Soapbox:

No recipe for war

By El-Sayed Eleiwa

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"Why wouldn't Syria fight?" the young journalist asked. "Indeed, why wouldn't Egypt fight?" My best guess, I told her, is that every Arab country has a plan for war gathering dust somewhere. They must, or so I choose to think.

For a country to go to war, it needs to have exhausted all diplomatic possibilities, concluded that its national security and interests are at stake and made sure that war is its best chance out. To arrive at such a decision, a nation must be sure that it can withstand the level of destruction a modern war is likely to involve.

Furthermore, a nation has to be able to withstand foreign influence, especially in the time of globalisation. It is no secret that satellite broadcast, the growing role of civil society, public freedoms, human rights and global economic connections all make individual countries vulnerable to outside pressures. In a nutshell, you cannot wage a war without taking the reaction of the whole world into account.

To wage a war, you need to be economically viable, technologically smart, media conscious, and diplomatically skilled. And you need to have at least the same conventional strategic deterrence power as your enemy. It is all too easy to make threats, but carrying these threats out can be tricky. You need to know when, how, and how long to act. If you're facing an enemy that has nuclear arms, you'll need to consider making your own non-conventional deterrence, including chemical and biological weapons. That's the kind of decisions you'll have to take.

Seen from this angle, Arab countries seem to lack what it takes to wage a successful war. This is why we're reacting so meekly to the ongoing carnage in Gaza.

This week's Soapbox speaker is professor of political science at Helwan University.