Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:39:40.951Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

State-Systems and Revolutionary Challenge: Nasser, Khomeini, and the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Maridi Nahas
Affiliation:
University of CaliforniaLos Angeles

Extract

Revolutions are momentous events that shake the foundations of societies, transforming their social and political structures and often signalling the triumph of a new ideology. It has long been noted that the international ramifications of revolutions are no less profound than their domestic impact. This is not only because revolutions often give rise to powerful states, thus potentially undermining the extant balance of power, but also because they sometimes infuse those states with norms and objectives that are antithetical to those subscribed to by other members of the international system. They also exert a demonstration effect beyond the boundaries of their country of origin, with a potential for triggering waves of revolution and counter-revolution both within and between societies.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Quoted in Rosecrance, Richard, Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston, 1963), p. 36.Google Scholar

2 Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, England, 1979), emphasizes the state- building activities unleashed by revolutions.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Hermassi, quoted in Skocpol, ibid., p. 4.

4 Kim, Kyung-Won, Revolution and International System (New York, 1970), p. 16.Google Scholar

5 Rummel, Rudolf, Understanding Conflict and War: War, Power, Peace (Beverly Hills/London, 1979), p. 172 lists the various components of conflict behaviour.Google Scholar

6 Because of the time factor involved, studies of the impact of the Egyptian Revolution are more readily available. A good qualitative account of the level of conflict related to Egyptian revolutionary politics is Kerr, Malcolm, The Arab Cold War (New York, 1971). Systematic measurements, using quantitative techniques, are in general hard to come by in works on Middle East politics.Google Scholar

7 I have adopted Cantori and Spiegel's definition of a subordinate system as one that consists of “one state, or of two or more proximate and interacting states which have some common ethnic, linguistic, cultural, social, and historical bonds, and whose sense of identity is sometimes increased by the actions and attitudes of states external to the system,” Cantori, L. and Spiegel, S., The International Politics of Regions: A Comparative Approach (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970), pp. 67.Google ScholarI also endorse their delineation of the “core” states in the Middle Eastern subsystem, with the addition of Iran, which together with Israel and Turkey they assigned to the periphery. The inclusion of Iran is based upon two considerations: 1. Unlike Israel and Turkey, which made a conscious choice since the Atatürk revolution to Islamisize and veer away from the Middle Eastern constellation, Iran has always enjoyed a high level of cultural and religious affinity with the Arab members of the state-system. Unlike Turkey, Iran's attachment to the Middle Eastern community was never diluted by association with such Western communities as NATO, the EEC, and earlier, the Concert of Europe. 2. In terms of the level of interaction and communication, Iran has also played a much more active role than Turkey in the recent affairs of the subsystem. Under the Shah, she collaborated closely with the conservative states in containing the Nasserite threat; and utilizing her post-1973 oil wealth, played an active role in the process of Egyptian assimilation. In this modified version, the Middle Eastern core would consist of Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq. Lebanon, Sudan, Jordan. Syria. South Yemen. Iran, and the Persian Gulf states.Google Scholar

8 Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass., 1979) and Man, the State, and War (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

9 Aron, Raymond, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (New York, 1966), p. 99.Google Scholar

10 lt is interesting to note that the concept of ideological homogenity has been utilized in the analysis of party systems. According to Sartori, the distinctive (and destabilizing) feature of what he termed “polarized multi-party systems” is not so much the factor of multiplicity as much as that of ideological heterogeneity. He defines ideology as a particular mentality – a forma mentis. Ideological distance between the parties bars certain alignment possibilities and creates a situation where “the parties fight one another with ideological arguments and vie with one another in terms of ideological mentality.”Google ScholarSartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 137.Google Scholar

11 Doran, Charles, The Politics of Assimilation: Hegemon, and its Aftermath (Baltimore, 1971) p. 22.Google Scholar

12 Rummel, Understanding Conflict, p. 318.Google Scholar

13 One wonders if the architects of the Vienna Settlement could not have applied their considerable diplomatic engineering skills to devising a formula for peaceful German unification.Google Scholar

14 Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), p. 240.Google Scholar

15 At this point, these were mainly Egypt. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, and Iran. Iran played a marginal role in the affairs of the subsystem at this stage. The Syrian and Lebanese republics joined upon gaining their independence from France in the early 1940s.Google Scholar

16 Faysal I moved from Syria to Iraq, and Abdullah, originally assigned the Iraqi throne, had to settle for the far less attractive throne of Transjordan.Google Scholar

17 Sharabi, Hisham, Nationalism and Revolution in the Arab World (New York, 1966), pp. 1011.Google Scholar

18 Al-Jazairi, Saudi Arabia: A Diplomatic History 1924–1964 (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1971), p. 45.Google Scholar

19 The Hedda Agreement, fixing the Saudi-Jordanian border, was signed in 1925. It was followed by a treaty of friendship and a protocol on the arbitration of border disputes in 1933. Similar border agreements were signed between Saudi Arabia and Iraq between 1930 and 1938.Google Scholar

