Will Putin fall?

The combination of economic sanctions and oil prices have led to the currency crisis in Russia mutating into the greatest crisis for Putin to face. The question which observers should be pondering is whether or not Putin will survive this storm. This is why I felt it necessary to write on the new crisis in Russia:

Putin’s brand of national capitalism, not to be confused with a neoliberal market economy, faces the greatest challenges in its short history. Economic nationalism meant the combination of a flat tax regime, land privatisation, state management of resources and protectionist measures to maintain industry. Oil revenue allowed Russia to secure growth and pay off its Soviet-era debt. But the nationalist push against international capital inevitably comes up against the limits of its own barriers.

Russia has a strategic interest in keeping Ukraine out of the EU-NATO orbit, but this doesn’t mean it produces results for its economy. On the contrary, the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea led to diplomatic and economic pressures being brought against Russian institutions. The sanctions converged with the collapse of oil prices, as OPEC maintains output, confident that it will break even sooner rather than later. The rouble is unstable, sanctions are beginning to cripple international trade, and the economy is logically contracting.

The full article can be read at Souciant.

Israel turns towards Russia.

On March 27^th 2014 Prime Minister Netanyahu abstained from the vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution on Crimea. It was de facto support for Russian aggression.  The significance of this event may not have hit the mainstream just yet, but it may soon outpace it in its own trajectory. It’s not the first time the Israeli government has looked eastwards with fond eyes. When Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 the Israeli government set a moratorium on arms sales to the tiny republic and in return Medvedev cancelled a delivery of missiles to Iran in 2009.  There’s even talk of a free trade deal between Russia and Israel now.

It would seem that there is a hand full of very exact reasons why the Russian government would seek out a relationship with the Israeli government at this time. Firstly, the Russian repression of the Chechen bid for self-determination has been severe and has engendered a Chechen resistance. Secondly, the need for international legitimation of Russia’s military campaigns in its backyard and, in general, a new pretext as the Cold War is long over. Thirdly, there is the necessity of non-Arab actors as allies in the Middle East. Israel is a top candidate for all of the above. It’s a state that has long understood what it takes to grind a people into dirt. But the Israeli government knows full well that it couldn’t do so without its patron-state.

The US has long played the role of patron-state to Israel’s aggressive expansionism. There are signs that the Netanyahu administration can see far enough to perceive a potential break with the American hegemon. Even Washington cannot support Israeli aggression indefinitely. It has seemed, for a long time, completely incomprehensible that the US would ever abandon Israel and with good reason. The US does need a strong military outpost capable of policing the region and it has built Israel into an armed force greater than any standing NATO power. It has created a strong force at hand in a region ridden with crises and oil fields. The empowered outpost has the capability to pursue its own strategic agenda. The story won’t end there.

This is an excerpt of an article to be published at Souciant where it can be read in its fully edited form as presented on May 14th 2014.

Blair on Putin.

Every now and then Tony Blair pops up out of nowhere and reminds us all he’s still out there on his private jet. It’s almost routine now. This time Blair tells us the West needs to focus on radical Islam. No surprise there. It’s an old message now. We’ve heard it all before. He ranked it alongside the environment in importance. Of course, it should go without saying that the politicians like Blair have never been as interested in combating climate change as they have been in waging wars in West Asia. For years all we’ve heard about has been radical Islamism and the threat it poses to liberal democracies. Yet in Blair’s mind it’s as if the West suddenly stopped focusing on radical Islam.

All of this is to be expected from Tony Blair given his record. What stands out is one of the suggestions Blair makes to this end. The former Prime Minister asks that the West put aside their differences with Russia over Ukraine. Of course, by Russia we know that the former statesman means Putin, as all statesmen see governments and countries as one in the same, just as when he refers to ‘the West’ he doesn’t mean the populations of America, Britain, and Europe. Usually ‘the West’ would only refer to North America and North-Western Europe, but since he has defined ‘the West’ in relation to Russia we can include Eastern Europe in this category as well. Like everything about Blair’s world we can only see it in its proper context.

