Thread by @iyad_elbaghdadi

When you've dug yourself into a hole, the first step to get out of a hole is to stop digging. Sometimes that moment of reckoning only comes to you when you hit rock bottom.

Unfortunately, for Arab governments, that moment when they hit rock bottom and can't seem to dig themselves any deeper - that's when they get excited and get even more furious with the shovel.

Arab dictatorships, especially over the past five years, have been digging themselves deeper into a hole, and calling that hole "ultimate victory of the forces of stability and tolerance over the forces of evil and instability".

There's actual science that shows that power - especially concentrated, unaccountable power - has psychological impacts on those who hold it. They become more arrogant, more rash, less compassionate, less likely to anticipate or acknowledge mistakes - among other effects.

These impacts do not only affect whoever is wielding power. They also impacts the entire operating culture around them. So they ultimately end up surrounded with an entire system whose job is to exacerbate and multiply their worst excesses (rather than checking & balancing)

Now some dictatorships are institutional, in that while power is restricted to a small group, there are power centers and some checks and balances within that group. Other dictatorships are the opposite - they are absolutist, highly centralized, and lack any internal checks.

Most Arab dictatorships aren't institutional, but absolutist dictatorships where power is concentrated in a very small circle, normally the security sector that surrounds the ruler. That makes these above impacts - and the culture and system around them - even more exaggerated.

This reminds me of a quote by Abdulrahman Al Kawaakibi, the Arab intellectual who wrote "The Nature of Tyranny" (back in 1898). "A wise people [nation] restrain political power with a tight leash, and wouldn't hesitate to risk death in order to keep that leash in their own hand".

So Arab dictators end up surrounding themselves with people whose job is to exacerbate, exaggerate, and multiply their worst excesses. A side effect is that they do not act rationally. There isn't something they wouldn't do "because it's irrational". There are no checks there.

When we try to explain the actions of these regimes, we often project our own rationality on them, thinking "hey why would they do that, that wouldn't be wise", or "that would be counter-productive". That's you projecting your own rationality on them. They live in a bubble.

Arab tyranny after 2011 (and certainly after 2014) is fierce, but that's because of paranoia and not because of some inner strength. The 2011 uprisings came from nowhere - they came from the depth of despair. The idea of being uprooted drives dictators crazy.

Perhaps no Arab dictator displays such rash, idiotic, self-defeating arrogance than Mohammad bin Salman, a man who has created quagmire after quagmire, each time referring to the quagmire as "victory". If there was a world prize for quagmires, MBS should win all the awards.

Here's MBS's modus operandi:
- Declare a swift, "decisive", "bold" action
- Have a glitzy propaganda campaign around it
- Arrest anyone who raises questions
- Sputter up and fail on implementation
- Get stuck in a quagmire
- Double down even more (dig deeper)

Quagmire #1: The Yemen War. Declared back in 2015 as a "swift" campaign that would take only a few weeks. It was literally called "The Storm of Decisiveness". MBS himself was branded "The Prince of Decisiveness".

Four years later, not only is Yemen an absolute catastrophe - but the Iranian regime (whose presence in Yemen was minimal before 2015) are now able to launch rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia almost every week. Still, all MBS is capable of doing is doubling down on what doesn't work

Quagmire #2: The Qatar blockade, which according to well informed sources was an actual planned invasion. Again, was supposed to be a quick affair after which Qatar is brought to its knees. Two years later, it's still the same mess, and Aljazeera is still pissing MBS off.

Quagmire #3: Arrest of the women's rights activists
Quagmire #4: The Khashoggi murder
Quagmire #5 (hopefully would fail): Dragging the US to war with Iran

MBS is not done creating quagmires. The entire Arab ancien regime is a crisis factory. The region - and the world - won't find stability or peace with these dictators in charge.