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A Plague of Black Swans in the Middle East

by Gary Sick
In the parlance of political risk assessment, a Black Swan is an event regarded as highly improbable or even impossible before it happens. A Black Swan is not only surprising but has the capacity to disrupt or severely alter the anticipated course of events. Once a Black Swan is sighted, however, the expert community quickly adjusts to the new reality and begins to explain why, under the circumstances, a Black Swan was likely to appear and, perhaps, was even inevitable.
As a card-carrying member of the chattering class, I am intimately familiar with all aspects of this phenomenon. And as someone who focuses on the Middle East, I can produce a number of historical examples. The Iranian revolution was a Black Swan. The Saudi-led oil boycott of 1973 was a Black Swan, even though the self-inflicted wounds of the embargo persuaded the Saudi leadership and its Arab allies to renounce the use of such tactics in the future. Some of the wars and coups in modern Middle East history might count as Black Swans. However, once the dust settled, things frequently returned to approximately their previous state, little changed except perhaps the cast of characters and the national balance sheet. The persistence of a seemingly unshakeable, if highly disagreeable, status quo made outcomes more predictable.
The Middle East today is in a new stage altogether. It seems as though an entire flock of Black Swans has descended on the region, confounding both experts and local populations. Since the region shows no signs of returning to what we came to regard over a period of generations as “normal,” it is worth cataloguing some of these events and their implications. http://lobelog.com/a-plague-of-black-swans-in-the-middle-east/#more-33189