Democracy is not for every region. Nowhere is this more evident than in the modern Middle East. As individual regimes and the entire region disintegrate and revert back to their familiar past of tribal wars and internecine strife that are answerable only to force and strength, not international rules and norms, it is instructive to look back at the origins of the current phase of violence and mayhem.
The West, from its European imperialist conquest in centuries past to the American invasions more recently, continues to march on repeated folly.
The ongoing Middle East mess is squarely attributable to United States' miscalculated response to the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001. By going overboard with what American neoconservatives at the time called "democratic globalism" in promoting "regime change" throughout the Arab world in the 2000s, the US has much to answer for in the havoc of 2010s, as do the French and British for carving up the region between them for much of the 20th century.
The US understandably retaliated for Sept 11 by first taking the fight to Afghanistan against the Taliban. It was a necessary but unwinnable war due to mountainous terrain and the fierce resistance of Afghan tribes, the same lesson the Soviets learnt in the 1980s. The dismantling of the Taliban opened a can of worms, as US-installed authorities never were able to pacify and rule the place with any semblance of stability. The closest the US reached to victory in this war was arguably the Special Operations that killed Osama Bin Laden, the titular head of al-Qaeda and mastermind of Sept 11.
While the Afghan invasion had to be done for payback, the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was unnecessary and premised on falsified grounds. As it has now been documented, Saddam Hussein neither had weapons of mass destruction nor connections to al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. Yet these were the two rationales for regime change. Saddam was eventually found and hanged. His regime that was able to put a lid on sectarian conflicts and maintained stability in a nasty but somewhat balanced Persian Gulf neighbourhood collapsed precipitously. Similar to Afghanistan, the US-installed government after Saddam proved incompetent and incapable of maintaining peace and order.
The American military eventually became bogged down in both theatres of war. Despite his election campaign pledges, President Barack Obama has not been able to extricate the US from Afghanistan and Iraq, partly undermining his strategy to "pivot" and "rebalance" to Asia.
But America's protracted occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq produced power vacuums that were replicated elsewhere. Always gleeful to promote democracy without holistic prudence and timeliness, the Americans moved in right behind the "Arab Spring" from late 2010 and the ensuing revolts against Middle East despots, such as Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Libya fell, and Gadhafi was executed by his own people.
Mr Assad, however, stood his ground, although clinging on to just a small swath of what used to pass as Syria. The US and other Western countries, of course, did not encourage Arab Spring-style uprisings in other countries, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. Such pragmatism and hypocrisy were unsurprising.
The explosive fundamental problem, however, is that stable Arab states tended to be despotic. Changing regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya while promoting regime change in Syria and elsewhere generated massive civilian strife and unprecedented migratory crises, not to mention militant radicalisation and the outgrowth of relatively new terrorist movements, such as the Islamic State (IS).
We are seeing now how the combustible cocktail of regime change, radicalisation, terrorism and migration and refugee crises are adversely affecting Western Europe. Even Norway, a peaceful and prosperous socialist-democratic state of five million, will have to absorb upwards to 100,000 refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. For European states with generous welfare policies, the refugee influx will divert resources away from other pressing needs, causing additional burdens and engendering local resentment. Not surprisingly, there is growing anti-immigration sentiment across Western Europe.
The ruined streets of Kobani, Syria, epitomise massive destruction from tribal wars caused by political intervention of Western powers in the Middle East. The New York Times
The optimal long-term solution is to let the Middle East be what it has always been, a contest for supremacy among tribes and peoples. Every now and then, one camp would triumph and the rest would submit to it. When outsiders intervene, the infighting Arabs would gang up to drive out outsiders and then return to internal squabbles anew until some tribe or movement can come out on top.
What the West should aim for in fighting the IS and other militant movements is the kind of targeted decapitated based on superior weaponry and intelligence on the ground. The kind of surgical special operations that led to the Bin Laden decapitation should be applied to leaders of the IS and other perpetrators of terror. An open air or ground campaign ultimately will become stuck in Middle East quagmires.
Beyond measured tactical responses, the West should learn to own up to the past, not necessarily having to apologise to misdeeds gone by but to recognise and respect the plight of Muslims over the centuries from Islam's apex to nadir.
The lack of democracy in the Middle East does not mean other regions are not ready for it. It depends on when and in what way democracy was planted in the first place. Indonesia, for example, has turned a democratic corner and its democracy appears to be consolidating. Myanmar's recent elections can potentially recapture the vibrant democracy the country enjoyed in the 1950s. Thailand's democracy, too, is too firmly established over four decades to be denied for the long term. Despotic authoritarianism, like democracy, is not for every region, certainly not for most of Southeast Asia.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.