WEBVTT - SPECIAL: Noah's New Book 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:22.036 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:22.076 --> 0:00:25.316 where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:25.796 --> 0:00:28.956 I'm Noah Feldman. This episode is going to be a 0:00:28.956 --> 0:00:31.676 little different from what we usually do here on Deep 0:00:31.676 --> 0:00:35.636 Background because it's going to involve a switchero. It's going 0:00:35.676 --> 0:00:39.676 to be a conversation between me and Jacob Weisberg. Jacob 0:00:39.756 --> 0:00:42.116 is the head of Pushkin Industries, which is the podcast 0:00:42.156 --> 0:00:45.436 production company that makes this show. He's also the person 0:00:45.476 --> 0:00:48.036 who had the idea for Deep Background in the first 0:00:48.036 --> 0:00:50.436 place and called me and said, hey, Noah, maybe you 0:00:50.436 --> 0:00:54.036 want to try a podcast. And the reason that I 0:00:54.156 --> 0:00:56.996 asked Jacob to come on the show and take my 0:00:57.116 --> 0:00:59.796 job is that the conversation we're going to have is 0:00:59.836 --> 0:01:02.676 about a new book that I've wrote that's being published 0:01:02.716 --> 0:01:07.516 today called The Arab Winter, A Tragedy. For those of 0:01:07.556 --> 0:01:09.716 you who've been writing in to say that it's time 0:01:09.756 --> 0:01:13.076 for us to add some non COVID topics alongside our 0:01:13.116 --> 0:01:16.316 COVID coverage, this one's for you, and I promised that 0:01:16.356 --> 0:01:19.556 we'll return to COVID coverage in our very next episode 0:01:19.796 --> 0:01:25.716 later this week. Jacob, thank you so much for coming 0:01:25.756 --> 0:01:29.836 to Deep Background. Well, Noah, thanks for inviting me to 0:01:29.876 --> 0:01:33.396 play you on your show for an episode. It's a 0:01:33.476 --> 0:01:35.876 tall order. And I also want to thank you for 0:01:36.196 --> 0:01:39.956 prompting me to read your new book, Or Winter, which 0:01:40.116 --> 0:01:42.356 I really enjoyed. I mean, it's a very short book, 0:01:42.396 --> 0:01:47.316 which made it easy, but it's so packed with ideas 0:01:47.356 --> 0:01:52.156 about what happened in the Arab Spring and challenging I 0:01:52.196 --> 0:01:55.196 guess the conventional wisdom that the Arab Spring was a 0:01:55.236 --> 0:02:00.156 complete disaster. Let's go back to the beginning. What was 0:02:00.236 --> 0:02:03.036 the Arab Spring? Where did it happen, Why did it happen? 0:02:03.156 --> 0:02:06.356 What was it? The Arab Spring was a kind of 0:02:07.196 --> 0:02:11.516 single episode that then read into a region wide contagion. 0:02:11.996 --> 0:02:14.276 But the contagion was, at least in the first instance, 0:02:14.316 --> 0:02:18.396 a really good one. It started in Tunisia, which is 0:02:18.436 --> 0:02:22.196 a tiny little country barely ten million people, and which 0:02:22.276 --> 0:02:24.316 is not usually thought of as hugely influential in the 0:02:24.356 --> 0:02:26.756 Middle East. In fact, most of the time, even most 0:02:26.756 --> 0:02:29.036 people in the Arab world never think about Tunisia at all. 0:02:29.876 --> 0:02:33.596 And what set it off initially was that a poor 0:02:33.876 --> 0:02:37.716 frustrated fruit seller who had been subject to abuse from 0:02:37.836 --> 0:02:42.316 government officials and whose money supply was running out killed 0:02:42.396 --> 0:02:45.516 himself in a very dramatic way. He set himself on fires, 0:02:45.516 --> 0:02:49.556 a horrible tragedy, and in response to the sense that 0:02:49.636 --> 0:02:54.156 he had quite literally ignited a sense of protest. Hundreds 0:02:54.156 --> 0:02:57.916 of thousands of Tunisians, ordinary Tunisians, from all different social classes, 0:02:57.916 --> 0:03:01.436 all different backgrounds, started going into the streets and protesting 0:03:02.076 --> 0:03:06.236 their governments, and they developed a couple of key slogans. 