LESSER: Fatten against killing

OPINION:

COMMENTARY:

From long before the time of Alcibiades, in the fifth-century B.C., to the time of the movie “Wag the Dog,” about Bill Clinton - and beyond - politicians have been acutely aware that foreign adventures are a terrific way to shore up a weak political base. It is a simple truth that the vast majority of people tend to be more bellicose than their leaders.

This is the fatal flaw in the neoconservative theory that democracy is the answer to the problems in the Middle East. “Democracies rarely, if ever, wage war against one another,” is the shibboleth frequently espoused by William Kristol and others. That may be true, but it is not because they are democratic. The relevant fact is that the vast majority of democracies - during all the years when there have been democracies - have been rich. Rich countries generally don’t attack one another because they are rich. Poor countries, like Shakespeare’s Cassius, are “lean and hungry” and deserving of fear.

Also deserving of fear are weak governments - whether democratically elected or not. It was the weakness of the unelected junta in Argentina that inspired their attack on the Falklands in 1982. And of all the mistakes made by the Argentine brass hats, the most crucial was this: They picked on another leader who also was in a precarious position - the democratically elected Margaret Thatcher - whose ferocious response to the Argentines solidified her political base and led to another eight years in power.

As the new Obama administration launches yet another U.S. effort to pour oil on the troubled waters of the Middle East - a region one would think already has enough oil of its own - more thought should be given to the most critical aspect of this whole entanglement: Governments in the region are too feeble to make - or keep - a peace. The more-or-less-democratically chosen governments of the Israelis and Palestinians are at the mercy of radicals on the fringes. The not-so-democratically chosen regimes of the Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis and so on are also too feeble to make peace. The basic reason? So many of their people hate them.

In Israel, a classic left-right split has produced razor-thin parliamentary elections and multiparty coalition governments dependent for their day-to-day existence on the support of tiny, single-issue fringe groups. The only policy that has anything resembling consensus support among the Israeli electorate is that of being tough on neighbors, most notably in recent years, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

The Palestinians, who, in all recorded history have never had anything resembling self-government, now are lucky enough to enjoy two competing governments, each chosen in a reasonably fair election - one ruling in Gaza and the other in part of the West Bank - and the two fight one another constantly, except when they are forced not to by an Israeli onslaught. And Fatah, otherwise known as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the government supported by the West, is thoroughly despised by many Palestinians who perceive it as weak, ineffective and corrupt.

The governments of the surrounding non-oil-rich states - Egypt, Syria and, to some extent Jordan - are widely hated because they have failed miserably to provide basic necessities for their people. Their failure to accomplish anything on behalf of the Palestinians just broadens the resentment. And the Saudi royal family is hated by Saudis who are not members of the family - and even by some who are - because they are perceived as being totally self-serving and corrupt.

What to do?

“In virtually every conversation I have ever had with an American, I have found myself saying, ’Think long term,’” a highly respected international civil servant used to say. Nothing could be more important in the Middle East.

Americans gravitate to quick solutions for problems big and small, new and old. Some Republicans are saying we should forget about - or at least minimize - President Obama’s stimulus package, on the theory that some of the money won’t be spent for two years. Looking back on the last time we got into a mess like this - the Great Depression - it would appear that two years is ludicrously short-term thinking.

So, too, with the Middle East. Too often, American efforts to bring peace to the area have been focused largely if not entirely on short-term fixes: “Let’s give the Palestinians this bit of land. Give the Israelis that bit of land, and everything should be hunky-dory.” Or, “Let’s invade Iraq, install a Thornton Wilder-style ’Our Town’ democracy, and everybody else will be amazed by how well it works and will follow the example - and everybody will get along because democracies don’t fight one another.”

The proposal here is to think long term and help strengthen governments. To help strengthen Israel’s Arab neighbors, among other things, we should arrange for technology transfers - to help broaden and improve government services, to help them give some education and training to the hordes of unemployed, unskilled young people they are not now helping to acquire the skills they need to be employed. The median age in Egypt is 24. In Syria it is 21. In the Gaza strip, it is 17. The only thing those young people are being trained for now is to fire rockets into Israel.

Caesar said of Cassius, “Would he were fatter.” Given some time, we can do something about putting fat on the folks in the Middle East and helping them live longer and more productively. That would make them better neighbors to the Israelis, which would help the Israelis be better neighbors to them.

George H. Lesser has reported for more than 30 years on international political and economic developments for both U.S. and European publications. He has been based in Washington, New York, London and Brussels, and lives in Washington D.C. and Florence, Italy.