Tarek Osman's Blog, page 3

1967 War’s Real Legacy in Egypt

From the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, Egypt pioneered the experiment of building a modern, secular, Western-oriented Arab-majority state, out of four-centuries-old Ottoman rule. President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in the early 1950s overthrew Egypt’s monarchy and dismantled its liberal political structure, turned the Egyptian state into a force fighting colonialism across the region, and sought to create out of disparate Arab countries a semi-unified “nation” that, he envisaged, would emerge, in one or two generations, as a global power.

Until the 1967 defeat, Nasser’s project resonated with the aspirations of tens of millions of Arabs. It was a moment of global transformation—the end of the Second World War and the fall of Europe’s empires. Large groups of Arabs, especially the first generations ever to be educated in the West, felt the “nation” was on the verge of discarding centuries of regress and subordination; that the “people” would now reap the fruits of the past century’s modernization; and that a new dawn after centuries of darkness awaited the Arab nation.

Nasser’s project became a dream, and the man its hero. For Egypt, however, the real value was in evolving its place in the collective Arab psyche from being the country where many Arabs came to learn, work, and holiday, into the custodian of the ideals of modern Arab nationalism. This custodianship gave legitimacy to Egypt’s political leadership in the Arab World.

June 1967, when Israel obliterated Egypt’s air force and occupied the whole of Sinai, crushed that dream. The blow was not in the military defeat. Six years later, in the October 1973 war, Egypt’s success at launching a strategic military surprise and a crossing of its forces into Sinai, secured for it serious negotiations with Israel, sponsored by the United States. Ultimately, Egypt managed to regain all the lands it had lost in 1967. The blow, however, was in the humiliation, and the crumbling of the pride and the image of the hero, Nasser, which June 1967 inflicted.

Most Arabs felt humbled. Arab art, especially poetry, spent two decades dissecting the pain. For some, like the Syrian poet Nizar Kabbani, Nasser became the Arab’s “Christ” who was to deliver the “nation” its historical salvation. For others, his project smacked of vacant rhetoric. Half a century later, Arab political discourse continues to oscillate between revering and loathing the man, and more importantly between self-victimization and self-flagellation.

The blow to Nasserist Arab nationalism took from Egypt a lot of its claim to leadership. No one understood this better than Nasser himself. His rhetoric, style of governing, even his posture and walk changed. Christ became mortal. Indeed, less than three years later, he died at the age of 52. His successor, Anwar Sadat, believed that his leading the country into the October 1973 war gave him a new mandate—not only to rule Egypt, but to chart for the country a new strategic direction. President Sadat harbored the ambition that Egypt would move beyond its connections with the Arab World and “join the developed world, the West”—the same vision, or delusion, that a century earlier, had inspired the most ambitious ruler of Egypt’s liberal age, Khedive Ismail. Ismail paid the price of his ambition, an exile in Naples and Vienna. Sadat paid with his life. In October 1981, Egyptians watched a group of militant Islamists assassinate the modern-day pharaoh live on television.

President Hosni Mubarak, who took over after the assassination, lacked Sadat’s ambition and Nasser’s charisma. In his first term in power (effectively throughout the 1980s) he eschewed real politics altogether. He focused on the country’s teetering economy, particularly on upgrading the infrastructure. For him, foreign policy’s primary objectives were avoiding problems and serving the economy. That sat well with millions of Egyptians who, after decades of political and military adventurism and fighting, aspired to better living. Like most people, they prioritized daily life over intangible notions of identity, the country’s role in the region, or place in the world.

But three decades of a foreign policy of “muddling through” became political surrealism—open to any interpretation, or charges of meaninglessness. Egypt’s 2011 uprising was not about foreign policy; but lurking behind the colossal anger that contributed to the eruption of the January 2011 revolt were the frustrations of a young generation of Egyptians about the yawning gap between the nation’s historic image as a powerful leader in the region, and the reality of a country consumed by its colossal social and economic problems.