20 Quoted in Haykal, Mohammad, “Egyptian Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 56 (Summer, 1978), 718.Google Scholar

21 Scale, Patrick, The Struggle for Syria (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar

22 Kimche, John, The Second Arab Awakening (New York, 1970), p. 13.Google Scholar

23 For a good account of the Ikhwan movement, see Habib, John, The Ikhwan Movement in the Najd: Its Rise, Development and Decline (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1970).Google Scholar

24 Wesson, Robert, State Systems: International Pluralism, Politics and Culture (New York, 1978), p. 216.Google Scholar

25 Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn., 1968) spells Out this dilemna rather well.Google Scholar

26 Halpern, Manfred. The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton, N.J., 1963), has masterfully analyzed the agitation and final triumph of the salaried new middle class in most Middle Eastern societies.Google Scholar

27 Clifford Geertz once noted that in the Third World, the nation State was uniquely suited to waging the struggle for independence, which often required a geographically delimited confrontation with the colonial powers. The nation state form also allowed for a broadly based societal coalition to function against the foreign power. Once that struggle was over, Geertz argued, a Pandora's box of conflicting sub- and supra-national loyalties is opened. Nowhere has this observation been better corroborated than in the Middle East. The post-World War I territorial divisions were smeared from the beginning by the stigma of divide and conquer and had constantly to be defended against the challenge of integrative nationalism, be it of the pan-Arab or pan-Islamic variety.Google Scholar

28 Quoted in Sharabi, Nationalism, p. 135.Google Scholar

29 Quoted in Kimche. The Second Arab Awakening. p. 119.Google Scholar

30 Dawisha, Adeed, Egypt in the Arab World: The Elements of Foreign Policy (New York, 1976), p. 14.Google Scholar

31 It is interesting to note that a second Lebanese civil war coincided with the disintegration of the “restored,” post-1967 state-system. Like the Egyptians on an earlier occasion, Iran's revolutionary leaders have found no shortage of partisans in Lebanon.Google Scholar

32 Kimche, The Second Arab Awakening, p. 91.Google Scholar

33 Hudson, Michael, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven, Conn., 1977), p. 178.Google Scholar

34 For Iran's forced march under the Shah, see Halliday, Fred, Iran: Dictatorship and Developnient (London, 1979).Google Scholar

35 Doran, The Politics of Assimilation. p. 10.Google Scholar

36 For a detailed account of the proceedings and significance of the Khartoum summit, see the memoires of former Sudanese prime minister Muhammed Mahjoub.Google Scholar

37 It will be remembered that the Egyptian revolution, although initially spearheaded by the military, eventually established the bureaucratic and technocratic elites in positions of power and influence. Under the direction of the latter, Egypt embarked upon a socialist route to development. Both the landed elites and the bourgeoisie were subjected to expropriation and nationalization as part of the program.Google Scholar

38 This aspect of assimilation receives much attention in Ajami, F., The Arab Predicament (Cambridge, England, 1981)Google Scholar and Dessouki, A. H., “The New Arab Political Order: Implications for the 1980's,” in Rich and Poor States in the Middle East, eds. Kerr, Malcolm and Yassin, Sayyed (Boulder, Colo., 1982).Google Scholar

39 Dessouki, ibid., p. 323.

40 Ajami, The Arab Predicament, p. 156.Google Scholar

41 Wesson, State Systems, p. 217.Google Scholar

42 Hobsbawm, E. J., The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (New York, 1962), p. 137.Google Scholar

43 Kissinger, Henry, A World Restored (New York, 1964), p. 322.Google Scholar

44 That theme is taken up by Keddi, Nikki, “Islam and Politics: New Factors in the Equation” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1979.Google Scholar

45 Ajami, The Arab Predicament, p. 11.Google Scholar

46 Cottam, Richard, “Iran and the War with Iraq,” Current History 80, 5 (10 1980), 6.Google Scholar

47 On the resilience of the concept of “umma,” see Rodinson, Maxime, “Islam Resurgent?Gazelle Review 6 (1979).Google Scholar

48 Beeman, William, “Khomeiny's Power Goes Far Abroad,” Los Angeles Times, 05 28, 1982.Google Scholar

49 Reported in The Times of London, 02 7, 1982.Google Scholar

50 Pipes, Daniel, “This World is Political! The Islamic Revival of the Seventies,” Orbis 24, 1 (Spring 1980), 35.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 14.

52 Batatu, Hanna, “Iraq's Underground Shi'i Movements,” MERIP Reports 12, 1 (01 1982).Google Scholar

53 Gulf Council members have apparently supported the Iraqi war effort to the tune of several billion dollars.Google Scholar

54 Dawisha, , “Iraq and the Arab World: The Gulf War and After,” The World Today (05 1981).Google Scholar

55 This approach boasts a celebrated ancestry that includes De Tocqueville and Weber. A more recent work in this tradition is Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar