Autocracy, Humphreys establishes, is the region s deepest and perhaps oldest dilemma. They legitimized power as such, in the abstract, but they did not say who should wield it. In other words, the soldiers programs failed to provide them with the justification they so craved, so they were left relying on brute force. Middle Eastern populations, whe ther centuries ago or today, respond to this unhappy reality by withdrawing their allegiance from the authorities and turning for solace instead to the realms of religion and family life. Military government may well not be good government, but by the standards of the twentieth century Middle East it is sometimes anyway stable government.
Trouble is, stability becomes an end itself and has a fearsome price.
The preoccupation with staying in power means that other goods economic development, civil society, cultural florescence are sacrificed. Warlordism turns out, for example, to be the single greatest obstacle to economic progress. They themselves are under siege by frustrated, angry populations. Humphreys traces the fall of bygone ideologies, like Pan Arabism, and shows that the sort of conventional state patriotism found in most of the world has little chance among Arabic speakers, for most of today s countries are creations of the colonial era that fail to draw on deep feelings. Given the paucity of rivals, Islamism pretty much has the field to itself, and Humphreys devotes considerable space to understanding what it is and what it implies.