Freestyler
12-27-2000, 12:06 PM
Hi, guys! You've gotta read this.
I've run across the brochure yesterday night and read it till the end - so engaging it was. The author, Bernard Lewis, takes a holistic approach offering a historical outlook to the political situation in the Middle East and Central Asia.
It should be equally interesing to all of you who are now participating in the discussions on the topics of religion, democracy and politics on this board.
What I liked most about this article is that it offers a virtually unbiased, objecitve analysis, taking a positive view rather then a normative (i.e., showing "what it is", rather then "what it should be")
I hope you will learn and clarify as many things for yourselves as I did from the brochure.
Despite it being intolerably long, I think you will be very much rewarded for your spent time.
I also want you to make analogues whenever you come across the topic of the Middle East" with Central Asia, because the situation seems quite to be repeating itself in our region, too.
(After all the discussions on the related topics on this board and after reading the brochure I felt as we were in some kind of scientific experiment while the author was the scientist conducting the experiment and making valuable notes) So here I am, trying to share my modest experience
Below are only the introductory part of the brochure and some extracts from the body:
================================================== ===========================
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<The Future of the Middle East>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
According to a conventiosn commonly agreed among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a French expeditionary force commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded and conquered Egypt and stayed there until it was forced to leave by a squadron of the Royal Navy commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson. This was the first Western advance against the previously dominant power of Islam. But it was the first incursion from the West into the heartlands of the Islamic world.
This began a period during which ultimate power, and with it responsibility, for what happened in this region resided elsewhere; when the basic theme of international relations and of much else in the Middle East was shaped by the rivalries of Non-Middle Eastern states. These rivalries went through several successful phases – interference, intervention, penetration, domination and, in the final phase, reluctant departure. From time to time the actors in the drama changed and the script was modified, but the basic pattern remained the same. In the final act of this drama two external superpowers whose rivalry dominated the Middle East were the Soviet Union and the United States.
Future historians of the region may well agree on a new convention of periodization – that the era in the Middle Eastern history, which was opened by Napoleon and Nelson, was closed by Bush and Gorbachev. In the crisis of 1990-1 precipitated by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, neither of the two superpowers played the imperial role which tradition and popular expectation assigned to it; the one because it could not, the other because it would not.
Moscow, once so great a force in the Middle Eastern affairs, could neither restrain nor rescue Saddam Hussein. Washington, having freed Kuwait from occupation and Saudi Arabia from the threat of invasion, had accomplished its war aims and unilaterally declared a cease fire, leaving Saddam’s regime intact and permitting him, with only minor impediments to crush his domestic opponents and in due course resume his policies.
As long as the Soviet Union existed, and as long as the Cold War was the main theme policy, American presence in the Middle East was part of a global strategy designed to cope with a global confrontation. With the ending of that confrontation such a strategy became unnecessary. No discernible strategy has yet emerged to replace it.
The break-up of the Soviet Union brought another important consequence – the emergence of eight new sovereign independent states in Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Two of these, Georgia and Armenia, are Christian; the rest Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are predominantly Muslim. All these countries are part of the historic Middle East, linked to it by a thousand ties of culture, language and history. The Tajik language is a form of Persian; the other five Muslim states use languages related to Turkish. The Turks, Persian and Afghans show increasing interest in their newly liberated kinsfolk across the former Soviet frontier. They are also interested in those other Muslim peoples – Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Circassians and others, who remain within the Russian federation. The same interest will in time extend to the Muslims of Chinese Central Asia.
The emergence of a world of Turkic states, like Arab world that emerged from the break-up of the British and French empires, will be increasingly important in the decades to come, and will have a significant effect on the Middle East to which they are now returning. But there are differences between the two cases. With a few exceptions - Algeria, Aden – British and French rule in the Arab world was indirect and of brief duration, The Transcaucasian and Central Asian territories were annexed by the tsars and retained by the Soviets under a thin veneer of federalism. Their experience of imperial rule was in many ways profoundly different from that of the Arabs. Their efforts to disentangle themselves from their former masters offer some similarities to the early stages of Arab independence. But they will be dealing with Moscow, not with London or Paris; with land-based power, not with a maritime and commercial ascendancy. The course and perhaps the outcome of their struggle for the true independence will surely reflect these differences.