0:03:07.036 --> 0:03:10.396 The most famous of one was the people want the 0:03:10.556 --> 0:03:14.076 overthrow of the regime. And they chanted it, and they 0:03:14.156 --> 0:03:18.556 chanted it, and remarkably and incredibly, within a couple of weeks, 0:03:19.076 --> 0:03:22.116 the regime gave way and the guy who had been 0:03:22.116 --> 0:03:25.116 the dictator of the country for almost twenty years left 0:03:25.156 --> 0:03:29.996 the country, and suddenly people were realizing that they had 0:03:29.996 --> 0:03:33.596 the opportunity to remake their political system almost entirely. So 0:03:33.636 --> 0:03:36.316 that's how it started. But then if that be the 0:03:36.316 --> 0:03:38.036 only story would have been an incredible story. It would 0:03:38.036 --> 0:03:40.596 have been a huge success story of one tiny little country. 0:03:40.996 --> 0:03:43.796 But what happened is that it was contagious, and so 0:03:43.836 --> 0:03:47.476 what you got were what started as copycut demonstrations in 0:03:47.796 --> 0:03:51.996 much bigger and more consequential countries, most famously Egypt, and 0:03:52.036 --> 0:03:55.516 then in Egypt, the same story played out again, at 0:03:55.556 --> 0:03:58.956 least initially, and people were chanting the same chance, and 0:03:58.996 --> 0:04:01.716 they were watching each other on Arabic speaking satellite TV, 0:04:01.836 --> 0:04:03.236 so they knew what the other people were saying. In 0:04:03.276 --> 0:04:06.196 the other countries, each of these protests had some local flavor. 0:04:06.236 --> 0:04:08.436 They were substrating the name of their own dictator, but 0:04:08.516 --> 0:04:12.276 basically the script was repeated, and in Egypt it seemed 0:04:12.276 --> 0:04:15.476 to work too. The dictator left there too, and then 0:04:15.716 --> 0:04:17.476 it was tried in other countries as well, and so 0:04:17.476 --> 0:04:21.916 it was a kind of sweeping contagion of attempts at 0:04:21.916 --> 0:04:24.796 political self determination in a bunch of Arabic speaking countries. 0:04:25.516 --> 0:04:27.676 So let's talk about Egypt a little bit as the 0:04:27.716 --> 0:04:31.156 place where the Arab spring seemed to turn dramatically into 0:04:31.196 --> 0:04:33.836 what you call the Arab winter. You know, first you 0:04:33.916 --> 0:04:37.116 had this moment in Tarier Square where protesters were out 0:04:37.156 --> 0:04:42.316 demanding the end of the autocratic regime, democratic replacement, and 0:04:42.356 --> 0:04:46.156 they got it, they got the more Sea government elected. 0:04:46.476 --> 0:04:50.236 And then people turned out in Terior Square again and 0:04:50.356 --> 0:04:53.796 demanded if it or the end of democracy? Why did 0:04:53.836 --> 0:04:56.556 that happen? And what do you make of it? These 0:04:56.556 --> 0:04:58.956 two events, which I called for short in the book 0:04:58.996 --> 0:05:05.396 Tarier one in Tarier two were bookends to a very 0:05:05.516 --> 0:05:09.996 very intense year and three quarters in which which a 0:05:10.036 --> 0:05:12.636 lot of things happened, some of which seemed to follow 0:05:12.676 --> 0:05:16.396 the correct way that we in democratic countries imagine things 0:05:16.396 --> 0:05:18.756 should go when a dictator comes down, and some of 0:05:18.796 --> 0:05:22.116 which went wildly the other way. So the first thing 0:05:22.276 --> 0:05:25.356 is that it took some time, but after the army 0:05:25.476 --> 0:05:29.276 had ordered the old dictator hosting Mubarak to leave, there 0:05:29.316 --> 0:05:34.116 eventually were big, pretty free public elections, and they were imaginations. 0:05:34.156 --> 0:05:35.956 Along the way. There was a question of who would 0:05:35.956 --> 0:05:37.756 be allowed to run for office, and could old regime 0:05:37.796 --> 0:05:39.996 people run for office, and what about members of the 0:05:40.076 --> 0:05:44.556 Muslim Brotherhood, which was the largest social slash political organization 0:05:44.676 --> 0:05:47.276 in the country. But ultimately there was an election. It 0:05:47.276 --> 0:05:50.436 was pretty free, and what happened is that the Brotherhood 0:05:51.036 --> 0:05:56.556 candidate won the presidency narrowly. The Brotherhood won a plurality, 0:05:56.676 --> 0:06:00.076 not a majority of but a plurality in parliamentary elections, 0:06:00.996 --> 0:06:05.076 and the Brotherhood won the chance to craft a new constitution. 