Shock Therapy

The Saddam shock will end an Arab era that has spanned more than five decades, beginning with the war of 1948 against the newly-created state of Israel. The Arabs have tried all sorts of political slogans during this era. The nationalists had the dream of pan-Arab unity. The Islamists had the dream of an Islamic state. I don’t see any new dreams in the works these days. But after Saddam’s fall, the dismantling of the extremist Islamic parties and the containment of the Palestinian issue, most Arab rulers will no longer be able to hide from their people by invoking the dangers of “external threats.” The Arab leaders will lose the rationalization for the use of “crisis logic,” a phrase coined by political scientist Mohammed Jaber Al-Ansari to denote the way the Arabs handle politics, as opposed to the logic of a normal state of affairs.

The next stage in Arab history will be one of internal domestic confrontations. After Saddam, not one Arab regime, including Syria and Libya, will dare oppose the United States, and most Arab regimes will be forced to pledge themselves to slogans like “renewal, reform and change” as a way of keeping their frustrated masses at bay. In this era, the United States will have to find ways to befriend the Arab masses, not the beleaguered regimes.

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