I am starting this blog, in part for myself, but I hope that doesn’t preclude others’ enjoyment of it as well. Its topical focus will be the Middle East, with a smattering of foreign policy and international development thrown in there (my "other" academic favs). This summer, I started blogging for Mercy Corps, going against all of my personal inclinations since I have long shunned all social media except checking facebook while writing papers in the library. But, I did find it to my liking. I enjoy investigating issues of interest to me, scribbling down thoughts, and archiving quotes; a blog forces some structure and semi-permanence on that process without the feeling of importance. In other words, I have come to view blogging as a version of the spiral notebook that will be more difficult to lose. Typical, that I would take such an old-fashioned view of this modern medium.
I choose tonight as the ribbon cutting for this blog, mostly as a way of side-stepping my grad school applications for the evening. With than out of the bag, I am also excited to finally actuate the creation of this long-intended project.
The first thing the blogging site requested was a title. Isn’t that something you think of last minute, after the writing and even the editing? Kind of a “crap, I have to turn this thing in in less than two-hours” writer’s loose-end to tie up. Still, a required field is a required field and this blog was going nowhere without a title.
So, I choose: Two Wolves and a Lamb. Why? Well, in no small part due to my own amusement at its many possible allusions, though I have more substantial reasons as well.
The most obvious allusion and one that might belie some type of Zionist leaning on my part, is the Biblical interpretation of Israel as the lamb and the surrounding Palestinian nations as the wolves. While quaint, I did not choose this title for its facile religious allegory, though I do enjoy the title’s potential double entendre.
The full context of the title, Benjamin Franklin’s observation that "democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." (The attribution of this quote to Franklin is widely accepted, but probably apocryphal. As a cheeky historian pointed out on a site I was perusing: the usage of the word lunch did not come into fashion until well after Franklin’s time.)
This quote first and foremost shows the irony that prevails in much of the Middle East. Today there are elections and liberal political institutions, but without the typical trappings: freedom and liberty. I do not intend to use this blog as a bully pulpit to voice ideologically driven cries for the transfer of democracy to the Middle East. Actually, I am still conflicted about the feasibility and advisability of encouraging these types of change. I intend to use this blog as a way to chronicle a path of self-discovery and intellectual inquiry into these issues.
With that said though, there is a dearth of democracy in the region, a shortage that is all the more stark given the overtures made towards transition. I find the metaphor of two wolves and a lamb to be an apt way to think about the elections held in an autocratic state. Sure, the populace is “deciding” something when Syria or Saudi Arabia holds elections, but who are we really kidding?
Moreover, I also like how the quote reflects the odd paradox between power politics that can seem both entrenched and mercurial. Like so many other things in this region, how you view power depends on your perspective. The quote seemingly derides the position of the lamb, err soon to be chop. Well, I don’t think that is necessarily the upshot of what Franklin was trying to express, because he clearly was not a detractor of democratic institutions.
Rather, I interpret his point as an observation that power is a function of the institutional constraints placed upon a group of people. This point certainly holds true in the Middle East. Ultimately, brute force can be decisive, but the power that underlies the ability to exercise brute force exists within a wider context. In the Middle East, that context is the “special relationship” between the US and Israel, the untouchable moral superiority of movements driven by religion, and the political economic game-changer: oil. There are many more, and each wield influence in different ways, but if one word characterizes this area of the world, it's incendiary. In 1948, the balance of power shifted dramatically, though perhaps not irrevocably. Israel was once the lamb, but given a favorable contextual shift in the world political atmosphere it emerged, still a lamb but one backed by a cadre of well-armed shepherds. Though I don’t see this fundamental balance of power altering anytime soon, there undoubtedly will be slight but significant shifts, changes, which I will watch for, record and analyze, right here, on my new blog. Enjoy.
