This speculating without knowledge is like musicology without music. Why on earth are any of you even engaging with the idea of the ‘middle-East’ as a superpower? Either you are define such a political entity as a geographical bloc sharing an abundant economic resource, or you’ve simply bought into the American mass media’s implicit portrayal of Arabs as a singular union of primitive existence. Examining disputing debating the political legitimacy of Islam as a body of law or Allah as a source of soveriegnty in a political system may reveal to an extent the reason why Arab states do not operate efficiently in maximising the economic output of all its citizens, but then again, the stated ideals of Arab constutions are not geared towards economic growth and material prosperity.
Arab society is marked by tribalism, a clan system that determines its leaders through a bargaining process which ensures that rival factions’ interests’ are upheld before the leader is chosen, as opposed to afterwards as with conventional political rule (in the healthier liberal democracies). This explains why leaders like Yasser Arafat managed to stay in power for so long, despite a poor record in power. Democratic instutions (as we know them in the west) are only successful when the ‘nation’ of people it is representing is coherent and cohesive. When not, the country either plunges into civil war (as with the American civil war) or maintains order by coercion and fear (as with Saddam Hussein). The US political system works now through a comprimise federal system, where most power is concentrated at state level, but federal government ensures control over foreign defence security and currency policies, whilst fostering a distinct national identity through industrial media alliances to avert destablising internal independence movements. (Something done so successfully in the USA, it is barely on the political agenda any more - note Quebec in Canada)
The arbitrary borders and ‘nation-states’ drawn up by the French and British in the Middle-East after world war 1 are evidently not nation-states born out of a social movement on the ground. We can see this with the widespread looting and mass anarchy that accompanied the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. This exposed the underlying fragmented form of ‘Iraqi’ society. Shi’ites and Sunni Muslims and groups within groups, all with a scores to settle with each other. A nation without a nation state in the form of the Kurds, stradling across the Iraqi, Iranian Syrian and Turkish borders.
Ironically, given some of the inferences posted in this thread, it was in fact the discover of the ‘gold under the ground’ after world war 2, that plunged the region into a deeper awareness of tribal differences. Whilst the nations did not fit the nation states, those prescribed by the west after ww1 were becoming more cohesive, and on the way to achieving a peaceful cohabitation. With the distribution of unknown oil reserves seemingly unaware of the geographical distribution of the Middle-East’s different ethnic and religious groupings, the distribution of oil revenues was bound to cause aggitation between the winning and losing groups. The wholesale political mismanagement of this find added to the imperial interventions - both corporate and military - within the context of the Cold War, and you have an embittered and tense environment where old clan rivalries suddenly matter again. In such an environment, it is almost inevitable that Islam would take a bashing, with Koranic law being interpreted to be stricter in keeping civil order and justifying a tribal hierarchy. With each injustice follows a resentment, and the concept of these large countries operating right at the top of the international order is thrown away as inefficient political systems fail to generate economic growth, as all politics and all economics revolves around one resource - oil.
Despite what should rightly be described as a period of political regression in much of the Arab world, Arab nations have been able to form OPEC (oil producing and exporting countries), an international cartel of oil producing countries which set production quotas to as to achieve equilibrium of supply and demand in naturally elastic world oil markets, given the great share of known oil reserves in the world. A rare but crucial source of Arab solidarity, you might say, artifically maintaining oil prices at a higher rate so as to guarantee a steady revenue from their main economic asset. This system, though varying in success, has ensured that western oil producers have stayed in the market by not undercutting their (higher) prices per barrel. If this all seems too technical, I definitely recommend the OPEC website opec.org
It is a tacit truth, that the USA wants to undermine OPEC and ultimately remove it from the global oil market, viewing its maintenance of unwanted regimes as a hindrance to their economic political and strategic interests and ambitions. They recently asked Nigeria to leave OPEC, and are taking a hands-on approach to the formation of a new regime in Iraq to inrease the likelihood that Iraq (with the world’s second largest known oil reserves) will not be subject to OPEC quotas. Is it in US interests (in the broadest sense-let alone global interests) to upset this stabilising factor in the global oil markets? I will return on that question.
The truth of the matter is, that both the USA and the USSR would have certainly invade many Middle-Eastern countries had they not been so reliant on them for cheap oil which effectively ensured that fuel costs were low. Both Russia and the USA still rely heavily on Middle-Eastern oil, though alternative reserves are being declared ‘tappable’ at an increasing rate (Northern Canada, Russia) Now that the Cold War is over, and the political excuse exists (Saddam’s tyrany and weapons of mass destruction) and a US administration with the will to bypass and undermine the multilateral world governance (confident of the military and economic might to stomach it), it was almost inevitable that regimes in the Arab world have to either pursue a programme of serious political reform and compliance with American demands, or be toppled. The USA would happily do just that to Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and even the Palestinian leadership, if they could tolerate the political (and ulitimately economic) damage, which they can’t. The Iraq war was a demonstration to all non-compliant Arab regimes of what the consequences can be, and the ease with which their regimes can be toppled. Realistically, it is only likely to stir further resentment, manifest in a more militarised and socially stifling Islam, than any fear-induced compliance intended. This is not the behaviour of a superpower, but undoubtedly that of a hyperpower, the only truly global power on earth. Bush’s regime will shamelessly punish long-standing allies who will not toe the line. It is not a world I personally want to live in. For all his charm and economic ineptitude, don’t make the same mistake again. Vote Democrats.
Some of these themes were debated quite well in the below link which explored the truth behind the ‘oil’ incentive for going to war. An adapted version of my first post appeared in Porspect magazine, though I have since watered down the ‘postscript to the Cold War’ analysis: ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=138731
