A liberal with a different colour. Some countries are not mature, global capitalism, uneven development, imperialism, etc. have nothing to do with the plights of these countries. Thus, Robert Kaplan in this article echoes what some of my white Western students once said: “a benevolent dictator is a good thing for countries the Middle East and Africa,” or what a Canadian suggested when she said “we should stop talking about democracy in those countries.”
What those students and Kaplan have in mind when they speak about ‘democracy’ is ‘democracy’ within capitalist social property relations. Capitalism for them is not the fundamental determiner and the fundamental problem.
Some countries are just unfit or ‘we’ – major Western regimes, corporations, international financial institutions, colonial and neocolonial powers - have not played any role in the predicaments of those countries. Furthermore, the arrogant ignores that the historical processes of Western Europe, industrialisation and advanced capitalism was rife with conflicts, revolution, social struggle and wars.
Kaplan is selective. He gives Singapore as an example - not a major capitalist country. He does not mention South Korea, for example, and the brutality of its regime in the 1960s when it embarked on industrialisation. He does not mention what wealthy Saudi Arabia can afford Tunisia or Jordan or Yemen cannot. Caplan fails to see contradictions and capitalist pressures. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is trying to rely less on oil and move to a diversified economy. In the process ‘Chinese walls’ are battered and “all that is sacred is profaned.” One has only to look at how the monarchy has been destroying sacred sites and creating Las Vegases.
Caplan would not acknowledge the wide spread fallacy of the culture argument according to which the Middle Eastern region is immune to change because of ‘Islam’ and traditions.
But for a defender of the existing global order, the solution is not empowering social movements, workers struggles, women’s struggle, etc. for a revolutionary change, but to propose that ‘relatively enlightened democrats’ are the solution. Kaplan in fact does not fundamentally differ from Biden. While he sees the ‘enlightened’ dictators as the solution, Biden embraces them. No wonder. For decades autocrats have served the major imperialist powers well, why should we live without them and have ‘democracy’?
In Klām Illil, perhaps the most famous Tunisian play, one of the actors sarcastically said: “Elections? It’s not for us; it’s not in our customs; it doesn’t suit us.”
An arrogant mind does not see that pregnancy takes a while. Positive social change takes longer with a few complications. For instance, an arrogant Western-centred mind does not see the concrete daily struggle of different human agencies on the ground in the MENA region since 2011. They do not see neither the achievements – however modest and weak they are – nor the potentialities in them. Such a mind wants ‘change’ to come from above, not won by real struggle and setbacks.
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