Will the Middle East Go MAD?

Any student of history can tell you where events in Egypt are headed. The French Revolution set the historical prototype and, with only a few exceptions, it's been the same ever since. A country under authoritarian rule develops a middle class. This articulate, legal-minded group agitates against the arbitrary rule until it finally overthrows the ancien régime in the name of representative government. However, the "revolution" quickly runs into two problems: 1) the overwhelming mass of people who don't care much about democracy but simply want "peace, bread and land," as Lenin expressed it, and/or 2) a highly organized illiberal party of fanatics ready to seize power in the name of some utopian scheme. Often the two mesh. The result is a Committee on Public Safety or Lenin's Bolsheviks or the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. The only exception to this pattern was the great American Revolution, where George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Madison, and the Founding Fathers were able to keep control of the process and wisely shepherded us into the truly representative system we still have today -- bless their hearts forever.

It isn't going to happen in the Middle East. During the Iraq War, President George W. Bush was heard to lament, "Where are the George Washingtons, the Thomas Jeffersons, the John Adamses?" There are none. You need an enlightened cultural tradition built over centuries plus a population steeped in "republican virtue" to achieve such a thing. Blessedly, we had it in the 18th century. Today the whole idea has spread far enough to the boundaries of Western culture so that when Eastern Europe freed itself from Communism, most countries were able to make the transition to a reasonable stable representative system as well

In Egypt and the Islamic world, however, there is no such tradition. Instead, you have the Koran and Sharia, which is basically a 7th century Bedouin ethos imposed on a society with cell phones. Bedouins were always big on conquest. Studies have shown them to be much more violent than settled agricultural communities -- and in fact, "Raids are our agriculture" is an Arab proverb. Islam is also the only major culture that sanctions polygamy, which is a system that produces a surplus population of unattached, unsatisfied men. In Thursday's New York Times, Anthony Shadid reported the grievances of protesting mobs to be "the hopelessness, the humiliations at the hands of the police and the outrage of having too little money to marry." The reason men need money to marry is because of the "bride price," an institution of polygamous cultures where the shortage of women allowed families to charge prospective grooms to marry their daughters. All this pent-up male anger has to be channeled someplace and the best solution is to point it outward, toward other cultures. Seventy-two virgins await you. Just pull this detonator when you get into the market square. Is it so difficult to understand why Islam at war with every society on its borders?

SO DON'T EXPECT anything good to come out of Egypt's "Revolution." Mohamed ElBaradei may be able to keep things under control for a few weeks but sooner or later he will prove too moderate and one of two other candidates will emerge -- either a Napoleonic military figure, à la Gamal Abdel-Nasser, or a Lenin-style party infiltrating the power centers of society -- i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood. Once united in this fashion, the new Egyptian leaders, be they secular or sacred, will follow the Napoleonic tradition and turn their turmoil outward. "Let's stop fighting amongst ourselves and go conquer Europe," Napoleon told the French Revolution. In Egypt and whatever other countries fall to the protest now sweeping the region, the cry will be "Let's stop fighting among ourselves and go conquer Israel."

Within a year, Israel will probably be facing a Hezbollah-led government in Lebanon, a revolutionary Egypt ready to scrap the legacy of Anwar Sadat (it was the Brotherhood, after all, that assassinated him), and possibly newly radicalized regimes in Syria and Jordan. The repeat of the 1967 and 1973 invasions would be a foregone conclusion, except for one thing -- Israel now has nuclear weapons. Nobody knows exactly how many but estimates it may be as many as 200 in Israel's arsenal -- certainly enough not to have to worry about a few misfires. They wouldn't have to be aimed at cities. Blowing up the Aswan Dam would essentially wipe the Egyptian economy off the map.

The Egyptians are not stupid. They would realize they have to restrain themselves, even if they indulged in a lot of sword waving or talked about obtaining their own nuclear weapons. (The Russians are building four new reactors for them, which makes this a not-remote possibility.) The same thing would hold true in Lebanon, Syria, or a revanchist Jordan. Lobbing shells across the border could become common and there might be subversive efforts in Gaza and on the West Bank. But even a nuclear-armed Egypt or Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to risk an all-out attack as in 1967 and 1973. The possibilities of nuclear war make the stakes too high. And so a Cold War-like standoff would prevail.

UNFORTUNATELY, THERE'S ONE MORE wild card in the deck -- Iran. As we are all learning, there are two main sects of Islam, the Sunni and the Shi'ia. The Sunni are mostly Arab (Egypt is 90 percent Sunni) and take pride that they are the "Sons of the Prophet." (That's why nearly half of them are named "Mohammed.") They are wedded to the Islamic idea of world conquest and can produce legions of suicide bombers, but they are not a suicidal culture. The same cannot be said of the Shi'ia, whose center of gravity is in Iran. The Shi'ia, as the saying goes, have "martyrdom in their blood." Given their history, the world cannot be completely confident that Iran would not be willing to start a nuclear war.