Tarek Osman's Blog, page 2

Love, Loss, and our Perceptions of them in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

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With China rising and America looking inwards, what is Europe’s grand vision?

Europe is preoccupied with the rise in immigration, the threat of militant Islamism, the lurking perils in the banking systems of some of its key countries and the details of the negotiations between the European Commission and Britain on the latter’s exit from the European Union.

These concerns are crucial to Europe’s political-economic landscape. But they reflect Europe’s internally-focused perspective, a derivative of the three objectives that have preoccupied European leaders in the past six decades. The first was moving the continent from the acute hostility and violence that marked its experiences in the first half of the 20th century, towards a harmonious existence, in which yesterday’s bitter enemies get integrated into an ever closer union. The second was bridging the gap, in socio-economic conditions, between the continent’s east and west. The third objective has been preserving for European citizens the relatively comfortable lifestyles they enjoy.

The pursuit of these objectives over the past decades, however, meant prioritising welfare over all other demands on resources. That was possible during the Cold War years, when European leaders were able to rely on the US to attend to the one risk that seriously challenged the European project: that the Soviet Union would dominate Europe. Europe was able to continue prioritising socio-economic development in the past quarter century, since the end of the Cold War, because the Soviet risk disappeared, the American protection guarantee remained and because the end of the Cold War triggered illusions about the arrival of a new order of perpetual peace and prosperity.

Europe achieved a stunning success. Yesterday’s enemies in Europe have now become the closest of allies. Socio-economic conditions in almost the whole of Europe range from the, arguably, best in the world (for example in Scandinavia and small countries, such as Austria) to the relatively good (even in large countries suffering from high unemployment, such as Italy and Spain). The expansion of the European Union in the 1990s and 2000s not only enlarged the project to almost the whole of the continent; it also widened the notion of the European ideal. Europe, arguably, has arrived at the pinnacle of social contracts humanity has ever known until now.

But the acute channeling of resources towards social betterment and economic development has reached its end. Europe can no longer rely on American protection only. Today’s America sees a new power (China) rising. And though America realises that its resources (and arguably its liberal, capitalist model) are superior to those of the new challenger, America cannot be sure or complacent. At this geo-strategic moment, America does not want to shoulder many legacy burdens, such as protecting allies that it deems rich and mature enough to carry a lot of that burden themselves. America also reckons that the key political (and potentially military) confrontations at this delicate historical moment will be in Asia, not Europe or the Mediterranean. The rhetoric and positions of the Trump administration aside, this view is here to stay, irrespective of whether the White House resident is Republican or Democrat.

The default European answer to the security question has, for almost a decade now, been an emphasis on the European project. The logic goes that the stronger the union, the more entrenched European values are, the more secure peace will be in the continent, the more prosperous Europe will become, the stronger its soft power will be. This soft power, the argument goes, will allow Europe to draw its neighbours (on one side, Russia and the countries that revolve in its orbit, and on the other side, Turkey and the Arab world) towards the European way of doing things.

Security here is also based on greed. A prosperous Europe constitutes the wealthiest market in the world. All rational neighbours, the European thinking goes, would want access to this market, and so would play by European rules.

From this perspective, many in Europe’s decision-making circles continue to focus resources and energy on confronting developments that disturb the continent’s socio-economic arrangements. And so, they see Brexit and immigration as key threats to that vision of secure, prosperous Europe.

Brexit is not such a threat. Trade relationships will settle down weighed by interests. European competitiveness will suffer, but to a limited degrees, because the industries that Britain has always excelled in (science, media, and the creative sectors) had traditionally low levels of integration with Europe. The main British economic integration with Europe in the last few decades was in industries that benefited a lot from European subsidies. Europe can well survive without a high level of integration there. Politically, that a major country such as Britain chooses to orient its future away from Europe is a blow to the union. But in reality, Britain’s exit from the union could strengthen it. Britain was always a reluctant member who assessed its membership through a transactional lens. Without Britain in, Europe can unmistakably define its union on the foundations upon which it was built: a common vision of the future and identity.

