SPEAKING
FREELY Arab Nationalism's last
heartbeat By Riccardo Dugulin
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
It is often a
challenging exercise to analyze the course of
history as it is unfolding under our own eyes.
Events may appear to have a stronger impact than
they do and lead to out-of-focus
conclusions. A lesson that
has to be learnt when writing about the Middle
East is that tendencies and overall
generalizations may be easy to draw but more often
than not do put the author in a theoretical
framework that over time detaches him/her from the
reality on the ground.
In Le
Nationalisme Arabe (1993), Olivier Carre
argued that Arab nationalism died in the Kuwaiti
desert in 1991. Saddam Hussein's defeat was to
Carre's eyes the end of an era where militarized
dictatorships ruled the Arab world through an
ensemble of European-style nationalism and the
exaltation of a common Arab culture. Prior to him,
authors and scholars saw in the 1967 Arab defeat
or the 1981 Camp David agreements other historical
turning points which should have marked the end of
Arab nationalism.
In this approach, it is
interesting to consider the Hegelian theory, used
by Francis Fukuyama, which sees history as an
unstoppable flow leading to a precise end. If its
"end" may remain only an analytical construct, the
events on its way, those that are remarked by
commentators, analysts and historians are a hint
enabling societies to understand the profound
trends they are undergoing.
The Arab
Awakening that started in Tunisia in 2010 and is
now culminating in the streets of Damascus is
likely to provide the region with an enormous
amount of uncertainties regarding its future; it
does however indicate a clear reality: the modern
Arab nationalism which saw the light in the 1950s
is no longer a cultural and political part of the
Middle Eastern power equation. Events in 1967,
1981 and 1991 may have discredited the idea and
its proponents, but the events of 2011-2012 have
shown the people's rejection of a paradigm based
on two key propositions (uniting the Arabs and
fighting Israel) which have failed over the last
decades.
Arab nationalism failed over time
due to the inability of this ideology to fulfill
the implicit social contract which it proposed to
populations. The limitation of personal freedoms
and individual presence in the public sphere, may
it be in Egypt, Syria or Iraq, had been presented
as necessary "pain" to enable economic development
and preserve peace and stability. Along with that,
the cultural aspect of a united and strong Arab
world, secular and socialist based on the values
of decolonized States was at the paramount of the
ideology.
This last point has since its
inception been the fallacy of the Arab nationalist
agenda. Regimes such as the Egyptian, Syrian or
Iraqi one, were in fact not calling for union but
for the submission of others to their regional
plans. This is why the stiff opposition led by
Saudi Arabia to Arab nationalism, through a proxy
war in Yemen and religious proselytism, have been
a stepping stone to a wider discretization of
these regimes.
In addition to outside
challenges, corruption, crony capitalism,
corporatism and bad governance have highly limited
the economic opportunities of countries filled
with a young and educated work force. More than
marches toward freedom and liberty, the 2011
Awakening started as an socio-economically driven
earthquake, where hundreds of thousands of
frustrated citizens showed their unwillingness to
accept any further power abuse. From Tunis to
Dara'a, revolts started as small scale rejection
of single exploitations.
The slow
extinction of the ideology has also been caused by
its essential inability to fulfill any of its
goals regarding the much branded fight against
Israel. In fact, none of the conventional wars
waged by Arab States against Israel has been able
to achieve any of its strategic objectives (the
1973 war may represent a debatable exception for
Anwar Saddat). Not only didn't Arab nationalism
lead to any victory against the Jewish State, it
also faced growing challenges by competing
regional players. Since the 1980s, the effective
"champion" of the Arab fight against Israel have
been embodied by non-state actors acting as
militias and staging an asymmetric threat to
Israel. Support by foreign powers (Iran) has been
instrumental in enabling these groups to maintain
their fighting posture. Hamas and especially
Hezbollah have in less than 20 years created a
more serious problem to Israel's security and
challenged its defensive posture in a way no Arab
conventional regime ever did.
As time is
the only factor which seems to remain undefined
concerning the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime,
what may appear as the last heartbeats of Arab
nationalism are underway. The ongoing civil war in
Syria, the semi-stable status quo in Iraq and the
period of uncertainties which Egypt is facing are
nothing like what Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam
Hussein or Hafez al-Assad envisioned for their
countries.
In the meantime, if the slow
but certain demise of Arab nationalism as an
ideology is underway, no clear alternative appears
to be available. Political Islam branded by the
Muslim Brothers in Egypt or Shi'ite political
parties in Iraq may try to assert themselves as
viable alternatives but are not for the moment
creating a concrete and stable new ideology which
could in the long term galvanize all parts of the
local societies. The historical adversaries of
Arab nationalism, namely oil-rich religious
conservative Gulf Monarchies have never seen the
exportation of their social model as a foreign
policy interest. In fact, Qatar interventionist
role in international relations and Saudi Arabia's
growing diplomatic weight are in no ways political
attempts to install a new regional ideology.
As for the Russia, Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States after 1991, the
fall of an ideology creates an immense power
vacuum and the period of instability that follows
is proportionally linked to the rise of new
interests group or movements that have been
repressed by the ancient regime. Without having
the pretension to venture into any long term
forecast, it may be the case that with the fall of
Bashar al-Assad's Syria unprecedented political
changes will take place in the near East as it
will mark the effective end of an ideology that
structured part of the Arab discourse over the
five decades.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Riccardo Dugulin holds a
Master degree from the Paris School of
International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is
specialized in International Security. He is
currently working in Paris for a Medical and
Security Assistance company. He has worked for a
number of leading think tanks in Washington DC,
Dubai and Beirut. Personal website:
www.riccardodugulin.com
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