the politics of incoherence: the united states and the middle east · incoherence means want of...

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The Politics of Incoherence: The UnitedStates and the Middle East

James A. Bill and Rebecca Bill Chavez

MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ✭ VOLUME 56, NO. 4, AUTUMN 2002

The world today is caught in the midst of fundamental incoherence. Old systemstear and unravel while new systems have not yet formed to take their places.The challenge of incoherence is especially acute in the Middle East where gaps,divisions, and inequities prevail. United States foreign policy has not yetsucceeded in addressing the issue of revolutionary change. This article lists sevenspecific policy recommendations that are designed to assist American policymakersmeet this challenge.

The societies of the Middle East are caught in the throes of unprecedented transfor-mation. History provides us with many dramatic examples of social change — theemergence of Islam in the seventh century, the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258,the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the rise and fall of various Islamic dynastiesthroughout the years. None of these events, however, can match the contemporaryera in terms of the depth and universality of change.

Today change is systemic in nature. Traditional social and political systems areeverywhere under siege. These systems crack and crumble, tear and unravel, shatterand splinter. As such, we live in an era of what the late Manfred Halpern calledincoherence. Incoherence is a disconnectedness, a time when old systems breakdown and new ones have yet to form. It is a world described well by Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre; the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the center cannot hold; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed; and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost;

Rebecca Bill Chavez is assistant professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy. Dr.Chavez has focused her research on the relationship between the rule of law and the process ofdemocratization. Her book, The Construction of the Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: JudicialPolitics in Argentina, will be published by Stanford University Press.James A. Bill is Reves professor of government at the College of William and Mary. Dr. Bill’s mostrecent publications include George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy and his coauthoredRoman Catholics and Shi’i Muslims: Prayer, Passion, and Politics.

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THE POLITICS OF INCOHERENCE ✭ 563

the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity; surely some new revelation is at hand...1

These words of the poet ring especially true in the Middle East today where thefalconer is confused and his call increasingly incomprehensible. In the Middle East,the social and political systems are splintering. The human networks that provide thebacking of society are ripping and tearing. External influences, many originating inthe West, are inexorably seeping and spilling into the Middle East, eating, corroding,decomposing, dissolving. Halpern has written eloquently about the politics of inco-herence: “Incoherence is that form of encounter in which self and other face eachother in the same place and at the same time but are unwilling or unable to agree uponhow, simultaneously, to manage continuity and change, collaboration and conflict,and the achievement of justice...”2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary,incoherence means want of cohesion;” “want of connexion; incompatibility; incon-gruity of subjects or matters.”3

James Rosenau, like Halpern, has written extensively about incoherence. InRosenau’s vocabulary, the world is caught in the midst of “turbulence.” Rosenau,too, emphasizes the unprecedented nature of the challenge and stresses the contradic-tions that lie at the heart of turbulence. In the world of incoherence, conflict prevails.In periods of incoherence, dialectical conflict often provides a balanced tension thathelps invest the system with surprising staying power. While Halpern emphasized thepolitics of “antagonistic collaboration,” Rosenau discusses “fragmegration,” a termhe coined to describe the close relationship between fragmentation and integration.4

Incoherence is always painful. This is an age when the gaps between the havesand have nots have become chasms, a time when imbalances and inequities have fedanger and discontent. Huge advances in technology have led to a new awareness ofone’s relation to the other. A new generation finds itself trapped in the jaws of unem-ployment, corruption, political oppression, and injustice.

Incoherence is the midwife to violence. Those who live in incoherence oftenresort to violence as they seek to improve their lives. They are not alone, however, inthis practice. Governments and states also promote violence as they struggle tomaintain their power and privilege. One might best describe this tumultuous world byreciting the alphabet of incoherence. The following countries, regions, and cities areintended to provide a flavor of incoherence as it exists not just in the Middle East but

1. W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Poems: A New Edition (Richard J. Finneran ed.; NewYork: Macmillan, 1983), p. 187.