Immigration is also not an unmanageable problem for Europe. Between 2013 and 2016, private yet credible sources estimate the arrivals in Europe from the eastern and southern Mediterranean, to be about two million. A colossal number, but going down rapidly, to less than 150,000 in the first half of 2017. The panic and major incentives that drove hundreds of thousands to risk their lives to leave their homes will subside if the situations in Syria and Libya persist. Plus, the rise in right-wing parties across the whole of Europe will substantially reduce the avenues of legal, and the incentives for illegal, immigration.

The real peril facing Europe is in continuing with the mindset of the previous decades in the face of a world in transformation. Rising above the socio-economics of the here-and-now and taking ownership of defending Europe transcends European defence mechanisms, the future of Nato and bilateral military and security agreements. Defence here means developing a unified European vision about Europe’s desired place in this changing world.

The key question is: what’s Europe’s vision of its global position amid the rise of China and the US’s responses to that rise. Linked to that vision, Europe must articulate the objectives of the relationships with the two giants on its east and south: Russia and Turkey, two countries with major ambitions, historical grievances, and significant resources. Europe also needs to see the Arab world with a wider lens than that of the fear of migrants. Europe’s old neighbour is undergoing its biggest transformation since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. The repercussions of that transformation will reach Europe, and no tactics of mitigation and isolation would work. Europe needs to engage with that transformation, for it presents threats and opportunities.

Such vision, objectives, and engagements will be the pillars of Europe’s new grand strategy. That strategy will, certainly, be markedly different from the currently dominant parametres of semi-cooked sanctions, accession agreements that bridge to nothing, and trade schemes of narrow scopes and potential.

This evolution of Europe’s approach to defence and foreign policy will prove difficult. Segments of Europeans will oppose it because it will mean less resources available to social support programmes. This evolution could even trigger more exits from the European Union, because they will truly test societies’ commitments to the “ever closer union”; it will force societies to think whether or not they see their futures as part of that union.

But this strategy and evolution of the continent’s approach to global positioning and defence is now a must. Without it, Europe will find itself a receiver, rather than a shaper, of events and realities with major influence on its security and future. And here, not only will Europe be threatened, but its union would have missed its true calling at a major historical moment.

The worst mistake Europe’s leaders could do now is to settle in the current comfort zone of thinking that preserving the continent’s wealth and way of life will shield it from the tornadoes of a global change. Students of the arts of self-defence learn early on that generating momentum gives you far more advantages than sustaining inertia.

Original post

Reviewing Henry Kissinger’s book “World Order”

Re-reading the Yacoubian Building

Presenting the thinking of Egyptian writer Tawfik al-Hakim

Anna….again and again

Tolstoy gives us what ‘Anna Karenina’ is all about in the first line of the novel: the distinction between happiness and unhappiness in relationships – between parents and children, siblings, and friends. His primarily focus is happiness, or the quest for it, and the onslaught of unhappiness, and the attempts to escape it, in a love relationship….when a woman and a man give oneself to the other: soul, mind, and body.

Anna is at the heart of all of these relationships. She is the mother devoted to her child and the mother without him; she is the sister trying to preserve her brother’s marriage and the one causing his family disgrace; she’s the friend feeling for the younger woman who sought her guidance, and the one who crushes her heart. And she’s the one who gives all and wants all in a consuming love story.

Unlike Tolstoy’s other major novels, ’Anna Karenina’ does not stray into multiple threads. We do have different families, see their stories unfold on the pages, but here Tolstoy keeps the novel’s energy almost totally emanating from and revolving round Anna. It is her world in which we live, her feelings in which we delve, and her ocean of emotions in which we sail.