In the ‘War on Terror’ the Russian Federation was a notable member of the coalition forged by the US with countries around the world. Back in 2001 Putin was fighting to put down an insurgency in Chechnya having flattened most of the country since the conflict first started. It was vital to the consolidation of his power in Moscow that the regions remain as Russian provinces. To some it was clear what this meant at the time. As Chomsky said in 2001 “We should look very carefully at this anti-terrorism coalition and who is joining it and why. Russia is happily joining the international coalition because it is delighted to have U.S. support for the horrendous atrocities it is carrying out in its war against Chechnya. It describes that as an anti-terrorist war. In fact it is a murderous terrorist war itself.”[1] Certainly, Blair and Putin understood this then just as they understand it today.

The tussle over Ukraine is a non-issue for Blair in his private jet. He has more pressing issues to concern himself with, such as advising the Nazarbayev regime in Kazakhstan, the al-Sabah family of Kuwait, and King Abdullah II of Jordan. For Blair the personal is political and we should never take him as a neutral agent. He stands as the Middle East Peace Envoy for the Quartet formed by the backing of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and the Russian Federation. Blair works closely alongside John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov. The Quartet was set up in 2002 in the still warm aftermath of the Second Intifada and the Israel’s war with Lebanon. The point of the Quartet has been to back ceasefire arrangements and try to bring about a peace settlement. But it’s long been clear what the arrangement is really about.

In his capacity as peace envoy Blair spends a week out of every month in Jerusalem and maintains warm relations with the Netanyahu government. He was conspicuously absent during Operation Cast Lead and chose to extend his holiday rather than comment on the unfolding bloodbath. Just as Putin has worked to build strong relations between Russia and Israel and continues to hold together the relationship in spite of the Ukrainian crisis. If there were any doubts that the Israeli government would fall in line with its American patrons those doubts were swiftly put to rest last month. On March 27^th Netanyahu abstained from the vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution on Crimea. No doubt, Netanyahu has the old refusenik voters to consider as his coalition with Avigdor Lieberman bids to hoover up as many of them as possible.

It doesn’t stop there. Israel looks forward to a free-trade deal with Russia. The Israeli government held a moratorium on arms sales to Georgia and turns a blind eye to Putin’s rampaging in the Caucasus; and in return Medvedev cancelled a delivery of missiles to Iran in 2009.[2] In its own aggressive expansionist designs Israel cannot help but find common cause with states which have traditionally sought to expand their boundaries. Of course, this is a relationship not uncomplicated given Russia’s support in weapons of Assad and, by extension, the Hezbollah. The main objective for the Israelis is to prolong negotiations in order to give them more time to expand even further. The Russians have no objection provided they can rely on Israeli and Western support for its operations to thwart the Chechen bid for independence.

Like everything about Middle East policy in the West it all comes down to Israel. So when Ariel Sharon finally died it wasn’t too surprising to see Tony Blair at the funeral service. There the peace envoy spewed forth about how the Bulldozer brought ‘iron determination’ to diplomacy as he had to the camps of Sabra and Shatila.[3] The Israeli government were more than displeased by the last minute change in policy towards Mubarak in the US. Netanyahu wanted total support even after it had become impossible to prevent Mubarak from being removed by his own goons. The reasoning was obvious. Israel does not need a rejuvenated Arab powerhouse on its border with the reins of government in the hands of its populace. Blair and Putin couldn’t agree more. This is what realists mean when they talk about ‘regional stability’.

Not many commentators seem to recall, or perhaps they don’t want to, Blair’s remark that Hosni Mubarak is “a force for good”.[4] As the military were displaced from power and democratic elections were held in Egypt the crusader was clear. He told the readers of the Evening Standard “democracy is not just a way of voting but a way of thinking”.[5] He emphasised the need for proper institutions and pluralism and individual freedoms and a modern economy. When the Muslim Brotherhood were dumped by military putsch last summer Blair reiterated these same words as a justification for the coup. The Arab masses weren’t ready for the democracy and, as always, need a strong leader, in his mind, the kind of man General al-Sisi looks for in his mirror every morning.

If the Quartet is a roadshow for the negotiations then we should know how to frame the importance of Russian support for it. All the states involved in the ‘peace process’ declare solemn support for the two-state settlement, the matters of when, where and how remain conveniently mysterious. As part of the Quartet, only the UN has been a serious forum for international opposition to Israeli aggression and support for a two-state settlement. The UN routinely votes through resolutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict and it votes unanimously in favour of a two-state settlement. The US uses it privilege on the UN Security Council to veto all resolutions and has done consistently for over thirty years now. Meanwhile the EU has been striking in its timidity to the US until recently when the Europeans passed a modicum of sanctions against Israeli settlements. It’s clear that the Russian Federation stands with the US to counterbalance any opposition which might creep out of the UN and the EU.