0:06:05.796 --> 0:06:09.916 And that panicked a lot of people who were of 0:06:10.516 --> 0:06:13.156 what used to be called one person, one vote, one time, 0:06:13.796 --> 0:06:16.916 people who said, look if the Muslim Brotherhood writes the constitution, 0:06:17.236 --> 0:06:19.876 if they become the people who are the dominant political party, 0:06:20.476 --> 0:06:23.236 they're going to abolish democracy. Now, to be sure, that 0:06:23.276 --> 0:06:25.276 wasn't their claim. They said we're going to be democratic, 0:06:25.316 --> 0:06:26.596 We're going to write a constitution. But that was the 0:06:26.636 --> 0:06:30.116 word that a lot of people had, and slowly but surely, 0:06:30.716 --> 0:06:34.836 various things happened that left those folks more and more 0:06:34.876 --> 0:06:38.436 concerned and worried. But it was a very complicated dant. 0:06:38.476 --> 0:06:41.476 So you just give you the most prominent example. The 0:06:41.476 --> 0:06:44.396 Constitutional Court of Egypt, which was made up at the 0:06:44.436 --> 0:06:49.636 time still of people from the old regime, disbanded the legislature. 0:06:49.916 --> 0:06:52.516 It said the elections had been illegitimate, and it disbanded 0:06:52.516 --> 0:06:56.676 the legislature. That left Morsey, who was the newly elected president, 0:06:56.716 --> 0:06:58.876 in a position where he couldn't govern through the legislature. 0:06:59.476 --> 0:07:01.796 And so then his critics started saying, he's an autocrat, 0:07:01.836 --> 0:07:03.796 he's an autocratic, he's governing autocratically. Well, of course he 0:07:03.836 --> 0:07:08.276 was governing autocratically because there was no legislature, and there 0:07:08.356 --> 0:07:10.036 was a deep word they were going to do the 0:07:10.076 --> 0:07:12.956 same thing with a constitutional assembly and disbanded that too, 0:07:13.596 --> 0:07:17.436 and so the Muslim Brotherhood rammed through a constitution very 0:07:17.556 --> 0:07:21.876 very fast, without listening to dissenters, and Morsey himself, afraid 0:07:21.916 --> 0:07:25.676 that the Constitutional Court would block that, issued an edict 0:07:25.716 --> 0:07:28.436 where he said, nobody can put me out of office. 0:07:28.436 --> 0:07:31.116 The Constitutional Court can't put me out of office until 0:07:31.556 --> 0:07:33.476 the constitution is in place. Now, in practice, that was 0:07:33.476 --> 0:07:35.236 only going to be a week or two. But then 0:07:35.316 --> 0:07:37.596 his opponent said, look now he's made himself a dictator. 0:07:38.116 --> 0:07:40.716 And ultimately what that led to is that opponents of 0:07:40.756 --> 0:07:43.756 the Brotherhood and opponents of the regime came back into 0:07:43.756 --> 0:07:47.996 the streets and they replicated what they had done in 0:07:48.156 --> 0:07:54.076 January and February and March of twenty eleven, and they demanded, 0:07:54.396 --> 0:07:56.516 with the same slogans and the same chance, with a 0:07:56.676 --> 0:07:59.716 comparable number of people in the square, that the army 0:07:59.876 --> 0:08:04.756 get rid of the elected democratic president. And after some delay, 0:08:04.796 --> 0:08:07.396 the army did. And so what happened was that the 0:08:07.396 --> 0:08:09.356 first time they were getting rid of a dictator, the 0:08:09.356 --> 0:08:11.036 second time they were getting rid of the guy who 0:08:11.036 --> 0:08:14.396 had been elected president, and that led to the army 0:08:14.436 --> 0:08:17.036 taking over again, and that was the end of democracy 0:08:17.036 --> 0:08:19.836 in Egypt. So that's the real conundrum Noah, and you 0:08:20.196 --> 0:08:23.676 talk about this at the level of democratic theory and 0:08:23.716 --> 0:08:27.476 political philosophy. But can there be a democratic decision to 0:08:27.556 --> 0:08:33.756 eliminate democracy? And if so, why is a democratic decision 0:08:33.756 --> 0:08:36.316 to do that valid? I mean, by making such a decision, 0:08:36.356 --> 0:08:40.236 as it were democratically, you're invalidating the idea of the 0:08:40.276 --> 0:08:44.076 democratic decision should be the ones account. I agree with you. 0:08:44.116 --> 0:08:47.036 It's a super hard problem and I really struggled with it, 0:08:47.076 --> 0:08:49.316 and I try to show that struggle in the book 0:08:49.316 --> 0:08:51.636 and try to lay out both sides of the possible view. 0:08:51.676 --> 0:08:53.316 I mean, you could take the view I don't take this, 0:08:53.436 --> 0:08:55.996 but you could take the view that when the people 0:08:56.076 --> 0:09:01.196 with a capital P get together and demand democracy, that's legitimate. 