Armed Liberal is currently fisking a proposal made by Jim Henley to resolve the conflict between the Ummah and the House of War through a mix of isolation, cultural exchange and limited trade. There are actually a few things that are appealing about Henley's argument, which makes it a useful thought exercise. But being the limited person that I am, I need some sort of guidelines to help me think through the problem. And to that end I began to recall a discussion that occurred when I was sitting in the back of one of Jim Buchanan's classes that he co-taught with Viktor Vanberg. The discussion was about the concept of "twoism," as exemplified in Daniel Defoe's classic adventure tale: Robinson Crusoe
As long as Crusoe and Friday had not met Crusoe's entire game was "man vs. nature." The fact that they both existed, but were unaware of one another, meant that, for all practical purposes only one person existed. Once they met, any action that Crusoe took in his man vs. nature game had to, in some way, accommodate the possibility of crossing purposes with Friday, and visa versa. All problems of human social, cultural and economic interaction grow out of this basic twoism that changes the character of the man vs. nature conflict.
The two protagonists might have been able to minimize the accommodation and the possibility of coming to cross purposes by limiting contact, but both sides would have had to agree to such terms, and be willing to keep those terms without any external coercion, relying only on mutual threat and natural boundaries and limits. But the agreement would, of necessity, be unstable because if one or the other party became substantially more successful in the man vs. nature game the less successful party would have increasing incentive to steal the goods of the more successful party, who would then have to defend his property. Either that, or the success of one would involve the monopoly of resources necessary for the other to survive, which would precipitate a confrontation. So, once "twoism" exists some sort of contract is required to avoid conflict.
The two might decide to cooperate (which, in fact, they did) and that would create a somewhat more stable situation, but the terms might still be contentious.
In a sense, nature acts as the motivation for a stable relationship, in the absence of a coercive authority to uphold a contract, because neither wants to be defeated by this third party, their mutual enemy: nature.
If there were a physical boundary making interaction difficult, and creating a kind of geographic isolation, an agreement might be worked out to remain separate, and perhaps even engage in minimal trade. Again, nature plays the critical role in the absence of a coercive authority, by creating a barrier to contact and minimizing the need for extensive enforceable contracts.
Geography once kept the Community of the Faithful and the House of War separate. They carried on exchange and trade, but contact was relatively infrequent so contracts could be minimal. The situation that probably best represents a scenario close to the idea of the "truce" suggested by Henley, concerns how the British dealt with the Al-Qawasim pirates of the lower Persian Gulf, and the arrangement they reached with the successors to the Al-Qawasim, the Banu Yas. Note that the freewheeling truce arranged with the Banu Yas which gave the name "Trucial States" to the region, only came about after the Qasimi forces had been militarily defeated. The history of the Trucial States suggests that there was significant competition within the Islamic World for favorable contracts with the British which provided the leverage needed by the various factions to wrest control from competing tribal factions. The UAE, or the Trucial States, played a key role. But they were, and are, something of a special case. And it was the British that had to provide many of the institutions that organized and managed trade, because the arrangements within Arab society were gauged to tribal interactions. The separation of trade and involvement was never really possible, but I mention the history of the Trucial states because the involvement of the outside powers was probably kept to a minimum.
The Trucial States eventually evolved into the UAE (although Qatr broke away and Oman was never part of the new entity, so the boundaries aren't coterminous), and the UAE is without a doubt the most successful of all Arab societies so far. Per capita income dwarfs all other Arab nations, and it dwarfs all other Middle Eastern nations, save one. There is a great deal of interaction between the UAE and the West, and unlike most other petrochemical-rich states the energy industry accounts for less than half of its annual revenue. But the reason for the success of the UAE lies partly in its long pre-colonial history as a refuge for apostate Islam, its maritime history (which includes both piracy and the pearl trade), and finally its willingness to incorporate the lessons learned from the mutually beneficial arrangements with a colonial power.
I find it hard to believe that the conditions that exist in the UAE can carry over to the rest of the Middle East if we disengage as Henley suggests. It seems a very idiosyncratic society. Even now, citizens of the UAE, the "native Arab" population, are only a minority of those living in the Emirates. It is a little like Singapore, a successful "city state," and therefore by definition an exception. It may ultimately play a critical role in the region.
But look beyond the Emirates and the prospects are pretty bleak. Economic success really demands the footprint of the Western Powers for investment, which is attracted by oil. And it demands democratic institutions to cultivate the innovation and diversification that will not come from autocracies and an oil mono-economy. Most importantly, the primary problem in the twentieth century involves a western import: counter-enlightenment philosophy. The basic assumption that Henley makes, that the culprit lies in some sort of western exploitation that insults and alienates the peoples of the region, itself comes from that same counter-enlightenment. The problem is not really Islam, but the marriage of a status-starved population, an unreformed religion, and an Hegelian-derived perspective on institutions and society. It is a toxic mix. We have already seen something similar in 1930s Germany and the USSR, 1940s China, and in now N. Korea. But in none of those places was the potential quite as explosive as it is in the Arab Middle East, for nowhere do the keys provided by the ideologies of hate fit so perfectly into the locks of political paranoia and the institutions and history that support them.
What would happen if we simply disengaged in the form of aid and support, and waited? Are nature and time on our side, as Henley suggests? We would be able to see the collapse of social institutions and the takeover of the angry generation that now dominates political discourse. The autocracies that have been standing in their way would be gone, quickly. And behind that angry generation stands another whose prospects are even grimmer. The percent of GDP from trade has been falling in most of these countries for a couple of decades, and the distribution of the one product that the West wants and needs is uneven. A struggle between Islamist warlords with spheres of influence and broad followings would ensue.
Ultimately there'd be a winner who controlled the entire region, and the odds are that it would be either Iran or Saudi Arabia. Their power would come from the sales of the product that Henley says we ought to buy from them, and they'd be free to use those resources to both expand their religious totalitarian belief systems and their weapons capability. With our isolationism and determination to keep hands off, would we intervene? Who would tell us if and when the Iranians crossed the nuclear threshold? Would UN inspections continue? Can UN inspectors be bribed? And while this new feudal struggle in the Middle East is playing itself out what would really prevent the metastasizing of the WMD capability among the factions? We, remember, have only our eye in the sky. No feet on the ground. Even if we found a likely proliferation point, would we strike unilaterally based on the kind of imperfect intelligence that Powell presented to the UN? Can you imagine the demonstrations?
To be sure, absent the intervention of human technology the role of nature would tend to stabilize the feudal struggle within the Middle East, and between the Middle East and the West. The Ummah and the House of War could arrange some sort of truce, even if it weren't quite as pristine as the one that Henley envisions. The natural boundaries would lower the frequency of interaction to the point that it could be managed by a modest set of contracts, and cultural evolution could catch up to the recursive loop of the feud. But nature doesn't mediate any longer, and time is therefore not on our side. There are so many routes to Trent's scenario, or to Wretchard's Three Conjectures, all developing simultaneously and with great speed, that the probability that one of those routes would be traveled within a decade approaches 1. Even if time were on our side in the long run (which it probably is not) the urgent would still bar the way to the important.
The essence of nearly all human tragedy is the feud, where a reaction to one perceived wrong must be answered, and in turn demands a response. Were it possible to de-synchronize action and reaction so that populations did not perceive them as linked, the effect of a perceived wrong would diminish over time, as Henley contends. Humans could therefore easily avoid the escalation of the feud, and we would never have needed the institutions that eventually put an end to feudalism: the rule of law and the nation state. The fact is that the feud is part of human nature, and were it possible for us to transcend that human nature, without the human institutionalization of coercive force, we'd have done so.
The circumstances have only been getting worse since Crusoe met Friday, because we increasingly dominate the third player in the game, the player that has mediated between the two of us to diminishing degrees throughout history: nonhuman nature. It is our very success against this foe that has ripened the fruit that threatens us.
The demand for the institutionalization of coercive control in order to quell feuds has only been growing, and as it grows so also does the need for the institutionalization of limits to that control, which are the rule of law and democratic self government. In the absence of answers to the question of limits on coercive control, the demand for control does not subside. Those willing to step into the breach by assuming control themselves don't take a vacation. They will grasp for the levers, precipitating a host of scenarios where, eventually, we will have no options and no discretion . We will have relinquished all control. Time will have leapt beyond us.
Posted by Demosophist at April 23, 2004 02:33 PM | TrackBack