The long stalemate in Yemen took a bloody turn yesterday which was as horrifying as it was utterly predictable. Regime forces opened fire on the tenacious, peaceful protestors in Change Square in Sana'a, killing dozens and flooding the hospitals with the wounded. The internet has been flooded with horrific videos which could easily have come from Libya or Syria. The violent crisis which many of us have been warning would result from neglecting Yemen and allowing its political stalemate to grind on has now arrived. The Sana'a massacre should be a crystal clear signal that the Yemeni status quo is neither stable nor sustainable, and that the failure to find a political resolution ensures escalating bloodshed and humanitarian crisis. It is time to push for an immediate political transition -- and one which does not include immunity for Saleh's men. 

It has been difficult to get anyone to pay attention to Yemen.  For months, ever since President Ali Abdullah Saleh had been rushed to Saudi Arabia for treatment of wounds from an apparent assassination attempt. Distracted by hot wars in Libya and Syria, the struggling transition in Egypt, and the diplomatic train wreck between Israel and the Palestinians, the U.S. and most of the region put Yemen on the back burner. Even though thousands of incredibly determined and resilient Yemenis continued to protest regularly, and analysts warned with increasing desperation that missing the opportunity to bring about a transition would be a disastrous mistake, the urgency faded away. Indeed, Saleh's regime counted on that fading external urgency as part of its strategy of delay and distraction, hoping to outlast, confuse, divide, and where possible crush the protest movement. Now, Yemenis are paying for that neglect in blood.  

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Friday's attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo by protestors marching from Tahrir Square and the subsequent harsh security crackdown could become an epic fail for the Egyptian revolution. That's not because Egyptians shouldn't protest against Israel if that's what angers them, and it's not because the incident is likely to escalate to war. It's because the incident could easily become an excuse for the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) to postpone elections, expand rather than surrender its Emergency Law powers, and avoid the transfer of power to a legitimate civilian government. What's more, these moves might now win applause rather than condemnation among key constituencies: revolutionaries who were already skeptical of elections, liberals worried that Islamists will win, and Americans and others abroad worried about the implications of Egyptian democracy for Israel. 

This would be a terrible mistake. The absence of any legitimate political institutions seven months after Mubarak's fall and the SCAF's arbitrary and unaccountable rule are what created the political vaccuum which has brought Egypt to this edge. Yesterday's chaos should not be taken as a reason to postpone a democratic transition. It should instead be a powerful reminder of the urgency of sticking to the timeline for elections and getting on with the business of building an Egyptian democracy. Those who care about Egypt completing its revolution should now be doubling down on the urgency of a real democratic transition -- not backing away from it. 

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Egyptian activist groups have called for another "million man march" on Friday, September 9 in an attempt to "correct the course" and to revive what they see as a flailing revolution.  Friday is shaping up as a significant test of the continuing power of the activist groups after a summer where they have struggled. The exuberantly successful mass demonstration of July 8 gave way to an unpopular Tahrir sit-in and a disastrous attempt to march on the Ministry of Defense.  Recent calls for protests have produced small turnouts. Friday is therefore being widely taken as a test of the continuing relevance and power of the activists. 

But in some ways the turnout on Friday is a sideshow compared to the decisions to be made about the upcoming Parliamentary elections now scheduled for November.  It's no secret that many activists are deeply disenchanted with the SCAF-led political process.  They see street protests as the source of their power, and understand their identity as the "soul of the revolution." They have done little to prepare for elections and don't look likely to win.  Some view the coming elections as themselves counter-revolutionary since they will likely produce a Parliament dominated by Islamists and ex-NDP fulul.  When I was in Egypt in July, I already began hearing whispers that activists might boycott the elections.  Those are now spilling out into public.

Will activists actually boycott?  What would happen if they did? I think that it is distressingly likely, and growing more so, and that it would be a disaster. An activist boycott probably would not be joined by the major political parties, and probably wouldn't affect the overall turnout or results. But it would have a disproportionate impact on the  perceptions of the legitimacy of the election, especially in the West, and would seriously  undermine hopes of achieving a democratic Egypt. I am putting this out here now mainly to draw attention to the risks, provoke some public discussion... and, hopefully, to be proven wrong. 

