Ceremony for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Baghdad, Dec. 15, 2011. Mario Tama/Getty Images
July 05, 2015
A
third wave of geopolitics has been making its way into Middle East political
geography since the end of the Cold War. The first wave began with the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The second wave followed World War II,
when the European colonial order crumbled. The third wave will reach its apex
with the demise of the American order in the region and the spread of political
disarray. The contemporary Middle East is the product of these three
geopolitical waves. Among the consequences is the rise of the extremist group
known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Geopolitics is the intersection of geography, power,
and foreign policy, and it often focuses on the states, peoples, borders,
resources, environments, trade routes, and human traffic. In the transition to
a new geopolitics, these factors become gradually reconfigured and they assume
floating realities, differing directions, and varying significance. The key
features of the emergent third wave of Middle East geopolitics are failed
states, humiliated peoples, crippled economies, extreme inequality and poverty,
devastated environments, plundered resources, conflicted geographies, foreign
intrusions, and violent radicalism.
The Middle East is where ancient
civilizations and three major religions developed, making it a crossroads of
Europe, Africa, and Asia for many centuries. The region has been an
intersection of people, trade, and ideas. It has been the locale of numerous
progressive developments such as scientific discoveries, giving rise to the
Persian, Arab, and Ottoman empires. During Islam’s Golden Age, scholars from
around the world would gather in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the capital of
the Abbasid caliphate, to exchange knowledge and translate the known sciences
into Arabic.
The resource-rich Middle East proved an attractive
prize for outside powers, including Europeans, Russians, and Americans,
particularly since the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Colonial Europe, imperial Russia, and capitalist America
have at various times and with varying degrees of success dominated the region.
Their rivalries, an iteration of the Great Game, left a lasting and, more often
than not, devastating impact on Middle East states and politics, peoples,
environments, resources, and economies. The region’s authoritarian rulers,
often the stooges of foreign powers, share responsibility for the plight of the
Middle Eastern peoples.
Ottomans
and Colonialists
The first wave of Middle East
geopolitics was triggered a century ago with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire,
the last Islamic global power, in World War I by European powers including
Britain, France and Italy. A new dispensation arrived for Arabs, who had been a
marginal population within the empire. While accepting the Ottoman Turks as
fellow Muslims, Arabs had little interaction with them and intermarriage was
rare. The empire was a multiethnic state based on loyalty to the ruling
dynasty, not on a shared national identity. Even before the Ottoman collapse,
Arabs had started identifying themselves as a distinct national group rather
than as subjects of the empire. In Egypt, Arabic displaced Turkish as the
language of the local government and the governing elite. When the
nationalistic ideas of the Turks arose in the final years of the empire, Arabs
likewise developed their thinking about national identity and independence.
Embracing Arab nationalism, and with the support of
Britain, Arabs thus revolted against the Ottomans in the midst of World War I.
They did not care to defend the Ottomans against the “infidel” European forces,
who meanwhile claimed to support Arab independence and bring justice to their
homelands. In 1914, the Ottomans declared jihad, or holy war, against Britain
and France, yet the Arab Muslims, eager for independence, were not swayed.
However, the Europeans did not
keep their promises. They redrew the Middle East map based on the Sykes-Picot
Agreement of 1916, which did not fulfill the plan for Arab independence.
Instead, Britain and France colonized the Arabs as well as the Kurds, and
mistreated them worse than their Ottoman overlords had ever done. Arab Muslims
were left humiliated by non-Muslims. They became the subjects of domineering
European powers. The region was chopped up into small states with unnatural
borders and heterogeneous geographies and cultures. These new states would
isolate families, divide ethnic groups and religious sects, and redraw the map
of natural resources such as important waterways. Local orders were dismantled,
traditional economies destroyed, cultures demonized, resources plundered, and
politics corrupted.
In time, World War II led to the
collapse of the European colonial order in the Middle East. Europeans had
transformed their colonies into artificial and conflicting nation states to be
ruled by local dictators whom the Europeans had nurtured. The invented border
configurations, largely straight lines, had no historical basis or even
geographical logic. The only logic was political: plant the seeds of future
conflicts and thereby divide and rule. The nation-state concept was a European
one hardly applicable to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. The groups or
tribal leaders who won control from the Europeans made sure that they would
hold on to power as long as they could.
This transition from colonialism
to neocolonialism and dictatorship would serve both local rulers and foreign
powers. The European approach to forming new nations all but guaranteed that
the Middle East and North Africa region would become and remain a
conflict-ridden territory. The inter-state, inter-ethnic, and inter-sectarian
fights today are direct products of the European policy of divide and rule as
well as a top-down nation‑building strategy that crippled
citizenship and civil society development.
