[inaudible conversations] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] this is my coverage of the center for strategic and International Studies were anticipated conversation on the politics of the middle east. Topics covered will be different nuclear deal come badly nice as in the fifth anniversary of the arab spring uprising. While late for this event to get underway, some other happenings on the cspan networks include the u. S. Holocaust museum told in a remembrance your money at the u. S. Capitol. About 60 Holocaust Survivors will attend the ceremony and you can watch that live right now im spent. Theres also a discussion on the different than the way the Chinese New Year experts think about Nuclear Weapons compared to the usb at that event will start at 10 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] good morning and welcome to csis. I am the Senior Vice President here and head of the middle east program. First, before we start from a security announcement. Weve never had a problem before the event. We have exits on the side and back of the room. We can do lots of places, so dont worry. Follow my direction. I am delighted to welcome Lisa Andersen to present the third in our series of three talks on the middle east at an Inflection Point. This is an activity which is supported by the general funds of the middle east program and adjusting to us as we were looking forward to in the industry should buy theirs after the beginning of the arab uprising will be useful to take stock of where we are. In my mind there could be no better guide than our speaker today. I have no lease for 25 years and shes always impressed me. From a fiveyear tenure as the American Press that university in cairo where she also served as provost for two years. She was the dean of the Columbia School of International Public affairs and head of the middle east institute at columbia. Professor of international relations. Lisa has not only had they been english career in administration, but as a political scientist. I think she has really had a remarkable record analyzing and describing in real terms what is happening and why things are happening in the middle east in an incredibly tumultuous five years in egypt. She was working with the various government and working with students. As we think about the middle east that Inflection Point, i can think of no better guide for the perplexed then Lisa Andersen. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, john. It is a delight to be here. Im honored to be in the company of the other speakers in the series. Particularly the ambassador who estimate that was the trust the entire row. I have lots of things that i can talk about as they were doing my Farewell Party at auc, the remark that it probably would not happen again that a president of auc served under four different president of the republic. And i think that is probably true. What i want to do is really a much larger reflection on where the middle east is today and how we really need to be thinking i think im somewhat new ways about the region itself and about the challenges that at present to us in the United States, to its own government, to its own people is a very complicated time in the region as you are undoubtedly know. I think it is 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. The title of this series, the middle east that Inflection Point i think speaks to an interesting moment, but it also suggests that we should be thinking is not a single thing that is changing. All such things are changing in history. So that may start with a few general observations about what i describe as the historical art in which the region find the self today and signal a little bit how they are reflected in the current fortune under particular country. So i would argue there are really three quite distinct historical revolutions at different scales that are converging and the events that began in Sierra Springs five or so years ago. Which is part of the reason why both its timing and fury were somewhat dated. There were plenty of jeremiahs around including in the city, but there really wasnt anyone who anticipated quite the draw that would follow the departure of denali from tunisia in the region. The first cut everyones eyes and probably is what we understood the best or what might be called straightforward uprising against authoritarian government and regime. This is the original call in tunisia and in itself these changes, these developments were not dynamically dissimilar from comparable revolts and political revolutions in other kinds, so we expected the process to look more or less like the fall of the military regimes in latin america with the classic communism in Eastern Europe you were ready to look for a very domestic act as, how hardline was the military, with Civil Society to negotiate patrician performance, all that kind of thing was what we saw was pretty familiar and we added a few notes about the neighborhood effect and our involvement. The United States is involved in a jet and so forth. But it all seems like gardenvariety regime change, something political scientists and policymakers that this country will familiar. Even libya was pretty predicted. But somehow it was well beyond that. And this is the second of my three arcs of revolution. I would argue that Global Politics that south is inflicting and that was to raise the stakes and add an element significant uncertainty to the dynamics within countries in the region. The end of the cold war and more importantly the revolution in information and Communications Technology that which we call time has brought largely unanticipunanticip ated changes to the character and context of politics everywhere