Welcome. Im delighted to welcome Lisa Anderson to present the third in our series of three talks on the middle east at an Inflection Point. This is an activity which is support bid the general funds to the middle east program. And it just seems to us as we were looking forward to a new administration five years after the beginning of the arab uprisings it would be useful to take stock of where we are. In my mind, there could be no better guide than our speaker today. Ive known lisa for 25 years and shes always impressed me. She just left from the fiveyear tenure as in cairo where she served as provost for two years. She was the dean of the Columbia School of the foreign affairs. A professor of International Relations. Lisa has not only had a distinguished career in administration, but as a political scientists i think she has really had a remarkable record analyzing and describing in real terms what is happening and why things are happening in he middle east in an incredibly tumultuous five years in egypt she was there and she was working with the various governments and working with students in the midst of this all. So as we think about the middle east at an Inflection Point, i can think of no better guide for the perplexed than Lisa Anderson. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, john. It is a delight to be here. Im honored to be in the august company of the other speakers in this series. Particularly ambass dor who as you may know is the trustee of the American University in cairo. I have lots of things that i could talked abas they were doing my fair well parties at auc they remarked that probably that it probably would not happen again that a president of auc served under four different president s of the republic. And i think thats probably true. But what i want to do is really a much larger kind of big picture reflection on where the middle east is today and how we really need to be thinking i think in somewhat new ways about the region itself and about the kinds of challenges that it presents to us in the United States, to its own government, to its own people. Its a very complicated time in the region, as you all undoubtedly know fofment so i think its important to take an opportunity like this to step back a little and reflect on what i actually think might be called multiple Inflection Points. So the title is this series the middle east at an Inflection Point i think speaks to an interesting moment but it also suggest that is we should be thinking that its not a single thing thats changing. Whole sets of things are changing in history. So let me start with a few general observations about what i describe as the historicle arks in which the region finds itself today. And then signal a little bit about how theyre reflected in the current for tunes of particular countries in conflict. So i would argue that there are really three quite distinct historical revolutions of that are scales converging which is why timing was not expected. There were plenty around in this city but there really wasnt anyone who anticipated quite the drama that would. Llow in themselves these changes, these developments were not dineically dissimilar from comparable revolts and political revolutions in other times and places. So we expected the process to look more or less like the fall of the military regimes in latin america or the classic communism in eastern europe. We were ready to look for actors, how hard lined was the military . Would Civil Society create political . And we add add few notes about the neighborhood effect and about great power involvement. Nite that the United States was involved in egypt and the saudis in baw rain and so forth. But it seemed like political regime change. Even the mess in libya was predictable and predicted. But somehow it went well beyond that. And this is the second of my three arks of revolution. I would argue that Global Politics itself is inflecting. And that was to raise the stakes and add an element of significant uncertainty to the dynamics within countries in the region. The apparent end of history, the end of the cold war, and more importantly the revolution in information and Communications Technologies about which we talk all the time have brought largely unanticipated changes to the character and context of politics everywhere including in this country. In the absence of great power minutes, that is to say the dynamic of the cold war, that seemed to keep people rallied around their flags, and with the newfound access and expertise particularly of young people, the world is seeing a surge of global populism, a growing skepticism about authority of all kinds. And enthusiasm for creative destruction. Not unlike the political upheavels that attended the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. So we are in a world historical revolution of important magnitude. From the occupy movements around the world recall that millions of individuals mobilized in flash mobs of protest in madrid, new york, istanbul, santiago, kiev, cairo, and elsewhere in the arab world. From that, which you will recall, all of that was part of this dynamic to the popularity of outsiders of president ial candidates even in the yutes. Antiauthoritarian, antiestablish politics is endemic. So you saw the intersection of very local complaints about very local governments and regimes with dynamics that were Global Dynamics of how protests appens and what kinds of o mod dalts there were to protest. So some of this is the global level we foresaw although probable not how quite tantalizing and terrifying it would be. Policy makers and analysts did anticipate that there were going to be major shifts adged how the Global Economy would take shape but not exactly how that would happen. And i want to remind you of a passage i use as an example of how clever we all are, and yet how puzzling the implications of what our insights may be. About 10 years ago, the president of the council on foreign relations, wrote nation states will not disappear but they will share power with a larger number of