Fifty years after June 1967, Egypt is no closer to bridging that gap. The dichotomy between the country’s nostalgia for that historic role and its current absorption with its challenges continues to torment the society. In 1930, Gramsci observed that “morbid moods arise from the unwillingness of the old to die and the inability of the new to be born.” Egypt’s old view of itself as the leader of the Arabs refuses to go into the shadows of historical memory. And no fresh self-image, and definition of what it means to be Egypt in the Arab World, has emerged either. Perhaps young Egyptian thinkers can dispel the morbidness.

The Four Dilemmas Facing Britain

June is bringing the British isles moderate temperatures and heavy rain. The contrast befits Britain’s mood, for the country is facing four wrenching dilemmas.

The first concerns who should form the coming government after the 8 June parliamentary election. The choice is hardly about a conservative party with centre-right positions versus a leftist opponent. It is also not, as often depicted in British media, a contest between affluent, confident, and quite content South-East England versus the (economically just-getting-by) rest. This election is by far more important than that, for it comes at the end of an era. The two political experiments that have shaped the country in the last thirty five years – Thatcherite Conservatism (under prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) and Blarite liberalism (the almost 15-years of “New Labour” rule that began with Tony Blair’s coming to power in 1997) – have been discarded by the two largest parties in the country. Thatcherite Conservatism, by its confidence in the wisdom and efficiency of market forces, is perceived by wide sections of the electorate, and by the new grandees of the Conservative party, as unbefitting our age of austerity and economic anxieties, especially given the colossal failures of market forces before the 2008 financial crisis. Blarite liberalism has been besmirched by Tony Blair’s pulling the country into the Iraq quagmire on pretexts and arguments that exposed a descent to the supremacy of spin over substance.

The current leadership of the Conservative and Labour parties are putting forward vastly different economic policies and political choices. At heart, each side is asking the electorate to subscribe to a different understanding of the role of the state in society.

The second dilemma concerns Brexit. Ten days after the election, Britain is expected to commence negotiating with the European Union the terms of their divorce. The two major parties in Britain want to minimise the immediate financial costs of the separation. But save for that, there is a major cleavage in views, actually across the whole political class, concerning the country’s strategy post leaving the EU.

Many observers in Britain, and not only die-hard Brexiteers, believe the country has the economic competitiveness, technological edge, tradition of rule of law, human talent, social institutions, unrivalled level of freedom of thought and expression, and the crucially important qualities of pragmatism and mercantilism, to be able to carve for itself a unique place in the world’s global economy. In this view, Britain has what it takes to sustain, and increase, its prosperity.

Others in the political class (interestingly from different and often opposing political clans) see Brexit as a calamity. In their view, it will expose the erosion Britain has experienced in the quantity and quality of its resources, from the capital accumulated here (that is not transient or marked for real estate investments) to the human talent that’s truly competitive in a world of rising Asia and economically desperate Southern Europe.

This dichotomy leads observers to the third dilemma: What is Britain’s place in tomorrow’s world. Most of those who are optimistic about Britain leaving the EU aspire to a place for the country at the top of a league of middle political and economic powers. Those who consider Brexit a disaster foresee a slow but certain decline. These views lead to different strategies relating to the country’s objectives and dynamics in dealing with major powers such as the US, China, and Russia. This dichotomy also touches on the country’s view of its future, and of itself, a hugely important issue for a nation that, until seven decades ago, was a global empire.

The fourth, and probably the most difficult, dilemma, is what narrative the coming government would put forward in front of its constituencies. Social narratives matter. For a society that will either have to fight to retain its place in the global order, or that will have to accept its inevitable decline into less power, privilege, and expectations, having a narrative that justifies the sacrifices or explains the deteriorating standards of life is crucial.

Britain’s new government has monumental problems to address. Global observers should keep an eye on what the country will be making of itself, not only because of Britain’s political, economic, and military importance, but also because the next few years in Britain will be interesting. Anglophiles like me wish Britain would summon the best of itself to confront these challenges facing it. In a way, reading the history of the British isles in the last few centuries advises one not to bet against Britain.

