Ask most Arabs what they think of the Arab League and the response will be one of derision, if not downright anger. The League is seen to have failed Arabs. In the 61 years since it was founded, all it has ever done is talk. Annual summits, emergency summits, conferences, urgent meetings — if success can be quantified in terms of man hours spent talking, the League must be the most successful organization on earth. It can talk ad infinitum on any issue.
But decisions and action? That is another matter. Yes, there have been one or two successes, such as the 1974 decision in Rabat to recognize the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians. That was in fact a decision the rest of the world followed. But otherwise, it is a humiliating void — at best, decisions taken and then forgotten, at worst squabbling and division. Since 1945, the League has proved consistently incapable of providing united, effective support for the Palestinians against the Israelis, let alone preventing inter-Arab conflict or ending civil wars in member states. The far-from-resolved conflict in Lebanon only serves to underline the League’s impotence. There was not even a summit — but then what was the point in a summit that would have ended either in rancor or in an humiliatingly futile statement about Lebanon’s sovereignty while the Israelis and Hezbollah battled it out on the ground and even more Lebanese died?
The League’s failure is not because the Arab world does not have the means to solve its own problems and that the power lies elsewhere. That is a delusion. Arabs have the means. There is oil and the Arab world’s purchasing power. Merely the threat to look for purchasers and suppliers further east would have consequences in the West. The League has failed because it is institutionally incapable of producing policies and enacting them. It is operated by a mechanism for indecision and gridlock: consensus. All it requires is for one or two member states to disagree. Ideological differences, political rivalries, the unwillingness of one government to be seen agreeing with the ideas of another — all have stymied Arab unity of action at different times.
The Arab public is sick of it. It wants a league that can take action, that can send in troops where necessary, not just to defend member states when invaded, like Kuwait or Lebanon, but also provide humanitarian aid in times of natural disaster.
This has what spurred Foreign Minister Prince Saudi Al-Faisal to suggest that the League be revamped. For that to happen there need to be concrete proposals and they need to be proposals that will make a difference. The most obvious one is to drop consensus. It is the enemy of decision-making. It needs to be replaced by majority voting, perhaps linked to the population size of member states (that and the size of the majority can be negotiated). Anything less than the removal of consensus will be an opportunity wasted.
If consensus is not done away with, the League will remain a byword for Arab inaction and the butt of Arab jokes.