This article was originally written for Souciant on May 2nd 2014.

---

[1] http://www.counterpunch.org/2001/10/04/chatting-with-chomsky/

[2] http://www.cerium.ca/IMG/pdf/Yakov_200.pdf

[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25710124

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/02/tony-blair-mubarak-courageous-force-for-good-egypt

[5] http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/tony-blair-we-cant-ignore-the-middle-easts-hunger-for-change-7892819.html

Update on Lockerbie.

In the latest Al-Jazeera documentary on the Lockerbie bombing a former Iranian intelligence officer was interviewed. Abolghassem Mesbahi claims that Tehran decided to retaliate against the US after the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988.  As an intelligence officer Mesbahi answered to President Rafsanjani and claimed Ayatollah Khomeini backed the plan to avenge Flight 655. The civilian airliner was mistaken for an F14 Tomcat about to attack and shot down over the Persian Gulf and 290 people died. Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein reported back in 1988: "A pair of binoculars could have told the officers of the Vincennes what was flying overhead. But binoculars don’t cost half a billion dollars. The more complex the weaponry, the deeper the pork barrel and the more swollen the bottom line." It was in December 1988 that Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

It seems plausible. In 1996 the Clinton administration cut a deal with President Rafsanjani to compensate the families of the victims with payments of over $200,000 per passenger amounting to more than $60 million. A part of the deal was that the US government did not apologise nor admit any responsibility for what it maintains was a 'mistake'. The Iranian government has consistently disputed this claim. Al-Jazeera interviewed Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who claims that the Iranians turned to a free-lance Palestinian group to take down five planes. The group in question has been named by various sources as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC for short). The main problem is that we may never know the full truth as the trial of al-Megrahi was clearly so flawed. It's doubtful that there will be any retrospective investigation.

Al-Jazeera has covered this subject before. In 2011 the channel gave a platform to Scottish defence investigator George Thomson, who claims that the forensic evidence against al-Megrahi was "inaccurate" and may have been contaminated. In 2012 Al-Jazeera interviewed al-Megrahi on his deathbed and revealed that the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission had re-examined the case and had recommended it be referred back to the courts. I've covered this story myself on and off since 2009 when al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds to the outrage of the US hawks and their British sycophants. I first came across the claims in an article by John Pilger, which I drew heavily on in my early writing on this subject. Since then a lot has transpired in Libya, the Gaddafi regime disintegrated before a NATO onslaught and the country now seems to be rapidly descending into anarchy.

After Al-Jazeera released its documentary the BBC, the Independent, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph, have given the claims coverage. With both Gaddafi and al-Megrahi in the ground it may be time for a serious reflection on what went on in 1988 and how the Lockerbie case was handled in the British legal system. It certainly seems that the UK media has opened itself to the possibility that Iran retaliated and that in turn opens up all kinds of troubling questions.

Not Forgetting the Kurds!

    For a long time Robert Fisk always rendered his references to the Palestinian homeland with quotation marks - it will be 'Palestine' until it exists as a state he righty put it. That was the case until the UN voted to bestow a limited form of statehood to the Palestinians. At that moment 'Palestine', at long last, became Palestine. There remains another stateless people in the Middle East, and there is a state that has yet to be established for the political liberation of that people. I am referring to the Kurds and 'Kurdistan'. Even though the Kurds are the largest people without a state in the world it's a cause that too often goes unheard. It's a cause which deserves a lot more support than it is given in the West. By comparison the Palestinian cause gains much more coverage - even though it's mostly framed as a defence of the Israeli position on Palestine.

 

    The Western media regularly goes on the defensive whenever Israel engages in outright aggression. Typically it's the wars, not the systematic forms of oppression that the Palestinians are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. For a long time the Kurds have been ignored, as the crimes against them constitute the constructive bloodbaths which go on in the blindspot of mass-media. Note the presuppositions of all debate on the Kurdish grievances are often schewed to the side of their oppressors. This was true of the complicit silence of the West over the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Turkey. Somehow the Kurdish cause became a fetish of liberal hacks looking to justify their support for the invasion of Iraq. The Far-Left in many countries campaigned against the war and conceded this ground to the pro-war camp. It made perfect sense to many of the Kurds to support the invasion with the hope of regime change and the possibility of greater autonomy for their people.