powerful nonsovereign actors than ever before including corporations, ngos terrorist groups drug cartels regional and banks and private sectty funds. Will fall victim to the powerful flow of people. Ideas that Greenhouse Gas is good, and weapons within and across borders. The worlds 35 years from now will be semisovereign ofment it will reflect the need to adapt legal and political principles to a world in which the most serious challenges to order come from what Global Forces do to states and what governments do to their citizens rather than what states do to each other. Ten years in that sounds pretty right, actually, at least as you think about the middle east. And yet we hadnt in that description really thought very much about how exactly that would transpire in any particular place. And i think we can see much of that playing out in the region. But even if we half expected this revolution at the global scale and even if we at least half understood the revolution at the domestic scale, the uprisings against regimes, we are still working at its implications. And for our purposes in the middle east the dual revolutions of local regime change and global transformation converge in what i would describe as a third revolution between these scales. Which is regional. Between the local and global a regional revolution or perhaps two is taking place before our very eyes. We are witnessing both and this people have written about, but i think to put them together is important. The beginning of the end of the imperial era and the particular states system it left in the region. And and internal regional result, if you will. Perhaps better a transfer of power. Whether this turns out to be a revolt in any seismic way in the region i think remains to be seen. But transfer of power from the regions fading nationalist establishment and the governments of those countries to the to a sort of moveo reesh. The gulf against egypt, kings against generals, with all of the political and cultural implications that that entails. So these regional revolutions are larger than a change in regimes, smaller than a change in the global means and mode of production, but they shape how these other revolutions are reflected in the region itself and are of course shaped by them in turn. No wonder it seems so complicated. I think its fair to say we now live in an area of quantum politics. I think that will be true forever now. The moment where we really thought we could understand with certainty the character of politics, particularly in the middle east but globally, is probably over. So the interplay of all these revolutions creates an enormous amount of complexity and confusion for us. So what i simply want to do is tick off a few issues i think are necessary to construct a description of the region and participate what the trajectory of some of these Different Levels of revolution might be. I think in fact there are some patterns of at least winners and losers or shifts in the way politics happen that we can tease out of this very complicated landscape. In the first place, keep in mind that the state that we have described for now 1020 years is itself a relatively new feature of Human Society and there are a lot of alternatives in this state and there have been. Other source of communities all sorts of things have served for millenia as vehicles for regulating social action, organizing production in exchange, ensuring security. And yet in many parts of the eroding, t, parts are these kinds of communities are reviving. And while they may be partly reinventions of tradition they are quite robust. And i will be returning to them over the course of time. The states and the way the state was created in the middle east and north africa in itself contributed to the character of these kinds of nonstate actors. There are two congenital defects if you will in the states as they were established particularly after the First World War. They have an amgution sometimes hostile sometimes unhealthfully codependent on relations with nonstate communities and eye dentedties and they have responsibilities they could never fulfill on their own with sources. So let me talk a little bit about that because i think its important to recognize the way the states and nonstate identities and actors have been intertwined from the very beginning of the modern state era in the middle east and north africa about a hundred years ago. And i will start you off by reminding you of a little bit of the language of the terms of the covenant of the league of nations which established the mandates in former otmon territories. It says there are certain communities thats their term that belong to the former otmon empire that reached the state of development that their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the mandates. And in article 22 the league promised there should be applied the principle that the well being and development of such people form a sake red trust of civilization. So is the language suggests that communities will be recognized as nations presumably to be accorded corresponding states. When actually of course what really mattered in the creation these eeptties is to the marine nites, to those to the junior partner in the First World War italy and then in libya and so forth and so on. These were not communities that were designed to be nations and accorded states. So from the very beginning of european tutelege state identities were entangled. Hats been true as everyone in this room is undoubtedly ware. Except in the most established states, turkey by the way got 80 of the bureaucrats of the otmon imperial administration. Hence, its state was instan tainsly very strong, well equipped, well trained in the 1920s. And most of the former otmon provinces in the arab world were diluted of their bureaucratic capacity. Iran, turblingy, esquipt, tunisia, to some extent, had formal institutions of bureaucratic states. But apart from them, those institutions are always a big of a feeg leaf in fiction. Or as the ambassador said in 1951 it was a last resort and expedient. It was not obviously something that he had a lot of confidence in succeeding. The alienation from and hostility tolt modern states of the middle east is occasionally expressed in support for violent Political Movement against governments and their supporters usually when sectarianism was politicized. But not that often. Certaintly not as off as is the case today. But what happened was it was routinely exhibited and what looks like the bureaucratic states perspective like corruption. That is reliance on friends families money changers even criminal networks to obtain the necessities of daily life. And these of course these networks ate away at efforts to create the formal institutions of a modern state. You had the scaffolding but most of the way that is scaffolding was deployed was fosh the purposes of other kinds of networks and eye deputies. The second congenital defect was the proposition of well being of people form a sake red trust of civilization. Including what i just called the necessities of modern life as an obligation on the part of these states may not seem like a bad thing. But the introduction of the standards of a modern welfare state in country which is had not developed the economic base capacity or fiscal apparatus to pay for it was to mean most remained at the mercy of xternal patrons. Hardly the hallmark of robust sovereignty. So inside and outside the states were as much the appearance as the reality debilitated from the start. Expected to meet standards barely possible even in the most developed states why bereft of the economic assets and elementary institutions. It was unclear what constituents they were supposed to serve. So they werent very robust to begin with, as you can tell. And over the course of time they failed to meet the standards they set for themselves. They never deliveed. Never. And they slowly and in the beginning began to fail. We now talk a lot about failed states. But failed states dont usually fail instan tainsly. They fail over time. And what you saw were states that were being hollowed out. The they were failing before it was apparent. But a sexenstri world developed. It wasnt you dont have failed states and then at mized char on the land scape. Today, i will give you an example of in what in the country that has one of the strongest states actually in the region, egypt, well over half the commercial transactions are unrecorded. 7 of adult egyptians have a bank account. And this is not for want of assets. Mobile phone is 115 . So there are more mobile phones than there are people. But the same people who have mobile phones smart phones and so forth dont put their money in banks. So even in a country which as i say has a fairly robust state capacity, this is not a country that is managing its own fiscal pparatus, its own monetary policy. None of that is taking place in any sophisticated way after decades of fiscal reform ntax revenue in egypt is 10 of g. D. P. , described as very low for a modern economy like esquipt. So in essence you have a layer of the appearance of a modern economy like ejipts. And blow that or beside it or around it is a different economy. As i say egypt is a fairly robust state. If it has virtually no reliable data on the Economic Opportunities we can hardly expect our counter parts to know more than the egyptians know. The informal world in the middle east is often called the dark sector of the black market or the gray economy but its actually quite vare gated and colorful. Their personal relations, friends and associates, move money around and other goods and services in a constant churn of activity. Ideas move, money moves, people move. Form, reform. Constantly. Informal savings associationings like egypts Credit Unions permits small investors to access net works. And sometimes when people talk about the informal economy of any place but in this region particularly, they behave it is only for people who are relatively poor. These have them. Theyre not for poor people. Particularly for people not reliant on the formal banking system. Causes settlements circle all the major cities and some are quite posh. This is not simply the informal slums of the big cities but the gated demuents that are developing all around cairo for example i think are fair to call them quasi legal. Health care, child care, legal assistance, job leads are all rtrd in exchange among Networks Often cement bid ties of ethnic or religious affiliation. Its been happening everywhere. As the sosheyolings put it gangs, neptistic privatizations, trafficking of influence, tolerance of drugs, the socalled blackning economy have been obstacles. T to remain at this level is inadequate precisely because the gangs are the survival of groups marginalized by the states as well as forces mapetted in those states. And i will return to this. I think the condemnation, the description is corruption and therefore not rising to a level that we can actually address systemically. As been part of our analytical and therefore policy failure. The failure of the states of the region produced and sustained nonstate actors all over the place. Not simply as political and military challenges to the states but in the daily lives of nearly everyone who lives there. This is important. What the general, a speaker in this series, has called a transizing transnational nonstate terrorist group isis is operating in a sea of nonstate actors of a whole variety of kinds many of which are quite benign and are well regarded by their beneficiaries. So how do you make those kind of distinctions in a way that is opposed to what seems violence. Thats important but not clearly the only one. I think the importance of these kinds of nonstate actors some of which are quite benign and well regarded is visible in the second element of the regional revolution. So ive talked about the effort to create recognizable states. Ive talked about the fact that those states virtually from the beginning were designed to fail and that they did in most places. I think theres also Something Else that is going on in the region that i thin