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"I seen people abuse power, use power, misuse and then lose power/Power to the people at last, it’s a new hour/Now we all ain’t gon’ be American Idols/But you can least grab a camera, shoot a viral/Huh? Take the power in your own hands." 

--- Kanye West, evaluating (presumably) the Egyptian revolution in the Power remix 

Watch the Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West may not prove to be the enduring hip hop classic that many people expected when news of the project leaked. But the album itself is hardly the point. Watch the Throne represents a fascinating gambit in the consolidation and extension of Jay-Z's hegemony over the hip hop world, and in Kanye's rehabilitation of his image following a catastrophic collapse in his global standing. How they did it offers important lessons for how the United States can handle its own changing position within a turbulent world.

Two years ago, I wrote a series of essays using Jay-Z as a window into international relations theory. They ended up provoking an astonishing outpour of debate, dissent, and commentary across the blogosphere. I recorded what remains to this day my all-time favorite radio appearance. And it landed me in an unforgettable, if short-lived, rap beef with Game himself. My basic argument was that Jay-Z handled his hegemonic position by exercising restraint, declining to engage in most provocations in order to avoid being trapped in endless, pointless battles. Jay-Z battling the Game would have risked being dragged down into combating an endless and costly insurgency with little real upside. Better for the hegemon to show restraint, be self-confident, and to carefully nurture a resilient alliance structure to underpin leadership.

Blueprint 3, released shortly afterward, largely vindicated that analysis. The opening track pointedly dismissed his beefs ("I ain't talking about gossip, ain't talking about Game") in favor of addressing "real" issues ("let's talk about the future, we've just seen the dream as predicted by Martin Luther, you could choose ta sit in front of your computer posing with guns, shooting YouTube up, or you could come with me to the White House"). "Run This Town" asked everyone to "pledge allegiance" to his label Roc Nation. "Already Home," breezily dismissed all of his would-be challengers as not in his league and "only excited when they mentioning Shawn" and taking them to task for not carrying their share of the burden ("I taught 'em about fish scale they want me to fish for them/They want me to catch clean, then cook up a dish for them"). D.O.A. did take the rising generation to task for singing too much with Auto-Tune and generally being soft, and took a few shots at competing power centers ("send this one to the mixtape Weezy"). But overall, the album was a self-confident, knowing blueprint for hegemonic restraint.

The structure of the balance of power in the rap world continued to evolve towards multipolarity over the last two years, if not an actual hegemonic transition, in the midst of a serious financial crisis afflicting the entire industry -- a situation not unfamiliar to the White House. The relentless rise of southern rap mirrors the economic and political rise of Asia. What had once been a marginal, derivative, and largely dismissed regional genre has risen to be a legitimate contender for hegemony. Lil Wayne and his Young Money label racked up success after success alongside older southern powers like T.I. and newcomers like B.o.B. The West Coast, like Europe, has declined significantly since its old great power days. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg still do their thing, but rarely have a major impact anymore (RIP Nate Dogg, by the way); Detox remains an urban legend, and we'll see if Game's new RED album does better. 50 Cent, a great power only a few years ago, has largely collapsed -- Russia, perhaps? Eminem returned strong after a long struggle with depression to make the ferociously brilliant Recovery album; but like, say, India or Brazil he has always been a powerhouse in his own world, neither influencing nor affected by the wider field.

In short, the environment facing Jay-Z over the last two years was turbulent and challenging, and he could not simply assume continued hegemony despite his track record or skills. Rap's center of gravity was being pulled relentlessly away from its New York roots, taking on a more southern and more international feel. The entire industry faced a massive financial crisis, as the internet and market fragmentation continued to contribute to the steady collapse of the business model for albums and record companies. What is more, there was every reason to view Jay-Z himself as a declining power. While a Jay-Z album could still dominate the rap space as completely as the U.S. military could dominate any global battlespace, that dominance rested on deteriorating foundations. Jay-Z should have seen his skills declining at the age of 41 (yeah, he's 10 months younger than me - and for what it's worth I think his rhymes are better than ever). He could hardly avoid being distracted by the competing pulls of running Def Jam or Roc Nation, and the comforts of marriage to the divine Beyoncé.

