Project Syndicate Fawaz A. Gerges Says More… Aug 27, 2024

 Project Syndicate

Fawaz A. Gerges

Says More…

Aug 27, 2024

This week in Say More, PS talks with Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and the author of What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East.

Project Syndicate: In January, you lamented that for many in the Middle East and across the Global South, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is “as much US President Joe Biden’s war as it is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s,” and Biden will be remembered as “just another American leader whose actions betray a lack of concern for Arab lives.” When the next US administration takes over, is there a US policy approach toward Israel that is both realistic, from a domestic political perspective, and more responsive to the needs of Arabs?

Fawaz A. Gerges: Any discussion of what is politically “realistic” within the United States, in terms of responding to the needs of the Arab people, runs up against a fundamental problem: America’s Middle-East policy is shaped significantly by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This precludes an approach that is fair, balanced, and even-handed.

And it is not just AIPAC: special interests and lobbyists have a stranglehold on US foreign policy, in what amounts to a crisis of democracy. Until their grip is broken – through campaign-finance reform and the broadening and diversification of the foreign-policy community (a generational aspiration) – any substantive change in American policy is unlikely.

PS: As you pointed out in your commentary – and detail in your new book, What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East – the US and other Western powers have, for nearly a century, pursued an “interventionist, militaristic, and anti-democratic foreign policy” driven largely by the “desire to roll back communism and secure the dominance of liberal capitalism.” Is it too late for the West to mend fences with the Global South, and what risks arise when alternative powers like China attempt to fill gaps left by the West?

FG: It is never too late for the West to mend fences with the Global South; history is not destiny. But doing so would require the US immediately and fundamentally to change how it acts on the world stage. As I have written elsewhere, America’s preponderant support for Israel’s war in Gaza may ultimately represent a great rupture in international relations, hardening long-dormant fault lines between the West and the Global South and shattering the international liberal order that has underpinned American hegemony since the end of World War II.

A growing number of people in the Global South think that the rules are different for “the West” and “the rest,” and recent opinion polls suggest that China is gaining ground in the Global South at America’s expense. That said, China has neither the desire nor the hard military power to establish an informal “empire” in the Middle East, as the West has. Unlike the US, China is interested mainly in geoeconomics, not geopolitics, and it pursues transactional relations with Middle Eastern states.

PS: Understanding the flaws in America’s approach to the Middle East, you explain in your book, is “fundamental to imagining a new future for the region.” Following the election in Iran of a reformist president, do you see opportunities not only for a more constructive Western policy toward the country, but also for “diplomatic openings and new security arrangements” of the kind that seemed possible in 2021?

FG: It is difficult to see opportunities for the normalization of relations between Iran and Western governments, particularly the US – to put it mildly. If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election this November, there is a real danger of a military confrontation between the US and Iran.

As I explain in my book, the US and Iran remain caught in a deadly dance. Over the past four decades, they have nearly come to military blows several times, with potentially devastating implications for international peace and security, yet both sides have remained unwilling fully to come to terms with the past and reconcile. Now, Israel’s war in Gaza risks escalating into a wider regional conflagration, which would drag the US, France, and the United Kingdom into direct military conflict with Iran and its local allies.

BY THE WAY . . .

PS: Your book explores what might have been in the Middle East, had the region’s newly independent countries been “allowed to chart their own development immediately after the end of European colonial rule.” Where do we see this historically? Which decisions, had they been different, might have contributed to making the region more “stable, prosperous, and pluralistic”?

FG: Let us consider Iran, which is a central case study in my book. In 1953, a US-backed coup removed the country’s democratically elected progressive leader, Muhammad Mossadegh, and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This ruptured political life in Iran, triggering a cascade of crises that radically altered the country’s political and developmental trajectory. Values were corrupted, and constitutionalism, liberalism, and pluralism suffered a powerful blow, making way for the rise of radical and revolutionary ideologies like Marxism and Shia Islamism. It thus set the stage for the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

We know the legacies of America’s 1953 intervention: uninterrupted authoritarianism – under both the repressive rule of the Pahlavi monarchy and the clerical rule that followed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s subsequent takeover – and an acrimonious US-Iran relationship. But what would have happened if the US had not intervened? As I show in my book, most Iranians seem to believe that democracy and political secularism – values that are routinely invoked by the US – may well have established deep roots in their country. A democratic Iran could have been a peaceful country and an example for its neighbors.

PS: While your book focuses on the Middle East, you also consider Guatemala’s experience for comparative purposes. Which parallels and divergences stand out, and what do they imply about the motivations and impact of US policy toward both regions?

FG: The Middle East has experienced more than its share of covert and overt American interventions, but it is not alone. The US waged multiple battles on many fronts in its efforts to roll back Soviet communism, tame assertive nationalist leaders, and secure the dominance of liberal capitalism. One of those fronts was Guatemala.

The CIA toppled Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz just a year after engineering Mossadegh’s ouster, for many of the same reasons – just replace “oil” with “land.” Whereas Mossadegh “sinned” (according to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration) by nationalizing the oil industry, Árbenz transgressed by launching agrarian reforms and undertaking land redistribution. Both Mossadegh and Arbenz pursued centralized economic development and “neutralism” in foreign policy – approaches that were anathema to the US.

The consequences of America’s intervention in Guatemala can be considered even more catastrophic than what happened in Iran. Whereas Iran descended into political authoritarianism, Guatemala was plunged into a brutal 36-year civil war that cost over 200,000 lives in a country of just 4.1 million.

PS: In What Really Went Wrong, you describe Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser as an “enduring symbol of Arab unity,” who “continues to inspire those seeking dignity.” What lessons does Nasser’s story hold for the people of the Middle East and their leaders?

FG: Western-backed rulers learned that human-rights abuses and clampdowns on popular dissent would be ignored as long as the US government’s orders were followed. And the people of the Middle East learned that, in the eyes of oil-addicted US policymakers dedicated to maintaining the authoritarian status quo, their rights are dispensable.

After World War II, ordinary people in the region had genuine goodwill and admiration for the US. But that has since been replaced by mistrust, suspicion, and even hatred. Whatever lingering doubt the people of the Middle East might have had about American hostility was destroyed by the decades-long US “war on terror.”

America’s complicity in Israeli crimes in Gaza was the final straw. In a survey conducted by the Doha Institute’s Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies this past January, more than 75% of respondents across the Arab world cited the US (and Israel) as the “biggest threat” to the region’s “security and stability.”

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Fawaz A. Gerges

Fawaz A. Gerges

Writing for PS since 2003

13 Commentaries

Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, is author of the forthcoming What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2024).