including in this country. In the absence of a great power and great power minister Matthias David dynamics of the cold war missing two key people are rallying around the flags end with the newfound access and expertise particularly of young people, the surge of global populism come a great skepticism about authority of all kinds and enthusiasm for creative destruction, not unlike the political upheavals of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. We are in a world historical revolution of important magnitude. In the occupied movements around the world were called to millions of individuals to mobilize and flash mobs of protest in madrid and 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 as president ial candidates even in the United States. Antiauthoritarian, antiestablishment politics is endemic. So you saw the interception area local complaints about very local governments and regime with dynamic that were Global Dynamics of how protests have been and what kind of modalities there are two protests. So some of this, the global level before south, although probably not how quite tantalizing and terrifying it would be peered policymakers and analysts to anticipate that there were going to be a major shift in how the Global Political economy would take shape, but not exactly how that would happen. I want to remind you of a passage that i often use as an example of how clever we all are, at least some of us, and yet how puzzling the implications of water inside may be. About 10 years ago, president of the council on Foreign Relations wrote, and i quote from the nations states will not disappear, but they will share power with a larger number of powerful nonsovereign actors never before come including corporations, ngos, terrorist, drug cartels, regional global institutions, banks and private equity funds. Sovereignty will follow the end to the powerful and accelerating people, ideas, greenhouse gases, emails and weapons within cross borders. The world 35 years from now will be semisovereign. It will reflect the need to adapt legal and political principles to a world in which the most serious challenges to order come from a global force is a Global Forces do a global force is due to stay from what governments do to their citizen rather than from what state do to each other. 10 years then, that sounds pretty right actually, at least if you think about the middle east. And yet we havent been that description really thought very much about how exactly transpired. I think we see much about playing out in the region. But even if we half expected this revolution at the global scale and we understood the revolution on a domestic scale of the uprising against regimes, we are still working on its implication and for our purposes in the middle east, the dual revolutions of global transformation converge in what i would describe as a third revolution between the scales, which is regional. Between the local in the global, a racial revolution or perhaps to his taking place before our very eyes. We are witnessing both and these people have that now, but i need to put them together is important. The beginning of the end of the imperial era and the particular state system left in the region. And in turn all regional revolt if he will, perhaps better transfer of power, whether this turns out to be a revolt in any seismic way in the region remains to be seen. Transfer of power from saving nationalist establishment in the government of those countries to a sword of nouveau riche, the pulse against egypt came against generals with all of the political and cultural implications that entails. So these regional revolutions of the larger than a change in regimes, smaller than the change in production, but they shape out these other revolutions are reflected in the region at Health Center of course shaped by them in turn. No wonder it seemed so complicated. I think it is fair to say we now live in an era of quantum politics. Uncertainty is not a condition. It is a principle and that will be true forever. We can understand with certainty that carrots her of politics particularly in the middle east, but globally is probably over. So the interplay of all this revolutions create an enormous amount of complexity and confusion for us. So what i simply want to do is take off a few issues that i think are necessary to instruct a description of the region and anticipate the trajectory of some of these Different Levels of revolution might be. I think in fact there are some patterns about these winners and losers for shifts in the way politics happens that we can tease out of this very complicated land gave peered in the first place, keep in mind the stakes we have described for now 10 or 20 years is in eclipse is itself a relatively new feature of Human Society and there are a lot of alternatives to the state and that historically has been. Other sorts of communities, families, tribes, churches, brotherhoods, networks, all sorts of things have served for millennia as vehicles for regulating social interaction, organized in exchange, ensuring security and in many courts in the middle east were formal expression of dave to come the territorial boundaries Come International sovereignty are eroding as anticipated. These types of communities are revising. And why they may be partly reinventions of tradition, they are quite robust and theyll be returning to that time. The way was created in the south contributed to the character of these kinds of nonstate actors. There were two congenital defects if he will in the state that they were established particularly after the First World War. They have been ambiguous sometimes unhelpfully codependent on relations with nondate. I will