Watch the Throne then can be seen as a shrewd move to institutionalize Jay-Z's hegemony before feeling the effects of likely decline in a rapidly shifting and potentially hostile environment, through more robust partnerships and a fully-realized new alliance system. The key moves came years earlier: Jay-Z allowing Kanye to produce Blueprint 3 instead of trying to destroy him after his 2007 diss track "Big Brother"; his signing of key rising stars to Roc Nation and Kanye's doing the same at GOOD Music (especially reaching beyond his comfort zone to bring the incredible Pusha T on board after the breakup of the Clipse -- Turkey, perhaps, given the religion issue?); his participation on Kanye's brilliant GOOD Friday series of free online downloads and on Kanye's remarkable comeback album My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy; and then finally Watch the Throne.

It's actually hard to say, and ultimately may not matter, whether Jay-Z or Kanye West is the architect of this new alliance. Kanye had become a lightning rod for political attacks after his post-Katrina outburst during a live telethon that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," and then had struggled with his mother's death. Kanye's reputation had been shattered in September 2009 by his drunken display at the Video Music Awards where he interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech to declare that the award should have gone to Beyoncé instead. "Imma let you finish" became a national punch line and he suffered massive ridicule even on South Park. There have been few public gaffes of such magnitude in the entertainment world, and amidst much whispering about his alleged drinking problems and erratic personality many doubted whether Kanye could ever recover. This was a reputational collapse on a par with what the Bush administration did to America's standing in the world. (How ironic, then, that Bush described Kanye's Katrina outburst as the lowest moment of his Presidency.)

How Kanye brought himself back to the top has some intriguing lessons for public diplomacy. He didn't rely on one big speech to apologize, try to respond to every critic, or retreat into a shell. As someone who thinks that internet has a transformative impact on world politics, I find it fitting that Kanye's return from his lowest days relied on innovative internet activism (paging Alec Ross). I'm referring partly to Kanye's hallucinogenic Twitter feed and online video interviews, but mainly to the GOOD Friday series of free music releases. It should be no surprise that he turned to the internet to seize control of his own image. The hip hop industry has been transformed by the internet, obviously. Unauthorized leaks have wiped out album sales, while most of the new generation of young rappers have built their careers on free mixtapes released online -- it's hard to believe that J.Cole, for instance, is practically a hip hop legend already without yet even releasing his first studio album.

Even in that context, it is almost impossible to exaggerate how good the GOOD Friday releases were. For months, Kanye release a world-class new track free over the internet every Friday. The Good Friday releases featured a wide range of artists, casting a big tent which signaled broad global support. They featured Jay-Z himself, signaling support from the top of the system. They showcased the prize acquisition for Kanye's GOOD label, the lyrical monster Pusha T, signaling a strong new alliance. They featured hot young artists such as J. Cole, Big Sean, and Cyhi Da Prince, socializing the best of the new generation of rising powers into their alliance system rather than fading away or jealously circling the wagons. And by giving it away free over months, they generated buzz and had far more impact than if they had just released it in one album. Like Warren Ellis with his amazing online comic book Freakangels, Kanye proved that giving top quality material away for free could actually be good business (a lesson, by the way, for academics and their publishers). By the time the albums came out, Kanye's misdeeds had faded in the collective memory in favor of the immense goodwill generated through this exceptional feat of public diplomacy.