 

    It was a mistake for the radical Left to disregard the not-so-historic grievances of the Kurdish people. For it was the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein that had subjected the Kurds to a brutal attempt of extirpation by poison gas. It was a campaign which left over 180,000 people dead in the late 1980s. At that time Saddam Hussein was a recipient of enormous support from the US and Britain, who cared nothing for the victims of his slaughterhouse regime. Nevertheless, the case for Kurdish rights would later be used as part of the justifications for the interventions in Iraq made by both Bush administrations. In 1991 it was convenient for George the Elected to make quick use of the Kurdish claim to rights and promptly abandoned them soon after withdrawal. Yet the Americans created a no-fly zone over the country they betrayed the Iraqis again, with support for Saddam over Iraqi dissidents and support for sanctions which ravaged the country.

 

    This was not the first time the Kurds had been betrayed by the US. It was in the 1970s that the caretaker administration of Gerry Ford pledged support to the Kurds and compelled them into a rebellion. It was an insurgency that was only defeated once the Iranians and the Americans abruptly withdrew their support for the Kurds. Later, The Kurds actually benefited from the no-fly zone in that the dark days of the late 80s were not revisited. By that time the campaign of violence had hardened the forces of Kurdish liberation. There was a price for this breathing time, Iraqi 'Kurdistan' later found itself the door into the country for Abu al-Zarqawi. The presence of Zarqawi in Iraq (the part not controlled by Saddam) was later used to back claims that the Ba'ath Party had links to al-Qaeda. Once again the Kurds would find themselves the beneficiaries of US-led interventionism.

 

    The first election to take place in occupied Iraq during the occupation instated Jalal Talabani as President. Talabani had been a leader of the fight for Kurdish rights and autonomy in Iraq long before and amidst the savagery unleashed upon his people by Saddam Hussein. Talabani's Kurdish sisters and brothers broke into celebration in Iran and Syria. Of course, the election was only held in 2005 after a great deal of protest within Iraq and, in the end, it was arranged to ratify a series of illegal economic measures imposed on the country. The mercurial socialist Talabani had no way of undoing the reforms passed by the Americans at that time. Just as Talabani had pledged loyalty to Saddam Hussein as the strong man annexed Kuwait. Fortunately, for the Kurds, Talabani had made a wise bet, whereas the Palestinians in Kuwait had made a most unwise bet. Soon the Palestinians became victims of Kuwaiti reprisals and were ultimately expelled.

 

    It is not difficult to see why the Kurdish question has gone unheard, only to be neglected by the Left as the US invaded Iraq and exploited by liberals at the same time. Whenever the rights of Kurds have positive value for the West then the discourse will turn in their favour. So as the Kurds became a force for opposition to Tikriti gangsters and the mullahs in Tehran the apologists for Empire discovered them. It's worth mentioning that the poison gas method employed by the Ba'ath Party was first advocated by Winston Churchill. That was just as the British occupied Iraq after the state was created in the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It may be due to the lack of a certain plan for Kurdish emancipation that it has left the Kurdish people in an ambiguous position with regard to the American superpower. The Palestinians are certainly the victims of American imperialism.

 

 

 

    However, this should not deter us on the radical Left from standing in solidarity with the Kurds. The artificial condition of the borders of states such as Iraq and Syria lends greater weight to the case for Kurdich autonomy. The political emancipation of the Kurds may offer a way to redefine boundaries created by imperialism. It was the interests of British and French colonialists (let alone the Turks and the Russians) have always prevailed over any demands for Kurdish autonomy. This was the case when modern Iraq was created, the Kurds were first promised independence and then briskly stabbed in the back over the oil under their feet. Instead of a democratic state the Kurds were absorbed into Iraq, a state constructed without any regard for local tribal formations. And so it was the Kurdish people were left to languish in abject servitude for decades to come.

