A Siege of Salt and Sand: Tunisia's Environmental Problems

The documentary about environmental and governance issues in Tunisia, A Siege of Salt and Sand, details the everyday struggles faced by Tunisians caused by two seemingly opposite factors: the sea and the desert. Climate change and rising sea levels have contributed to economic distress in the country, and the unsustainable projects undertaken by Ben Ali have not helped matters. The ousted president undertook many large construction projects, claiming that they were sustainable and good for the country when it was quite obvious to the population that this was not the case. He even created a bizarre mascot for these projects, Labib, which was meant to resemble a desert fox.

64% of Tunisia’s territory is threatened by desertification, and rising sea levels have led to the formation of salt flats where agricultural production is no long possible. One third of Kerkennah is now salt flats.

Climate change has also led to the intrusion of dangerous species that have brought disease and parasites such as Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, which is caused by the parasitic protozoa leishmania transmitted by sandfly bites. This parasitic infection causes painful lesions on the skin which inevitably lead to unsightly, permanent scars.

Sand encroachment is another major problem, and once land falls victim to desertification, the damage is irreversible. Sand drifts bury whole houses and swallow villages. The people of Tunisia have attempted to resist sand drifts and desertification by building sand walls consisting of one meter high walls topped with palm leaves, however this only delays the inevitable.

Water scarcity is also very prevalent in Tunisia, and some areas go years without any rainfall. When it does rain it is often in negligible amounts–5-10 millimeters at a time. Climate change has been such an important issue in the country that when the new constitution was drafted after the ousting of Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia became one of three countries in the world to include climate change in its constitution.

Rentierism in the Middle East and North Africa

Rentier states and rentierism are common in the Middle East and North Africa, however it is not solely because of oil rents that authoritarian regimes are so prevalent there. Such a unilateral explanation of anything could be characterized as a vast oversimplification. There are other states in the world that have oil rents of comparable size to those found in the Middle East and North Africa. Norway’s oil rents were last measured in 2012 at 9.4% of the country’s GDP. Qatar’s oil rents accounted for 12.1% of its GDP in 2012. The difference is that oil was not discovered in Norway until 1969, more than 150 years after the constitution of Norway was adopted. The Norwegian government and economy were already well established and stable at this point. Oil was discovered in the Middle East in Persia in 1908 and in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 carved up the Middle East between French and British influence into mandates, which differed minimally from colonies. The current state system in the Middle East and North Africa is largely a result of this agreement and others made in the years surrounding the first world war. National borders and state borders do not match up as a result of this lack of self-determination, which is one of many factors contributing to instability in the region. The states in the Middle East and North Africa are all very young. Many of these states did not achieve independence from Western influence until after World War II, and in some cases not until the 1960s and 70s, as in the cases of Algeria and Iran, respectively.

European influence in the Middle East and North Africa may be one of the factors contributing to the prominence of authoritarian regimes there, specifically monarchies. European powers, especially the UK and France set up monarchies in their mandates in the Middle East after World War I. Much as the United States strives to spread democracy across the globe, these monarchical states set up governments in their own image to some extent. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 also contributed in large part to the current state of affairs in the Middle East.

The interaction of large oil rents in these states with such factors as European influence, existing instability, and existing authoritarian and monarchical regimes produces these “peculiarly pathological political outcomes.” At the time oil was discovered in the Middle East and North Africa, the mandate and colonial system was still in place and European influence maintained stability to some extent. After these states achieved independence at various points during the twentieth century, newly independent regimes had huge oil rents and new-found power without European powers keeping them closely in check.

A confluence of large oil rents, the mandate system and the resulting state system is largely responsible for the current state of the Middle East and North Africa. Some political scientists have asserted that the Middle East needs decades of interstate and intrastate war before it achieves a state system that matches national borders and overcomes the currently dominant political pathology. The European state system is mainly a result of centuries of war since the middle ages. This process of state formation was never allowed to happen in the Middle East and North Africa because of Western presence in the region.