2. Halpern, “Four contrasting repertories of human relations in Islam,” in L. Carl Brown andNorman Itzkowitz (eds.), Psychological Dimensions of Near Eastern Studies (Princeton, N.J.: TheDarwin Press, 1981), p. 83.

3. J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner (eds.) Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.; New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989), p. 803.

4. See James N. Rosenau, “Stability, Stasis, and Change: A Fragmegrating World,” in Richard L.Kugler and Ellen L. Frost, eds., The Global Century: Globalization and National Security (vol. 1;Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2001), pp. 127-153.

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564 ✭ MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

in areas with significant Muslim populations as well.

THE ABC’S OF GLOBAL INCOHERENCE

Algeria: A decade of civil war that has resulted in an estimated 55,000 deaths;

Bosnia: An internal conflict in the 1990s that resulted in the rape of over 20,000Muslim women; 125,000 Bosnians dead or missing;

Chechnya: All-out war between the Russian army and the Chechnyans; sinceOctober 1999, 4,000 Chechnyans have been killed and over 7,000 wounded; duringthe same time period, 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and over 30,000 wounded;

Dushanbe: Capital city of Tajikistan, where a devastating civil war resulted inover 60,000 deaths, 600,000 displaced persons, and another 80,000 refugees whohave fled the country; the cost of this war was a staggering $7 billion;

Egypt: Government of Husni Mubarak locked in political and military combatwith Muslim militants;

Ferghana: Valley in Uzbekistan where Muslims have been battling Uzbek gov-ernment forces; Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) challenging repressive re-gime;

Gaza: Pitched battles in this crowded, poverty-stricken urban jungle betweenGazan residents and Israeli occupying forces;

Herat: Western city in Afghanistan where Iran and Afghan tribes have struggledfor influence and control; one of the major urban centers of violence in the 23 yearcivil war;

Iraq : Continuing confrontation between a repressive regime and a populationthat includes Kurds and Shi‘is;

Jerusalem: City holy to three great world religions divided and torn by spo-radic violence;

Kabul : Capital city of Afghanistan, a country that has witnessed a 23-year civilwar;

Lebanon: Continuing vestiges of a civil war begun in 1975 and complicated bythe occupying intervention of Syria and the military attacks of Israel;

Morocco: One of the world’s last absolute monarchies; challenged by corrup-

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tion and political repression;

Nigeria: Most populous African country; 40% Muslim; rampant violence, pov-erty, unemployment, corruption, and crime; in early 2002, the armory in Lagos caughtfire setting off explosions across the city; 1000 people killed, mostly women andchildren who drowned in drainage ditches when trying to escape;

Oran: Algerian city of 600,000 marked by clashes that represent country-widestruggle between Muslim populists and repressive military regime;

Palestine: Continuing conflict between Arabs and Israelis over the same an-cient piece of land; the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993) resulted inthe deaths of 1,162 Palestinians and 160 Israelis while the second intifada (Septem-ber 2000-present) saw the total death count rise to nearly 2,400;

Qatar: Emirate struggling to survive in the 21st century by balancing repres-sion and reform, control and conciliation;

Russia: With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia finds itself locked inpolitical and military conflict with many regional governments across central Asia andthe Caucuses;

Somalia: A land of grinding poverty that witnesses sporadic violence; In 1993a bloody confrontation between the people of Mogadishu and elite American specialforces;

Turkmenistan: A ruthless central Asian dictatorship that is struggling to sur-vive in the face of serious political challenges.

Uzbekistan: Another Central Asian republic ruled by a dictator and torn bycorruption; Uzbekistan has become embroiled in the Afghanistan imbroglio and hasprovided American military forces with bases;

Varna: Third largest city in Bulgaria, country with 1.2 million Muslims; longhistory of conflict with the Ottoman Turks;

Western Sahara: Continuing tension between Morocco and the Polisario Frontover control of this large region; over 170,000 refugees who fled the Moroccan inva-sion of 1973 living in harsh conditions in the Algerian desert;

Xinjiang : Since 1990, Chinese troops have used force repeatedly to control theMuslims in this western-most province of China; Uighur Muslims pitted against domi-nant Han Chinese;

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Yemen: Armed tribesmen fight among themselves and resort to kidnapping offoreigners; on October 12, 2000, American ship the USS Cole was bombed while inthe port of Aden; 17 American sailors killed;

Zaire: Today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo which is home to six millionMuslims; site of one million refugees; poverty, corruption, and political repression areeverywhere present in this Central African state;

This extraordinary chronicle of violence provides only a partial picture of globalincoherence. Other examples of Middle Eastern and Muslim societies experiencingexplosive incoherence include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kashmir, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan,and Turkey.

