Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He is a longtime observer of the Middle East and has written extensively about the region, where he has lived and traveled. His book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, was just published by Doubleday.

NOW sits down with Smith to talk about America, the Arab World and strong horse politics.

Tell our readers about your new book. What is its main thesis and what prompted you to write it?
 
Smith: The title comes from Osama Bin Laden’s observation that people by nature prefer the strong horse to the weak one. I was writing for an American audience and what I wanted to try to explain is how politics works in a region like the Middle East, where, with very few exceptions, there are no peaceful transitions of authority, and power is not shared but rather is typically passed from one family member to another, or taken in a military coup.

I suspect this thesis will be confused with the notion that “Arabs only understand force,” except I believe that violence and coercion is something much of the world has had to deal with throughout history, and modern-day Americans are exceptionally lucky insofar as this is not an issue for us. I was trying to explain to them that this is not the case around the world, and certainly not in the Arabic-speaking Middle East.

How do you see the strong horse principle playing out in the region today?

Smith: I think it’s the same as it ever was, with various actors vying for regional supremacy. On one hand you have the Islamic Republic of Iran, which wants to rewrite the regional order to its own advantage, and on the other you have Washington and the American-backed regional order, including Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, along with Egypt, Jordan, and of course Israel, that wants to maintain its position.

Tehran, at least until the June presidential elections, has been very confident in its status as a rising power, while the US is now led by a president who has expressed his discomfort with power. In his UN address, Obama even argued against the balance of power, which is a strategic principle about as old as politics itself. Even if you find it desirable, I doubt it’s possible to rewire human nature in this way by emptying human beings of their political ambition and quest to exercise power. I guess we’ll see how reality catches up with the White House and what kind of adjustments the administration is capable of making on the fly. 

What are the repercussions of this abdication of super power status?

Smith: I think Washington’s regional allies have a very clear sense of what it means for them. A victory for Iran and the resistance bloc – Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. – means that they are on the defensive and have to play to block. The Arabs will cut deals with the Iranians and their allies, and/or they are forced into other security arrangements, for instance, aligning themselves with Al Qaeda and other Sunni militant groups. The Israelis will have to decide whether they can best afford to alienate an American president whose term of office is limited to no more than seven more years or try to contain a quasi-millenarian state with the bomb that has threatened to destroy them.

For pro-democracy forces in the Arab states, and perhaps Iran as well, an American loss of will amounts to an unqualified disaster. An active Iranian nuclear program would be powerful evidence that resistance works. Those publicly advocating in the region on behalf of democratic principles like rule of law are a minority as it is; but a victory for the culture of resistance would enshrine violence and vengeance as the manner in which to redress all grievances, real and imagined.

It’s not clear to me that the US understands what’s at stake. It is certainly the case that Americans have a short attention span, and for better or worse we are exhausted and embittered by the last nine years of our Middle East adventures. And now with all the domestic issues to confront, including a daunting financial crisis, the temptation is to just want out, or at least to forget. The problem is that sacrificing our position in the region – especially the Gulf, where the US has ensured the security of the world’s largest oil reserves and hence the relative stability of international markets for the last 60-plus years – could make things even worse.

But the US is already planning on minimizing its regional footprint by withdrawing from Iraq. How will that affect Washington’s standing in the region?

Smith: The Americans have made countless mistakes in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, but in my opinion none worse than the one they’re committing now on the eve of withdrawal. The three major bomb attacks in Baghdad since August have revealed the essence of the problem. The Surge was a counterinsurgency operation that by definition ignored the role of states in supporting terror. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government and security officials have identified the states that have been facilitating the terror attacks. Almost nine years after 9/11, Washington has spent thousands of American lives and billions of US dollars in Iraq and has not yet fully understood terrorism. By ignoring states that provide financial, logistical, diplomatic and political support for terror, US strategy is now devoted to capturing pawns instead of zeroing in on kings. This is a failure on every level: political, strategic and also moral.

You write that the Arabs have started to see Israel as a potential strong horse vis-à-vis Iran. Can you explain that?

Smith: Even before the Obama administration came to power and all but announced that military action against Iran was off the table – both the president and National Security Council staffer Dennis Ross told the Chinese that it was Israel and not the US who might act against Tehran’s nuclear program – the Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan were pleased that the Israelis were fighting against Iran’s regional assets. Of course, Israel’s mismanagement of the July 2006 war with Hezbollah embarrassed the Arabs, but they were no less happy to see Israel go after Hamas, with much more success, in December 2008.

Of course this scarcely means that we are witnessing the dawn of a golden age of Israel-Arab comity, but the consequences could be serious. It is not at all good for Washington if it is no longer the go-between for the Israelis and the Arabs, who may now feel they need to count on Israel since they can no longer depend on the US for protection.

To end with Lebanon, you say in the book that the Cedar Revolution embodied what the US hoped to see in the region: a peaceful movement calling for the rule of law. In light of the events of May 7, 2008, and the subsequent developments, has this made you rethink what you wrote about the principles that can work in the Middle East?

Smith: Yes, unfortunately it has. Lebanon was the scene of a remarkable transformation, a unique event in the Arab world, when more than a million people took to the streets after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri to demand their freedom, sovereignty and independence; and it worked, for a while anyway. The Syrians left Lebanon, but they and their Lebanese assets waged a campaign of terror against Beirut’s pro-democracy forces, culminating in the events of May 7, 2008. And so today, in spite of March 14’s victory at the polls in June 2009, it is hard not to conclude from recent developments that the vote meant nothing and what matters is who has a weapon and who it is pointed at.
 
Lebanese leaders, especially those who once stood shoulder to shoulder with pro-democracy figures and have now changed sides, must certainly bear much of the responsibility for the turnaround in Lebanon; and the international community, by which I mean primarily the world’s strong horse, America, must also shoulder much blame, for unless Washington was willing to step in to protect its allies this was bound to happen. For democracy to succeed in the Middle East it needs to be protected by powers that are willing to resort to strong horse tactics of their own. The facts are clear then: yes, Lebanon’s political culture is democratic, and yes the country elected pro-democracy forces to a parliamentary majority, but Lebanese democracy is held hostage, and that equation is not going to change until someone steps in to reshuffle the balance of power. Sad as it makes me to say it, Lebanon is not today a democratic country.