Arab Elites Defend Economic Models that Gave Rise to Arab Spring, but Made Them Rich

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PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

We’re continuing our interview with Raja Khalidi. He’s at the UNCTAD in Geneva. That’s the UN Conference on Trade and Development, where he’s currently chief, Office of the Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies. He speaks here today with his own opinions, which are not necessarily those of UNCTAD.Thanks for joining us again.RAJA KHALIDI, SENIOR ECONOMIST, UNCTAD, GENEVA: Nice to be back.JAY: So let’s just continue our discussion. As things unfold in Palestine and in the other countries in the Middle East–we can start with Palestine–there’s a tremendous role being played by Qatar and Saudi Arabia in virtually all of the countries that had an Arab Spring. They’re very involved in Syria, arming the opposition. They’re doing this in cooperation with the United States. There also seems to be–Turkey seems to be part of this plan, at least as far as Syria goes. And when you look at what kind of Middle East they have in mind, I guess it’s a reflection of what kind of countries Qatar and Saudi Arabia are, to a large extent, although some of these countries are going to have elections, and they’re hoping the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power in these countries through the electoral process. But what kind of economies do they want to build?KHALIDI: Well, in the region, we haven’t really seen from these new governments any significant change in their posture towards their economic–towards how they’re going to go about resolving the economic problems that in some cases I suppose you could say brought them to power. In Tunis, perhaps less so than in Egypt (it’s been more pronounced in Egypt), negotiations of the IMF led to a renewal of–we’re not sure of all the details, but the renewal of some of the same conditionalities that perhaps in some–in our view, at least, led to or contributed to the buildup of the socioeconomic pressures that contributed to the whole uprisings of last year. We haven’t seen governments yet adopt a different posture in terms of their dealings with the international community. And of course they want–you know, it’s reasonable that these transitional situations, you don’t want to scare off investors, you want to maintain whatever trade you’ve got set up as a result of, you know, many years of liberalization in all of these countries. So I don’t think that there’s, however, any realization yet among policymakers. I think there’s a lot of discussion in the media among experts, even among international organizations, of the extent to which different policies are required, different, in some cases significantly, to those that characterize the regimes of the past 20 years [incompr.] But I don’t see that trickling through to–seeping–you know, penetrating yet into any of the policymaking that we’ve seen among Arab governments in the last two years.JAY: I mean, the way it appears to me is you have Qatar and Saudi Arabia, together with Turkey, but especially in–other than Syria, it seems, mostly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and then to a large extent Qatar, managing these Arab Spring revolutions from Libya to Egypt in a way that brings to power forces that will essentially carry on kind of neoliberal economic policy, so privatization and open the markets to foreign capital and such, except instead of being done, for example, in Egypt under the dictatorship of Mubarak, it’s now going to be done with some kind of democratic form, but with the face–the face of it will be the Muslim Brotherhood, and perhaps not only in Egypt.KHALIDI: Look, I don’t think the alliances that have been built so far between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries in general, and the new Muslim brethren dominated governments of Tunisia and Egypt are really predicated so much on the survival of an economic model. I think the survival and the endurance of the economic model comes from much deeper causes, in a sense.I mean, it’s partly because you don’t have policymakers in place who know anything else. This is the way that they’ve always dealt with the world, and they haven’t yet internalized the extent to which the demands that continue to come up–and you’ve seen it even in the constitutional–in the current showdown between–in Egypt.The economic and social demands continue to be, you know, increasingly more urgently voiced in some cases, because, you know, nothing has been done to even indicate that a different approach is going to be taken to dealing with them. And so I think there’s that. You know, I think the problem–what I’m trying to say is that the political alliances that you’ve mentioned are to do with other things. They’re to do with ideology.JAY: Do you not think this is partly about the Arab Spring kind of let loose a lot of democratic forces whose demands were not just about political democracy but were also about more economic democracy, and wanted to question, you know, how is stuff owned and how is the wealth of the country distributed? And do they not want to keep a lid on that?KHALIDI: I don’t think they’re worried about that. I think they’re just worried about losing power, to be honest. I’m talking about now the regimes who have yet to be challenged, the monarchies in particular. That’s what their main concern is, and keeping a lid on the region as a whole. I don’t think that when they’ve, you know, promoted, be it in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia, political or other forces allied to them, it’s been so much because they’re assured that these people continue to run the same economic policies. I think the economic policies come along with other things. In Arab politics, the economics, you know, economic policies, of course it’s important, and of course they want to maintain the models that have made them, you know, a lot of elites in the region very rich, you know, through illegitimate as well as other–you know, even sometimes sanction forms of pillaging, if you wish, of national resources. There’s no doubt about that, that there are a lot of forces that want to keep that system in place and that know that this is being challenged widely.On the other hand, I think that, you know, at least in–money–in Saudi Arabia, at least, there was a major–and in some of the other Gulf countries, as the first Arab Spring, real–the original Arab Spring, if you want to call it that, erupted, by the summer of last year, of 2011, they had handed out some, I don’t know, you know, at least $50 billion in extra payments, you know, transfer payments to households.So, you know, in a situation where you have no organized–either at the national level in many of these countries or regionally, not only no organized opposition, but there’s no real leadership for the Arab Spring movements, if you wish. There are different contenders to the thrones or to that title, but in general this is still a very disparate movement, and each country has very different components, you know, constituents, and demands. So, you know, I don’t think they need to worry too much about those demands turning into new pressure. I think the issues that are being–you know, that are being hotly debated are, unfortunately, to do with sectarianism, that sort of an–ethnic differences, and obviously, you know, political, constitutional liberties and all that as well. Those are determining the agendas of the political alliances of the region. The other thing I wanted to say, though, was that, you know, from the PLO’s–you know, the perspective of the history of the PLO as a revolutionary movement in the region, which, you know, maybe it has–it is no longer, but it certainly was in the ’60s and the ’70s, into the ’80s, one could say, you know, the PLO spent many years fending off Arab governments’ intervention, to the extent that they actually officialized it by having an executive committee that had factions, you know, supported by Iraq, by Syria, etc. So it’s nothing new to revolutionary movements in the region for governments, you know, regimes who, even if they’re–these are not–you know, in the Palestinian case, it wasn’t a revolutionary movement against the Arab regimes, but of course the Arab regimes, certainly at the time and for many years, wanted to make sure it didn’t become one. So it was better for them to rally around and, one could argue, at different times divert, etc., the PLO’s course that it would have–. And as a result of which, the issue of the independence of the Palestinian decision, which is something that Yasser Arafat, you know, was famous for, always reaffirming as a way of implying, I’m not subservient to any of the governments, etc., you know, it’s something that even Mashal the other day, the head of Hamas in Gaza, reiterated.So what I wanted to make–the analogy, I think, that is pertinent is that the Arab uprisings, as I mentioned, without leaders clearly identified, without, you know, organization even to represent them in any way, are even at greater risk of intervention. And it’s only natural that the governments of the region will want to suppress, divert, hijack, you know, ride the wave, whatever. And we’re seeing it in some cases. But we’re also seeing it continue in Egypt. And I think even in the Palestinian case we’re seeing a continued popular, broad social base movement that is continuing to insist on the things that we’ve heard even, you know, from Tahrir in the very first months of this whole episode of the last two years.JAY: Okay. In the next segment of our interview we’re going to talk more about Palestine. Please join us for the next segment of our interview on The Real News Network.

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