Jay-Z and Kanye therefore solidified their place on the throne not by crushing their rivals but by inspiring them to be their best as part of a team, through creative use of the internet for public diplomacy, and by working within rather than trying to dictate new norms. They recognized that "no one man should have all that power." Jay-Z was willing to "lead from behind" and share the spotlight in order to build a broad and effective coalition. This approach to leadership encouraged others to step up and share the burden, even when he could have easily dominated on his own. Like the U.S. did for NATO in Libya, he and Kanye contributed unique assets (the ability to command public attention, tracks from the best producers like Swizz Beatz and Pete Rock, their own skills). And it worked. Potential competitors clamored to get in to this new order rather than bashing it from afar, while the attractiveness of the partnership pushed those invited to join to step up their game and perform at their peak.

Jay-Z also demonstrated the maturity and self-confidence to avoid demanding credit or singling out weaker players for abuse. Sure, he continues to send out warnings to smaller powers, but he is usually careful not to name names and to keep his messages broad. He complains "I'm just so offended, how am I even mentioned by all these f***ing beginners", but he concludes not with a threat but with a weary shake of the head: "all these little bi***es, too big for their britches, burning their little bridges... f***ing ridiculous." It's not his fault if they destroy themselves -- like Obama eyeing Qaddafi, Mubarak or Assad, it's really up to them to decide whether they will choose their next steps poorly. And he loves to flaunt his wealth and status -- indeed, such displays are part of how he signals his hegemonic standing. But if "planking on a million" can be humble, then this is a strategy of humility.

Watch the Throne therefore should not be judged as an album, but rather as a move in this savvy strategy of institutionalizing hegemony in the face of potential decline. Kanye and Jay-Z's alliance offers a new blueprint for managing decline in a turbulent world from which international relations scholars and American foreign policy practitioners alike should learn. And if political scientists don't want to take lessons from hip hop artists, then allow me to give the last word to Cyhi Da Prince: "my haters got PhDs, y'all just some major haters with some math minors."

Addendum and Commentary:

- Spencer Ackerman warns that we should not just watch the throne, but instead keep an eye on the rising power of the periphery.

- Lil Wayne goes directly at Jay-Z - how should the Jay-Z/Kanye alliance deal with a challenge from a serious peer competitor?

- Game renews attack with "Uncle Otis" - did Jay-Z's restraint embolden challenger because of absence of consequences for defiance?

The scenes of the joyous reception for Libyan "Freedom Fighters" entering Tripoli with little resistance yesterday sent an electric shock through the Arab public. The Jordanian blogger Naseem Tarawnah beautifully captured this regional effect: "Staying up last night to watch the events unfold on the streets of Tripoli, I cannot help but feel the sense of confidence that swept across the region last night; radiating from TV, computer and mobile screens." My Twitter feed could barely keep up with the rush of excited declarations that Assad must be watching Tripoli on TV and seeing his own future. 

The reactions yesterday once again show the potent and real demonstration effects which characterize today's highly unified Arab political space.I don't see how anybody watching al-Jazeera, following Arab social media networks, or talking to people in the region could fail to appreciate the interconnected nature of Arab struggles. It's the same sense of shared fate and urgency that those who follow the Arab public sphere could feel in February and March. I supported the NATO intervention in Libya in large part because of that powerful Arab popular demand and the likely impact of the outcome in Libya across the region.

Now, as Syrians march chanting "Qaddafi is gone, now it's your turn, Bashar!" and excited protestors in Yemen's Change Square shout "our turn tomorrow!" there's suddenly a chance to recapture some of that lost regional momentum. It has been a long time since there has been such a unified Arab public sphere, or such hope that the long summer's stalemate might be broken and the momentum of January and February reclaimed. As one put it, "the fight isn't over in Yemen & Syria; Libyan friends remind us when we think its over we're closer to victory than we think."

Everybody understands that there is a long way to go and that the new Libya will face many challenges. Nobody thinks that the new enthusiasm from Libya will on its own magically end the stalemate in Yemen or stop the bloodshed in Syria. But the impact of Qaddafi's fall is resonating powerfully across the region in all the right ways.  