0:09:01.396 --> 0:09:04.516 That's democratic because they're asking for democracy. But when the 0:09:04.596 --> 0:09:07.276 same people get together and say we don't want democracy anymore, 0:09:07.316 --> 0:09:10.076 we want to get rid of a democratic leader, it's undemocratic. 0:09:10.556 --> 0:09:12.756 And in the end, I don't buy that. And the 0:09:12.796 --> 0:09:16.076 reason I don't buy it is that what makes the 0:09:16.196 --> 0:09:19.156 choice of democracy in their first place legitimate isn't that 0:09:19.196 --> 0:09:22.756 there's some fair process or fair procedure for democracy. I mean, 0:09:22.796 --> 0:09:24.516 what it really amounts to is a lot of people 0:09:24.556 --> 0:09:26.916 going to the public square and saying get rid of 0:09:26.916 --> 0:09:29.196 the dictator. And in Egypt, they didn't even say give 0:09:29.236 --> 0:09:31.236 us democracy. They just said get rid of the dictator. 0:09:31.676 --> 0:09:34.796 And then they held elections. And so what made that 0:09:34.916 --> 0:09:38.396 legitimate was that, in some sense, the Egyptian people as 0:09:38.396 --> 0:09:41.756 a collective were saying what they wanted, and they weren't 0:09:41.796 --> 0:09:44.156 doing a through a procedure, and you couldn't count them 0:09:44.196 --> 0:09:45.596 all up and figure out if they were a majority 0:09:45.596 --> 0:09:47.396 of the public, which of course they weren't. It was 0:09:47.476 --> 0:09:50.236 legitimate because it was an expression of genuine popular sentiment. 0:09:50.956 --> 0:09:53.116 And then when the same number of people or maybe 0:09:53.156 --> 0:09:56.476 even more do the same thing and call for the 0:09:56.556 --> 0:09:59.716 changing of the democratic system, they're not operating within the 0:09:59.796 --> 0:10:02.236 ordinary rules of democracy. But you have to believe. I 0:10:02.316 --> 0:10:05.036 think that what they're doing is just as legitimate as 0:10:05.076 --> 0:10:08.956 when people called to get rid of the dictator. Otherwise 0:10:09.196 --> 0:10:11.556 the first one isn't legitimate. I think whatever rules you 0:10:11.596 --> 0:10:13.716 apply to figure out whether the demand to get rid 0:10:13.756 --> 0:10:16.156 of a dictator is legitimate are going to give you 0:10:16.196 --> 0:10:19.316 the same result when people do the same thing to 0:10:19.356 --> 0:10:21.276 say they want to get rid of a government which 0:10:21.356 --> 0:10:24.236 was democratically elected. So you know, I think The upshot 0:10:24.276 --> 0:10:26.516 of that is that we forget that democracy is something 0:10:26.516 --> 0:10:29.356 that the people choose, and therefore democracy is something that 0:10:29.356 --> 0:10:32.196 people could choose not to choose. It's not inevitable, it's 0:10:32.236 --> 0:10:34.836 not necessary. It's not the only system of government that's 0:10:34.876 --> 0:10:39.236 fair or legitimate. But in advance of a legitimate constitutional 0:10:39.276 --> 0:10:42.716 system which lets people have votes with equal weight, you 0:10:42.836 --> 0:10:45.516 do have this problem of being back to you the 0:10:45.596 --> 0:10:49.996 general will. I mean, that's who constitutes the people and 0:10:50.636 --> 0:10:56.316 what determines which people and whose views predominate. We didn't 0:10:56.356 --> 0:10:59.396 count the people into rear square, and why, for that matter, 0:10:59.436 --> 0:11:02.836 should only people in Cairo and the nation's capital who 0:11:02.916 --> 0:11:05.756 have the ability to turn out in the biggest public 0:11:05.836 --> 0:11:09.316 square have a say in determining what the general will is. 0:11:10.436 --> 0:11:13.916 I totally agree, and you know, I try to use 0:11:13.956 --> 0:11:16.836 a thought experiment to get people to ask themselves what 0:11:16.876 --> 0:11:19.676 their own intuitions are about this. What I say is, 0:11:20.156 --> 0:11:21.836 think of what it felt like to you if you 0:11:21.876 --> 0:11:25.916 were watching when you saw people in dictatorships going out 