However, in the years following World War II the
region became increasingly unmanageable for the weakened colonial powers.
Liberation movements sprung up in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and
Iran. Pan-Arabism became a major political force, culminating in the union of
Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961. This
anti-colonialist Arabism, along with the revolutionary populism of Nasserism
and Baathism, contributed to the Suez Crisis, which would come to symbolize the
end of Britain’s role as a world power.
The second wave of geopolitics, in the context of the
Cold War, then emerged. As Europeans gradually withdrew from the region, the
United States and the Soviet Union filled the vacuum. The struggle between the
two emergent superpowers of the capitalist and socialist blocs took form in
Iran immediately after the end of World War II. In 1945, while British troops
withdrew from the country, there were signs that Moscow would not comply with a
March 1946 deadline to also withdraw its troops from Iran. The Soviets finally
complied after an American ultimatum and lengthy negotiations with the Iranian
government. In a dramatic manifestation of Cold War maneuvering, in 1953 the
United States and Britain organized a coup against Prime Minister Mohammad
Mosaddegh in response to his government’s nationalization of the Iranian oil
sector.
The Arab Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s divided the
Arab World between pro-Western Arab monarchies including Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
pre-1958 Iraq, and non-Arab Iran, and the pan-Arab and Islamic socialist states
such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Libya, North Yemen, and post‑1958 Iraq. As the Cold War
split the Middle East along an East-West line, oil was emerging as the most
significant global energy resource, and the local economies gradually became
dependent on oil rent. The most significant regional development was the formation
of the State of Israel and the resulting first major Arab-Israeli war. The
United States then assumed the custody of oil, Israel, and the moderate Arab
states, as the Soviet Union buttressed the populist and nationalist forces in
the region. This was the beginning of ideology‑centered geopolitics in the Middle
East.
In this bipolar world, oil rent became a curse, as it
led to extreme class divides between a minority super-rich and a majority
super-poor, with a small but growing middle class besieged in between. Oil also
led to large military and luxury purchases, uneven urbanization and
environmental wastes, and growing dictatorship and corruption of the dependent
and largely weak states. The Arab‑Israeli conflict exacerbated external
interventions and local distresses caused by war and human displacement.
Under these conditions, Arab and Muslim reassertion
took the form of several nationalist and populist coups, and a struggle against
Israel. However, these movements failed to evict the imperial powers, defeat
Israel, or deliver the promise of justice, freedom, and independence sought by
the growing middle and working classes. The military defeats and loss of lands
to the Jewish state became a source of frustration, anger, and ultimately
humiliation. In the face of defeat and despair, a culture of victimization
emerged in the Arab World.
Contributing to the humiliation, Orientalism was
promoted in Western policy circles, academia, and media, exaggerating and
distorting the differences between Arab peoples and cultures and those of the
West. Arabs and Muslims were viewed as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at
times dangerous. For many years the thinking of Western scholars was dominated
by the idea that Arabs are not ready for democracy, and are indeed even
incapable of living under democratic rule. The racism and stereotyping
went so far as to claim that there was an “Arab mind” bent on rejectionism,
fundamentalism, and terrorism. Cultural demonization complemented the Western
economic domination and murderous political humiliation; while Britain was
seizing control of Arab oil resources, for example, France was killing a
million Algerians.
Worse, Arabs and Muslims were also humiliated by their
own corrupt, inept, or ignorant rulers—dictators and populists alike. These
rulers, many of whom had been nurtured and supported by outside powers, made
the national state their private property, extended their rule to lifelong
terms, and limited elite circulation to their immediate families, allies, and
stooges. They created oligarchic economies, mismanaged the country, and
misappropriated the public budget and wealth.
Middle Eastern rulers, aided by foreign powers,
destroyed all nationalist, reformist, and socialist opposition. In Iran, Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, supported by the United States and Britain, crippled the
nationalist and leftist movements. In the Arab World, the Six-Day War of 1967
ended with Israel’s military defeat of the anti-West camp, including Egypt,
Jordan, and Syria, leading to the humiliation of Arab nationalists and the
death of pan-Arabism. The U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003
destroyed the last vestiges of Arab nationalism.
Islamist movements, however, survived the efforts of
Middle Eastern rulers and their foreign allies to eliminate opposition. In Syria,
while then-President Hafez Al-Assad dismantled the Syrian Cultural and Social
Forum, which sought a secular, socialist, democratic state, he failed to
annihilate the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and its various youth
organizations. In 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood’s military wing massacred
several hundred Syrian officers near Aleppo, most of whom were members of the
minority Alawite religious sect of the Al-Assad family. When cracks began
developing in the dictatorships in the late 1970s, only Islamists could quickly
emerge and assume leadership. In the Arab World, as well as in Iran and
Afghanistan, Islamist forces became radicalized and set the stage for the third
wave of Middle East geopolitics.
