{"id":6947,"date":"2024-08-19T05:38:01","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T05:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=6947"},"modified":"2024-08-19T05:38:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T05:38:03","slug":"middle-east-lasting-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=6947","title":{"rendered":"Middle-East: Lasting legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>WITH the Middle East in turmoil and\u00a0Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza<\/a>\u00a0entering its eleventh month, a book that examines the region\u2019s political experience in the postwar period makes for insightful reading.\u00a0What Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy<\/em>\u00a0in the Middle East by Fawaz Gerges, published earlier this year, examines the contribution of Western, especially US foreign policy to the chaos and instability found in the region today. Gerges, who teaches at the London School of Economics, offers sharp analysis in his book on the evolution of the Middle East in the postcolonial era and seeks to explain what has led to present-day turbulence and tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main thesis of the book is that the Middle East\u2019s instability is not rooted in factors inherent in the region such as ancient hatred, tribalism, and chronic violence, which many Western scholars and policymakers have assumed. It is mostly the consequence of America\u2019s disastrous foreign policy decisions during the Cold War and its interventions that have left such a lasting legacy. Gerges shows convincingly that the Cold War confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union turned the Middle East into a battleground for proxy conflicts, marking a continuity with the legacy of \u2018dysfunction\u2019 left by European colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington\u2019s obsessive concern with countering Russian communism, efforts to establish a Pax Americana, and secure access to cheap oil drove it to ally with repressive autocrats. These regimes were assured American patronage so long as they submitted to US hegemonic aims and ensured an uninterrupted supply of oil. This denuded the region of any postcolonial peace dividend and undermined these countries\u2019 independence. \u201cResources that should have gone to development were directed to the military-security sector.\u201d Washington\u2019s aim to build a \u201cnew informal empire\u201d thwarted the evolution of modern pluralistic political systems and strong economies independent of the West. This diminished the Middle East\u2019s chance of achieving a peaceful future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In relating the story of lost opportunities and dashed hopes, Gerges focuses on key flashpoints that \u201csowed the seeds of discontent, hubris, and subsequent conflict\u201d. They include the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and the confrontation with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the mid-1950s. The author uses these \u2018ruptures\u2019 to reinterpret the history of the region and challenge the narrative popularised by Western scholars. He sees ruptures in Iran and Egypt leading to the defeat of \u201csecular-leaning nationalist visions\u201d. This in turn enabled \u201cpuritanical religious narratives\u201d and movements to gain ascendancy in the 1950s and 1960s across the region and beyond. Popular leaders were replaced by those subservient to the West. The consequences of these events writes Gerges, still haunt the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The consequences of policies aimed at building an \u2018informal empire\u2019 still haunt the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He argues that before these two pivotal events, the US was viewed positively and with optimism in the region. Freed from the shackles of European colonialism, people looked forward to an era of economic and political freedom and prosperity. But soon, US policies meant Washington mimicked European imperialists by seeking to build an \u2018informal empire\u2019 \u2014 a term that resonates in the book \u2014 whose results were virtually the same as colonial rule. He cites political scientist Atul Kohli, who defined an informal empire as predicated on \u201can alliance in which elites in the imperial country allow elites on the global periphery to share in economic growth in exchange for establishing stable but ultimately subservient governments there\u201d. Gerges details how the US \u201cexploited pliant local regimes, established extensive military bases, penetrated national economies, staged military interventions and imposed punishing multilateral sanctions\u201d. These policies were executed at the cost of people and countries. They hobbled political development, liberalization, and social change and, instead, pushed the region on the path of militarism, authoritarianism, strengthening of political Islam, and intensification of sectarian rivalries. US decisions to ally with Islamist groups against secular-oriented nationalists proved just as fateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the chapter titled \u2018What could have been\u2019, the author discusses the two events he sees as transformational and consequential to the region\u2019s subsequent trajectory \u2014 the ouster of Mossadegh in 1953 and American moves against Nasser that led to the Suez crisis of 1956. These triggered a chain of reactions and counterreactions that were to change the Middle East\u2019s complexion. They also seriously undermined US relations with people in the Arab and Muslim world. Popular, progressive nationalist leaders like Mossadegh and Nasser were branded as \u2018disguised communists\u2019 because they asserted independence and pursuit of modernization. Washington\u2019s preference was to back \u2018authoritarian strongmen\u2019 on the grounds of \u2018stability\u2019 \u2014 a policy Gerges argues persists today. Accompanying this was the expedient Western view that Islam and Arab culture were incompatible with democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In answering the \u2018what if\u2019 question had the US not overthrown Mossadegh, the author posits that a democratic Iran would have evolved, at peace with itself and serving as an example to its neighbors. In Egypt, US hostility towards Nasser, although no democrat but a secular nationalist leader intent on modernizing his country and pursuing an independent path, also had damaging consequences. It changed regional dynamics and shaped issues of war and peace. Gerges recalls that Nasser retaliated by turning to Moscow for arms and opposing Arab monarchs and leaders who joined the US military alliance, which in turn led to the Arab Cold War. Lost in the process was balance and equilibrium in the Arab state system with geopolitical rivalries dashing hopes of unity and regional economic integration. Gerges states, \u201cAmerica\u2019s imperial overreach and Cold War crusade ignited and escalated geostrategic rivalries in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerges draws this conclusion from his detailed assessment of covert and overt external interventions during the Cold War. Today\u2019s grim situation in the Middle East would have been very different if Washington had shown tolerance for countries that disagreed with its foreign policy and declined to serve its economic interests at their own cost. Of course, one should add that blind US support for Israel drove a dagger into the heart of the region and destabilized it, which is so tragically illustrated by the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza today. This book is a must-read for its riveting revisionist account of the Middle East\u2019s modern history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference Link:- https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1853258\/lasting-legacy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITH the Middle East in turmoil and\u00a0Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza\u00a0entering its eleventh month, a book that examines the region\u2019s political experience in the postwar period makes for insightful reading.\u00a0What Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy\u00a0in the Middle East by Fawaz Gerges, published earlier this year, examines the contribution of Western, especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[2709,105,2710,933,74,2334,2708],"class_list":["post-6947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-confrontations","tag-geopolitics-2","tag-intereference-og-big-powers","tag-middle-east-2","tag-muslim-world","tag-political-instability","tag-wars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6949,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947\/revisions\/6949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}