The Importance of Being Political

Physicists complain that their academic departments discourage them from contemplating the philosophical implications of the theories they study. Instead, they are told to mathematise: just solve the equations. The same approach bedevils policy making.

There’s a tendency to economicise social problems. For example, the waves of migration by young Europeans from central, eastern, and southern Europe to the north west, and especially Britain and Germany, are framed as a response to richer job markets. This scoping correctly leads policy makers to emphasise the need for structural economic reforms in the countries unable to create jobs. But it ignores the social consequences of these waves of migration. For example, that few European societies receive dynamism that is manifested in various domains, from business to art, while most lose that natural source of rejuvenation. Economicising also fails to acknowledge the cultural dimension here: the subtle hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic worldviews. Narrow scoping leads to partial responses (such as the focus on reforms), and fails to shed light on the necessity of political and cultural ones, for example, to attend to the rise of resentment among many Europeans of what they perceive to be a dilution of their heritages.

Inequality is another example. It is one thing to understand it economically or see it as a consequence of globalisation; it is quite another to reflect on its socio-political meaning. For example, the sense that economic inequality is a consequence of political inequality, and that the elite’s getting away with causing colossal socio-economic pains that the rest – the masses – endure, erode trust in the prevailing social order which lends credence to those who advocate its complete overhaul. Here, narrow economic scoping misses the links between inequality and nativism, and in turn savagism.

Economicising problems also fails to distinguish between manageable political risks and systemic failures. For example, decision makers in the West saw the uprisings in the Arab world, six years ago, as both: a “spring of democracy” against various forms of dictatorship and a social response to corruption and acute concentrations of economic power. The common denominator of all reactions was a focus on how to address key economic challenges in the region, for example, youth unemployment and declining competitiveness. These responses are valuable. But a wider scoping of the phenomenon would have seen the uprisings as the first waves of a social tsunami, carrying decades-old frustrations and an array of social and cultural problems, that is transforming the entire Middle East. In this understanding, the economic responses would be one component of a larger understanding of the challenges that lurk in the region’s future.

Often economicising problems is deliberate obfuscation. Political elites prefer narrow, economics-centred scoping and responses. They focus on the technical (say, measures to cut budget deficits) and avoid the political (such as, why a country’s political economy, which favours a select group, is the way it is). Economicisation frames social ills as transient phenomena that fiscal and monetary reforms would fix, rather than systemic faults that require political changes. Economicisation also perpetuates the status quo, and so hardly challenges existing concentrations of power. The vast majority of economic reform programs seek substantial bottom-up changes (what the masses are to endure) rather than top-down changes (ejection of governing models that have failed to deliver).

Seven decades ago, reflecting on France at the moment of transformation that followed the Second World War and the retreat from North Africa, Albert Camus described the then prevailing elite’s thinking and rhetoric as “falling short of real expression”. The words capture the economicising malaise of the past few decades because this economicising fails to express how large groups of people see the acute problems that their societies experience. This failure of thinking or intentional manipulation of expression could doom social contracts, even in established democracies. For it will be like a doctor describing physical symptoms and prescribing tranquillizers, while ignoring the causes and consequences of the lurking anxieties.

Source

Truths, Post-Truth, and Untruths

Conformity is seductive. Even in societies where questioning prevailing narratives and challenging authority has been entrenched in educational systems and the media, conformity to the view of the majority is a much warmer milieu than intellectual autonomy. A gifted orator who succeeds in distilling the public’s feelings about an issue into succinct messages that sound smart and are devoid of qualifications could capture the heart of the nation, especially at moments of economic weakness. Here, packaging impulses as robust solutions trumps serious thinking.

This is national self-deception. It shows the society’s fears, but portray them as triggers for change. It makes clear the weaknesses, but depicts them as damages imposed by others. And it stops a society from delving into itself, from seeing the true causes of its anxieties. Often these causes transcend economic weaknesses, declining standards of living, or the increasing presence of foreigners ‘among us’. Beneath these lie a separation anxiety: one or two generations within a society that grow with a certain belief about their country, their identity, their place in the world, the relative value of their beliefs and way of life, and what they expect the future to bring, find themselves in a reality in which all of these are challenged. They have not changed their expectations; the present changed. They became separated from what they assumed will always be their life. This is an inhospitable emotional place.

