Is the World Moving Apart or Coming Together?

by Hazem Saghiyeh

Two projects aimed at viewing the world as a unified entity appeared in the

twentieth century. American President Woodrow Wilson represented one, by

dragging the United States into the very heart of the world with his

obsession for a universe governed by all-inclusive laws and values. The

Russian leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin represented the other. He strived

toward one universality, through an internationalist revolution led by the

proletariat that would end capitalism and imperialism.

A century later, the mission continues to be arduous. The American project

has encountered major setbacks, the most important of which may have been

the Cold War. It assumed its most vicious form in Indochina, but no

continent was safe from its repercussions. It left its impact on

the heart of America, as indicated by the emergence of McCarthyism and the

"military-industrial complex," and later, by the capture of the Republican

Party by the radical right, represented in the eighties by Ronald Reagan.

The Soviet project, before its demise, gave birth to Stalinism and a number

of vicious totalitarian regimes, causing sufferings that could fill

volumes. Marxism lost its unified impetus and became widely used to provide

an additional ideological justification for anti-American traditionalists

and religious elements.When the Cold War ended, the need for a facade for modernity, which claims

it builds nations, liberalization and development, crumbled, and the only

players left were religion and ethnicity. The responsibility of the "super

powers" was colossal, but the "third world" did not respond effectively to

the challenges arriving from the West, either. It is not sufficient to say

that colonialism bears responsibility, despite the partial truth in such an

evaluation; communist parties, though they were very active in opposing

imperialism, never made any popular progress worth mentioning in the third

world. Those communist parties who achieved influence and assumed authority

used nationalism and the rhetoric of the peasantry as a tool to gain power,

with no real connections to western Marxism.

The same is true regarding regimes that supported the West during the Cold

War: their support was restricted to political and strategic dimensions,

without being attracted by the western way of life, the culture of

enlightenment or the true meaning of liberalism (and the West, in its

concentration on the Cold War, did not give much attention to this side of

the matter, either). "Non-European" societies did not produce any

worthwhile methods for adopting liberalism in politics and culture.

Dictatorial and totalitarian regimes succeeded, through the confiscation of

their societies and the atomization of their groups and individuals, in

drying up social vigor.

Despite all this, some progress was made. Parties throughout the world

began to accept some international and comprehensive legal standards, and

modernist elites formed in all regions. Fascism, at least in its Hitlerite

version, became no longer an option in the West or anywhere else.

Meanwhile, Russia and Eastern and Central Europe veered towards some shade

of democracy.

But economic and cultural transformations are not, by themselves,

sufficient to empower modern elites, particularly in some third world

countries, where they continue to survive as enclaves, surrounded by an

ocean opposing modernity. These groups need much courage to proclaim their

identity and prepare to confront primordial and backward values and

relations that oppose enlightenment. For this, it is essential that they

attain encouragement from the West, which should do its part through fairer

economic policies, and by helping to sort out complicated regional

problems, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet there is serious doubt

as to whether the West will undertake this challenge. The war on terrorism

has started to obliterate almost everything else, and grow at the expense

of attention to issues of poverty, the environment, development, disease,

education and nations' independence and freedom. The war between Russia

and Chechnya is a recent strong example.

Add to this the growth of the more religious and reactionary elements in

the US, and the fact that the war on terrorism has weakened some democratic

rights, and you have a dangerous, self-propelled dynamic. The devastating

human and economic effects for what is happening in Iraq and Palestine

contribute to enlarging the gap and intensifying the fever of animosity

towards the US. There is also a real danger that few recognize: the

lessening of sensitivity regarding racism and anti-Semitism. Some now

oppose racism alone, and ignore anti-Semitism, while others oppose

anti-Semitism and ignore all other forms of racism.

The third world and in particular the Arab world is forced to face to the

new realities brought on by the 9/11 tragedy, in addition to the challenges

of modernity in general. In some cases, this is causing people to dig-in

behind the barricades of ethnic or religious identities. The loudest voice

today is that of unity among brothers in faith and ideology; it is loud

enough to decrease the numbers of those willing to condemn terrorism and

suicide operations, if not actually enlarge the circle of supporters. The

space for tolerance becomes evermore thin, and groups previously secular

and leftist join ethnic and religious forces, justifying their actions as

acts of opposition to

imperialism.

The Lebanon case is an example of retreat. That country, which was, at the

outset of the final chapter of the Cold War, a middle ground between

progress and underdevelopment, today is annexed by Syrian military regime

at the expense of its democratic evolution. After that country produced

both a parliament and the largest middle class in the region, and nurtured

a number of unionist, partisan and media freedoms, its foremost function

now is to produce "martyrs" and literature for martyrdom and resistance.

Wars are factories of morbid thoughts, where "destinies" prosper as the

most wanted commodities. As soon as World War One ended, the ideas of

Spingler and the histories of Toynbee shone brightly. And as the Second

World War came to a close, the anthropology of Levi-Straus and the

existentialism of Sartre reigned supreme. The question today is whether the

ideas of the "neo-conservatives" and the ethnic and religious

fundamentalisms, old and new, are the offspring of the end of the Cold War,

or whether the issue is more complicated and intricate.

What causes concern is that the distance separating ideas and policies this

time seems shorter than it was before. And if this is one of the

after-effects of globalization and democratization, then the distance

between policies and generalized death is, in itself, shorter than what it

was before.

Should we, then, be optimistic about the future because ideas and concepts

have become more influential while ideas are cosmic by definition, or

should we be pessimistic for the same reason, because local identities have

captured a much bigger portion in the process of idea production?

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- Writer, commentator, and columnist for the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat in

London, and author of books on Pan-Arabism and Political Islam. This

article is part of a series of views on the relationship between the

Islamic/Arabic world and the West, published in partnership with the Common

Ground News Service (CGNews).

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Source: CGNews, November 12, 2004

Visit the CGNews website at: http://www.sfcg.org/cgnews/middle-east.cfm

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service.

Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.