Taking it seriously

Those who think that the difficulties the Americans are having in Iraq are going to make them rethink their commitment to effecting serious change in the Middle East and adopt some kind of a neutral hands-off stance vis-à-vis regional developments are, simply put, deluding themselves. In fact, the invasion of Iraq promises to be merely the beginning of a long period of direct American interventionism in the region. Whatever difficulties the Americans are bound to encounter along the way, whatever changes should take place at the helm, substituting Democrats for Republicans, conservatives for liberals, doves for hawks, or vice versa, could affect the choice of the particular interventionist strategy to be deployed, but it will have no impact on the interventionist policy itself. The United States has no option but to intervene. Continue reading “Taking it seriously” →

A View From Inside Syria

The text of a lecture given at the Woodrow Wilson Center during my first ever visit to Washington, D.C. which also marked my first venture back to the U.S. since I left in September of 1994.

The Syrian Shadow Government and the Possibilities of Change

Introduction

Syrian-American relations have always been much too complex, despite the fact that they have always been rather minimal. There was hardly a time when the relations between the two countries could be described as warm or cordial, not to mention strong. As such, the current observable lack of good will, to put it mildly, between the two sides is not exactly a new phenomenon or a peculiar development. Rather, there are many outstanding issues in Syrian-American relations that remain unresolved and that have not, in fact, been seriously addressed yet. Continue reading “A View From Inside Syria” →

From Nationalism to Country-Building: A Necessary Shift in Emphasis

Introduction

Observers of Middle East contemporary politics have always contended that the Palestinian cause has often been used by the various ruling Arab regimes to distract the minds of their oppressed peoples from the need for internal political, economic and social reforms. There is an urgent need, however, now that the region seems to be undergoing conditions similar to those that existed in the early twentieth century, to flesh out this argument even further. Continue reading “From Nationalism to Country-Building: A Necessary Shift in Emphasis” →

The Aftermath of Conquest: Two Possible Scenarios and a Simple Must

The problem with modern Arabs, peoples and governments alike, is not that they have been consistently defeated in almost every war they fought, ever since gaining independence in the second part of the twentieth century. Rather, it is the continuing incredulity with which they choose to deal with these defeats. The central role that the Arab collective memory still assigns to Arab peoples, in both the historical process and the divine scheme, is so out of touch with contemporary reality that Arabs have almost no choice but to continue to fall back upon conspiracy theories to explain this seemingly illogical situation to themselves and make it more acceptable somehow.

Continue reading “The Aftermath of Conquest: Two Possible Scenarios and a Simple Must” →