For the time being however, Russia is out of the game and likely to remain so for some years to come; America is reluctant to return. This means that in many significant respects the situation reverts to what it was before. Outside powers have interests in the region, both strategic and economic; they may from time to time interfere in the Middle Eastern affairs, or even influence their course. But their role will no longer be one of domination or decision.
Many in the Middle East are having difficulty in adjusting themselves to the new situation created by the departure of the imperial powers. For the first time in almost 200 years, the rulers and peoples of the Middle East are having to accept the final responsibility for their own affairs, to make their own mistakes and to accept the consequences. This is difficult to internalise, even to perceive, after so long a period. For the entire lifetimes of those who formulate and conduct policy at the present time and their predecessors for many generations, vital decisions were made elsewhere, ultimate control lay elsewhere, and the principal task of statesmanship and diplomacy was as far as possible to avoid or reduce the dangers of this situation and to exploit such opportunities as it might from time to time offer. It is very difficult to forsake the habits not just of a lifetime but of a whole era of history. The difficulty is much greater when alien cultural, social and economic pre-eminence continues and even increases, despite the ending of alien political and military domination.
Military and to a growing extent political intervention by the West has indeed ended, but the impact of its science and culture, its technology, amenities and institutions remains and even increases. As in other parts of non-Western world, this impact has been and will be enormous.
In these circumstances, it is natural that the Middle Easterners continue to assume – and proceed on the assumption – that the real responsibility and decision still lie elsewhere. In its crudest form, this belief leads to wild and strange conspiracy theories directed against those whom they regard as their enemies – Israel, and more generally the Jews, The United States, and more generally the West. No theory is too absurd to be asserted or too preposterous to be widely and instantly believed. Even among more responsible statesmen and analysts, a similar belief in an alien power, albeit in a less crude form, often seems to guide both analysis and policy. Some even go so far as to invite outside intervention, presumably in the belief that only outside powers have the capacity to make and enforce decisions. A case in point is the constant appeal to the United States to involve itself in the Arab-Israel conflict, oddly coupled with the repeated accusation of “American Imperialism”.
This state of mind is likely to continue for some time, with appeals for support or even intervention to the United States, to Russia and even to the European Union. In time, no doubt, Middle Eastern governments and peoples will learn how to use this window of opportunity to the best advantage – that is, of course, if the window remains open long enough.
Those who accuse the West and more particularly the United States of “imperialist designs” on the Middle East are tilting against shadows from the past. There is however another charge with more substance – that of cultural penetration.
American culture differs from all its predecessors in two important respects. First, it is independent of political control and extends far beyond the areas of American political dominance or even influence, as for example in Islamic Iran or communist China. Second, it is in profound sense popular. Previous cultural expansions were limited to political and intellectual elites. American popular culture appeals to every element of the population and especially to the young. It also brings a special message to elements disempowered in the traditional order, notably women. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is seen as a mortal threat by both the defenders of tradition and the exponents of fundamentalist ideologies. How that threat is perceived is clear from Khomeini’s repeated characterisation of the United States as the “Great Satan”. No intelligence service is needed to interpret this epithet – just a copy of the Qur’an. The last verses, the best known along with the first, talk about Satan, describing him as “the insidious tempter who whispers in the heart of men”. Satan is neither a conqueror nor an exploiter. He is a seducer, most dangerous when he smiles.
The challenge of the Western culture has been a major theme in Middle Eastern debate for almost two centuries. American popular culture presents this challenge in its most recent and also its most pervasive form. Middle Eastern rulers, leaders and thinkers have offered and will no doubt continue to offer various responses to this challenge – imitate, adopt, adapt, absorb, or complain, denounce, reject.
FAITH OR FREEDOM
When General Bonaparte arrived in 1978 there were only two sovereign states in the Middle East: Turkey and Iran. Today, these are resuming their inescapable roles as the major powers of the region. The regimes in both, in their present form, were founded by revolution – the secular republic of Turkey and the Islamic republic of Iran. Both are inspired by revolutionary ideologies, which might be named after their founders as Kemalism and Khomeinism. And both ideologies, albeit in very different ways, are under attack at home.
Today, increasing numbers of Middle Easterners, disillusioned with the past ideals and – in many countries – alienated from their present rulers, are turning their thoughts of their loyalties to one or other of these two ideologies – liberal democracy and Islamic fundamentalism. Each offers e reasoned diagnosis of the ills of the region, and a prescription for its cure.
In this struggle, fundamentalism disposes of several advantages. It uses language that is similar and intelligible, appealing to the vast mass of the population in a Muslim country. At a time of economic deprivation and political oppression, many are ready to believe that these evils are a result of alien and infidel machinations, and that the remedy is a return to the original, authentic way of Islam. The fundamentalists also have an immense advantage over other opposition groups in that the mosques and their personnel provide them with a network for meeting and communication, which even the most tyrannical of governments cannot suppress or entirely control. Indeed, tyrannical regimes help their fundamentalist opponents by eliminating competing oppositions.
The exponents of democracy in contrast offer a programme and a language that are unfamiliar and, for many, unintelligible. They have further disadvantage that the name of democracy and those of the parties and parliaments through which it operates have been tarnished in the eyes of many Muslims by the corrupt and inept regimes that used these names in the recent past. In contrast, appeals in the name of God and the Prophet to cleanse society by restoring his holy law have a force and immediacy unattainable by democrats whose arguments and examples, indeed, whose vocabulary is recognisably alien. An Arabic loanword like "dimuqratiyya" lacks the resonance of "shari’a".
...
The strength of the democrats, and the corresponding weaknesses of the fundamentalist, is that the former have a programme of development and betterment, while the latter offer only a return to a mythologized past.
...The problem is that the weaknesses of the democrats are immediate and obvious; their strength are long-term, and therefore for many, obscure.
...
(To be continued)
P.S. All the bold, italics, underline formats are my job and might probably reflect my bias, if some of you will sens one.
Keep it ...
I've run across the brochure yesterday night and read it till the end - so engaging it was. The author, Bernard Lewis, takes a holistic approach offering a historical outlook to the political situation in the Middle East and Central Asia.
It should be equally interesing to all of you who are now participating in the discussions on the topics of religion, democracy and politics on this board.
What I liked most about this article is that it offers a virtually unbiased, objecitve analysis, taking a positive view rather then a normative (i.e., showing "what it is", rather then "what it should be")
I hope you will learn and clarify as many things for yourselves as I did from the brochure.
Despite it being intolerably long, I think you will be very much rewarded for your spent time.
I also want you to make analogues whenever you come across the topic of the Middle East" with Central Asia, because the situation seems quite to be repeating itself in our region, too.
(After all the discussions on the related topics on this board and after reading the brochure I felt as we were in some kind of scientific experiment while the author was the scientist conducting the experiment and making valuable notes) So here I am, trying to share my modest experience
Below are only the introductory part of the brochure and some extracts from the body:
================================================== ===========================
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<The Future of the Middle East>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
According to a conventiosn commonly agreed among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a French expeditionary force commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded and conquered Egypt and stayed there until it was forced to leave by a squadron of the Royal Navy commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson. This was the first Western advance against the previously dominant power of Islam. But it was the first incursion from the West into the heartlands of the Islamic world.
This began a period during which ultimate power, and with it responsibility, for what happened in this region resided elsewhere; when the basic theme of international relations and of much else in the Middle East was shaped by the rivalries of Non-Middle Eastern states. These rivalries went through several successful phases – interference, intervention, penetration, domination and, in the final phase, reluctant departure. From time to time the actors in the drama changed and the script was modified, but the basic pattern remained the same. In the final act of this drama two external superpowers whose rivalry dominated the Middle East were the Soviet Union and the United States.
Future historians of the region may well agree on a new convention of periodization – that the era in the Middle Eastern history, which was opened by Napoleon and Nelson, was closed by Bush and Gorbachev. In the crisis of 1990-1 precipitated by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, neither of the two superpowers played the imperial role which tradition and popular expectation assigned to it; the one because it could not, the other because it would not.