Often we identify with Anna. We want her to be in that love story in which she finds much more than warmth, companionship, and desire; she finds the man who chose her, the man round whom she wants to weave her life, and who happily settles into that central role she wants him to be in. We know how rare and valuable it is for a woman to want and give fully, and for a man to choose and commit wholeheartedly. There is innate warmth in that bond, one that connects with our own wants and desires. And so we want it to grow and prosper. We want it to become the framework surrounding their life. We feel that – she – by giving all, and – he – by wanting and accepting, the two of them form two circles surrounding each other, where both of them are the core and the surface. He chose, entered, accepted, settled, and protected. She accepted, chose, received, and gave her own protection. In he went, reception and settlement she endowed.

Tolstoy denies us choice. By structuring the relationship like that, by drawing Anna the way he did, by seducing us into the annals of her anxieties, for us to see the glory of her soul, as well as her darkness, Tolstoy weaved many threads round our emotions that we become compelled to wish Anna and her lover to withstand the tornadoes.

Tolstoy plays with their destiny, and in so doing, with our wants and wishes for them. At moments of weakness, the man feels the two circles that he and Anna have formed are getting too small for him. Anna, feels the circles are the life she sacrificed all for, and that by not seeing that, the man she accepted being chosen by, is almost on the verge of betraying her choice – almost on the verge of betraying his own choice. The two circles seem to separate; the two lives begin to diverge. Anna feels that her acceptance of being chosen, her choosing of her surrender, and her blessing of his life being hers gives her rights that his weaknesses cannot, must not, abrogate. And we, watching her rising waves of emotions, see the danger that could shatter the warmth, companionship, and desire.

But Tolstoy is a romantic. By creating Anna the way she is, he had to make her sail through the turbulence. The warmth returns, and the separation of the two lives, souls, wants, and desires disappears.

Tolstoy did not decide to save Anna’s love from a man feeling the domestic nest is too limiting, or from a woman having second thoughts about the sacrifices she made for being with the man she fell in love with. Tolstoy saved Anna’s love because he had to. The love story at the core of ‘Anna Karenina’ gets its meaning from the strength of the bond between the souls of the two protagonists. For Tolstoy, showing the strains that life, the banality of life, could impose on that bond was a must to arrive at the foregone conclusion that that bond would, of course, come out victorious.

But if the bond is almost sacred now, it is the love story that’s becoming too unreal. That closeness, that attachment to the extent of disappearing spaces between lives entangles the two souls by mental links and by passion. Those intangibles make ‘Anna Karenina’, the love story, what it is….but can that bond survive what is not mere life, what is not mere banality? The Tolstolian victory of that valuable bond lures us into believing it can survive, into wanting it to survive, into wanting Tolstoy to make it a reality that the characters he surrounded Anna with, accept.

Some do. Some do not. But Tolstoy does not care much about that. He leaves us focusing on the social aspects – will Anna regain the respectability she sacrificed, will her lover regain the career he squandered, will the former husband find tenderness (or faith) in his heart to forgive. And while we are turning the pages to look, to find out, to plea, Tolstoy splashes cold water on our faces. It is not waking up of the dream that society, that life, would let the two circles sail smoothly, not disturbed by forces that pull them apart. Tolstoy could have made that dream come true. He could have made the tenderness of nineteenth century sensibilities, coated by the luxurious privilege of upper classes Tzarist Russia accept the love story, come to terms with it, and with time, let it linger there in a grey zone of acceptability, that would have sufficed the two lovers.

But what Tolstoy could not have done, irrespective of our feelings, irrespective of how strongly we feel for Anna, was to let her survive her own story. To have sailed smoothly through her own inner tornadoes would have made Anna a different heroine from the Anna Tolstoy have made us fall for, identify with. Anna and the love story Tolstoy weaved for her, of course, transcend the ridiculousness of society, but does not transcend Anna herself. Anna had to be herself, had to look with warmth in the coldness surrounding her, and feel herself unable to go forward, to carry the burden of her own story. Anna had to shudder as her tornadoes rage inside her. Anna would not have been Anna if she had comprehended and reasoned with the anxieties lurking at her core. As she shudders, she crumbles. And as we see her fall, we cling to her occupying that warm place inside our imagination where our care for her story, for what it meant, for what it could have meant, resides. There Anna lives forever, nestled in the perception we have formed of her, of her life, of her love. Tolstoy takes her away from us, crushes her story, shows us the impossibility of Anna carrying her story through. Yet, he makes that decision with the absolute confidence of knowing that we will never let our take on Anna, our interpretation of her, our want for her story to live in our imagination, fade with her. The great writer, and deep inside him the wise old man, takes Anna away, casts his mercy, his tenderness on her, and saves her from her anxieties, knowing that Anna, with us, will never die.