THE NEW ERA OF INCOHERENCE

The contemporary era is like no other time in human history. In the Middle East,dramatic change is sharply visible in everyday life. As change slashes across theregion, it leaves in its wake contradictions, inconsistencies, and imbalances. Socialchange is marked by a bizarre blend of tradition and modernity. Globalization spreadsmodernization, which races out ahead of effective political development. Advances inthe fields of medicine, communication, transportation, and military capacity mark thenew Middle East as distinctively as do poverty, hunger, inequity, and violence.

This new era of incoherence is unprecedented in six ways. First, the demo-graphic explosion has resulted in staggering internal and cross-national migration num-bers. In the last fifty years the world population has increased from 2.5 billion to over6 billion people. In the Middle East, annual population growth rates have exceeded 2%in all countries except Israel. In societies like Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and several of theGulf states, the growth rate has reached nearly 4%. The population of Egypt was 21million in 1950, 54 million in 1990, and is predicted to reach 111 million in 2030. Thenumbers for Pakistan were 39 million in 1950, 115 million in 1990, and are predictedto reach 312 million in 2030.5

The demographic explosion has resulted in staggering internal and cross-na-tional migration numbers. Today, nearly 50% of the world’s population lives in urbanareas. Cross-national migration is a major social force as borders are blurred andincreasing numbers of people migrate from country to country. An estimated 150

5. The statistics in this paragraph are drawn from Caroline Thomas, “Poverty, Development, andHunger” in John Bayliss and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics (2nd ed.; vol. 2;New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 574-576; United Nations Development Programme,Human Development Report 2001 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 141-149; andJames A. Bill and Robert Springborg, Politics in the Middle East (5th ed.; New York: Addison WesleyLongman, 2000), p. 311.

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million people live outside of their countries of origin. With the partial exception ofSudan, Iran has had the largest refugee population in the world. Totaling 1.9 million,most refugees have migrated to the Islamic Republic from Afghanistan and Iraq.6

Second, technological advancement has promoted communication that has inturn helped spread important messages from village to village, city to city, country tocountry, region to region. Political and economic feedback is almost instantaneous.This process, an important component of globalization, accelerates with time andtechnological progress. Between 1995 and 2000, internet access increased 1,902percent across the globe. Internet subscriptions in the Arab world reached 338,200 in1999 with the total users numbering 923,100.7

Third, the accelerating change is universal in character. Incoherence is presentin all corners of the world. In the past, incoherence occurred only sporadically andremained limited to specific geographic areas. While one region underwent turbulentchange, another experienced stability. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries whenEurope was trapped in its dark ages and primitive tribal groups ruled society, Arab andPersian civilizations took enormous strides in the fields of medicine, education, math-ematics, astronomy, and philosophy. Chaotic turbulence marked the period beforethe Safavids came to power in Iran in 1501 and during the early Ottoman period priorto 1451. This turbulence coincided with a placid period in China during the rule of theMing dynasty which took power in 1368.

Fourth, the incoherence that marks the Middle East today runs much deeperthan change that marked the past millennia. Traditional societies witnessed a greatdeal of incremental change but fundamental transformation was rare. Today, changeis systemic. Such change is not just in the system, it is of the system. Fifth, incoher-ence today alters all systems by which men and women organize their lives. Theunraveling is evident in the psychological, educational, social, economic, and politicalrealms of life.