Moscow, once so great a force in the Middle Eastern affairs, could neither restrain nor rescue Saddam Hussein. Washington, having freed Kuwait from occupation and Saudi Arabia from the threat of invasion, had accomplished its war aims and unilaterally declared a cease fire, leaving Saddam’s regime intact and permitting him, with only minor impediments to crush his domestic opponents and in due course resume his policies.
As long as the Soviet Union existed, and as long as the Cold War was the main theme policy, American presence in the Middle East was part of a global strategy designed to cope with a global confrontation. With the ending of that confrontation such a strategy became unnecessary. No discernible strategy has yet emerged to replace it.
The break-up of the Soviet Union brought another important consequence – the emergence of eight new sovereign independent states in Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Two of these, Georgia and Armenia, are Christian; the rest Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are predominantly Muslim. All these countries are part of the historic Middle East, linked to it by a thousand ties of culture, language and history. The Tajik language is a form of Persian; the other five Muslim states use languages related to Turkish. The Turks, Persian and Afghans show increasing interest in their newly liberated kinsfolk across the former Soviet frontier. They are also interested in those other Muslim peoples – Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Circassians and others, who remain within the Russian federation. The same interest will in time extend to the Muslims of Chinese Central Asia.
The emergence of a world of Turkic states, like Arab world that emerged from the break-up of the British and French empires, will be increasingly important in the decades to come, and will have a significant effect on the Middle East to which they are now returning. But there are differences between the two cases. With a few exceptions - Algeria, Aden – British and French rule in the Arab world was indirect and of brief duration, The Transcaucasian and Central Asian territories were annexed by the tsars and retained by the Soviets under a thin veneer of federalism. Their experience of imperial rule was in many ways profoundly different from that of the Arabs. Their efforts to disentangle themselves from their former masters offer some similarities to the early stages of Arab independence. But they will be dealing with Moscow, not with London or Paris; with land-based power, not with a maritime and commercial ascendancy. The course and perhaps the outcome of their struggle for the true independence will surely reflect these differences.
For the time being however, Russia is out of the game and likely to remain so for some years to come; America is reluctant to return. This means that in many significant respects the situation reverts to what it was before. Outside powers have interests in the region, both strategic and economic; they may from time to time interfere in the Middle Eastern affairs, or even influence their course. But their role will no longer be one of domination or decision.
Many in the Middle East are having difficulty in adjusting themselves to the new situation created by the departure of the imperial powers. For the first time in almost 200 years, the rulers and peoples of the Middle East are having to accept the final responsibility for their own affairs, to make their own mistakes and to accept the consequences. This is difficult to internalise, even to perceive, after so long a period. For the entire lifetimes of those who formulate and conduct policy at the present time and their predecessors for many generations, vital decisions were made elsewhere, ultimate control lay elsewhere, and the principal task of statesmanship and diplomacy was as far as possible to avoid or reduce the dangers of this situation and to exploit such opportunities as it might from time to time offer. It is very difficult to forsake the habits not just of a lifetime but of a whole era of history. The difficulty is much greater when alien cultural, social and economic pre-eminence continues and even increases, despite the ending of alien political and military domination.
Military and to a growing extent political intervention by the West has indeed ended, but the impact of its science and culture, its technology, amenities and institutions remains and even increases. As in other parts of non-Western world, this impact has been and will be enormous.
In these circumstances, it is natural that the Middle Easterners continue to assume – and proceed on the assumption – that the real responsibility and decision still lie elsewhere. In its crudest form, this belief leads to wild and strange conspiracy theories directed against those whom they regard as their enemies – Israel, and more generally the Jews, The United States, and more generally the West. No theory is too absurd to be asserted or too preposterous to be widely and instantly believed. Even among more responsible statesmen and analysts, a similar belief in an alien power, albeit in a less crude form, often seems to guide both analysis and policy. Some even go so far as to invite outside intervention, presumably in the belief that only outside powers have the capacity to make and enforce decisions. A case in point is the constant appeal to the United States to involve itself in the Arab-Israel conflict, oddly coupled with the repeated accusation of “American Imperialism”.
