During the research for my latest book, Imperial Designs: War, Humiliation and the Making of History (Potomac Books – the University of Nebraska Press, 2013), I came across something the Czech writer Milan Kundera said in his novel Immortality about shame. He was twice expelled from the Communist Party, forced to leave his homeland to go to live in France seven years after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, then stripped of his Czech citizenship. “The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours,” he said, “but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.”
Another work which influenced my writing was the 1978 literary masterpiece Orientalism of the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said. In his book, Said examined the set of beliefs behind the Western ideology known as Orientalism, that is, the tendency of colonial administrators, philosophers, and writers to treat the East as alien, exotic, and inferior. For several centuries, this ideology emphasized the difference between the European and Asiatic parts of the world, as if each were a distinct and single entity. Said described Orientalism as “fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient.”
Imperial Designs is the last volume of my trilogy. The book follows Breeding Ground, a study of Afghanistan from the 1978 Communist coup to 2011; and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan that evaluates George W. Bush’s presidency in terms of the “war on terror,” focusing on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and their aftermath.
I had suggested in the two previous books that among the factors contributing to the events of September 11, 2001, was a sense of humiliation felt in the Muslim world, especially in the Middle East. It made me think further about war and humiliation in international politics, and how war, humiliation and manipulation have historically affected the behavior of the humiliated and the humiliator. My focus in Imperial Designs was the Greater Middle East. For oil, geopolitics and imperial rivalries between Britain, Russia and the United States had been among my interests. The history of Arabs and Persians is rich and interesting. They have both fought numerous wars over the centuries. The history of external actors’ meddling in the region, by the Ottomans, then the British, the Russians and the Americans is intriguing. The consequences have been profound and far-reaching.
In Imperial Designs, I examine the Ottoman Empire’s collapse around the First World War in the early twentieth century; the discovery of oil in the region and the division of lands between Britain and France; the creation of the state of Israel after the Second World War and its meaning for Palestinians and Arabs; and further conflicts. In Iran, the early democracy movement; the 1953 overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in an Anglo-American intelligence plot; and subsequent events over a quarter century until the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in the 1979 revolution. Examination of events such as these is relevant in any study of the role of humiliation and the shaping of the contemporary Middle East.
I demonstrate that the continuing upheaval in the region has its origins in the events around the First World War a century ago, when Ottoman rule was replaced by British and French colonial rule using the instrument of “Mandate.” I also discuss how conflict between tribes and wars with external invaders have determined the thinking and behavior of local peoples through history. Vast sandy deserts, a free spirit and a warrior instinct are fundamental elements of Middle Eastern cultures. Repeatedly, wars put those instincts on display and reinforced them.
Through history, where desert communities were sparsely located, interaction was less between them, but more within members of each community or tribe. The emphasis was on cohesion within each tribe. Personal possessions within the general populous were fewer, and lifestyle was frugal for most members. Wealth tended to accumulate with chiefs. Honor, its dispossession causing humiliation, and promises betrayed became strong drivers of human behavior. Defending the honor of a person, a clan, tribe or nation–and regaining it after humiliation–became of utmost importance. Past injustices and unsettled disputes persisted, and more added to the long list as time went by.
Power and humiliation are the cause and effect of human behavior. In Imperial Designs, I also discuss interventions by Russia, Britain, and the United States in Iran and the consequent radicalization of the Iranian population. My observation is that, throughout the region, the greater the scale of mobilization by opposing sides locked in conflict, the deeper, more long-term reaction it generates. The greater the defeat, the more intense and long-lasting the determination in the vanquished to extract the price for humiliation. It is this pattern of events through history that explains the making of the Middle East.
See Deepak Tripathi, Imperial Designs: War, Humiliation and the Making of History (Potomac, 2013)
You are absolutely right. The Arab “warrior instinct” that leads them to engage in endless wars and their sense of humiliation when they lose these wars, is the source of the Middle East conflict, coupled to their inability to reconcile themselves to the existence of a non-Muslim state in the region.
Right. The legacy of colonialism and continued foreign interference in their countries (e.g., overthrow of Mossadegh, illegal US war on Iraq, US support for armed rebels in Syria, Israeli occupation of Palestine, etc., etc.) clearly have nothing to do with it.