The Problem with Democratization

There are several main problems that Anderson talks about in her article, including:

1. “Insincere rulers” who hold out democracy as their form of government, naming their states “democratic republic of...” “people’s republic of...” when in reality, these states are not in any sense of the word, democracies. In fact, the presence of the word democratic in the name of a state is a fairly reliable bellwether for the presence of an authoritarian regime.

2. Democracy is destabilizing. The United States and others have historically been perfectly willing to allow traditional autocratic rulers remain in power in order to maintain the status quo and stability. The United States’ Cold War policy of supporting Islamist regimes that would help stand against the atheist communist Soviet Union in many ways contributed to the resistance to democratization in the Middle East we see today. Islam is not inherently resistant to democracy, as we can see in Indonesia and Turkey (at the time the Anderson article was written), while Arab Muslim states seem to be the ones with the major democratic deficit. These Arab states are the ones that were most directly influenced by American Cold War policy.

3. Rentier states in which governments can effectively bribe their people into acquiescence. People pay no taxes in these states and are instead paid dividends each year by their governments, that have massive hydrocarbon wealth.

According to Anderson's argument, the United States’ involvement in the region since the end of the second world war has been and continues to be the single most potent problem for democratization in the region. The US helped to cement a system of authoritarian regimes in the region through its involvement both as it relates to the Cold War and opposition to atheist communism, as well as the maintenance of access to abundant oil resources in the region. The United States and other Western powers have been very active in the region over the past sixty years, helping to cement rentier states with authoritarian regimes.

The Arab uprisings of 2010-11 have changed matters very little in the long run. Some of the uprisings ultimately resulted in civil war, as in the cases of Syria and Libya, a failed state in Yemen, and ongoing violence and unrest in other states. Tunisia is one example of a state that successfully transitioned to democracy with a fairly good constitution as a result of the Arab Spring.

Israel and Palestine: Diplomacy at work

I do not believe that the resolution of the issues between Israel and Palestine lies with the ascendancy of more moderate political leaders. The closest to being resolved the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict has been was at the Oslo Accords in 1993 with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat was not exactly a hardliner, but he wasn’t a quite moderate either. Rabin was politically moderate, even too moderate, according to some.

Although the Oslo Accords did not ultimately result in an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it did precipitate a Nobel Prize shared by Arafat and Rabin (and Shimon Peres). Two years after the famous handshake between the two leaders on the White House lawn, Rabin was assassinated by a radical right-wing Israeli who did not approve of the signing of the Oslo Accords. In this case, moderate, or fairly moderate, political leaders were able to make some progress in reaching a settlement, but were unable to reach a final status.

In 1972 when President Nixon made a diplomatic visit to China, it was looked at as very uncharacteristic of him as a politician because he was known as being very conservative and anti-communist. His reputation was what allowed him to make that visit successfully and help to thaw relations between the United States and China without public backlash. No one questioned whether he was sympathetic to the Communist cause because he had such a strong reputation for conservatism and anti-communism.

President Reagan took advantage of a similar situation to help end the Cold War when he nurtured a positive relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan had a track record of being conservative and his motives and allegiance to democracy were not brought into question when he acknowledged that the Soviet Union was no longer an “Evil Empire.”

It may be that it is not moderates, but more partisan political leaders who may bring about the settlement of final status issues between Israelis and Palestinians. Moderates are subject to criticism and accusations of being too soft or conceding too much during negotiations, whereas more partisan leaders have secured stronger reputations with their constituents.

All Politics Is Local?

Tip O’Neill, former Speaker of the House, famously said that “all politics is local.” He’s not wrong, but he’s not right either. It’s not possible to accurately assert that all politics is anything, politics is many things. There are certainly many very important political issues that are local–issues that are closest to home and that matter the most in a person’s everyday life. There are also many important political issues that are important on a national or global scale, and cannot be considered as local as other issues.