Sixth, today is the first time in history when the forces of incoherence do notresult in closed systems. Change today is open-ended. In the words of Halpern, allearlier historical changes “shared a single quality in common. They all created closedsystems. Dogma set boundaries to the search for truth.”8

Although incoherence and turbulence are everywhere evident in the twenty-firstcentury, they are especially dominant in the Middle East. The gaps and divisionsbetween haves and have nots are deeper here than in any other region on the globe.The relationship between wealth (GNP per capita) and its distribution in terms of aphysical quality of life index (PQLI calculated on the basis of infant mortality, life

6. See Bahram Rajaee, “The Politics of Refugee Policy in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Middle EastJournal, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 44-63.

7. Jarraw Fawaz, “Internet Users in Arab World Close to One Million,” in Richard L. Kugler andEllen L. Frost, The Global Century: Globalization and National Security (vol. 2; Washington, D.C.:National Defense University Press, 2001), p. 919.

8. See M. Halpern, “The Revolution of Modernization in National and International Society,”manuscript, Center for International Studies, Princeton University, April 24, 1964.

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expectancy, and literacy) demonstrates the comparative size of this gap. The percapita GNP-PQLI ratio for Africa, Latin America, and South/Southeast Asia is 12, 18,and 22 respectively. For the Middle East, however, the ratio is 69. The huge gapbetween per capita GNP and PQLI in the Middle East is due in large part to theexistence of large oil deposits and the failure to distribute the wealth deriving fromthese deposits among the populace at large.9

ISLAM AND THE CHALLENGE OF INCOHERENCE

Old ideologies fail miserably when political leaders seek to address the chal-lenges of change. Marxism, socialism, Ba‘thism, Nasirism, and Western capitalismhave exhibited a frustrating impotence in the face of these new challenges. Oneideology of universal impact and import, however, does claim to have the answer tothe challenge. This ideology, which seeks to confront revolutionary incoherence onits own terms, is Islam. As a powerful universal force, Islam finds itself in greatdemand by those trapped in incoherence. Islam has had considerable experience inconfronting political, social, and economic challenges. The Islamic system has sur-vived by absorbing the new and the different into itself. It has avoided transformationby promoting reformation. Islamic leaders have understood well the human searchfor identity and authenticity in the midst of incoherence. Historically, the Islamicsystem has taken on all challengers and has absorbed them.

Today, Islam finds itself confronted by a new type of adversary. This chal-lenger has not arrived on horseback carrying sword and shield. It does not wave thebanner of an outmoded nationalism. Nor does it promote a narrow secularism. Thetraditional Islamic system could confront and conquer such challenges. Today’s chal-lenge is much more pervasive and corrosive. It rides the winds that blow across themodern global landscape. The new challenge is ideational and it rises most noticeablyin the West. Westernization is a cluster of processes that include modernization, in-dustrialization, and globalization. The cultural concomitants of this challenge increas-ingly smother the message of Islam and eat away at its roots.

The Western challenge confronts the younger generation first and foremost.Over half the population of the Middle East countries is under age twenty. Over thenext decade and a half, these young people will reach their childbearing years and willenter the job market. Yet the unemployment rate in the Middle East is already thehighest in the world. The expectations of these young people are high, but their ca-pacities to meet these aspirations are limited. In the United States, the challenges toyouth have deepened with time. In the 1940s, for example, the most frequent disci-pline problems in school included “talking, chewing gum, making noise, running inthe halls, getting out of turn in line, wearing improper clothing and not putting paper in

9. The calculations that undergird these conclusions can be found in James A. Bill and RobertSpringborg, Politics in the Middle East (3rd ed., New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), pp. 14-20.

