24 April 2008
The French writer André Fontaine has found nothing better than history to enlighten and explain the events in the Middle East and the conflagrations of the fundamentalist flux from the heights of Afghanistan to the shores of the Mediterranean. Among the historical coincidences he has recorded a strange thread that links the events in Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon with the Suez crisis in 1956, when the British Empire sought to reoccupy Egypt and to prevent it from being transformed into a "Vietnamese trap" for its soldiers, and to dominate it. Fontaine observes that the British then had few options because the Soviet Union had threatened to launch rockets against Paris and London while the American ally acted to halt the "tripartite aggression".
As historical chance would have it, one of the personalities present in the office of the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, at No. 10 Downing Street during the decision to launch the war was Nouri al-Saïd, a close British ally and one of the principal figures of the Middle East since the 1930s. The debacle of the Suez adventure was the cause of the collapse of the monarchy in Iraq and the fall of the parliamentary regime set up by the British after the First World War. Eighteen months after London's humiliation at Suez, Nouri al-Saïd's body was being dragged through the streets of Baghdad. British influence went into eclipse, where it remains.
Today the United States is seeing the eclipse of its influence in the "Iraqi Suez". Richard Haas, one of the leading experts on American foreign policy, was the first to detect this fact, and he has been followed in the same line of thought by Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, who has noted the rise of Iran as part of the equation of which Israel is a part.
King Abdallah bin Abdelaziz spoke in Madrid of fears about the fragmentation of the region, with its repercussions on the world level. There is no doubt that the matter is more complex than following a line linking John Foster Dulles to Stephen Hadley and Dick Cheney. The war in Iraq appears to be the principal card in the hands of Teheran, which is "occupying" the country in a non-apparent and indirect way, under the protection of American and British forces.
In this context, Prince Saud al-Faisal addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, which comprises members of the American foreign policy and strategic planning elite. He said, "We entered a war to prevent the Iranians from taking over Iraq. Now you are enabling them to penetrate this Arab country without a war".
In Ohio, Bush appeared in his guise of an emperor in a state of exaltation over his conquests and victories. As usual, his speechwriter inserted certain religious references, at the request of the president and of his mother, Barbara, who has a "religious vision", as her husband, Bush Senior, has indicated, as has the historian Bernard Lewis. There is in Bush's pronouncements nothing of the panic spread by others troubled by the threat of terrorism to the world, "which must be the scene of security, stability and good".
Fontaine detected this "folly of grandeur" once when there was intense debate in American political and cultural circles on an axial question: "Should the rising American state be envisaged as a republic or an empire?"
This question was much discussed in the decades before the First World War, in the days of President McKinley (1897-1901) and his immediate successors, but the matter was never settled.
But the war, which America entered in 1917, tipped the balance in favor of the "imperial" thesis, a tendency which deepened during the second world conflict and the famous meeting at Yalta. And what we have seen in the years since is no fewer than 250 US military operations all over the world.
There is no doubt that the mentality of the "forest fires", which goes back to the time of Harry Truman and which was carried on by Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Rumsfeld and Cheney, imposes itself on the options and decisions of President Bush. It is a thoughtless mentality, as our friend Clovis Maksoud has remarked, and one which stirs up extremist sentiments.
The existence of terrorism has been transformed into a pretext to which the Bush Administration ascribes all its failures, problems and crises. The result is a mindset intent not on settling accounts with the Arabs, but on liquidating their political and historical position and the solid position conferred on them by petroleum wealth. The dramatic fact now is that the American vision is now more uncertain than it has been. The Arabs, however, though targeted, have not so far faced the American threat with any kind of collective reaction. In fact, we may speak instead of a collective coma. Such is the "Achilles' heel" of their position. It is for this reason that a committee of wise men is needed.
Let us suppose that since the foundation of the Arab League in 1945, it had been possible to implement just 10 percent of the resolutions and communiqués adopted by Arab League summits. We would then see what a qualitative difference there would be between our present condition and what might have happened. The failure to implement the resolutions does not augur well for the Arabs in the context of globalization and a situation in which the whole world has become a planetary village.
The position is made especially serious by the pressure of the rising generations. Students at various Arab universities receive empty promises and are given commitments which are never fulfilled.
Collective Arab action is a mirage, and the cause of this state of things is the lack of political life in the Arab world. How different is our situation from that of Europe, which now comprises a solid bloc of states from Portugal and Ireland on the Atlantic to Romania on the Black Sea and Finland on the Arctic Ocean. We ourselves still have the status of tribes, with an Arab League whose resolutions have become food for rats. A road map? Let us speak of Arabs abandoned to bandits on the highways of Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Darfur, waiting for the end of the game.
