CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Will the Middle East be as unstable 10 years from now as it is today? I asked that question this week to a class of students at Harvard's Kennedy School. About half answered yes -- that things will be as bad or worse, no matter what America does.
These Harvard graduate students sense what many Middle East experts are beginning to vocalize: The region is caught in a turbulent vortex of change that's likely to continue for many years, perhaps for decades. The drivers are political, social, economic and demographic forces over which the U.S. and other outside powers have little control. For the next generation, instability may be the rule in the Middle East, rather than the exception.
Economic and demographic data show a region that is already stressed by slow growth and high youth unemployment. These problems are compounded by refugee flows from wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya -- and worsened, further, by falling oil prices that hinder Saudi Arabia's ability to provide a buffer.
The International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook, released this month, presents a grim picture. Unemployment will top 13 percent in Egypt and Tunisia this year, and reach nearly 12 percent in Algeria. Economies aren't growing fast enough to provide enough jobs for young people: Growth this year is expected to be 1.3 percent in Iraq, 2.5 percent in Lebanon, 2.6 percent in Algeria, 3.8 percent in Jordan and 4 percent in Egypt.
"Tepid" growth and falling oil exports mean larger trade and budget deficits, predicts the IMF. The region will suffer a cumulative current-account deficit of 1.9 percent of GDP this year; even the oil-exporting countries will run a deficit of 1 percent.
The Middle East's body politic -- enfeebled by these disorders -- has been ravaged by sectarian and civil wars. The International Rescue Committee estimated this month that 11.4 million Syrians, or about half the population, have fled their homes. The Syrian disaster has affected the whole region. To take just one example, poverty has more than doubled in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to a recent World Bank report.
As weak governance structures have buckled across the Middle East, extremist groups have become more powerful. The most potent is the Islamic State, which exploded out of the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq. But many other groups across the region are fusing popular rage with sectarian and tribal bases of support. Even if the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, can be "degraded" in Iraq and Syria over the next three years, as President Obama hopes, the underlying disorder in the region could spawn ISIS 2.0, or even 3.0.
Observing the devastation in the Middle East is a bit like watching a hurricane pummel a vulnerable coastline. Outsiders can try to mitigate the destruction and provide humanitarian relief. They must also try to protect themselves from collateral damage. But they can't stop the raging winds and surging tides from leveling fragile structures. As disaster-management experts have learned, a big storm has to blow itself out before rebuilding can begin.
Graham Allison, who heads the Belfer Center here, argues that the U.S. government should be careful about trying to fix problems in the Middle East until it understands them better. He contrasts the deadly Ebola virus with the ideological contagion of the Islamic State. We know what causes Ebola and how to stop it, Allison wrote recently in Time magazine, but there is no such clarity about how the Islamic State toxin spreads or how it can be cured.
What we do know is that this extremist virus has taken root in a body that is already severely weakened and showing no signs of recovering soon.
Washington Post Writers Group