 

    We can further the cause of human emancipation without giving up on anti-imperialism. The liberation of the Kurds won't be fulfilled until the boundaries created by Empire are undermined and the economic system that sustains the situation in the Middle East has been overhauled. The bourgeois forms of liberation made possible by liberal interventionism may hold extrinsic value insofar as these means facilitate the emancipatory process. The invasion of Iraq had tremendous disvalue, the occupation was a great injustice and Iraq still lives with the horrifying consequences of its results. The intrinsic value is in the ultimate liberation of human beings. It's possible to walk a fine line on this question. It takes subtlety and sophistication. Something our discourse lacks desperately. Even if the Iraq war had been a total success then the position of the Kurds would still be one of relative insecurity. It was a military project that was never concerned Kurdish liberation.

 

    There are obvious limitations in liberal internationalism as in the precarious position it has left the Kurds in. The copious quantities of oil under the feet of men like Massoud Barzani means that the autonomy may well be subject to the whim of foreign interests. The prospects of independence are interesting right now as a new pipeline between 'Kurdistan' and Turkey may enable the Kurds to export oil without permission from Baghdad. Potentially this could give 5 million Iraqi Kurds a degree of economic independence in order to further enable greater political independence. It's not impossible for Turkey to decide that it is not in its interests to defy Baghdad and break up Iraq. After all the Turks have their own Kurds to worry about. As Patrick Cockburn reflects "Self-determination is close, but not quite there yet."

Hideous Idols.

 

Democracy by Airstrike.

We might, in synoptic terms, see the invasion of Iraq as leading ultimately to the elections of an Iraqi government. This is not to take a teleological view of the invasion as undertaken in order to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq. It was a teleological calculation that led a great many Iraqi leftists to support the intervention. Similarly, David Aaronovitch argued that the prospect of free elections is good reason to bomb Afghanistan as well as the justification for, and ultimately the function of the intervention. It's democracy by airstrike. It can be said that this is not only highly mistaken, it is almost a bastardisation of historical materialism. Karl Marx would remind us that history progresses by its bad side. If we take this too literally then we might come to the conclusion that injustice now is necessary for justice later. The point is actually more subtle: The advent of democracy in Iraq is inseparable from the violence of the invasion and occupation, but it is not a justification of the aforementioned horrors. In this sense Iraq is not unique.

The evils of the war were not perpetrated for the good of Iraqis. But it is the case that the Iraqi people should make the best of their country now that they are free of Saddam. It is precisely because the war was not fought to free Iraq that another intervention was necessary. This time it came from the Iraqi people, including from those who had supported the invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power. We shouldn't sneer at the Iraqis who supported the intervention, in their minds the invasion didn't have to lead to an occupation. In his writing on India Karl Marx likened progress to "that hideous, pagan idol," who drinks the nectar "from the skulls of the slain." He did so not to claim that there is no progress, but to emphasise the horrifying price that has to be paid for it. In the same line Marx writes that it's only when "a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production," and subjected them to the control of the people will we have broken with progress as a monstrous god.

It's worth noting that Marx was writing about British colonial rule in India, particularly with regard to the economic composition there. So it should be stressed that the ultimate emancipation of Iraq will come out of the economic conditions. As Terry Eagleton comes out with it, the moral and the material dance hand-in-hand, while at the same time the moral and the material are at daggers drawn. Material development equates to moral development insofar as the advance of productive forces promotes the unfolding of creative power and capacities in man. Yet every advance in civilisation is an advance in barbarism, as Walter Benjamin would remind us, if it brings in its wake new possibilities of emancipation it also arrives coated head to foot in blood. Once again in synoptic terms, we can see the processes of productive advance as a general movement onwards and upwards as generations amass the material preconditions for the new world, as Marx put it, through miserable toil. Capitalism was born indebted to feudalism and slavery in this way.

Defeating an Empire.

The US wanted to avoid any concessions as the resistance in Iraq wanted to end the occupation, in an attempt to hold-off the inevitable Washington managed to prevent elections for the first couple of years. In the meantime a series of market reforms were imposed to destroy Iraq's civil society, opening the country to multinational corporations and privatising everything in sight - the only law of Saddam's left in place was to prevent unionisation. These reforms were illegal until they could be ratified by an Iraqi government of some kind. The first moves towards a new government for Iraq were made for this reason. This included a new constitution, which was quickly typed up by unelected officials. As the Iraq war went on the US had to back down from its war aims, to the extent of trying to block free elections in Iraq. The grass-roots movement for democracy could not be suppressed because it had mass support in the country. It was Iraq's intervention in the US occupation.

