If Not Now, When?

Published: February 22, 2011

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

“America, you have built your house at the foot of a volcano. Thatvolcano is now spewing lava from different cracks and is rumbling likeit’s going to blow. Move your house!” In this case, “move your house” means “end your addiction to oil.”

No one is rooting harder for the democracy movements in the Arab worldto succeed than I am. But even if things go well, this will be a longand rocky road. The smart thing for us to do right now is to impose a$1-a-gallon gasoline tax, to be phased in at 5 cents a month beginningin 2012, with all the money going to pay down the deficit. Legislating ahigher energy price today that takes effect in the future, notes thePrinceton economist Alan Blinder, would trigger a shift in buying andinvestment well before the tax kicks in. With one little gasoline tax,we can make ourselves more economically and strategically secure, helpsell more Chevy Volts and free ourselves to openly push for democraticvalues in the Middle East without worrying anymore that it will harm ouroil interests. Yes, it will mean higher gas prices, but prices aregoing up anyway, folks. Let’s capture some it for ourselves.

It is about time. For the last 50 years, America (and Europe and Asia)have treated the Middle East as if it were just a collection of big gasstations: Saudi station, Iran station, Kuwait station, Bahrain station,Egypt station, Libya station, Iraq station, United Arab Emiratesstation, etc. Our message to the region has been very consistent: “Guys(it was only guys we spoke with), here’s the deal. Keep your pumps open,your oil prices low, don’t bother the Israelis too much and, as far aswe’re concerned, you can do whatever you want out back. You can depriveyour people of whatever civil rights you like. You can engage in howevermuch corruption you like. You can preach whatever intolerance from yourmosques that you like. You can print whatever conspiracy theories aboutus in your newspapers that you like. You can keep your women asilliterate as you like. You can create whatever vast welfare-stateeconomies, without any innovative capacity, that you like. You canundereducate your youth as much as you like. Just keep your pumps open,your oil prices low, don’t hassle the Jews too much — and you can dowhatever you want out back.”

It was that attitude that enabled the Arab world to be insulated fromhistory for the last 50 years — to be ruled for decades by the samekings and dictators. Well, history is back. The combination of risingfood prices, huge bulges of unemployed youth and social networks thatare enabling those youths to organize against their leaders is breakingdown all the barriers of fear that kept these kleptocracies in power.

But fasten your seat belts. This is not going to be a joy ride becausethe lid is being blown off an entire region with frail institutions,scant civil society and virtually no democratic traditions or culture ofinnovation. The United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report 2002warned us about all of this, but the Arab League made sure that thatreport was ignored in the Arab world and the West turned a blind eye.But that report — compiled by a group of Arab intellectuals led byNader Fergany, an Egyptian statistician — was prophetic. It merits re-reading today to appreciate just how hard this democratic transition will be.

The report stated that the Arab world is suffering from three hugedeficits — a deficit of education, a deficit of freedom and a deficitof women’s empowerment. A summary of the report in Middle East Quarterlyin the Fall of 2002 detailed the key evidence: the gross domesticproduct of the entire Arab world combined was less than that of Spain.Per capita expenditure on education in Arab countries dropped from 20percent of that in industrialized countries in 1980 to 10 percent in themid-1990s. In terms of the number of scientific papers per unit ofpopulation, the average output of the Arab world per million inhabitantswas roughly 2 percent of that of an industrialized country.

When the report was compiled, the Arab world translated about 330 booksannually, one-fifth of the number that Greece did. Out of seven worldregions, the Arab countries had the lowest freedom score in the late1990s in the rankings of Freedom House. At the dawn of the 21st century,the Arab world had more than 60 million illiterate adults, the majorityof whom were women. Yemen could be the first country in the world to run out of water within 10 years.

This is the vaunted “stability” all these dictators provided — the stability of societies frozen in time.

Seeing the Arab democracy movements in Egypt and elsewhere succeed inmodernizing their countries would be hugely beneficial to them and tothe world. We must do whatever we can to help. But no one should haveany illusions about how difficult and convulsive the Arabs’ return tohistory is going to be. Let’s root for it, without being in the middleof it.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 23, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition.