The Muasher doctrine

I've read the lecture given by Chomsky in Amsterdam. I've also listened to it as Emilio has asked us to do. But to do a summary it's not something simple or easy: you can't do it unless you understand it. And I have to admit that Internet is a very potent and interesting tool for everyone. What I mean is that undestanding the text was a deep intensive race I had to run in order to do the summary. I must also admit that I sometimes look over your blogs: some findings are entertaining and amusing and others are really very useful. In this case, as I was having problems with Chomsky's lecture, I decided to have a look at your blogs and I particularly find two of them quite enlightening: Borja's findings about the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and those of Jose Enrique's about the Grand Area,The Strait of Hormuz and Chomsky. Here, what I'm posting is a little brief explanation about something that Chomsky mentions several times in his discourse: The Muasher doctrine. Hope it helps you to understand better this text. It did help me.

AV: Can you describe what you’ve been calling the Muasher doctrine?

Chomsky: What’s been going on in the Middle East, basically—and they don’t want to admit it—is the US and its allies have been supporting really harsh, brutal dictatorships for a very long time. And they’ve known for years, it’s not been a secret, that the population is strongly opposed to US policy. This guy Muasher, he’s a former Jordanian high official, which is a dictatorship of course, and he’s now the Middle East specialist for the Carnegie Endowment, and he was describing the principle that as long as people are quiet and subdued, we don’t really care what they think. Everything is fine.

It works in the United States, too. As long as people don’t make too much of a fuss, we’ll get away with whatever we can. In the Middle East it’s been going on for decades, in fact all over the world. But what’s striking right now is people aren’t quiet, and therefore the US and its allies and Israel are pretty upset, because you can’t count on your favorite dictator to keep everything under control. And of course, since Washington and everyone else is terrified of democracy, they have to find some way to keep the thing under control even if their favorite dictator isn’t there.

Incidentally, this happens over and over. People act as if it’s something new but it’s as old as the hills. You just look through the record: Somoza, Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier in Haiti, Mobuto in the Congo, Suharto in Indonesia. You support your favorite dictator as long as you can, and if it becomes impossible to continue to support him—like maybe the army moves against him, and you can’t do it anymore—well then, what you have to do is shelve him somehow, put him out to pasture, and pretend that you’ve always been a passionate supporter of the people and of democracy, and then try to reinstall the old regime. Try to make sure that the basic system remains, even with a change of names. And that’s done all the time. There’s nothing new in this.

If you want to read all the conversation go to this link.