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wastebaskets.” In the 1980s and 1990s, the problems included “drug abuse, alcoholabuse, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, arson, bombings, murder, absenteeism, van-dalism, extortion, gang warfare, abortion and venereal disease.”10 The changes thatoccurred in the West in the past forty years are taking place in the Middle East in lessthan half that time.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini understood the power of this Western cultural chal-lenge. When he banned pop music, he sought to attack the drug culture and thegrowing rootlessness of Iranian youth. He saw the family threatened. Because heviewed the family as the last solid building block of Islamic society, Khomeini movedto protect it. The youth seemed increasingly lost and as a partial response, someyoung women returned to the veil “not for religious reasons but simply because itgave them a feeling of identity. Thus dressed, they knew who they were: in blue jeansthey were something that was neither this nor that.”11

THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE: A TYPOLOGY

There are two principal approaches that Muslims adopt to confront the chal-lenge of incoherence. The first looks to the past for its answers. This is puritanicalIslam. It is chiliastic, fanatical, hierarchical, and has fascist tendencies. PuritanicalIslam has been referred to by Manfred Halpern as “neo-Islamic totalitarianism.”12 Ithas sometimes been referred to as neo-Islamic totalitarianism and carries an importantmillennial component. Known as the salafiyyin, the followers of puritanical Islam areengaged in a struggle to recreate the past. This movement grows rapidly out of thesoil of incoherence. As it does so, it spreads the fertilizer of violence and lays theblame for the turbulence at the feet of foreign forces.

In Islamic history, the puritanical leaders include individuals and groups such asHasan al-Sabbah, the old man of the mountains and his order of assassins; Hasan al-Banna’, founder of the Egyptian Brotherhood; the Mahdi movements in the Sudan andLibya; the Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia; the Taliban in Afghanistan; andmore contemporary leaders such as Juhayman al ‘Utaibi and Usama bin Ladin.

The second Islamic response to the challenge of incoherence is more future-oriented and moderate and can be referred to as reformist Islam.13 Those who sup-port reformist Islam eschew violence and fanaticism and focus instead upon toler-ance (tasahul), reason, justice, and equality. The reformists are those who have

10. New York Times, December 5, 1987, p. 29 as quoted in James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in WorldPolitics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) p. 67.

11. G. H. Jensen, Militant Islam (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 125.12. See Halpern’s seminal book, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 134-155.13. Reformist Islam is also referred to as “Islamic liberalism” or as “Islamic modernism.” For an

informed discussion of this movement, see W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Fundamentalism andModernity (London: Routledge, 1988); Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1988); and John L. Esposito (ed.), Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983).

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looked to the West for useful models but who have remained anchored in their ownMuslim traditions. The roots of reformist Islam are found in the writings and lives ofindividuals such as Seyyed Jamal al-din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and RashidRida. In today’s world, the reformists include clerics such as Yusef Karadawi andHasan al-Turabi. In Shi‘i Iran, the reformists include Murtaza Mutahhari, AyatollahMahmud Taleqani, Husayn ‘Ali Montazeri and, more recently, Mohsin Kadivar andMohsin Mujtahid-Shabistari. The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, MuhammadKhatami, also qualifies as a follower of reformist Islam.14

The division between the two clerical factions is captured in the words ofprogressive cleric Ayatollah Musavi-Ardebili in Qum, who, in the March-April 1998issue of the Echo of Iran bluntly criticized his puritanical colleagues in the followingquote taken from speech: “We have portrayed a tough, hateful, horrible, inflexible,irrational image of Islam. Why have we drawn such a picture of Islam? Islam is thereligion of blessing, comfort, perfection, grace, ethics, and logic.” In his speechMusavi-Ardebili warned that the negative portrayal of Islam was alienating the youthof the Muslim world.

Both the puritanical and the reformist Islamic movements are populist in nature.They sweep upward and outward and represent movements of the angry, the alien-ated, the deprived, and the dispossessed. These movements originate from the under-side and periphery of society. Puritanical Islam, however, is anti-foreign and espe-cially anti-Western in its perspective. Reformist Islam seeks an accommodation withthe West. While the puritanical movement tends to condemn everything Western, thereformists adopt Western technology, Western medicine, and elements of Westernpolitical systems.

As the forces of Islam confront incoherence, they soon find themselves en-tangled with the Western world. In particular, they face the United States, the globalsuperpower. US policymakers, in turn, must also deal with incoherence and resur-gent Islam. The puritanical element, often referred to as “Islamic fundamentalism,”dominates the American perspective, which frequently equates this iteration of Islamwith terrorism and violence. Lacking a discriminating understanding of Islam, USleaders often lump the reformist and puritanical movements together. In so doing,they unwittingly push the reformists into the puritanical camp.