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Late at night on Sunday, August 7, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia delivered an unusual televised rebuke to Syria’s Bashar al-Asad calling on him to “stop the killing machine” and immediately begin reforms. The Saudi move against Damascus was only the latest twist in Riyadh’s newly energetic foreign policy. Since March, Saudi Arabia has been in the forefront of a regional counter-offensive designed to blunt the momentum of the Arab uprisings and shape the new regional order to its liking. After a decade of a regional order defined by an alliance of “moderate” autocracies aligned with the United States and Israel against a “Resistance” axis, the Saudis have responded to an age of revolution by leading what many now call a regional counter-revolution. This has placed them at odds with the Obama administration in key theaters, disrupted long-standing alliances, and brought Riyadh to the forefront of regional diplomacy.

While many in the region now see counter-revolution anywhere, in fact this trope likely gives too much credit to the Saudis and their alleged conspiracy. They are certainly trying to shape regional politics to their liking, but the results have not been particularly impressive. The Saudi effort to broker a transition plan in Yemen has gone nowhere. The near collapse of the Yemeni state left politics gridlocked, with not even the dire wounding of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a mysterious attack and his flight to a Saudi hospital breaking the stalemate. Its early enthusiasm for intervention in Libya, fueled in no small part by long-festering resentment over Moammar Qaddafi’s reported attempt to assassinate King Abdullah, faded. The regime long seemed baffled by the unrest in Syria, unable to decide how to respond to the turbulence, and has not yet translated its newfound urgency into any practical steps to bring about change. It remains to be seen whether the Saudi regime can sustain the level of energetic diplomacy of the last few months as a succession crisis looms and regional challenges mount. And even if it does, little in its diplomatic record over decades suggests that its approach of throwing money at problems will work.

To help understand the Saudi response to the Arab uprising, we have just released POMEPS Briefing #5, "The Saudi Counter-Revolution," collecting Middle East Channel essays by Greg Gause, Toby Jones, Stephane Lacroix, Steffen Hertog, Kristin Diwan, Madawi al-Rasheed, and many more. The rest of my introduction to the Briefing follows below the break:

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Al-Shaab Yureed Tatbiq Shari'a Allah!  The people want to implement God's Sharia! That chant rang through my ears as I struggled through a jam-packed Tahrir Square on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Islamists packed the symbolic home of Egypt's revolution to demand that their presence be known. Two days later, the ill-advised occupation of Tahrir Square by mostly secular and leftist political trends which began on July 8 largely ended, as most groups decided to pull out and then security forces cleared the remains. Feelings are running raw in Egypt as the revolution approaches yet another turning point. The galvanizing events of the weekend mark a new stage in one of the most urgent battles in post-Mubarak Egypt: who owns the revolution, and who may speak in its name?

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"I have seen no evidence yet in terms of hard changes on the ground that the Syrian government is willing to reform at anything like the speed demanded by the street protestors. If it doesn’t start moving with far greater alacrity, the street will wash them away."

That was the blunt verdict offered by U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford in a wide-ranging telephone interview with Foreign Policy today. Ford sharply criticized the Syrian government's continuing repression against peaceful protestors and called on President Bashar al-Assad to "take the hard decisions" to begin meaningful reforms before it is too late. Not, Ford stressed, because of American concerns but because of the impatience of the Syrian opposition itself. "This is not about Americans, it is about the way the Syrian government mistreats its own people," Ford stressed repeatedly. "This is really about Syrians interacting with other Syrians. I’m a marginal thing on the sidelines. I’m not that important."

Some might disagree. Last Thursday and Friday, Ford made a dramatic visit to the embattled city of Hama to demonstrate the United States' support for peaceful protests and its condemnation of the Syrian government's use of violence. His trip to Hama electrified supporters of the Syrian opposition, and marked a sharp escalation in U.S. efforts to deal with the difficult Syrian stalemate. It also sparked a vicious Syrian response, as government-backed mobs attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, inflicting considerable damage. In a caustic note posted to his Facebook page, Ford called on the Syrian government to "stop beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators." Ford's sharp criticism of the Syrian government's violence against peaceful protestors and detailed outline of multilateral and American diplomatic efforts to pressure the Syrian regime suggest that the recent U.S. rhetorical escalation does mark a new stage in the ongoing crisis.

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