Refuge in
Religion
Across the Islamic World the radicalization of
Islamists occurred quite unevenly. Generally speaking, where pre-Islamic
civilizations existed, such as in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, extremism was
contained as the humiliated Muslims sought glory in their distant pasts. This
was not the case for most Arab Muslims who lacked pre-Islamic civilization. To counter humiliation they took
refuge in Islamic teachings and culture. Islamic fundamentalism is perhaps best
defined as a desire to return to Islam’s Golden Age, when most other regions of
the world, including Europe, were in decline.
During the Golden Age, the
Islamic World was ruled by a caliphate, enjoyed political superiority, and made
important advances in science and philosophy. Jihadist groups such as ISIS seek
a unified Islamic state, a restoration of the caliphate. They view the Western
powers and Arab dictators as obstacles to this objective, and are prepared to
use violence against them. In a suffocating political environment, and feeling
culturally demonized by the West, their quest to return to Islam’s past glory
led to a politics of reaction and extremism. Jihadist groups have primarily
targeted local authorities and Western powers, whom they see as the
perpetrators of their humiliation.
ISIS is inspired by religion, finding an ideological
foundation in principles derived from Salafism (a return to original Islam) and
Wahhabism (the unity of God). Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahhab was a scholar of
the conservative Hanbali school of Islam. He believed that only the Qur’an
and the Sunna are the true sources of Islamic law, unlike other schools that
accept collective scholarly reasoning (ijma) or individual analogical
reasoning (qiyas). While ISIS justifies violence on the
basis of narrow religious doctrine, its prime motivation seems essentially
political—a drive for territory, resources, trade routes, and human traffic, as
well as dignity, identity, independence, and self-preservation. It uses
religion to advance a political cause, aimed at reversing humiliation and
regaining an idealized past, rather than the other way around.
The conflict with Islamic extremism has no military
solution. ISIS is a movement with the political goal of overcoming the
humiliation that Muslims have suffered at the hands of foreign powers and local
dictators. ISIS draws on religious ideology, nostalgia for a glorious past,
deep-rooted societal impairments and psychological outrage against violations
of sacred or moral values. As long as the root causes remain, movements like
ISIS will feed on them. A case in point is that America’s self-congratulatory
killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden did nothing to prevent the rise of
ISIS, an Al-Qaeda offshoot, from the ashes.
The challenge posed by Islamic extremism is likely to
be complicated by any number of other factors as the Middle East grapples with
the third wave of geopolitics. ISIS and other groups will benefit from the
coming demise of American global power and the diminishing interest of the
United States in the Middle East. The surge in U.S. domestic oil production
through shale extraction and other technological means makes the United States
less dependent on Persian Gulf oil—a dependency that for decades has been a
vital U.S. national interest that justified the projection of military power in
the region. America’s bitter and costly experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Libya make Washington reluctant to remain directly involved in the region.
Instead, the Obama doctrine uses drone attacks and airstrikes to fight
terrorists, and sells arms to regional states to balance one against the other.
American policy also calls for a so-called pivot to Asia, whose growing
economies offer opportunities for huge trade deals.
No other major power, whether it
be Russia, China, the European Union, or even the United Nations, is willing or
able to fill the gap that will be left by America’s retreat. Russia is already
involved in supporting the Al-Assad regime in Syria, and seeks to become a
bigger player in the Middle East. But neither other Arab states nor Washington
welcomes an expanded Russian role.
Perhaps equally disturbing is the fact that no foreign
power is willing to acknowledge the causes of rising extremism and embark on a
workable solution. Domestic and foreign powers continue with authoritarian and
militaristic policies, as witnessed in the violent suppression of the Arab
Spring and the purely military approach to dealing with the challenge from
ISIS. Military sales and regime security were the main items on the agenda when
President Barack Obama hosted leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries
at a Camp David summit meeting in May. Rather than more arms sales, the Middle
East needs benevolent foreign powers, patriotic leaders, democratic politics,
and balanced economic development.
Another complicating factor is
the likely emergence of a tripartite struggle for the region as Iranians,
Turks, and Arabs seek to revive past glories. Iranians will increasingly turn
to chauvinistic Persianism, Turks to jingoistic Ottomanism, and Arabs to
intemperate Islamism. Before the Arab uprisings in 2011, Iran and Saudi Arabia
were already engaged in a new regional Cold War, with the Saudis aligned with
Egypt, Jordan, and the Arab Gulf states, and Iran with Syria as well as with
the Palestinian and Lebanese Shia factions, Hamas and Hezbollah. Saudi-Iranian
relations further deteriorated into proxy wars amid evolving political crises
in Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, and eventually Yemen.