You’re absolutley right about that too, Jeremy. The etc. etc. had absolutely nothing to do with it. The warrior instinct came out of the desert, as Mr. Deepak correctly points out, long before there were any Western imperialists in the world, as did the Arab conquest of the Middle East, North Africa and most of Spain, long before there was a State of Israel and a United States, and the Arab culture that responds so violently to what it perceives as humiliation comes from the same place and has operated all through Arab history.
What can explain the “warrior instinct” of Israel and the West, the culture that acts so violently towards other peoples and nations?
Thanks for raising this, Jeremy. Normally, an author should quietly follow their work being discussed. However, I will make a brief interjection. My article, and the book, are part of a general attempt by me, and the analysis therein should not be reduced too much to make a partisan point. That would be a misinterpretation and unfair.
About tribalism, warrior instinct and humiliation, it is important to look around and bear in mind works like the Twelve Tribes of Israel (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/tribes.html), and the history of the United States. In the US, settlers from other continents who set up colonies, starting on the east coast, were in many cases themselves excluded, persecuted and humiliated in their own countries before leaving. The warrior instinct of the US as a nation is not disconnected from the history of early settlers. But I am digressing too much from the immediate topic.
Dear Deepak
There is no warrior instinct in Israel and the United States. The impulse to make war for its own sake is not part of the culture of either country and has very little to do with the conflicts in which they have been engaged, nor does any sense of humiliation play a part. You are using these terms in a very imprecise and generalized way and seem to know these cultures only on paper and not in any direct and intimate way.
I am curious whether you can provide an example of this “warrior instinct” manifest, this “impulse to make war for its own sake” shown in history.
The Mongolian invasion of Europe.
Fred Skolnik provides a perfect example of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”
It seems he is convinced The Mongols were Arab! And the Moroccans who were generally invited into Spain because of the benefits they provided, were also Arabs!
I presume Fred is an American? if so would that make him a Venezuelan? You have my sympathies Fred for the recent death of Hugo Chavez, a great man and a great loss.
No, Mike, I don’t think the Mongols were Arabs, but I also don’t think that what you call Morrocans were invited into Spain. The Moors or Berbers, both ethnically meaningless terms, were forced converts to Islam enlisted in the Arab armies that invaded Spain under the Ummayad caliphate.
Fred, you give an extremely simplistic and bias version of history. The rapid expansion of Islam succeeded because it provided advantages to the general population, yes there were battles to remove those leaders who opposed the introduction of the words of a third prophet, but no massacres of “non-believers” as numerously conducted by Christians during the later Crusades.
Jews and Christians were allowed to continue openly practicing their faiths. Islamic culture was very practical, it introduced advanced irrigation techniques, vastly advanced architecture, undreamed of medical standards and an emphasis on learning and science.
Far from being forced to convert to Islam against their wishes, many “Spanish” welcomed the opportunity to replace their existing “leaders” with “Moors” who provided an improved way of life.
Islam accepts the teaching of Abraham (an Arab) and Jesus (an Arab). Mohammed (another Arab)is regarded as the third Monotheistic Semite Prophet, his teachings recorded in the Koran, in addition to the Torah and the New Testament, is known as “The Book”.
The creation of The State of Israel allowed for no such tolerance, the creation of the State of Israel required the forcible removal of the intrinsic population and exists only by force of arms, and US support. Sorry Fred, that cannot be justified.
You have a comic book view of Arab history. In any case, your view that conquests by superior civilizations are good for the conquered people if they improve their lives is the rationalization used by all imperialist powers, so if you like one you have to like them all, and certainly you have to like Israel, since Israeli Arabs have the highest standard of living and the most political freedom in the Arab world and according to polls (in Wadi Ara, for example) would refuse to live under Palestinian sovereignty under any exchange of territory.
Sounds like a good read. How does it differ from Fromkin’s seminal work, “A Peace to End all Peace”?
Let us keep aside basic instincts etc etc. There was peace in what we call the middle east before the break up of the Ottoman Empire. What the Europeans created after the fall of Ottoman empire was a recipe for disaster that is now slowly unfolding. Combining the Kurds, Sunnis and the Shias to form Iraq and then import a Sunni ruler laid the foundation of what is happening now. Had a Kurdish state combining Kurds of Turkey,and Iraq been formed and the Sunni areas of Iraq,Kuwait and Jordon were to form one state much of the problems of today would not have arisen. Probably it would not have been democratic state but is peace not more important?