elaborate on that. And they have responsibilities they could never fulfill on their own resources. When they tackle a bit about that because i think its important to recognize the way they stayed in nonstate identities have been intertwined since the very beginning of the modern state era in the middle east 100 years ago. And i will start you off by reminding you of a little bit of the language of the terms of the league of nations, which established the mandate and former ottoman territories. It says there are quote, certain communities that belong to the former Ottoman Empire that has reached the stage of development with specific independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the mandates. And in article xxii, the league promised to there should be applied principles that the wellbeing and development of such peoples sacred trust of some of nation. So the language suggests that communities will be recognized as nations, presumably to be accorded corresponding im actually of course what really matters with imperial convenience and political patronage. In other words, to the zionists, the hash made, to the state rulers, to the junior partner in the First World War italy and benin bolivia and so forth and so on. These were not communities that were designed to be nations and accorded stays. So for the very beginning, state identities were entangled with family patronage, Identity Community of networks and that has been true for everyone in this room. Except in the very established states, most of which predate this period, i, turkey that 80 of the bureaucrats at the ottoman imperial administration. Hence the state was instantaneous very strong, wellequipped, welltrained in the 1920s and most of the former ottoman provinces in the arab world were viewed as their bureaucratic. Iran, he, egypt, tunisia to some extent had formal institutions in bureaucratic state, but apart from them, those institutions always have a fake intersection or is the u. S. Ambassador said of independent india in 1951, it was a last resort and an experiment. It was not obviously something that he had a lot of confidence in succeeding. The alienation of and hostility to the modern states in italy was for violent Political Movement against governments and their supporters, usually when politicized, but not that often. Or certainly not as often is the case today. But what happens is was routinely visited from the bureaucratic state of the corruption that is reliant on friends, family, ethnic, religious ties, network to obtain the necessities of daily life. These categories, these networks in a way it efforts to create the formal institutions of a modern state. He had the scaffolding of the moderns take, but most of the ways was for the purposes of other kinds of networks and identities. The second congenital defect was the proposition of the wellbeing development of peoples sacred trust and civilization. That included what i just called the necessities of modern life as an obligation on the part of the state may not seem like a bad thing, but the introduction standards of the modern welfare state responsible for Wealth Development in countries that have not developed the economic base extracted capacity or fiscal apparatus to pay for it was the most of external patrons with a hallmark of robust sovereignty. These states were as much the appearance as the reality. Debilitated from the start, expected to meet domestic policy standards that were possible at even the most most economically developed and well administered states while the rest of all but the most minimal economic aspects in elementary institutions. It was unclear what constituents they were to third. So they were very robust as you can obviously tell and over the course of time they fail to meet the standards set for themselves. They never thrived, never. And they slowly in the beginning imperceptibly began to fail. We now talk a lot about failed states. Filled states dont usually fail and continuously. They fail over time. What you saw were state that were being hollowed out. They were failing before it was apparent. But a compensatory world developed. You dont have failed state and then i do my strides on the land gave. Today i will give you an example in the country that has one of the strongest things in the region, egypt, well over half the commercial transaction are unrecorded. 7 of adult egyptians have a bank account and this is not as desperate mobilephone penetration was 115 . So there are more mobile phones than there are people. But the same people who have mobile phones, smartphones and so for dont put their money and advantage. So even in a country, which as i say, has a fairly robust a capacity, this is not a country that is managing its own fiscal apparatus, monetary policy. None of that is taking place in a sophisticated way. Fiscal reform, not tax revenue in nature just 10 of gdp with christy and the guard of the imf and is very low for a modern economy. So in a sense, you have a layer of the appearance of a modern economy like egypt and below that were rounded as a different economy and as i say, egypt is a fairly robust day. It is virtually no reliable data on the economic activities. We can hardly expect its counterparts elsewhere in the region to know more than egyptians know about their own population. The informal world of the middle east is often called the dark sector, but its actually quite colorful. Their personal associations of extended car religion from original and ethnic networks move money around to other goods and services with the constant churn of act dignity. Ideas move, money moves, people move they reform cant donate. Informal Savings Association like egypts credit but the bust