National self-deception becomes the easy way out. Confronting the political, economic, and cultural changes that altered a society’s circumstances becomes difficult because it entails the excruciating questions of ‘why, what happened, how did we lose what we had’. Invariably, the true and honest answer entails self-blame: where the society has let itself slide.

To avoid that, we deceive ourselves by deflecting blame to others. We try to punish the weaker ones whom we can still, with our lesser means, continue to dominate. Imposing pain on others becomes valuable because it makes the society seem to be doing something. One of the sometimes deluded, but typically manipulative, gifted orators becomes a rising leader who captures the national mood. He or she portrays blaming and punishing others as serious effort to restore ‘our greatness’. The rising leader attaches meaning to the society’s moral descent. And with those whom we can no longer punish, our challengers, the ones who have been working hard while we were sliding, we resort to stereotyping and conspiracy theories.

These narratives not only delude a society into further descent; they become a basis for domination. Those who master the narrative of national self-deception – particularly the rising leaders at that moment of mass anxiety – emphasise ‘the exceptional circumstances the society is undergoing and that necessitate sacrificing checks and balances’. If they are able to invoke that ‘we are under threat’, their path to the throne gets shorter.

That tired old game succeeds when three things happen. First, the powerful interests see the general anxieties as threats to the order they had benefited from, and calculate that controlling the narrative (and therefore policy making) is crucial to maintaining the system. Here, the mistaken assumption that the old system would continue under the new circumstances leads to the cardinal sin of betting on those rising leaders, the grand deceivers who capture and exacerbate the national sense of fear. Second, the game succeeds when the traditional political forces of the society become too close to the same (or other) powerful interests. This diminishes their political entrepreneurialism, and so their ability to evolve the order that has underpinned their society’s decline. In the eyes of large sections of their society, they become part of the problem. And third: when the most enlightened – truly liberal – voices in that society become mere moral agents, proselytising against the big interests but without the ability or the desire to put forward drastic corrective measures – because their genuine liberalism inhibits their reactionary impulses. Here, those liberal voices build small constituencies of followers and larger audience of admirers. But they antagonise the powerful interests and fail to enthuse the colossal segments of economic losers who constitute the largest voting blocks.

Those wide segments of voters fall for the deception. The deceivers come to power. Many, especially within the liberal groups, feel disenchanted with their own society, and alienated from the place they call home. Some isolate themselves, become Espinosas: saying their words not caring who will hear them and what they’ll do with them. But most fight the narrative of deception and self-delusion. And here, they offer the deceivers an opportunity for acquiring more powers.

In the grand narrative of deception, the liberal fighters become either ‘intentional perpetrators of untruths’ or ‘irrationals who can’t see the truth’. In a short period of time, the great leaders, speaking on behalf of the ‘majority’ (the wide segments that elected them) threaten the liberals that ‘our tolerance and patience of [their falsehoods] have limits’. The liberals become ‘threats, agents’, or in the best cases, ‘naive’. Either way, they become of lesser value than ‘us, the ones who understand the reality and know the truth.

Soon enough, ‘we’ accept to be treated in a lesser way than we had been before. Why? Because of what political scientists call “normalisation”: the relatively quick and easy ways with which most humans accommodate and adjust to declining status and rights. Nationalism lubricates that accommodation: slogans that invoke a country’s name help. Narratives of national self-deception deepen the ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide and entrench ‘our’ inherent moral superiority. Invoking God here works magic. If the deceivers are able (which is usually easy) to infuse religious connotations in their rhetoric, portray themselves as deeply motivated by a divine order, and co-opt powerful religious authorities, they occupy the national psyche: their constituencies elevate them to the status of transformers; their liberal detractors become obsessed by them. Either way, they set the agenda.

