There are supposedly a hundred Arabic synonyms for “storm”. Simoom, haboob and aasifat ramliyya are some I can recall. Those words have been tossed around like confetti on twitter feeds in the past few weeks.
If 1848 was the year of revolution, 2011 is the year of aasifat ramliyya. It has been one unending storm for pan-Arabia, since a Tunisian fruit seller committed self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid. (Military historians footnote it as the opening action in the Battle of Kasserine Pass, 1943).
Two despots who ruled unchallenged for decades have been forced out of their territory in the past two months. A third is fighting a civil war. Every “beloved leader” in pan-Arabia is wondering if he’s going to join the queue. In distant Zimbabwe, which is not an Arab nation, the boss is terrified. Robert Mugabe has banned any mention of Egypt/Tunisia/Libya as “treasonous”.
With over a dozen potential targets in the vicinity, there’s no telling how far this could go. Game theorists can concoct scenarios involving multiple actors, stances, salience, clout, interactions, alliances, etc, and solve for multiple outcomes. Geopoitical think tanks must be running such simulations, as I write.
In Egypt, the Pharaoh is gone, but he’s replaced by a junta. That could be a “sticky” regime. Or it may give rise to a new strongman. Or it may morph into a Mullah-dominated regime ala Iran. Or, it may even result in some form of democracy. Ditto Tunisia.
Libya’s possible futures are even more wide-open. Given its oil exporter profile, the temptation to dabble must be higher. On humanitarian grounds, one could make a case for UN intervention to extract the Colonel from his Labyrinth along with all those Ukrainian nurses. But anybody making that argument is also likely to have large stakes in the energy markets and may, therefore, suffer from a credibility gap.
The impact of uncertainty on the energy markets is, of course, the big reason why the other nine-tenths of the world is on tenterhooks. Crude prices have shot up. New record highs, maybe a breach of $150/barrel, could occur if the trouble continues and spreads.
Who eventually takes over, where, is also important. Regime changes could lead to random crude supply fluctuations. In the long run, this may be a good thing. It will focus attention and funnel investment into alternative energy. But that’s long-gestation.
In the short run, a cynical analyst would see the region as an energy souk. It’s easier to shop when there’s one chap setting prices and ordering around a disciplined army of flunkies. Hence, the temptation to shore up dictatorships and ensure “stability”, rather than navigate the chaos of democracy with its pushes and pulls.
Conversely, the most idealistic way to see things would be to assume regime change will make a lot of people happier and they will show collective good sense. This may indeed happen. But they may also end up worse off if new strongmen, or extremist mullahs, (or an alliance of the two) take over.
Even if democracies do bloom in the desert, there is little chance they will fit dictionary definitions of being secular, gender-equal, or even democracies. What the impact will be in the war on terror is also impossible to estimate. How they will deal with Tel-Aviv is also imponderable.
The Neo-con thesis of regime change that prompted the 2003 invasion of Iraq will now be tested. This maybe the biggest geopolitical upheaval since the Soviet Union went bust in 1991. Apart from following twitter, the only constructive action I can think of, is to take speculative calendar spreads in energy contracts: Buy near-month crude futures and sell the far months. That gives some time for the storm to blow itself out. Inshallah, the world will be a better place when it ends.