Natasha, Andre, and Pierre

Since it’s still the month of the anniversary of Tolstoy’s birth, I’ll continue with some thoughts spurred by his writings. ‘War and Peace’ was not the first Tolstoy novel I read. But it was the one that left the biggest impression on me. Perhaps it was the impact of a novel exceeding a million words on the mind of a Cairene teenager. Perhaps it is the novel’s vast scope: the sumptuousness of Tzarist St Petersburg, the austerity of Russia’s heartland in the winter, the warmth of the culture of that country’s peasants, the mix of fear and glory on the battlefields as ‘mother Russia’ fights to crush Napoleonic ambitions. With or without these elements, it was also Tolstoy’s take on love that grabbed kept mind.

Love isn’t the primary theme of ‘War and Peace’, unless one stretches the definition to argue that ‘War and Peace’ is about nothing but love….love in its myriad of forms: love for oneself, for family, country, life, and a woman. And that woman did leave a strong impression. Natasha is the heroine of ‘War and Peace’, irrespective of the many female characters in the novel. She grows in front of us, on the hundreds of pages of the novel. She grows in age, but also in character, in emotions. She sits at the intersection of the many loves that Tolstoy steers us through. She’s our focus within her family, the one that Tolstoy chose to expose to us in minute detail, I think, to represent a certain segment in Russian society, a segment that’s in the nobility, yet with strong links to the ordinary folk, one that lives in a grand house, yet whose financial situation oscillates between affluence and the brink of hardship. Natasha also sits at the Tolstoy’ian intersection of city and countryside. We see her in, and through her eyes, Moscow, and we also see her in, and through her eyes, the vast Russian rural interior. We see her with the rich and famous, and with the farmers’ wives and daughters. It is Natasha, more than any other character in ‘War and Peace’, who, by being herself, shows us the multiple facets of Russia.

And so, the teenager boy, the one I was when I first read ‘War and Peace’ is struck by literary love. But does he identify with Andre or with Pierre? Each was the man in a love story with Natasha. But those stories could not have been different. Andre, the detached, the warrior in mind and looks, the man chasing destiny and almost craving death, appears to the Cairene teenager as the hero Tolstoy carved to represent the dignity of patriotism, integrity, high values, and rising above the frivolous living of lesser beings. But Andre’s story with Natasha is far from a happy one. The hero is there, lives up to his ideals, draws admiration, gets the girl, but his detachment leaves him a bare-thread character, slowly but steadily withdrawing from our – the novel’s – world. His detachment takes him away from his family, his friends, his home, and from Natasha. It is not surprising that Tolstoy chooses to kill him, a noble death, that fills his father with pride (sitting alongside grief), a death that catapults him even further into the heavens of heroism. But the more Andre lives up to our expectations, the less we can identify with him. The human frailty in him – his melancholic character and failure to understand himself and what he wants – pale against his sacrificing all to defend Russia. If there’s one thing that redeems his humanity is, perhaps, seeking death to crush l’ennui of the mediocrity of his social class. We leave his body on the Russian snow and his memory dwelling in his family’s ancient house.

