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Experts Discuss the Mideast Crack-Up

(Tablet) David Samuels - Robert Worth, foreign correspondent, the New York Times: We are witnessing the breakdown of a specific model of governance that had become untenable: the military dictatorships that spread across the Arab world in the mid-20th century. This breakdown has brought a tremendous distrust of the centralized and oppressive governments in all these countries and a corresponding move toward local power. David Goldman (aka Spengler): The minority Alawites ran Syria and the minority Sunnis ran Iraq. A government drawn from a minority of the population cannot attempt to exterminate the majority, so it must try to find a modus vivendi. The majority can in fact exterminate a minority. That is why a majority government represents an existential threat to the minority, and that is why minorities fight to the death. Robert Worth: The fall of Assad would be a blow to Iran, but not one that would necessarily benefit Israel. A persistent state of chaos would probably be worse than Assad ever was, and there is no guarantee that a unified and Sunni-led government in Syria would be any less dangerous to Israel. David Goldman: The conventional threat on Israel's borders has all but disappeared, but the threat from non-state actors with sophisticated weapons has increased.
2013-05-24 00:00:00
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