Subject: [Homestead] Foreign Policies have to (or should) shift with the changing realities they encounter
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 12:12:50 -0500
tvoivozhd---the tangled, ever-shifting alliances necessary to prevent
Umma and the Khalifate reordering the oil-producing sector of the Arab
World.
With the advantage of hindsight, it is now apparent the United States
made a monumental mistake in trying to prevent the Soviets from
defeating the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. A Soviet regime would have been
vastly preferable to educating and equipping Jihadists to kill Americans
wherever they make an appearance in the Middle East
Lines in the sand: Western state building in the muslim world -
01/26/2005 13:38
Modern day maps of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia reflect
a pattern and a principle ingrained in the foreign policies of major
European, and now American, powers -- the existence of numerous
sovereign Muslim countries.
While wars and invasions against Muslim states by outside powers have
taken place in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, none of
such major military and political moves in the last several decades
sought to redraw boundaries or radically change the modern map of the
Islamic world.
Today's Muslim states -- countries where Islam is a majority religion
adhered to by the overwhelming percentage of the population -- emerged
on the ruins of the last major Muslim power -- Ottoman Turkey, and as a
result of the dissolution of British India. Following the end of WWI,
and later on, in 1947, young nation-states emerged in place of the
centuries-old established order and principles. For many decades,
Western European powers, the United States and the Soviet Union all
promoted the emergence of these states onto the world arena, and
supported them based on their own political, military or economic
interests. Assistance to these states as separate political units drove
the diverse foreign policies of the major powers after both world wars,
during the Cold War, and in the current unipolar environment.
Muslim States: Past and Present
Taking a look at the modern map of the Islamic world reveals a rather
strange picture. In North Africa, and the Middle East, actual boundaries
of states hardly correspond to the historical, cultural and ethnic
make-ups of these regions. The prevalence of straight lines on the map
that cut the Saharan or Arabian Deserts into independent states is just
that -- lines in the sand. They divide tribes, clans, families and their
corresponding histories and aspirations in an arbitrary manner.
In some cases, all that is required to cross from one North African or
Arabian state to the next is to walk over a sand dune. In a region where
natural boundaries such as mountains, rivers, valleys or seas are
largely absent, the new "borders" came to represent independent Libya,
Egypt, Algeria or Jordan. People living on the border areas of these
states are hardly aware of the fact that they live across another
country. Likewise, in South Asia, Pakistan and India are divided by
hastily-designed borders that have been the source of conflict between
these two states for the last five decades.
The powers that divided the Islamic world into modern states sought to
preserve their own influence. British, French and Italian colonial
holdings had to be clearly defined in the newly acquired territories of
the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The easiest way to do this was
to create clearly defined boundaries on the world map. The results are
straight lines running across the deserts of Arabia and the Sahara.
These lines, however, did not -- and still do not -- reflect the
realities on the ground, where people were used to moving around with
ease, unobstructed by any border checkpoints and patrols.
The Muslim concept of umma, or one's belonging to the worldwide Islamic
community, is one of the chief principles of Islam. According to the
Quran, every practicing Muslim's loyalty should be to his religion
first, and to any other state or political entity second. Furthermore, a
true believer of Islam should not follow the rules and customs of other
governments, but instead must obey Islamic principles, as millions of
fellow Muslims do every day.
Thus, the actual reading of certain Islamic teachings would indicate
that Muslims living across the globe belong to the worldwide Islamic
"nation," and not to any particular state on the map. Today's headlines
are full of statements by some Muslim groups or individuals all over the
world who refuse to obey the secular laws of various countries,
preferring instead to establish Islamic rule in those very states. Many
countries today grapple with this principle, and the state responses to
such Islamic claims vary considerably.
Until the end of WWI, most Islamic nations were part of great Muslim
empires. Following the demise of the Mughal and Persian empires, the
last such empire, Ottoman Turkey, was comprised of what are now nearly
twelve independent states of the Middle East and North Africa. It was
once a regional hegemon and a superpower, threatening both Europe and
Russia. The Ottoman Empire held sway over Islam by controlling two of
the religion's holiest cities -- Mecca and Medina in present-day Saudi
Arabia.
While internally weak, and under constant attacks from within and
without starting with the dawn of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire
represented the strength and hope to millions of Muslims around the
world. As WWI drew to a close and the dissolution of this once-great
power was imminent, a powerful movement was born in British India, home
to the majority of the world's Muslims at that time. The movement,
called the Khilafat -- after the Islamic notion that a Muslim state
unifying all the world's Muslims should exist, governed by a
religious-political head, the khalif, or caliph -- sought to preserve
Turkey's role as the leader of the Islamic world.