Invariably the deceivers’ consolidation of power heralds a rise of mediocrity. Decision becomes concentrated in circles around the ‘great transformer’. True talent (again) adopt the Spinozian approach of detachment. There emerges an obsession within the ruling circles with what could be packaged as achievements here and now, with the notion of ‘our leader delivering to the people, restoring our greatness’. Predictably, national self-deception and the rise of mediocrity accelerate the society’s regression, rather than halt it.

A society’s escape route almost always comes through an internal shock: acute polarisation or extreme economic pressures – any situation that forces the society to look beyond the illusionary narrative, whose explanatory and consoling powers wanes as quickly as it rose. Within a short period of time, large segments of the society see the delusion they had embraced. They realise that the seductive comfort of living an untruth was actually a trap, in which they handed over their collective will to charlatans who abused their society’s politics and squandered its resources. This realisation builds rage – or, rather, unleashes the rage that had previously been directed only at the foreigners, the external forces, and the liberals. Now, the unleashed rage seeps out of politics into various social circles. The level of chaos and violence in that period depends on the society’s prior reservoir of cultural advancement and behavioural refinement. The period could become a catharsis through which the society evolves from its self-delusion, comes to terms with what it has lost, and reflects on its realistic options. That allows various serious streams of thought to put themselves forward as alternatives. But there’s another scenario. The period could herald further descent into baseness. Segments within the society, especially in the traditionally restless lower middle classes, refuse to accept the new economic realities. Their anger ignites sparks of class or other social confrontations.

At this stage, the society needs either a Konrad Adenauer or a Milan Kundera. In the first case, a leader with an exceptionally strong will, an unshakable belief in his nation’s greatness yet without qualifications about its descent, and a sensitive moral compass captures the national feelings. The Adanauer of the nation presents the painful reality to his society, but attaches to it a vision of how the society can climb from the swamped valleys back to the sunny hills. His greatest contribution becomes his ability to command the national psyche and inspires it, against the odds, to transcend the factors that regressed it. He takes the society to an emotional and moral state that’s almost the exact opposite of that in which the society was under the grand deceivers.

When an Adanauer fails to appear, a Kundera becomes a necessity. As the society sinks deeper into the mud of authoritarianism and the liberals are cast as the enemy, or the naive who should acquiesce to the ‘truths’ that the majority holds, an artist who’s ‘one of us’, one who escaped tyranny yet maintained and nurtured his burden with ‘our’ predicament becomes a genuine reflection of the good and the great in the society’s consciousness. His or her art transcends mere crusading against tyranny, and instead delves in the society’s complex understandings of values. Stories of love, loss, and lament, of pursuing pleasures here and now to drown crushing sorrows, of camaraderie, friendship, and belonging, and of identities inherited, created, or bankrupt – all strip the society naked. Wide audiences find themselves seduced by simple narratives, disarming words, engaging scenes, and familiar milieus into looking at themselves drowning in the mud. Repulsion at ‘what we have become’ and hope of returning to a refinement that we have lost catalyses segments of the society to rise up, if not against tyranny, at least against the feelings, ideas, and rhetoric it has stood and built on.

Conformity loses its appeal. Liberal forces that have withstood the oppression, persevered against the ridiculing and did not succumb to haughtiness or alienation, connect with the social segments that rise against ugliness. The deceivers, invariably, resort to the stick. The heaviness of violence awaken yet larger groups to the deceptions. The longing for the lost lightness of refinement spreads rapidly within society. Untruths fall.

Tarek Osman

Talk at LSE on Trends Shaping Middle East Future.

The Religion Question

I have recently published an article on Project Syndicate, please click the link below to read the article.

The religion question in the new year

Iran’s Play for Middle Eastern Leadership: Where It Comes From and Why It Can’t Last

I recently published an article on foreignaffairs.com, please click the link below to read the article.

Iran’s Play for Middle Eastern Leadership: Where It Comes From and Why It Can’t Last

Most Blessed of the Patriarchs

The paradox of the liberal theorist who owned slaves

“Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. By Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2016. 400 pp.