US FOREIGN POLICY, ISLAM, AND INCOHERENCE

As we learned by reciting the ABCs of incoherence, turbulence prevails in theMiddle East and the broader Islamic world. Such turbulence, however, is global innature. At any given time, there are an estimated 30 or more wars underway in theworld. Furthermore, violence migrates. The traumatic events of September 11, 2001demonstrated that no country is immune from the violence of incoherence. The criti-

14. Other leading Shi‘i intellectuals who represent the reformist school but are not clerics areMehdi Bazargan, Ali Shariati, and Abdul-Karim Sorush.

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cal question for US decision-makers concerns the need to formulate policy that willattack the roots of the rage that extend throughout the world. In particular, what canUnited States policymakers do to avoid future confrontations with groups in the Is-lamic world in general and in the Middle East in particular? Islam claims to have aresponse to incoherence. What is the response of the United States?

After the September 11 episode, Americans began raising the question: “Whyare we so hated in the world?” There are good reasons to raise this question. In arecent poll of nearly 10,000 people in nine Islamic countries, Gallup found that two ofthree people were hostile to US foreign policies. That ratio rose to four of five in thecase of Saudi Arabia.15

Because of the nationality and religion of the September 11 terrorists, Islamis under close scrutiny. The United States has announced a global campaign of waragainst terrorism. Is this declaration of war the answer to our problems? The suc-cess of such policy is highly doubtful. It is time that the US undertake a searchingreview of its policies and place in the world. There are seven ways in which USleaders can engage in constructive new policymaking.

First, the United States must understand the nature of the world in which welive. This is a world caught in the midst of fundamental transformation. Incoherenceis dominant. Order, stability, and stasis are increasingly rare. The underlying as-sumption upon which the United States must build policy is change. Yet, the world’sleading superpower has no theory of change. The US bounces along from crisis tocrisis in an ad hoc fashion and is increasingly locked in a reactive mode. But crisesabound and increasingly confront the United States, which carries on intelligenceoperations and clandestine operations in 80 different countries.

It is time that the process of preventive diplomacy be taken seriously byAmerican foreign policymakers. Preventive diplomacy is best defined as “the use ofdiplomatic techniques to prevent disputes arising, prevent them from escalating intoarmed conflict if they do arise, and, if that fails, to prevent the armed conflict fromspreading.”16 Crisis management must give way to crisis avoidance.

Second, the US must better inform itself about the world in which we live. It isin America’s interests to understand other cultures and religions. Many of thesecultures are subtle and complex. Such is the case of Islam, which is comprised ofnumerous sects. It is necessary to understand these differing sects rather than tolump all Muslim groups into a single category called “Islamic fundamentalism.” Thedistinction between puritanical Islam and reformist Islam is particularly important. Abetter, more nuanced understanding of Islam would have made excursions into Af-ghanistan more successful. Afghanistan, a country of 50 different ethnic groups speak-ing 34 different languages, was reduced to two groups, the Northern Alliance and theTaliban. Thus, despite billions of dollars, the latest military technology, and assistancefrom countries such as Pakistan, the US has failed to unite warring Afghan tribes and

15. See Financial Times, May 11-12, 2002, pp. 1-4.16. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Challenges of Preventive Diplomacy,” in Kevin M. Cahill, Preventive

Diplomacy: Stopping Wars Before They Start (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 18.

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has been unable to locate Usama bin Ladin and most of the Taliban leadership.Third, United States decision-makers would do well to view the Middle East

as a system in which political events are intertwined with one another. A politicalailment that develops in one part of the region quickly metastasizes throughout theregion. Trouble travels. Conflict is contagious. In brief, the Middle East resembles ahuge multi-layered spider web. Pressure and movement at one part of the web areimmediately transmitted to other sections. Given this system, the United States mustreassess its policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. If the US were to establisha serious detente with Iran, the Islamic Republic would move as a mediating balancewheel against Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east.