Turkey’s intervention in Syria against the Al-Assad
government, in turn, has worsened its already strained relations with Iran. The
biggest danger is that their geopolitical rivalry will erupt into a struggle over competing
versions of Islam. Turkey’s Sunni government wishes to be a key player in the
Islamic World, while the Shia government in Iran is opposed to such a role for
Turkey or other Sunni states. Kurdish nationalists may seek to exploit the
rivalry in their quest for independence, which in turn would threaten the
territorial integrity of both Turkey and Iran. The tripartite struggle poses a
greater risk of chaos in the region than the existing Sunni-Shia split, with
its potential to fuel discord among Sunnis and widen the gulf between extremist
and moderate Muslims.
As old conflicts continue and new ones emerge, they
may assume troubling new dimensions. Domestic turmoil will increasingly pit the
younger generation of the educated middle class against the authoritarian
state, relations between the poor and the rich will become more antagonistic,
and secular and religious forces will become estranged. As states begin to
fail, regimes will call foreign powers to the rescue, a move that will further
complicate domestic politics in the region. A new era of foreign intervention
carries the risk of greater destabilization, as the crisis in Syria
illustrates.
The Way
Forward
The new geopolitics of the Middle East will be
characterized by failed states, political chaos, popular revolt, religious
extremism, inter-state conflict, foreign rivalries, and military interventions.
Countries of the region will be left plundered, their social systems twisted
and dehumanized, their environments ruined, their cities and towns vacated by
citizens migrating to safer places. In such a dark scenario, a condition of
despair will prevail and extremist groups and their rivals, struggling for
self-preservation, will scar the Middle Eastern landscape.
The trajectory of these disastrous developments can
and must change. The causes of the Middle East catastrophe must be fully
understood and addressed. Autocratic rulers and foreign powers must bear
responsibility. For too long they have worked, whether together or in
opposition, to suppress popular demands for political reform, ruin economies,
provoke regional conflict, and humiliate beleaguered populations. Ideologies, religion
in particular, have promoted obliviousness and intolerance; they and their
institutions must be reformed or else replaced by new drivers of change, namely
the young generations.
At the global level, the international community must
come together in supporting the end of dictatorship, corruption, and
monopolistic practices in favor of democratic rule, transparency, and a free
market system. Foreign powers must reduce their negative interference,
including arming dictatorial regimes, in favor of positive mediation and
coalition building. They must openly advocate political and economic reforms
and provide practical and peaceful support, logistical and financial, for
nationalist and democratic forces.
They must also refrain from coercive diplomacy in favor
of engagement, advancing economic cooperation, protecting regional
environments, and promoting sustainable democratic development. A strengthened
UN role in democratic change and economic development à la the Marshall Plan, focused
on the middle class and the working people, may be required. Other
international organizations should also become involved in the promotion of
democracy in the region. Connecting economies of these countries to the global
economy will diminish Islamic extremism. International NGOs can play a more
active part in strengthening democratic institutions.
At the regional level, there must be concrete attempts
to reform failed regimes or force them into retirement in favor of new
democratic leaderships. The Arab Spring and the earlier Green Movement in Iran
failed because democratic and nationalist forces are too weak to stand on their
own. Such movements need unconditional outside support and the development of
domestic fronts. All states in the region must be encouraged to become
legitimate, sovereign, and cooperative.
At the national level, multiple reforms must be
instituted from the top and secured by public participation at the bottom. These
should include democratizing local politics, developing the economy, leveling
income distribution, mitigating poverty, eliminating repressive social
restrictions on youth and women, and protecting religious and ethnic
minorities. Without courageous steps, the future is bleak for the peoples of
the Middle East.
Finally, while authorities at the international,
regional and national levels have a responsibility to effect significant
positive changes in the objective (economic and political) conditions of the
Muslim and Arab masses, the scholarly and journalistic communities must also
help alter their subjective (identity and culture) conditions that are so badly
demonized and damaged by Orientalism and racism. These terrible ideologies must
be dispelled if Muslims and Arabs are to regain dignity. Unless dignity is
returned to these communities, there will be no way forward to a better Middle
East.
Hooshang Amirahmadi is a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and
Public Policy and former director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Rutgers
University. He is the founder and president of the American Iranian Council and
a Senior Associate Member at Oxford University. He is author of The
Political Economy of Iran Under the Qajars: Society,
Politics, Economics and Foreign
Relations 1796-1926; and Revolution and Economic Transition:
The Iranian Experience. On Twitter:
@HAmirahmadi.