Recycle for a Better Tomorrow

Analysts and Beltway insiders have been stunned by the ease with which U.S. operatives and sleepers in Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania have catalyzed exactly the kind of regime-changing popular movements that the Orientalist dinosaurs of the Cold War era have insisted since day one of the New World Order could not be fomented in the complacent, fatalist and yet simultaneously fanatic Muslim societies of the Middle East. A few well-placed internet posts coupled with careful activation of the appropriate economic mechanisms have unleashed upon the ancien regimes of the North African a veritable weapon of mass destruction represented by a genuinely united and determined popular resistance at a negligible operating cost. The demolitions of the Tunisia and Egyptian projects that ran their course in 2008 have thus far been much cheaper and cleaner than critics had expected. What this means is that the old paradigm of "creative destruction" that gained currency in the 70s has given way to what policy wonks are calling the first genuine recycling plan of the postmodern era.

Though the term recycling is very recent, the concept is quite similar to the strategy used by the British Empire to control the Ottoman state for nearly a century and to a lesser extent the strategy employed by the League and NATO in China. However, the term was first coined in the 1970s for the Iran case, which in that December of 1978 appeared a model example of a recycled regime. The idea was to manage and reuse the same regimes, changing the faces and the rhetoric while maintaining the hard structure where possible. Profits would be significantly less than those of the "command and conquer" paradigm, but recylcing also in theory involved much less risk and promised a more sustainable option. Of course, when the revolution took a communist turn, NATO activated plan B (some say prematurely), and the rest is history. With the high-modernist recyclers out the door, a new paradigm emerged with the Iraq-Afghanistan corridor as its new test case: creative destruction. The logic behind creative destruction was that U.S. companies could reap massive profits by building up puppet governments, milking countries dry until it was time for the "demolition" phase, which involved a costly war, occupation and rebuilding project that would yield further economic gains for the pillar companies.

Recently, economists have indisputably proven that the cost of extracting, for example, the entire lithium reserves of Afghanistan over the course of 20 years as opposed to 50 would be tenfold, and thus, a steady reemergence of recycling has culminated in the events of this past month. Even the old hardliners have for the time being been willing to give recycling a second chance, no doubt secretly hoping that the revolutions take a theocratic turn.

Nobody is certain what the next few weeks will hold, and many are worried that the protests will veer too close to real revolution and once again the "Islamic card" will enter play. On this point, I must stress the need for patience. While the profits of creative destruction have been truly impressive, there is only so much space on the planet. We simply cannot continue to raze countries to the ground and rebuild them with the limited resources available in this day and age. Let's stop strip mining the planet and start farming it. Think of our children. Give recycling a chance.