0:11:25.956 --> 0:11:29.116 into the streets in hundreds of thousands and saying, you know, 0:11:29.236 --> 0:11:31.956 leave or we want the end of the regime, or 0:11:32.396 --> 0:11:35.236 you know, we demand social justice. What happened in Ukraine, 0:11:35.316 --> 0:11:37.676 or what happened in so many countries in Eastern Europe 0:11:37.716 --> 0:11:41.636 when authoritarian governments were brought down by public protests. Exactly 0:11:41.716 --> 0:11:43.716 in all of these places. You can ask yourself, what 0:11:43.756 --> 0:11:46.196 do you feel when you see on TV thousands or 0:11:46.276 --> 0:11:48.996 hundreds of thousands of people making this demand. And if 0:11:49.036 --> 0:11:51.756 you feel, and I think most people do, feel wow, 0:11:52.276 --> 0:11:56.356 you know, that's great, that's real. Those people are taking 0:11:56.436 --> 0:11:59.196 charge and the world should listen to them, then you 0:11:59.276 --> 0:12:02.156 share in some way the intuition I think that there 0:12:02.276 --> 0:12:05.756 is such a thing as a people which is capable 0:12:05.836 --> 0:12:08.796 of speaking for itself, even though in none of those 0:12:08.836 --> 0:12:12.516 cases is there a formal vote, is there a census, 0:12:12.556 --> 0:12:15.316 Are there districts with ballots? The whole apparatus that we 0:12:15.356 --> 0:12:18.396 associate with the democracy that's up and running only exists 0:12:18.396 --> 0:12:20.556 when a democracy is up and running. You know, at 0:12:20.596 --> 0:12:23.636 that initial moment of demand, there's something about the core 0:12:23.756 --> 0:12:27.476 collective political action of the people that's motivating people, and 0:12:27.476 --> 0:12:29.916 it's motivating us to think that that is legitimate and 0:12:29.916 --> 0:12:32.836 that is democratic. And that is hard because we're so 0:12:32.916 --> 0:12:35.756 used in thinking of democracy in terms of vote counts 0:12:35.756 --> 0:12:38.956 and districts, but democracy is more than that. It's bigger 0:12:38.956 --> 0:12:41.636 than that, and it's also much more vulnerable than just 0:12:41.916 --> 0:12:44.156 the kind of democracy that plays by the rules. Democracy 0:12:44.196 --> 0:12:47.116 doesn't always play by the rules. We'll be back in 0:12:47.156 --> 0:12:58.356 just a moment. The book seems to be very much 0:12:58.396 --> 0:13:02.316 an attempt to salvage something positive from the Arab Spring, 0:13:02.676 --> 0:13:06.316 and you focus a lot on this idea of these 0:13:06.356 --> 0:13:11.356 Arab countries taking political response ability for themselves the first 0:13:11.356 --> 0:13:16.236 time after centuries of imperialism and then these autocracies that 0:13:16.276 --> 0:13:19.276 gave the people no say You say, basically, you know, 0:13:19.356 --> 0:13:23.316 at least they're taking responsibility for their own destinies. And 0:13:23.356 --> 0:13:26.516 the really hopeful example you talk about is Tunisia, where 0:13:26.516 --> 0:13:30.756 you mentioned the Arab Spring began. You were involved in 0:13:30.796 --> 0:13:34.996 the effort at constitution writing there, giving some advice to 0:13:35.116 --> 0:13:38.756 the Constitutional Commission. Talk a little bit about both your 0:13:38.796 --> 0:13:43.156 experience and why Tunisia remains the one real bright spot 0:13:43.276 --> 0:13:45.476 to come out of the Arab Spring. So, yeah, I 0:13:45.516 --> 0:13:48.076 was very lucky. I was in Tuonesia's six times during 0:13:48.116 --> 0:13:52.436 the process of their constitutional negotiations, and partly because it 0:13:52.476 --> 0:13:55.276 was a small country with a relatively small political elite, 0:13:55.596 --> 0:13:58.876 partly because I kept on coming back. What began as 0:13:58.916 --> 0:14:01.556 an opportunity just to show up and learn turned into 0:14:01.556 --> 0:14:04.076 an opportunity to collaborate a little bit with people who 0:14:04.076 --> 0:14:07.716 are actually drafting the constitution. And you know, I and 0:14:07.836 --> 0:14:10.756 my research associate who went with me made I don't know, 0:14:10.796 --> 0:14:13.316 I think a couple of hundred suggestions, all of them 0:14:13.396 --> 0:14:16.596 at the request of people on the Constituent Assembly, and 0:14:16.716 --> 0:14:19.436 a whole bunch of them got incorporated into the constitution. 0:14:19.476 --> 0:14:21.036 I have no idea if they were incorporated because we 0:14:21.076 --> 0:14:23.436 recommended them or because they were just good ideas that 0:14:23.476 --> 0:14:25.676 everybody would have thought of. Any Way, you can never 0:14:25.756 --> 0:14:27.756 quite measure those things, and that's probably a good thing 0:14:27.916 --> 0:14:30.836 into their constitution. But yeah, I was very fortunate to 0:14:30.876 --> 0:14:33.716 be sitting there in the drafting rooms, in the Delicates 0:14:33.716 --> 0:14:36.676 dining rooms, and I got to observe up close and 0:14:36.796 --> 0:14:42.276 personal why their negotiation process worked when constitution negotiations didn't 0:14:42.316 --> 0:14:46.116 work in other countries. And the reason was that everybody 0:14:46.116 --> 0:14:48.476 in the room knew, no matter whether they liked each 0:14:48.516 --> 0:14:50.156 other or hated each other, and no matter how much 0:14:50.156 --> 0:14:52.316 they distrusted each other, and they did distrust each other, 0:14:52.916 --> 0:14:55.316 that no one was coming to save them, No one 0:14:55.356 --> 0:14:57.836 really cared enough about Tunisia to intervene in a big 0:14:57.876 --> 0:15:01.316 way in their constitutional process. The US wasn't coming to 0:15:01.356 --> 0:15:04.116 save them, you know, the European countries were not coming 0:15:04.156 --> 0:15:06.076 to save them. They were on their own. The other 0:15:06.116 --> 0:15:08.396 Arab countries weren't coming to save them, and so they 0:15:08.396 --> 0:15:12.436 had to compromise, and they compromised like crazy. All sides 0:15:12.476 --> 0:15:17.916 made compromises that their own political core supporters thought were 0:15:18.076 --> 0:15:21.796 terrible compromises, and they made them anyway. And I think 0:15:21.876 --> 0:15:25.476 that is really what got them ultimately through, and it's 0:15:25.476 --> 0:15:27.916 why they developed a consensus that enabled them to draft 0:15:28.076 --> 0:15:31.556 and successfully ratify a constitution. And just to add one 0:15:31.556 --> 0:15:35.156 more point to that, the thing that they realized is 0:15:35.156 --> 0:15:39.556 that a constitutional negotiation is by definition all about giving 0:15:39.596 --> 0:15:43.676 the other side more than it deserves. If you think, well, 0:15:43.676 --> 0:15:45.956 we've won a plurality or a majority, and so we're 0:15:45.996 --> 0:15:48.516 not going to give you what you want, your constitution 0:15:48.556 --> 0:15:51.596 will fail because if enough people are unhappy with a 0:15:51.596 --> 0:15:55.916 constitutional draft, then they'll go into the streets, they'll protest, 0:15:56.236 --> 0:15:59.116 they might even use violence, and then the whole constitutional 0:15:59.196 --> 0:16:02.356 deal will fall through, sort of like what happened ultimately 0:16:02.476 --> 0:16:05.756 in Iraq, where Sunnies were cut out of the constitutional process. 0:16:05.796 --> 0:16:08.316 They partly cut themselves out and then they just used violence, 0:16:08.316 --> 0:16:11.796 and that deeply under caught the constitution. So you have 0:16:11.876 --> 0:16:16.916 this one North African Arab country that has a functioning, effective, 0:16:17.276 --> 0:16:23.636 seemingly sustainable constitutional democratic system. Why aren't its neighbors and 0:16:23.716 --> 0:16:26.236 the other Arab countries looking at it and saying, yeah, 0:16:26.356 --> 0:16:29.836 that's what we wanted, We want what they have. People 0:16:29.916 --> 0:16:33.316 in some of those countries did say that initially, as 0:16:33.356 --> 0:16:36.436 in Egypt, but then Egypt wasn't able to produce the 0:16:36.556 --> 0:16:40.956 kind of compromise and consensus that Tunisia did. So the 0:16:40.996 --> 0:16:46.156 elected government, the Muslim Brotherhood backed government, did not successfully 0:16:46.156 --> 0:16:50.236 compromise with secularists on the other side. They made some 0:16:50.276 --> 0:16:53.956 initial gestures in that direction, but they were paranoid, not 0:16:53.996 --> 0:16:56.316 without good reason, but they were paranoid that if they 0:16:56.396 --> 0:16:58.836 let in too many liberals they would undercut themselves. They 0:16:58.876 --> 0:17:00.596 were paranoid that if they let in too many of 0:17:00.636 --> 0:17:03.876 the old regime they would undercut themselves. So they actually 0:17:03.876 --> 0:17:06.876 tried to do it all without compromise, and that failed. 0:17:06.956 --> 0:17:09.796 They just couldn't get sufficient buy in. And in a 0:17:09.876 --> 0:17:13.876 much more extreme way, in Syria, What happened there is 0:17:13.876 --> 0:17:16.156 that we never even got to the moment of the 0:17:16.156 --> 0:17:18.156 formation of a new government because we never got the 0:17:18.196 --> 0:17:22.716 ultimate collapse of basharl Assad's regime because Asad fought back 0:17:22.716 --> 0:17:26.276 with violence, and instead of the protests which began pretty 0:17:26.316 --> 0:17:31.116 peacefully leading to regime change, they actually created circumstances where 0:17:31.156 --> 0:17:34.436 the government started a civil war. And once that started, 0:17:34.756 --> 0:17:37.556 people in lots of countries around the Arabic speaking world 0:17:37.596 --> 0:17:40.276 started saying, whoa wait a minute, the structure of our 0:17:40.276 --> 0:17:43.596 countries may not be capable of surviving regime change. And 0:17:43.716 --> 0:17:46.516 once people start thinking that and looking at worst case 0:17:46.516 --> 0:17:49.716 scenarios like civil war such as we also have in 0:17:49.756 --> 0:17:54.116 Libya and such as exists now in Yemen, both in 0:17:54.156 --> 0:17:57.356 the aftermath of the Arab Spring, that starts making people 0:17:57.716 --> 0:18:00.316 really think long and hard about whether it's worth it 0:18:00.556 --> 0:18:02.716 to try to stay in the streets and remove the regime. 0:18:03.436 --> 0:18:06.836 At the other end of the spectrum from Tunisia's liberal 0:18:06.996 --> 0:18:13.436 democratic state, you have of Isis's medieval theocratic state, and 0:18:13.556 --> 0:18:16.836 you say that that too was a product of the 0:18:16.916 --> 0:18:22.036 Arab Spring. In a strange way, why was Isis part 0:18:22.076 --> 0:18:25.996 of what came out of the original protests in Tunisia 0:18:26.156 --> 0:18:28.956 in two ways. The Arab Spring first of all, created 0:18:28.996 --> 0:18:32.916 the conditions for the civil war in Syria, which created 0:18:32.956 --> 0:18:36.756 a political vacuum, a power vacuum, which allowed isis to 0:18:36.796 --> 0:18:40.036 emerge and call itself a caliphate. So that was the 0:18:40.076 --> 0:18:42.756 first immediate way that the Arab Springs set the conditions 0:18:43.076 --> 0:18:45.796 for the emergence of the Islamic State. But the more 0:18:45.836 --> 0:18:51.636 profound similarity between the Islamic State and the peaceful uprisings 0:18:52.516 --> 0:18:55.476 is that the people who founded the Islamic State were 0:18:55.556 --> 0:19:00.396 aspiring to create a new form of political order which 0:19:00.476 --> 0:19:05.356 they themselves would control, where they would be sovereign, and 0:19:05.596 --> 0:19:08.436 in which they could effectuate a system of government that 0:19:08.516 --> 0:19:13.476 they believe. Now, what's sad, horrifying, and indeed tragic, and 0:19:13.516 --> 0:19:14.996 this is one of the reasons I call the book 0:19:15.276 --> 0:19:18.316 The Artwinter a tragedy, is that the form of government 0:19:18.356 --> 0:19:23.756 that the Islamic State supporters wanted was not utopian, although 0:19:23.756 --> 0:19:25.916 they thought it was utopian, but it was dystopian. It 0:19:25.996 --> 0:19:29.476 was the opposite. You know. It involved murder on a 0:19:29.596 --> 0:19:33.796 huge scale, It involved rape on a huge scale, forced 0:19:33.796 --> 0:19:38.796 sexual slavery, and for the people who were engaged in 0:19:38.836 --> 0:19:44.876 this movement, those were fulfillments and authentic manifestations they believed 0:19:45.476 --> 0:19:50.196 of Islamic tradition going back to the Middle Ages, which 0:19:50.236 --> 0:19:52.556 did exist on the books. If you read the classical 0:19:52.556 --> 0:19:54.876 Islamic legal sources from the Middle Ages, you do have 0:19:55.316 --> 0:19:57.516 tech saying, you know, you can do these things in wartime, 0:19:58.156 --> 0:20:01.076 but they were not practiced on a comparable scale to this, 0:20:01.236 --> 0:20:04.156 certainly in the Middle Ages. And also nobody's really tried 0:20:04.196 --> 0:20:06.396 in the Muslim world to govern in anything like this 0:20:06.436 --> 0:20:10.516 way in hundreds of years. So they were doing something 0:20:10.516 --> 0:20:13.316 that was a throwback, self conscious throwback, and it was 0:20:13.396 --> 0:20:16.476 worse than it ever had in fact been in history 0:20:16.516 --> 0:20:21.316 almost certainly. So it was horrifying and deeply deserved the 0:20:21.356 --> 0:20:24.196 condemnation that we've all given to it. And the world 0:20:24.236 --> 0:20:26.996 had to take action, slowly but surely to go and 0:20:27.036 --> 0:20:29.356 get rid of the Islamic state, and I'm super glad 0:20:29.396 --> 0:20:31.716 that they did get At the same time, we shouldn't 0:20:31.756 --> 0:20:34.876 forget that the folks who were doing this were engaged 0:20:34.876 --> 0:20:37.196 in the process of trying to self determine. They were 0:20:37.196 --> 0:20:38.516 just doing it in a way that turned out to 0:20:38.556 --> 0:20:41.636 be pretty evil. I mean, I was mystified as a 0:20:41.676 --> 0:20:45.356 lot of people were how this barbaric sort of cult, 0:20:45.436 --> 0:20:51.156 as it seemed, was attracting volunteers from all over the world, 0:20:51.756 --> 0:20:56.916 including from Western countries. In the thousands. You talk about 0:20:56.956 --> 0:21:01.476 it as a utopian revolutionary movement, but why was it 0:21:01.716 --> 0:21:05.436 that young people, including young women in many cases, went 0:21:05.676 --> 0:21:08.996 to join the Islamic State completely of their own volition. 0:21:09.876 --> 0:21:12.676 I really think it was the opportunity that they perceived 0:21:12.716 --> 0:21:15.676 to build something new, to build a new society, to 0:21:15.676 --> 0:21:18.476 build a utopian society on what they saw as a 0:21:18.516 --> 0:21:22.676 classically authentic Islamic model. In that sense, the Islamic State 0:21:22.756 --> 0:21:25.876 was really different from Alkaida. People did come from around 0:21:25.916 --> 0:21:29.156 the world to join Alkaida in much smaller numbers, but 0:21:29.236 --> 0:21:31.596 to join Alkaieda basically meant you were going to fight 0:21:31.796 --> 0:21:35.276 and probably die in the jihad. You weren't building something 0:21:35.356 --> 0:21:37.436 new for the most part, you were just trying to 0:21:37.676 --> 0:21:41.076 break something, namely what is imagined to be the occupation 0:21:41.116 --> 0:21:45.556 of Muslim lands by non Muslim invaders. In contrast, once 0:21:45.716 --> 0:21:48.716 the Islamic State was a caliphate, that it had territory, 0:21:48.756 --> 0:21:51.516 that it was building a society that was a chance 0:21:51.516 --> 0:21:53.596 for people to say much the way that young people 0:21:53.596 --> 0:21:55.836 from around the world wanted to go to Cuba after 0:21:55.876 --> 0:21:59.596 the Cuban Revolution, or some people from around the world 0:21:59.716 --> 0:22:03.476 wanted to go to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. You say, well, 0:22:03.756 --> 0:22:05.876 here's a new world being created, and I want to 0:22:05.916 --> 0:22:07.636 be a part of that. And so they didn't come 0:22:07.716 --> 0:22:10.756 for the spectacular violence, but they also were willing to 0:22:10.756 --> 0:22:14.396 tolerate and participate in even that kind of violence, which 0:22:14.436 --> 0:22:18.756 also happens after other revolutions that partake of this kind 0:22:18.756 --> 0:22:23.396 of millennialist religious, revivalist, reformist idea. And they don't have 0:22:23.396 --> 0:22:25.196 to be religious. That could just be communism, which is 0:22:25.236 --> 0:22:28.876 itself a kind of religion. In a certain respect, people 0:22:28.956 --> 0:22:35.076 will do unbelievably radical things that are horrifying in circumstances 0:22:35.076 --> 0:22:38.196 like those when they feel that they're in a revolutionary moment, 0:22:38.276 --> 0:22:41.636 all bets are off. The end times in some way 0:22:41.916 --> 0:22:43.236 are there. And again it doesn't have to be end 0:22:43.236 --> 0:22:44.796 times in a religious sense. It could be that we're 0:22:44.836 --> 0:22:47.836