after the Cuban
Revolution of 1959 were classic acts of offensive defense to
roll back "the rising din of communist voices in Asia and
Latin America." (John F Kennedy) The war imposed by the then
pro-Western Saddam Hussein of Iraq against revolutionary
Iran from 1980 to 1988 fell into the same pattern of trying
to catch the genie and shove it back into the bottle.
In all these cases, the wars that followed revolutions in
teleological fashion sowed chaos, destruction and
destabilization on regional and meta-regional scales. They
did not succeed in unseating the targeted revolutionary
regimes, but exacerbated crippling spirals of divisions and
internal war within societies that just experienced
revolution. Counter-revolutionary wars, even the largely
domestic ones like the Cristero War of the 1920s in
Mexico, become internationalized and
succeed in the sense of creating a yearning among sections
of population to return to or sustain the repressive but
orderly past. The inherent chaos and uncertainty of
revolutions are magnified and laid bare due to
counter-revolutionary wars, paving the way for Napoleon-like
dictatorial figures to usurp authority.
The current strategic environment in the Middle East bears
resemblances to the above scenarios from the past. Saudi
Arabia, the staunchest bastion of monarchical and religious
conservatism in the region, has just taken the first
military steps that portend a deepening inter-state war
through proxies. By dispatching heavily armed platoons of
over 2,000 troops, 800 of which are from the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), into Bahrain to shore up the
protest-besieged al-Khalifa dynasty, Riyadh has immediately
stirred up a hornet's nest. Iran, the self-appointed
worldwide guardian of Shi'ite interests, has immediately
slammed the Saudi move as "unacceptable" because the
revolutionary uprising of Bahrain's Shi'ites for majority
rule against the Sunni Khalifa regime was seen as
strategically welcome in Tehran.
Saudi Arabia's open
resort to sending its armed forces to
prevent revolution in Bahrain comes after weeks of tacit
supply of weapons through the 25-kilometer-long King Fahd
Causeway that borders the two countries. The Saudi monarchy
and its sister royals who head governments of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) waited to first see if the
standard authoritarian responses of carrot-and-stick by the
Khalifas of Bahrain would work in calming the turmoil. But
the revolutionary fever and inspiration from Tunisia, Egypt,
Libya, Yemen and Jordan was so infectious that the
marginalized Shi'ite majority of Bahrain kept returning to
Pearl Square in Manama despite the crackdowns.
For the GCC, much like the paranoid European alliance that
waged war on France in the 1790s, overt military
intervention by Saudi and UAE troops is the last throw of
the dice to stop the upending of the old order on a
continental basis. Given that Bahrain under the Khalifas has
an apartheid-like polity with Soviet-era totalitarian
dimensions, the GCC's military plunge into Bahrain has
shades of the brutal counter-revolutionary invasions of
Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) by the USSR. With
Soviet tanks and boots patrolling the streets of Budapest
and Prague, the ancient regimes were reinforced and saved.
However, the Iran factor places limits on this comparison.
As long as Tehran is outraged and capable of mounting a
"counter-counterrevolutionary" response, there is no
guarantee that Saudi and UAE armored personnel carriers and
heavy artillery will end up protecting the Khalifas and
squashing Bahrain's pro-democracy ground swell. The ironies
are compounded here because Iran is itself long past its
revolutionary self and is using all means to crush its own
pro-democracy activists at home.
An Iranian counter punch to the GCC in Bahrain through proxy
warriors or by stirring up Shi'ite rebellion in Saudi
Arabia's oil-rich Shi'ite-majority Eastern Province
threatens escalation into a major Middle Eastern inter-state
war, the likes of which has not been witnessed since the Yom
Kippur war of 1973.
In the fog of full-fledged war, transnational revolutions
become secondary and status quo powers can divert people's
attentions through appeals to narrow nationalism or
sectarianism. If there is one actor that can disentangle the
poisonous web that could turn Bahrain into another Nicaragua
(where US-trained and armed Contras were inserted to topple
the leftist Sandanista regime in the 1980s), and render the
broader Middle East into the centerpiece of a world war, it
is the
United
States.
Bahrain is host to the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy and a
vital lynch pin of the US military's Central Command. The
Barack Obama administration should drive sense into the
Saudis and the GCC to withdraw from Bahrain before it
becomes a deadly war zone like Libya. Technically, the GCC's
troops have crossed into Bahrain upon the invitation of the
ruling Emir, Shaikha Salman al-Khalifa. But in the eyes of
the discriminated Shi'ite majority of Bahrain, foreign Sunni
forces entering their country in the name of restoring
"stability" are invaders to tilt the scales against
democratization currents.
Washington cannot be short-sighted by nodding at the
Saudi-led intrusion, because history shows how horrific the
consequences of counter-revolutionary wars are. Too often,
the predicament of the Barack Obama administration since the
pro-democracy spirit burst out in the Middle East has been
touted as a choice between values and strategic interests.
The crisis in Bahrain challenges this dualistic
interpretation, because the removal of the hated Khalifas in
that country through peaceful endogenous means, as in
Tunisia and Egypt, is strategically more beneficial to
Washington than the onset of a hot war between Saudi Arabia
and Iran whose flames will take down the whole region.
The real choice is between myopic interests (as defined by
Washington's inability to distance itself from tails like
the Saudi monarchy and Israel, both of which are ‘wagging
the dog') and farsighted interests that avoid catastrophic
infernos. Obama need not be a revolutionary to discipline
Riyadh. It just takes some commonsense and a deeper
reckoning with the disastrous historical ramifications of
allowing counter-revolutionary wars to metastasize.
Sreeram Chaulia is Vice Dean of the Jindal School
of International Affairs in Sonipat,
India, and the author of the forthcoming
book, ‘International Organizations and Civilian Protection:
Power, Ideas and Humanitarian Aid in Conflict Zones' (IB
Tauris).
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.) |
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