Pierre’s story with Natasha, on the other hand, is bustling with humanity. We first meet Pierre as the impressionable, naive, yet hungry for life, young man. Like Natasha, he grows in age and character over the pages. His journey, filled with the warm joys of sins, descends him to successive failings. He stands up, stumbles, rises, and falls, and we, amidst the valour and glory and sacrifices of other characters, see in this flawed man, our humanity in all its wonderful imperfections. And he sees it too. He looks at the mirror of time and sees that the man he has become is very different from the one he wanted to be as he returned from France to Russia years earlier. Tolstoy was too noble, too much the product of nineteenth century idealism, to make Pierre accept, let alone relish in, his failings. And yet, as Pierre kneels in front of Natasha, proposing to her, he does not confess his love to her as much as he confesses his flaws. Tolstoy makes him wish, and tell Natasha, that he wished he would have been a much better man so as to deserve her. And yet, it is exactly because of his failings and his growth to see these failings, his ability to transcend some of them, and to tame others, it is exactly because of the richness of his character that we see him as the match to Natasha, with her own failings and imperfections.

Together, Natasha and Pierre are not only a couple in love, as much as two kids who have finally grown beyond their childishness. We remember their naughtiness and transgressions. Some of their actions have left scars, on their souls as well as on our views of them. But in finding a real form of love – human, earthly, passionate – they find redemption, for themselves, and for those who have seem themselves grow as they read and reread ‘War and Peace’. And it is here that we see an angle of Tolstoy’s genius: his ability to take us from an abyss of human failings to heights of spiritual grandeur.

On Tolstoy….on the day of his birth

Tolstoy was born on this day….he’s among that rare breed of writers you first encounter – typically through “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina” – because of his fame. If you’re into reading literature, you feel you have to read him. After all, his name has that massive reputation that attracts you. For many, his stories acquire a special appeal. The love, valour, chivalry, betrayal, cruelty, and delving into the depths of human feelings, pull us in. And so, we feel for Pierre, we admire Andrei Bolkonsky, we identify with Anna, we love Natasha. But over time, perhaps with a second reading of one of his great novels, usually many years or even decades after the first reading, we see and feel much deeper than the stories. We see and feel the conditions that Tolstoy was really talking about. The conditions of love as experienced by different characters in different situations, and the joys and pains that these conditions gave rise to. Seeing and feeling these conditions make us identify with Tolstoy’s writings much more than the plots of his novels do. Because in these conditions of love, joy, sorrow, grief, regret, bewilderment, ambition, courage, rise, and fall, we see the essence of the human experience, presented slowly, at length, and with intelligence, compassion, and wisdom that make such presentations transcend the circumstances of 19th century Czarist Russia, and make them relevant to us, readers in different times, places, and coming from vastly different backgrounds. We see elements of our lives shown to us, not really through the events Tolstoy recounts, but rather through his understanding of the feelings that underpin our lives……After one has absorbed Tolstoy’s stories, took a journey with him into his universe of the human experience, one can discover his later writings, those essays written in the last few years of his long life, in which he reflects on the depths of our conditions as beings with consciousness, with deep thinking, with elevated feelings. In these essays, Tolstoy completes the circle of his universe. He offers us not just thinking, clear, direct, and not wrapped in the plots of stories, but he also gives us his feelings, his anxieties, his struggles. He takes us through the questions that he could not answer, but found a form of wisdom in tackling. Reading these essays after absorbing his great novels feels like listening to the final observations of a wise and humble teacher.

The Arab World’s Coming Challenges

Fifty years after the Six Days War, the Middle East remains a region in seemingly perpetual crisis. So it is no surprise that, when addressing the region, politicians, diplomats, and the donor and humanitarian community typically focus on the here and now. Yet, if we are ever to break the modern Middle East’s cycle of crises, we must not lose sight of the future. And, already, four trends are brewing a new set of problems for the coming decade.

The first trend affects the Levant. The post-Ottoman order that emerged a century ago – an order based on secular Arab nationalism – has already crumbled. The two states that gave weight to this system, Iraq and Syria, have lost their central authority, and will remain politically fragmented and socially polarized for at least a generation.

In Lebanon, sectarianism remains the defining characteristic of politics. Jordan has reached its refugee-saturation point, and continued inflows are placing limited resources under ever-greater pressure. As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no new initiative or circumstance on the political horizon that could break the deadlock.