O’Neill’s idea relates to the principle that all politicians can be successful by understanding and being able to effectively improve the issues and circumstances of their constituents. In many governments, part of the national government is made up of representatives from more local districts. In this way, national politics is the sum of all local politics. These politicians represent their own local districts and represent the issues and concerns of their constituents in the national government.
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There are many issues that may seem to be a national or global issue, but when examined more closely, they can also be looked at as local issues. Immigration is an issue in the United States for which policy is created at the national level. Immigration is certainly a local issue as well as a national one, however, especially for citizens living in areas close to the borders or in cities with major ports.

Labor and unemployment are other examples of issues that are often dealt with at the national level, yet affect people on a local level on a daily basis. While some people may claim that all politics is local, or answer the question with a yes or a no, “all” politics cannot be adequately described with one term. Politics are complicated, on a local, regional, national and global level.

Saudi Oil and Diplomacy

The price of brent crude oil is now at its lowest in over three years in an apparent move by the Saudi government to use their influence on the oil market as a tool of diplomacy. The precise intentions of the Saudis in encouraging the price of oil to fall are somewhat convoluted, however the falling price may have several results.



For one, the price drop will effectively provide a tax cut to American consumers, which will potentially stimulate the economy as a whole as well as benefit individual consumers. Also, the drop in price will put strain on the economies of Russia and Iran, which are already hurting from economic sanctions.

The move by the Saudis, according to some, is a carefully orchestrated plan to benefit diplomatically with the United States while also hurting their rivals in Iran and Russia. The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has been somewhat stressed as of late due to the nuclear talks between the United States and Iran, a major rival to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis would prefer to see the nuclear talks with Iran fail, however it is possible that the economic pressure on Iran from lower oil prices will encourage Tehran to be more agreeable at the talks in order to get relief from economic sanctions the country already faces.

There has been some speculation of direct collusion between the Saudis and the United States to cause the price of oil to drop as they did in the 1980s to put pressure on the Soviet Union. This does not appear to be the case this time, however, and the drop is not without consequences for the US economy. The drop in oil prices, in addition to hurting the Russian and Iranian economies, puts pressure on the American natural gas industry. The boom in natural gas in the United States has taken up a larger part of the global energy market in recent years and the Saudis intend to slow that growth with their influence on the oil market.

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Water Diary

According to waterfootprint.org, I use 1,083 cubic meters of water in one year. This is significantly less than the national average for the United States, which is 2,842 cubic meters per year. According to nationalgeographic.com, I use 1,660 gallons of water each day. The U.S. average is 2,088 gallons per day.

The global average water footprint is 1,385 cubic meters per person per year, less than half the average in the United States. In the U.S., 20.2% of the water footprint falls outside of the country. In the Middle East, specifically in the Arabian Peninsula, the percentage of the water footprint falling outside of the states is much higher. In Yemen, 75.7% of the footprint falls outside; in the United Arab Emirates, 75.7% falls outside; in Saudi Arabia, 66.1% falls outside.

There are many implications that go along with having such large percentages of these water footprints falling outside of the states. This is an indication of the dependence on outside sources of water, food, and other goods that require large quantities of water to produce. Similar to the United States’ dependence on foreign oil, states in the Middle East are dependent on foreign water. This is a human rights issue, as well as an issue of economics and politics.

The average water footprint of an individual in Yemen is 901 cubic meters, while the average water footprint of someone in the United Arab Emirates is a whopping 3,136 cubic meters (more than twice the global average). Both have the same percentage of their footprint falling outside of the country. This disparity may be caused by the oil wealth enjoyed by the UAE and lacked by Yemen. People in poorer countries do not have the same access to fresh water as those in wealthier countries, which is a major reason for the water footprint being so much smaller.

States with larger percentages of their water footprints falling outside the country are subject to market fluctuations, potentially subjecting their economies to stress when food prices rise. States with smaller percentages of their water footprints falling outside the country are more self-sufficient and are not as subject to market fluctuations. Those countries that rely heavily on outside sources for water, food, and other goods are more interdependent, which is a bad thing from a realist’s perspective. According to liberalism, however, this interdependence is positive and fosters stability.