While many Muslims living under the decaying Ottoman rule did not
support such a movement, and fought against it alongside European
powers, the concept itself was a powerful force to millions of Muslims
in British India. It eventually died once Turkey became a republic and
embarked on the road to modernization in the early 1920s. Nonetheless,
Western foreign policies since that time have been directed at
preserving the political disunity of the Muslim world, fostering various
political developments with the eventual aim at avoiding the resurgence
of a powerful Islamic state that would unify hundreds of millions of
Muslims into one political, economic and military entity.
That process was greatly assisted by the start of the Cold War and the
American-Soviet rivalry. As the newly created Islamic states ended their
domination by the British, French and Italian colonial powers in the
1950s, they actively sought to protect their newly acquired independence
from the repeat of colonial encroachment. Both the West and the Soviet
Union were happy to oblige their new clients, supporting each one
independently from the other. Pan-Arabic nationalism of the 1950s and
1960s was a perfect example of such a policy, as the U.S.S.R. supported
Egypt's nationalism, while the West invested resources to support the
states of the Arabian Peninsula.
Elsewhere, in North Africa, states like Morocco and Algeria were seen as
a counterweight to strong claims by Egypt for the leadership of the Arab
world. Supporting each state separately, giving it incentives to act
independently of others in the region, made it possible for the Western
and Soviet world to deal with each Muslim state on its own. Pan-Arab
national aims replaced religious Islam as a rallying cry for unity -- a
cry that was followed by various indigenous attempts to modernize the
Muslim world and bring it closer to Western economic and political
standards.
While the Soviet Union actively supported secular nationalistic Egypt,
Syria, and Libya, the United States supported secular Iran and Pakistan,
as well as Israel and monarchic Arabian kingdoms. Conflicting political
and economic programs by the Middle Eastern, North African and South
Asian states replaced relative Muslim unity and cohesion that might have
existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, these countries
were drawn into economic interdependence with the West through the
exploration and trade in oil, the chief source of fuel for the rapidly
growing Western and Asian economies.
Modern Challenges to the West
The Iranian revolution of 1979 delivered the first shock to the
established principles of splitting the Muslim world into separate
political entities. While the coming to power of a theocratic government
was not by itself shocking -- most oil-producing states of the Persian
Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula were monarchic theocracies supported by
the Western world -- the message and policies of the new Iranian
government were alarming. The new rulers of Tehran sought to export
their religious revolution to other Muslim countries and to overthrow
the regimes that were either leaning towards, or were supported by, the
secular, non-religious United States, Soviet Union and Western Europ.
Their motives met with relative success with the Iranian-style
revolution in Sudan in the early 1980s, and the creation of the Lebanese
Hizbollah movement. In effect, the Iranian theocratic government assumed
the leadership of the movement to unify the Islamic world, hoping to rid
it of any non-Islamic influence, or to at least unify Shi'a Muslims
living in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. This has been Iran's
consistent policy and while it has varied its statements and policies
since 1979, the overall message is the same. What makes Iran more
powerful in this scenario is the fact that it is one of the world's
largest oil producers, and its aims are directed at the main
oil-producing region of the world that is of immense strategic and
economic importance to practically every industrialized country.
The second challenge to the non-Islamic governments of the West was
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This time, the United States and its
worldwide coalition responded with a powerful military operation against
the Iraqi regime that became known as the Gulf War. Iraq's aims at that
time were two-fold -- to achieve military hegemony in the Persian Gulf
and to conquer a major oil-producing state in the region. Throughout the
Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, espoused
claims to the leadership of the Arab world, acting as the protector of
Arab Sunni countries against a recalcitrant Iranian Shi'a regime.
At that time, many Muslim states supported Iraq as the bulwark against
Iran. Once Iraq invaded Kuwait, the regional powers and the West saw the
possible emergence of Iraq as a major power in control of the world's
oil supplies. Prior to the U.S.-led military action, the Iraqi regime
stood within striking distance of Saudi Arabia and its massive oil
fields, a territory that would not have been able to adequately protect
itself without outside assistance. A military attack on Iraqi forces
became a necessary option for Western interests to prevent the emergence
of a powerful Muslim state with the capacity to act as a possible
unifying force in the Muslim world due to its growing military and
economic strength.
The third challenge came in the face of al-Qaeda, a powerful worldwide
militant organization that calls for the unity of the umma against the
United States and the West; the overthrow of secular, military,
political or monarchic regimes associated with the West; and the
establishment of an Islamic khilafat, or caliphate. Al-Qaeda has been
linked to various Muslim militant groups operating all around the world
with similar goals.
Recently, it has been suspected of cooperating with the Iranian-backed
Hizbollah militant organization, as well as other non-Arab groups and
movements. This particular cooperation is significant because it marks
the first known operational linkage across religious and ethnic lines --
al-Qaeda is an ultra-conservative movement adhering to the Sunni branch
of Islam, while Hizbollah and Iran follow Shi'a Islamic teachings. This
worldwide cooperation of this network marks a serious development that
is already unsettling the entire Muslim world. While al-Qaeda has been
temporarily crippled by the U.S.-led assault after the September 11
terrorist attacks, there is no indication that it is letting up its
efforts in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or even Europe -- in fact,
its popularity is growing amongst the world's Muslims.
The Western response to Iranian, Iraqi and al-Qaeda threats include the
support and cooperation with several key Muslim states, such as Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. All of them receive varying degrees
of military, logistical, economic and political support. Following the
defeat of the Iraqi regime in 2003, the United States made public its
desire to contain Iran and to destroy al-Qaeda. The harder that both
al-Qaeda and Iran try to create a Muslim movement capable of challenging
the outside world, the harder the U.S. and its partners push back in
preserving and supporting regimes as different from each other as the
military dictatorship in Pakistan, the Saudi monarchy or the
quasi-military government of Egypt.
From a geopolitical standpoint, it is easier to deal with a relatively
small state than with a large and powerful country. When Egypt sought to
create the United Arab Republic in the 1960s by attempting to unify
Egypt, Syria, Yemen and potentially other states in the Middle East, the
United States supported Israel's successful military moves and
countermoves that eventually ended the Egyptian initiative. The U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 did not seek to
radically change these countries -- rather, it seeks to install a
friendly government within the existing borders.
The current administration's drive to spread democracy in the Middle
East does not envision the melting away of boundaries and decades-long
political sovereignty -- rather, Washington seeks to preserve the
existing states as they are by hopefully bringing
democratically-oriented governments to power. This policy is driven by a
premise that democratic states would not pose a danger to each other,
would respect each other's sovereignty within the existing borders and
would not easily launch war on their neighbors for a religious,
political or ethnic purpose. The collection of pacific, but independent
Muslim states would allow for unobstructed access to the world's oil
resources and would preclude the emergence of a regional hegemon capable
of upsetting the existing balance of power.
That is precisely what Iran and al-Qaeda want to avoid. The melting away
of artificial Middle Eastern and North African boundaries that were
imposed by now defunct governments of Western Europe would create a
massive state with the majority Muslim population in the hundreds of
millions and in control of the crucial oil and natural gas reserves.
Such an outcome would effectively create another superpower on the world
arena. There are indications that Muslim states are seeking to move
closer to such a reality.
The creation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(O.P.E.C.), a supranational organization comprised of major oil
exporters from North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, was a
major development in the Muslim world. It has already demonstrated its
power by causing an oil crisis in the United States in the 1970s, and it
could still be a powerful force affecting world governments that grow
more dependent on oil imports. The Organization of Islamic Conference
(O.I.C.) is another powerful organization that unifies Muslim states
around the world.
The O.I.C. has a major influence in world affairs, since even Russia is
seriously contemplating joining it in order to foster greater religious
freedom for millions of its Muslim citizens. Other organizations exist
that seek to speak with a unified Arabic, North African or Islamic
voice. While at present these organizations are not powerful or unified
enough to stop U.S. political and military developments, their clout is
steadily increasing as the powers of the European Union and China --
both entities with a heavy reliance on oil -- grows on the world arena.
Conclusion
Given the historical progression that at one time saw powerful Islamic
states play a major role in world developments, followed by their
internal dissolution, later subjugation and colonization by outside
powers, and the eventual emergence as many distinct entities with
varying degrees of religious, political and military governance, today's
Islamic world presents a fragmented picture within artificial political
boundaries. If the world's current dependence on oil continues to grow
-- as recent reports about China's oil consumption seem to indicate --
many Muslim states will assume greater clout in world affairs, making it
harder to treat each of them separately as distinct "identities"
vis-Ю-vis other states.
The latest developments in the "war on terrorism" point to unifying
movements in the Islamic world, either with Iran's help or under the
banner of al-Qaeda and its allies -- a more coordinated attack on
Western principles and Western interests in the Muslim world that cut
across the religious and ethnic divides. While U.S. efforts in Iraq have
faltered since 2003, the January 30 Iraqi election following a
relatively successful election in Afghanistan will prove to be one of
the turning points in the development of the Islamic world, which will
either accept and foster the Western model and emerge as a collection of
distinct and friendly states, or will finally break under the pressure
of Iran and al-Qaeda and begin to emerge as a unified religious,
political and military entity, heralding a new chapter in world history.
Yevgeny Bendersky
PRAVDA.Ru
[Homestead] Foreign Policies have to (or should) shift with the changing realities they encounter,
tvoivozhd, 01/29/2005