Strong horse politics

Talking to author Lee Smith

Tony Badran
Now Lebanon
12 January '10

(An excellent read, covering a very wide scope.)

Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He is a longtime observer of the Middle East and has written extensively about the region, where he has lived and traveled. His book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, was just published by Doubleday.

NOW sits down with Smith to talk about America, the Arab World and strong horse politics.

Tell our readers about your new book. What is its main thesis and what prompted you to write it?

Smith: The title comes from Osama Bin Laden’s observation that people by nature prefer the strong horse to the weak one. I was writing for an American audience and what I wanted to try to explain is how politics works in a region like the Middle East, where, with very few exceptions, there are no peaceful transitions of authority, and power is not shared but rather is typically passed from one family member to another, or taken in a military coup.

I suspect this thesis will be confused with the notion that “Arabs only understand force,” except I believe that violence and coercion is something much of the world has had to deal with throughout history, and modern-day Americans are exceptionally lucky insofar as this is not an issue for us. I was trying to explain to them that this is not the case around the world, and certainly not in the Arabic-speaking Middle East.

How do you see the strong horse principle playing out in the region today?

Smith: I think it’s the same as it ever was, with various actors vying for regional supremacy. On one hand you have the Islamic Republic of Iran, which wants to rewrite the regional order to its own advantage, and on the other you have Washington and the American-backed regional order, including Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, along with Egypt, Jordan, and of course Israel, that wants to maintain its position.

Tehran, at least until the June presidential elections, has been very confident in its status as a rising power, while the US is now led by a president who has expressed his discomfort with power. In his UN address, Obama even argued against the balance of power, which is a strategic principle about as old as politics itself. Even if you find it desirable, I doubt it’s possible to rewire human nature in this way by emptying human beings of their political ambition and quest to exercise power. I guess we’ll see how reality catches up with the White House and what kind of adjustments the administration is capable of making on the fly.

(Read full interview)