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Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute
Social distancing has isolated ordinary citizens around the globe. Men and women chafe at not being able to go to the market, relax at a restaurant with friends, or watch a football match with thousands of other fans.
That isolation might be new for ordinary citizens, but social distancing is a fact of life for presidents and prime ministers across the globe.
The U.S. presidency is nicknamed “the loneliest job.” Security exigencies mean a president can’t simply wander around at leisure. When he goes out, he is forever surrounded by a security cordon. Suspicion of ulterior motives by anyone seeking his time means he will gain no friends during his time in the White House and, indeed, will likely lose many. The White House, like many presidential and royal palaces, are gilded prisons.
When Donald Trump entered the White House, he thought he could do things differently, but even he was not able to do so. After initial chaos, he hired a series of more traditional chiefs-of-staff in order to impose order and keep friends and sometimes even family away from him. He might wallow in the glow of political rallies, but no participant can stop and talk to him for more than 15 seconds.
It can be even harder in the Middle East. The latest twentieth century was a time of coups, revolutions, and assassinations. The late Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen for more than 30 years, likened the constant struggle to maintain his power as “dancing on the heads of snakes.” That four of his five predecessors were deposed or assassinated weighed heavily on him until he, too, was forced to flee in the wake of civil insurrection and an assassination attempt.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, like his contemporaries Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Hafez al-Assad, kept family members and fellow tribesmen as his closest counsels. Each tries to promote their sons, although only Assad was successful. Even in Iran, Saddam went further, of course, down the path of isolation, often using body doubles to make his public appearances in order to mitigate risk to himself.
Early in his kingship, Jordan’s Abdullah II would don disguises to cut through the layers of bureaucracy and court followers who would otherwise shield him from the reality which his citizens faced. Simultaneously, however, he remained deeply paranoid, doing everything possible to ensure his uncle Hassan, the former crown prince, would not mix and mingle too much with the public.
In monarchies—not only Jordan, but also Morocco, and the Gulf states—it can be especially difficult. Leaders who rise up through the military in places like Egypt might grow isolated, but they can still draw upon those with whom they had served, exercised, ate and slept in the barracks in their more junior years. In countries where sons are expected to succeed to the throne, however, the social isolation begins at birth. They attend special schools, never socialize outside the family, and are unable to mix freely with peers. The social distance provides security, but also can smother understanding of the difficulties which their societies face.
Political scientists, diplomats, and theoreticians can debate the best form of government along the spectrum between democracies and autocracies but they agree that whatever the form of government, the most successful are the ones with agile leaders who identify the problems afflicting their societies and address them head on. When leaders are surrounded by relatives who are as isolated as they are or by yes-men who tell them what they want to hear in order to win favor, it is possible to lose touch with society. This happened, for example, in Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud was a beloved tribal leader and founded modern Saudi Arabia. He interacted with his people and understood them intimately. His sons understood the respect people had for him, but wealth and power imposed a distance which will only increase as another generation prepares to assume power.
There is only one mechanism to bypass this isolation: a free press. Even the most enlightened leaders should check and challenge their top advisors. Alas, the Middle East as a region rivals only Asia’s Pacific rim in terms of poor press freedoms. In the 2019 Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, half of the world’s ten worst press freedom offenders were in the Middle East. Iraq surpassed Turkey for the first time, but both hover near the bottom. This does not mean all press is accurate; some outlets are more professional than others. Some journalists are honest, whereas personal agendas hijack others’ work. But they all should be tolerated and, if necessary, rebutted rather than repressed. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an presided over a sustained economic boom in the first years of his rule. Not by coincidence, this dissipated as he transformed his country into “the world’s biggest prison for journalists.”
In the United States, it was the press rather than the president’s political allies that challenged Trump’s initial fumbles handling the coronavirus and forced him to change his policies. In Iran and perhaps Turkey as well, however, journalists were unable to challenge leaders’ narratives until it was too late to effectively contain the viruses’ spread.
The Arab Spring caught leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria by surprise. Certainly, their intelligence services had reported on dissatisfaction, but their leaders had no idea of how deep the malaise was. A new generation of leaders may fear political unrest, but repression absent identifying and addressing growing grievances only sets society down the path to a more violent explosion. Press criticism may make leaders and their closest advisors uncomfortable, but it should not if they are capable, have confidence in their own abilities, and desire the best for their society.
Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society. Read more by Michael Rubin.
The article first published at American Enterprise Institute.
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