I spent the last few days before the election of Donald Trump in the company of Thomas Jefferson. As the Founding Father with the greatest contribution to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Jefferson left a special mark on American ideals. As an eloquent theorist of liberalism, and at the same time one of the largest slave owners in the American South, he was a controversial man (some would say a hypocrite). In his years as minister to France, Jefferson, despite his limited command of French, immersed himself in European culture, particularly music, theater, and his lifelong obsession, architecture. But he rejected post-Renaissance European values; he abhorred Europe’s relaxed mixing of the genders and races, lack of reverence for patriarchs, and liberal sexual attitudes—interesting for a man who, in his forties, began a liaison with a 16-year-old slave, who was the half-sister of his deceased wife. Jefferson wanted his young nation, America, to absorb the heights of modern European culture and reject the old continent’s moral descent. He was the effective founder of America’s conservative party—which he envisioned as the beacon of liberal ideals in the nation that was to become “the shining city on the hill,” the refined example the rest of humanity would look up to—and in whose spirit Donald Trump ascended to the presidency some two hundred years later.

My journey with Jefferson was guided by Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf, authors of “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. This is neither a biography nor an analysis of Jefferson’s legacy. It’s a voyage into the man’s thinking through his papers, letters, and actions. The authors eschew chronology; we jump between different stages of Jefferson’s life. Our markers along the way are the themes the authors reckon dominated Jefferson’s thinking, shaped his views, and directed his choices.

Slavery is the most important of these themes. Gordon-Reed and Onuf devote a quarter of the book to dissecting the flagrant contradictions between Jefferson’s writings on liberty and his ownership of slaves, including ones who almost certainly were his own sons. The objective is far from condemning the man; these are authors who, after decades of studying Jefferson, are clearly in awe of their subject. Yet their admiration and strong feeling do not lead them to rosy assessments. They do not hide behind ascribing his actions to the mores and traditions of the time.

Though they repeatedly say that Jefferson was a product of his time and environment, they make it clear that he repeatedly chose to ignore the winds of change; often, they hint, he lacked the courage to lead, in action, the changes his ideals and writings advocated. The authors stop at the several moments in his life, most notably his years in Paris at the cusp of the French Revolution, in which he clearly saw that the world was moving beyond the social order into which he was born. And yet invariably, in these moments, Jefferson ignored the opportunity to ride these waves of transformation. He saw that slavery was both an illness that resided in the then-nascent American sociopolitical system, as well as a source of future conflict between the slavery-opposing northern states and the southern ones whose economies depended on it. But he shied away from fighting it.

Here presenting Jefferson’s foresight about the future of the political project (America) that he helped shape transcends the ills of the institution of slavery. This discussion casts light on the paths that Jefferson saw as potential routes for the new country: to continue being an extension of Britain, but on a grander scale; to pursue a “continental” (European) identity—becoming a Europe, rather than a Britain on the other shore of the Atlantic; or—the choice that he strongly believed in—to make tangible the ideals and aspirations of the settlers who left Europe, crossed the ocean, and sought to create a new form of society in this new world. We read about America’s “mission” (the ideals that “the shining city on the hill” embodies), what it has to achieve, the pitfalls it should avoid, and the perils (in the early nineteenth century) that could diminish the promise of that mission. Reflecting on these routes that the American Republic could have taken, and comparing them to what actually happened in the ensuing two centuries, would tempt many readers to leave Jefferson’s thinking, for a bit, and look at the Republic’s actual legacy and its state today.

Gordon-Reed and Onuf show us the evolution of Jefferson’s thinking about America’s place in the world, the prospects of expanding the Republic westward (with all the political, economic, military, and moral challenges associated with that expansion), and interestingly how or whether religion—and early Americans’ understanding of the divine—fits within what the Founding Fathers thought of the meaning of America. Is America “blessed by God?” Isn’t that a perpetuation of a form of religious thinking that America, supposedly, repudiates?