This state of mind is likely to continue for some time, with appeals for support or even intervention to the United States, to Russia and even to the European Union. In time, no doubt, Middle Eastern governments and peoples will learn how to use this window of opportunity to the best advantage – that is, of course, if the window remains open long enough.
Those who accuse the West and more particularly the United States of “imperialist designs” on the Middle East are tilting against shadows from the past. There is however another charge with more substance – that of cultural penetration.
American culture differs from all its predecessors in two important respects. First, it is independent of political control and extends far beyond the areas of American political dominance or even influence, as for example in Islamic Iran or communist China. Second, it is in profound sense popular. Previous cultural expansions were limited to political and intellectual elites. American popular culture appeals to every element of the population and especially to the young. It also brings a special message to elements disempowered in the traditional order, notably women. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is seen as a mortal threat by both the defenders of tradition and the exponents of fundamentalist ideologies. How that threat is perceived is clear from Khomeini’s repeated characterisation of the United States as the “Great Satan”. No intelligence service is needed to interpret this epithet – just a copy of the Qur’an. The last verses, the best known along with the first, talk about Satan, describing him as “the insidious tempter who whispers in the heart of men”. Satan is neither a conqueror nor an exploiter. He is a seducer, most dangerous when he smiles.
The challenge of the Western culture has been a major theme in Middle Eastern debate for almost two centuries. American popular culture presents this challenge in its most recent and also its most pervasive form. Middle Eastern rulers, leaders and thinkers have offered and will no doubt continue to offer various responses to this challenge – imitate, adopt, adapt, absorb, or complain, denounce, reject.
FAITH OR FREEDOM
When General Bonaparte arrived in 1978 there were only two sovereign states in the Middle East: Turkey and Iran. Today, these are resuming their inescapable roles as the major powers of the region. The regimes in both, in their present form, were founded by revolution – the secular republic of Turkey and the Islamic republic of Iran. Both are inspired by revolutionary ideologies, which might be named after their founders as Kemalism and Khomeinism. And both ideologies, albeit in very different ways, are under attack at home.
Today, increasing numbers of Middle Easterners, disillusioned with the past ideals and – in many countries – alienated from their present rulers, are turning their thoughts of their loyalties to one or other of these two ideologies – liberal democracy and Islamic fundamentalism. Each offers e reasoned diagnosis of the ills of the region, and a prescription for its cure.
In this struggle, fundamentalism disposes of several advantages. It uses language that is similar and intelligible, appealing to the vast mass of the population in a Muslim country. At a time of economic deprivation and political oppression, many are ready to believe that these evils are a result of alien and infidel machinations, and that the remedy is a return to the original, authentic way of Islam. The fundamentalists also have an immense advantage over other opposition groups in that the mosques and their personnel provide them with a network for meeting and communication, which even the most tyrannical of governments cannot suppress or entirely control. Indeed, tyrannical regimes help their fundamentalist opponents by eliminating competing oppositions.
The exponents of democracy in contrast offer a programme and a language that are unfamiliar and, for many, unintelligible. They have further disadvantage that the name of democracy and those of the parties and parliaments through which it operates have been tarnished in the eyes of many Muslims by the corrupt and inept regimes that used these names in the recent past. In contrast, appeals in the name of God and the Prophet to cleanse society by restoring his holy law have a force and immediacy unattainable by democrats whose arguments and examples, indeed, whose vocabulary is recognisably alien. An Arabic loanword like "dimuqratiyya" lacks the resonance of "shari’a".
...
The strength of the democrats, and the corresponding weaknesses of the fundamentalist, is that the former have a programme of development and betterment, while the latter offer only a return to a mythologized past.
...The problem is that the weaknesses of the democrats are immediate and obvious; their strength are long-term, and therefore for many, obscure.
...
(To be continued)
P.S. All the bold, italics, underline formats are my job and might probably reflect my bias, if some of you will sens one.
Keep it ...