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Bernard Lewis: Be Like Stalin?

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even […]

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: “What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?” ~Bernard Lewis 

The other thing, though, is Russia has been deploying brutal measures against subjugated Muslim populations for at least two hundred years. The Czars fought Muslim guerillas [sic] in the Caucasus, the Soviets fought Muslim guerillas [sic]in the Caucasus, and Vladimir Putin has done the same thing. Relations between Russians and the Muslims who live to the south of the Russians is a big, long, giant example of Lewis-favored conservative policy prescriptions not working — the fighting just keeps going on and on and on and on. ~Matt Yglesias

Some may wondering why Bernard Lewis is bringing up this comparison, since I believe most people are agreed that the Soviet Union lost the Cold War and ceased to exist shortly thereafter, yes?  In other words, as the other “ideological nation” of Irving Kristol’s fantasies, Lewis seems to be proposing that the United States could also help hasten its demise by following the same sorts of policies that the Soviet Union followed vis-a-vis the Islamic world.  Contra Yglesias, these policies sometimes may temporarily “work” in the narrow sense of quelling immediate resistance (at tremendous moral, human, political and economic cost), but they usually require such brutal and heinous methods that civilised people–you know, the sort who regard communists as generally very bad types–would not employ.  The core assumption of the entire article seems to be that Lewis approves of the idea that the Soviets were tougher-minded than we are and that this is somehow meaningful for what we should do today.  Yet again, I would remind the esteemed court servant historian that the Soviets lost and their system collapsed from within, which means that the jihadi estimates of the actual strength of adversaries may be about as good as their ability to appreciate fine Buddhist art. 

Lewis certainly isn’t saying that any of the Soviet policies carried out during these decades were good or wise policies (though the entire article leads you to think that he almost has to be equating the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with our occupation of Iraq), but simply that Moscow had arranged it in such a way that it would not be criticised by Muslims and Arabs when it engaged in such policies.  In effect, it had intimidated or bought off these countries to such an extent that it remained entirely clueless just how stupid remaining in Afghanistan for all those years really was.  Perhaps if it were not for the Soviet method of smashing foreign critics in the mouth they might have learned a little more directly and bluntly the outrage their invasion had caused in the Islamic world.  So, it’s a good thing for us and the world that the Soviets were as foolish as the neocons now are, but this hardly sounds like a model that we would want to keep imitating. 

What would be on the Soviet check-list, so that we would know whether or not we were doing the “right,” tough things?  Occupy Central Asia!  Partially already done.  Invade Afghanistan!  Check.  They never got around to occupying Iraq, so we’re actually ahead of the game.  Let’s see, we haven’t deported entire nations to distant locations in the frozen tundra, but if we want to get tough and put a stop to all of this Muslim troublemaking we could start there.  Obviously, the reason why Russia is having problems with Chechnya today is that Moscow has lost its killer instinct.  Stalin would never have permitted this sort of thing to go on this long–after all, winning is everything, right? 

Yglesias is partly right about the Caucasus, though Soviet occupation of the Caucasus did not meet with the same kind of sustained Shamil-like resistance of the mid-19th century.  After WWII, any nationality suspected of having collaborated with the Germans or otherwise of dubious loyalty to the USSR met with mass deportation, which is what the Chechens suffered. 

The Soviet re-occupation of Central Asia after the civil war was relatively much more difficult and bloody for the Soviets, since the various Turkic peoples of the region had been stirred up to revolt as the empire began to collapse in WWI and were then encouraged in resistance to the Bolsheviks first by Enver Pasha (still living the Pan-Turanist dream at that time) and then transformed itself a general Islamic resistance movement against godless communism that outlived Enver.  Probably little known Soviet fact: Frunze, the former name of the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, was the official who brought an end to the Basmachi.  No wonder the locals didn’t want to keep the name!

Back to the article.  Lewis’ fun with history continues, citing the response of certain Arab states to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan:

Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets.

It is hardly surprising that South Yemen, which defied the Cold War pattern that the communist part of a divided country would be in the northern half, sided with the Soviets.  Soviet support for the PLO is well known, so it is also not very interesting to note that the group the Soviets supported lent rhetorical aid to Soviet policy.  I would have to guess that Libyan, Algerian and Syrian actions could be explained in much the same way (for instance, Libya was ruled by an Arab nationalist revolutionary with obvious sympathies with the Soviets, and Syria was then, as now, governed by a socialist government friendly to Moscow).  This is not proof that heavy-handed Soviet tactics work better, but that international patronage wins and keeps clients.  We used to understand how that worked.

I’m not sure exactly why Lewis is rehashing this story, since we are all keenly aware that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (our two Muslim “allies”) were and have remained leading exporters of jihadis.  Soviet treatment of enemies abroad did not somehow cow the Pakistanis and Saudis into acquiescence or inaction, and the occupation of Afghanistan radicalised many Muslims from around the world and caused them to go fight the Soviets there.  Indeed, Lewis includes this in his article:

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous.

Never mind that many Islamic countries weren’t “submitting to Soviet authority,” but failing to protest a war fought by their great power patron.  We might talk of “the Muslim willingness to submit to American authority” because many of the governments of allied Islamic countries have “failed” to actively work against the war in Iraq.  Lewis doesn’t even acknowledge the role of the Saudis or Pakistanis in any of this.  The mujahideen of the ’80s and the Taliban apparently just emerged from the soil of Afghanistan all on their own.

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