Often, when it comes to sensitive issues such as Jefferson’s own beliefs, the authors leave it to Jefferson to explain himself. Jefferson’s words on religion, the nature of God, the meaning of the message of Jesus, and the role of religion in society are intriguing; he shows us how he mixes disciplines, ideas, and experiences to form complex, and by the standard of his time, innovative definitions and understandings. But he does not explain himself fully, and certainly does not reveal the inner core of his beliefs. As much as he was clear and unequivocal in drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was abstract and elusive when it comes to his personal beliefs. He takes you on an intellectual tour, but there isn’t a specific destination. It is likely that Jefferson the politician (thinking about his positioning, before and after his presidential terms) was concerned about the harm that Jefferson the thinker could do to himself.

Gordon-Reed and Onuf situate their presentation of Jefferson’s views on religion in a section they call “The Enthusiast.” Jefferson was hardly an enthusiast when it comes to faith. Relative to other Founding Fathers, especially the two he is often associated with—George Washington and Alexander Hamilton—Jefferson was not overflowing with political fervor or passion for any ideology. His defining characteristics were his intellectuality and consistent preference for reasoning and argumentation. Perhaps the enthusiast in Jefferson was fired up by culture and the arts. This is the section in which the authors introduce us to Jefferson the lover and critic of music and architecture. Based on what they tell us, his taste was highly refined, though limited. He knew what he liked, stuck to it, and sought it performed by the best in class. And if those were in Europe, he would grudgingly admit that, in the world of art and culture, Europe was far ahead of his young country.

Architecture was different. Jefferson approached it not just for indulgence and transcendence, and not just as a form of science and art, but as one of the most influential ways to manifest certain values and to project power. The authors devote big sections of the book to examining how he designed his estate in Virginia, Monticello, how separated his private quarters were from the rest of the mansion, which was almost always swamped by visitors who came to listen to the “great man,” and what those design preferences reveal about his character. But the important factor in this discussion is how he combined his views of what America means, the significance of the political project that he championed, with what he absorbed of the French (and by extension, the European) usage of architecture to demonstrate power. This is an intriguing discussion, even for readers familiar with Jefferson’s writings and with the history of America’s formative years.

Gordon-Reed and Onuf resist casting a judgment on Jefferson. Many, after reading tens of thousands of words on the man, the politician, and the thinker, would find that disappointing. After the many contradictions, ascent to greatness and descent to depravity, and vague expositions hiding as much as they are revealing, readers would want a conclusion and closure. But I think the authors’ approach is wise. The book is not a trial of Jefferson. It is a voyage into his mind. Readers with a penchant for philosophy, appreciation of the complexity of human thinking, sympathy for failings and weaknesses, and admiration for cultural refinement will enjoy this journey. They will get an understanding of, rather than a verdict on, one of the finest minds in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Source: thecairoreview.com

Arab Reform and Revolt

After years of hesitation, several Arab countries are enacting economic reform measures, typically in conjunction with financial support programs from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The measures entail rapid reduction of energy subsidies, significant increases in electricity and water tariffs, major reductions in the state’s commitment to public pensions, and concerted efforts to make the country’s financials sustainable, which means reducing the recurring need to borrow (locally or internationally) to meet state obligations. The most recent example is Morocco’s full liberalization of petrol prices and Egypt’s floating of the pound and significant reductions of fuel subsidies.

Invariably these measures stir debates—and fears—about the political costs the authorities could pay. Observers speculate about the prospects of social unrest and waves of protests that could threaten the ruling regimes. Egypt’s January 1977 bread riots, when tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets rejecting the increases in the prices of basic goods, prompting the authorities to immediately reverse these price hikes, are usually invoked as a classic example.

Following the 2011 Arab uprisings, most Arab authorities are now versed in how to respond to the first signs of large-scale demonstrations, whether through tactical use of force, media messaging, or infiltration of crowds. But protests are different from political revolts, which could come in the form of demonstrations, unexpected voting patterns, or widespread acts of violence perpetrated by large groups of people.

Irrespective of the form they take, revolts typically do not stem from economic difficulties, but when people feel—for a significant period of time—that the future holds no promise for them, and that economic difficulties will settle in and become the norm and their future will be worse than their present. Revolts come when people feel that their dignity is trampled on. Political rhetoric and media manipulation could assuage that feeling for some time. But as lifestyles deteriorate, aspirations crumble, and large sections of the middle class spend months on months pulling immense effort to barely afford the basic necessities they used to take for granted, their sense of dignity takes a severe blow.