The Middle East is certain to face the continued movement of large numbers of people, first to the region’s calmer areas and, in many cases, beyond – primarily to Europe. The region is also likely to face intensifying contests over national identities as well, and perhaps even the redrawing of borders – processes that will trigger further confrontations.

The second major trend affects North Africa. The region’s most populous states – Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco – will maintain the social and political orders that have become entrenched over the last six decades of their post-colonial history. The ruling structures in these countries enjoy broad popular consent, as well as support from influential institutions, such as labor and farmers’ unions. They also have effective levers of coercion that serve as backstops for relative stability.

But none of this guarantees smooth sailing for these governments. On the contrary, they are poised to confront a massive youth bulge, with more than 100 million people under the age of 30 entering the domestic job market in North Africa between now and 2025. And the vast majority of these young people, products of failed educational systems, will be wholly unqualified for most jobs offering a chance of social mobility.

The sectors best equipped to absorb these young Arabs are tourism, construction, and agriculture. But a flourishing tourism sector is not in the cards – not least because of the resurgence of militant Islamism, which will leave North Africa exposed to the risk of terror attacks for years to come.

Moreover, a declining share of the European food market and diminished investments in real estate undermine the capacity of agriculture and construction to absorb young workers. The likely consequences of North Africa’s youth bulge are thus renewed social unrest and potentially sizeable migration flows to Europe.

The Gulf used to provide a regional safety valve. For more than a half-century, Gulf countries absorbed millions of workers, primarily from their Arab neighbors’ lower middle classes. The Gulf was also the main source of investment capital, not to mention tens of billions of dollars in remittances, to the rest of the region. And many Arab countries viewed it as the lender of last resort.

But – and herein lies the third key trend – the Gulf economies are now undergoing an upgrade, ascending various industrial value chains. This reduces their dependence on low-skill foreign workers. In the coming years, the Gulf countries can be expected to import fewer workers from the rest of the Arab world, and to export less capital to it.

The Gulf might even become increasingly destabilized. Several Gulf powers and Iran are engaged in a partly sectarian proxy war in Yemen – one that will not end anytime soon. And now, several Sunni powers are forcefully trying to compel one of their own, Qatar, to abandon a regional strategy it has pursued for decades. The pressures being generated across the Arabian Peninsula could produce further political shocks.

That is all the more likely, given mounting domestic pressure for reform from a technologically savvy and globally engaged young citizenry. Reforming centuries-old social and political structures will be as difficult as it is necessary.

The fourth trend affects the entire Arab world, as well as Iran and Turkey: the social role of religion is becoming increasingly contested. The wars and crises of the last six years have reversed much of the progress that political Islam had made in the decade before the so-called Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011. With radicalism becoming increasingly entrenched, on the one hand, and young Muslims putting forward enlightened understandings of their religion, on the other, a battle for the soul of Islam is raging.

The problems implied by these four trends will be impossible for leaders, inside or outside the Arab world, to address all at once, especially at a time of rising populism and nativism across the West. But action can and should be taken. The key is to focus on socioeconomic issues, rather than geopolitics.

The West must not succumb to illusions about redrawing borders or shaping new countries; such efforts will yield only disaster. One highly promising option would be to create a full-on Marshall Plan for the Arab world. But, in this era of austerity, many Western countries lack the resources, much less public support, for such an effort – most of the Arab world today couldn’t make the most of it in any case.

What leaders – both within and outside the region – can do is pursue large-scale and intelligent investments in primary and secondary education, small and medium-size businesses (which form the backbone of Arab economies), and renewable energy sources (which could underpin the upgrading of regional value chains).

Pursuing this agenda won’t stem the dissolution of the modern Arab state in the Levant. It won’t generate workable social contracts in North Africa. And it certainly won’t reconcile the sacred with the secular. But, by attempting to address young people’s socioeconomic frustrations, it can mitigate many of the longer-term consequences of these trends.