The French writer André Fontaine has found nothing better than history to enlighten and explain the events in the Middle East and the conflagrations of the fundamentalist flux from the heights of Afghanistan to the shores of the Mediterranean. Among the historical coincidences he has recorded a strange thread that links the events in Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon with the Suez crisis in 1956, when the British Empire sought to reoccupy Egypt and to prevent it from being transformed into a "Vietnamese trap" for its soldiers, and to dominate it. Fontaine observes that the British then had few options because the Soviet Union had threatened to launch rockets against Paris and London while the American ally acted to halt the "tripartite aggression".
As historical chance would have it, one of the personalities present in the office of the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, at No. 10 Downing Street during the decision to launch the war was Nouri al-Saïd, a close British ally and one of the principal figures of the Middle East since the 1930s. The debacle of the Suez adventure was the cause of the collapse of the monarchy in Iraq and the fall of the parliamentary regime set up by the British after the First World War. Eighteen months after London's humiliation at Suez, Nouri al-Saïd's body was being dragged through the streets of Baghdad. British influence went into eclipse, where it remains.
Today the United States is seeing the eclipse of its influence in the "Iraqi Suez". Richard Haas, one of the leading experts on American foreign policy, was the first to detect this fact, and he has been followed in the same line of thought by Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, who has noted the rise of Iran as part of the equation of which Israel is a part.
King Abdallah bin Abdelaziz spoke in Madrid of fears about the fragmentation of the region, with its repercussions on the world level. There is no doubt that the matter is more complex than following a line linking John Foster Dulles to Stephen Hadley and Dick Cheney. The war in Iraq appears to be the principal card in the hands of Teheran, which is "occupying" the country in a non-apparent and indirect way, under the protection of American and British forces.
In this context, Prince Saud al-Faisal addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, which comprises members of the American foreign policy and strategic planning elite. He said, "We entered a war to prevent the Iranians from taking over Iraq. Now you are enabling them to penetrate this Arab country without a war".
In Ohio, Bush appeared in his guise of an emperor in a state of exaltation over his conquests and victories. As usual, his speechwriter inserted certain religious references, at the request of the president and of his mother, Barbara, who has a "religious vision", as her husband, Bush Senior, has indicated, as has the historian Bernard Lewis. There is in Bush's pronouncements nothing of the panic spread by others troubled by the threat of terrorism to the world, "which must be the scene of security, stability and good".
Fontaine detected this "folly of grandeur" once when there was intense debate in American political and cultural circles on an axial question: "Should the rising American state be envisaged as a republic or an empire?"
This question was much discussed in the decades before the First World War, in the days of President McKinley (1897-1901) and his immediate successors, but the matter was never settled.
But the war, which America entered in 1917, tipped the balance in favor of the "imperial" thesis, a tendency which deepened during the second world conflict and the famous meeting at Yalta. And what we have seen in the years since is no fewer than 250 US military operations all over the world.
There is no doubt that the mentality of the "forest fires", which goes back to the time of Harry Truman and which was carried on by Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Rumsfeld and Cheney, imposes itself on the options and decisions of President Bush. It is a thoughtless mentality, as our friend Clovis Maksoud has remarked, and one which stirs up extremist sentiments.
The existence of terrorism has been transformed into a pretext to which the Bush Administration ascribes all its failures, problems and crises. The result is a mindset intent not on settling accounts with the Arabs, but on liquidating their political and historical position and the solid position conferred on them by petroleum wealth. The dramatic fact now is that the American vision is now more uncertain than it has been. The Arabs, however, though targeted, have not so far faced the American threat with any kind of collective reaction. In fact, we may speak instead of a collective coma. Such is the "Achilles' heel" of their position. It is for this reason that a committee of wise men is needed.
Let us suppose that since the foundation of the Arab League in 1945, it had been possible to implement just 10 percent of the resolutions and communiqués adopted by Arab League summits. We would then see what a qualitative difference there would be between our present condition and what might have happened. The failure to implement the resolutions does not augur well for the Arabs in the context of globalization and a situation in which the whole world has become a planetary village.
The position is made especially serious by the pressure of the rising generations. Students at various Arab universities receive empty promises and are given commitments which are never fulfilled.
Collective Arab action is a mirage, and the cause of this state of things is the lack of political life in the Arab world. How different is our situation from that of Europe, which now comprises a solid bloc of states from Portugal and Ireland on the Atlantic to Romania on the Black Sea and Finland on the Arctic Ocean. We ourselves still have the status of tribes, with an Arab League whose resolutions have become food for rats. A road map? Let us speak of Arabs abandoned to bandits on the highways of Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Darfur, waiting for the end of the game.
© Monday Morning 2008