The deterioration of public spaces contributes to the build up of pressure. Universities, professional syndicates, libraries, social and sports clubs, entertainment centers, and even safe areas for ordinary citizens to gather (for example, parks) allow for healthy social interactions, the development of a plurality of ideas and viewpoints, and the subtle but important feeling that individuals relate to the society’s commons, and to the overarching whole that brings all together. These feelings lessen the build up of anger. Such public spaces, and the feelings they engender, have been acutely suffering in most Arab countries for at least two decades.

Religion used to be a hedge against revolts in the Arab World. Largely pious and conservative, Arab societies have, for centuries, relied on religion to soothe and console. Arab political elites have also relied on religious (Islamic and Christian) institutions, which traditionally command colossal reverence, to act as bulwarks of stability against the “peril of unrest and sedition.” But the role of religion in Arab societies, for over a decade now, has been undergoing a subtle but important change. Large sections of young Arabs (the significant majority in all Arab societies) are experimenting with new definitions and understandings of the role of religion in society: as a basis for legitimacy, identity, legislation, and frame of reference. This is coupled with a major dilution in the prestige, reach, and influence of most leading religious institutions across the region.

There is also a sense of injustice prevalent in many Arab societies. In some cases, this is a result of historical situations: certain sects have lesser rights than others or regions were intentionally ignored from investment and development plans. But often injustice is the outcome of corruption and acutely dysfunctional political-economy structures whose function is to perpetuate the conditions through which ruling elites reign. In these situations, people feel that the “system” is not only faulted, but that it is working against them.

These factors take a long time to simmer. When they are ripe they give rise to revolts, whether or not in the form of demonstrations.

Revolts bring together social constituents with different and often opposite objectives, but who share common feelings of exasperation, frustration, and rejection of the order in place. This is conspicuously clear now in the various groups that support the extreme right in Europe, which irrespective of cultural background feel that their economic futures are bleak, sense (or imagine) a considerable change in their social milieu (caused by immigration), and who feel the elites have not only created these conditions they are in, but have gotten away with crashing the system (whether in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 or the steady but clear decline in European lifestyles in the last decade).

In the Arab World, there is an added factor that could make any coming wave of political revolt much more acute than in Europe. The failure of what used to be called the “Arab Spring” has sapped the will for smooth change from the most promising and socially engaged young Arabs. Political initiative now resides with groups that are much less educated, sophisticated, and intellectual.

In revolts, persuasion loses currency. The loss of respect for the prevailing order, for state institutions, and for the notion of stability, descends segments of society into their most basic elements. This is why revolts trigger raw feelings: whether powerful aspirations for change (which could be constructive), or desires for revenge, and often destruction. The underlying driver here is insecurity, the product of all these feelings about the deteriorating lifestyle, worse off future, and sense of injustice.

It is impossible to predict when will the accumulated pressure give way to the first expression of revolt. Political economists have learned to respect the immense wisdom of the law of unintended consequences. As the leading technologist Andrew Grove once put it (in an entirely different context): “factors accumulate and lead to a strategic inflection.”

From this perspective, economic reforms should not necessarily trigger fears of unrest, because even if they create economic difficulties, they are a momentary factor. Actually, if coupled with serious improvements in political, civil, and human rights, and in governance, such comprehensive reform could defuse negative feelings and convictions that have been accumulating for years. Such comprehensive reform could become the basis for a new, sustainable, and mature state-citizen relationship. This is a reason why theorists of transition (towards advancement and sustainable development) couple economic with political reform. The problem occurs when economic difficulties become another layer of pressure in a construct decaying from anger and anxiety. For if economics is the sole pillar upon which a state builds its new social contract, the new construction won’t withstand the forces of rejection that have been growing for years, and that could come crashing in.

Tarek Osman with the Dalai Lama on a panel discussing The Paradox of Religion