Also, it is imperative that the US use its power and credibility to end thedeepening Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has degenerated into all-out war. The Bushadministration was at first reluctant to develop a pro-active policy concerning thePalestinian-Israeli issue. The pattern was one of “sporadic and superficial Americanengagement.”17 With the violence and bloodshed that occurred throughout 2002,however, the Bush administration has become directly engaged in seeking a solutionto this problem. The major strategy adopted by President Bush and his foreign policyteam is to stress the need for a Palestinian state. In the words of White Housespokesman Ari Fleischer, “The President continues to believe that the best route topeace is through the creation of a Palestine that can live side by side in security withIsrael. That’s what the President believes and that’s what the President will continueto push for.”18 Although influential voices in Israel seem intent on resisting this plan,the Bush administration appears committed to pushing forward. Much will depend onthe seriousness of the United States’ commitment to a Palestinian state.

Fourth, in dealing with other nations, the US must understand the value ofmodesty and humility. Despite its enormous power on the global landscape, the UnitedStates must resist the temptation to be arrogant. The late statesman J. William Fulbrightwarned his country about the “arrogance of power” thirty years ago.19 Unfortu-nately, the terrible attacks of September 11 shook the country to the core, and manyAmericans feel vulnerable and exposed. In response, the President set the tone for thesubsequent retaliation, and leading US political officials developed a vocabulary ofthreats and a harsh language of war. In the process, President Bush demonstratedonly a primitive understanding of diplomacy and resorted to a vocabulary of the Americanfrontier. When asked if he wanted Usama bin Ladin dead, Bush replied, “There’s anold poster out west as I recall, that said, Wanted Dead or Alive.” The President wenton to warn the world that “you’re either with us or against us.” And he boasted that“We’ll attack with missiles, bombers, and boots on the ground. We are going to rainholy hell on them.”20

17. Washington Post, March 31, 2002, p. 16.18. Washington Post, May 14, 2002, p. A13.19. J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random House, 1966).20. The quotes in this paragraph are from a Washington Post series by Bob Woodward and Dan

Balz entitled “Days of War.” See Daily Press, February 24, 2002, section I.

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Fifth, the US must reassess its emphasis upon the use of force and theglorification of war that has dominated government and media discourse since theSeptember 11 attack. This horrible act of terrorism has changed the approach adoptedby the United States in the formulation of its foreign policy. The use of coercion tosolve delicate social and political problems carries a heavy price. In the first year afterthe September 2001 bombings, the Department of Defense estimated that it wouldcost $30 billion annually to fight the war against terrorism. This estimate is certainlylow. Furthermore, the policy of war fails to provide answers to the challenge ofincoherence. Delicate social and political problems cannot be bombed or “missiled”out of existence. By dropping bombs and firing missiles, the United States onlyspreads these festering problems. Violence can be likened to a virus; the more youbombard it, the more it spreads.21

In March 2002, the US media published a secret Pentagon report revealing theBush administration’s plans to target seven countries for possible nuclear attack: Iraq,Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, China, and Russia. According to this report, “NorthKorea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could be involved inimmediate, potential or unexpected contingencies. All have long-standing hostilitytoward the United States and its security partners... All sponsor or harbor terrorists,and all have active programs to create weapons of mass destruction and missiles.”This nuclear posture review also recommended the production of a new generation ofnuclear “earth penetrating weapons.”22

By resorting to the politics of nuclear intimidation, the United States opened theway for other actors to do the same. Furthermore, this nuclear sabre-rattling sentnegative signals across the world and contributed to the environment of distrust,alienation, and fear that mark incoherence in the Middle East.

Sixth, in its crusade against terrorism, the United States has found itself work-ing closely with unsavory regimes. The US has a history of supporting repressive andunpopular governments throughout the Middle East. Then, when these regimes turnon America or its allies, the United States finds itself having to go to war against itsown creations. It is ironic that many of these former US protegés have come to betermed “terrorists,” a word not used when these groups were pursuing policies ap-proved by the United States. Among the examples of US-created and protected dicta-tors, one might include the Shah of Iran, Saddam Husayn of Iraq, Usama bin Ladin inAfghanistan, Muhammad Farah Aideed of Somalia, Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahmanfrom Egypt, and Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire.

Saddam Husayn is a particularly embarrassing example of a US ally turned ren-egade. In 1988, for example, the United States deliberately looked the other waywhen Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians. Today, the USsupports a new crop of tyrants. They include Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, SaparmuratNiyazov of Turkmenistan, and Imamali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan. These leaders practice

21. Others have used this analogy, including Kamal Hilbawi a former head of Muslim organizationsin Europe.

22. New York Times, March 10, 2002, pp. 1, 6.

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draconian methods of control, including the systematic use of torture. The UnitedStates supports these regimes financially and politically because they provide militarybases where the US can station troops and pre-position military supplies. The UnitedStates should reconsider its embrace of these oppressive governments. When suchregimes fail and fall, America receives much of the blame. By supporting these tyran-nies, American credibility suffers throughout the world.

Seventh, by responding in kind and even by outdoing the adversary with noattention paid to proportionality, the United States surrenders the moral high ground.As an aggressive global hegemon, the US increasingly alienates both friend and foe inthe international arena. In Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya, the UnitedStates has killed many civilians. In the words of a former Prime Minister of Sudan,“Today, backward and deprived, we face an economic and military giant with themoral and spiritual scruples of a flea. It is not a pleasant encounter.”23

Wise and talented American statesmen, such as George Ball and J. WilliamFulbright, have warned about such attitudes and policies. In Ball’s words, “there islittle exceptional about military strength or economic weight; other nations have alsogone far in that direction. What is truly exceptional is moral leadership, which meansa firm adherence to principles and the rejection of certain arrogant practices that havenow become almost automatic in our political life.”24

Senator Fulbright described the situation in different words. He warned againsta “militarized economy” and argued that the plague of incoherence cannot be cured by“even the sophisticated expertise of our most gifted military thinkers, who delight inexotic weapon systems and strategic doctrines that threaten the solvency of the rich-est nations as well as their physical survival.” In his view, “the attributes upon whichwe must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intel-lect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.”25

It is a sad fact that the Balls and Fulbrights are in short supply today. In ad-dressing the problems of incoherence that prevail in the Middle East, our leaders mustsearch for the roots of these problems while at the same time working to understandthe responses of Islam, a religion and way of life that is also grappling with thisconfusing world. The process of incoherence has already succeeded in uprooting theold system. It is now time to build a new system, one that emphasizes participation,justice, and equality. The earlier quotation from Yeats describes the depths of thechallenge of incoherence. The 13th century Persian mystic, Jalal al-din Rumi, carriesYeats’ words a step further when he elegantly explains how incoherence can carrywithin itself the seeds of a new and better world:

23. The words of Sadiq al-Mahdi, quoted in G.H. Jansen, Militant Islam, p. 14.24. Personal copy of the text of Ball’s speech delivered at his eightieth birthday party on January

23, 1990.25. J. William Fulbright with Seth P. Tillman, The Price of Empire (New York: Pantheon Books,

1989), p. 232.

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26. These powerful words from Rumi are quoted in a piece entitled “Where was God on September11?” by Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina. See San Diego Union-Tribune, October 21, 2001, p. E1.Personal conversation with Dr. Sachedina, September 11, 2002.

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house,so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from thebough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pullsup the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.26

United States policymakers must develop a special sensitivity to this rapidlytransforming world. The production of a new generation of weapons systems anddeclarations of war will not guarantee success for the American giant in the MiddleEast. From Morocco to Pakistan, from Somalia to Afghanistan, the United States haschosen to assume the role of global gendarme. If it hopes to succeed in this monu-mental task, it must understand the social and political environment in which it oper-ates. It must develop a new consciousness. Despite its latest infrared goggles andlaser equipped automatic weapons, the giant is easily lost and its destination uncertain.Meanwhile, the swirling winds of incoherence only blow harder as the American giantstaggers across the landscape of this turbulent world.

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