Eventually the elections could not be avoided given the strength of the support for democracy in Iraq. So the US first tried to manipulate the elections and when that failed the US came out with its war aims explicitly in 2007. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the conditions were that the US have privileged access to Iraqi oil and that the US can continue its combat operations in Iraq indefinitely. The Bushites were determined to maintain these conditions in January of 2008, but the US government had to back down within a couple of months in the face of Iraqi nationalism. It was in 2009 that the US government finally conceded defeat and began to move to withdraw troops from the country. The privileged access of American corporations to Iraqi oil has been lost, that's not to say that the US has not plundered Iraq - but it does say that Iraq may finally be making the first steps towards independence. By 2010 the Obama administration had to give in to Iraqi "obstructionism" and initiated military withdrawal from Iraq.

It's true that Obama has attempted to maintain and expand the bloated US embassy in Iraq, there have been signs that the US have given up on the diplomatic presence in Iraq. In Febuary 2012 the Obama administration opted to initiate a reduction of funding and staff for the US embassy, which has over 16,000 people in staff and runs on an annual subsidy of $6 billion. More so the embassy will find itself hiring Iraqi staff and source goods and services from the Iraqi economy. Even still this event signifies the ongoing decline of American influence in Iraq. The war has been a disaster for the US overall, specifically in terms of its strategic goals for the region. The invasion had failed to reverse the increasing isolation of Israel on the world stage while Iranian influence in Iraq has only been increased. Elections have empowered Shi'ite conservatives and nationalists in Baghdad, the new Iraq will have peaceful relations with Iran. Washington can continue to dream of an isolated Iran that can be readily cowed.

At History's End.

In defence of the suggestion that it is preferable to export democracy by military intervention, Christopher Hitchens would point to the French role in the American Revolution to throw-off the British rule. So in his mind it remained possible to spread democracy by armed force. Democracy in India came as a by-product of British colonial rule, it was not an indigenous invention. The defeat of European Fascism is what led to the emergence of democracy in Germany and Italy. This still falls short of a justification for the criminal invasion of Iraq, as British rule in India was hardly about nurturing a democracy with a socialist constitution. At the same time, we may safely say that the defeat of Hitlerism in Germany only came about once 'appeasement' had failed and German expansionism came to threaten British interests abroad. Churchill's real concern was that the Fascists would seize the Suez Canal before moving on to India. In the end the British empire was lost in the war and frankly it was the best way to lose it.


The official line of the Communist Party in China is that the accumulative processes of capitalism are necessary in order to create the preconditions for historical change. So the capitalist revolution under Deng Xiaoping required such an ideological justification, the idea is that the Communist Party can push Chinese society through capitalist development to socialism and then to communism. Mao had tried to bridge the chasm between partially post-feudal China and socialism without giving ground to the burgeoning forces of capitalism; whereas Deng sought to "cross the river by feeling the stones". The teleology rears it's head once again in the guise of capitalism with Asian values, where capitalism can and must be drawn upon to construct socialism it is in place for that purpose. It is almost theodicy - vindication through the existence of evil. This really represents the victory of the capitalist roaders, the ultimate revenge of the anti-Maoists after the Cultural Revolution - that was made crystal clear in Tienanmen Square!

At the same time, it's worth acknowledging that, the historical materialist conception of history could be used to justify a non-interventionist stance. The US was not in favour of overthrowing Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War and even after it US policy remained supportive of Hussein's regime. So it shouldn't be forgotten that it isn't necessarily the case that history tends towards liberation. The US allowed Saddam Hussein to crush the massive uprising against him in 1991, specifically providing the authorisation for Hussein to use airstrikes against the Iraqi people. It's also not consistently non-interventionist to suggest that the US should've allowed Saddam to be overthrown by his own people. The economic sanctions imposed on the country by the US strengthened Saddam and devastated the population, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead in the end. This devastation prevented an uprising which would have removed Saddam Hussein from power. A ruination of all is not out of the question at history's end.

The Perils of Depoliticization.

Religious anti-Politics.

It’s often overlooked that the encroachment on public space and stultification of mass-politics has damned us to an anaemic existence in political terms. The inability to participate in a meaningful fashion in the realm of organised politics has left people without any means of identification, participation and association at the political level. Religious fundamentalism fills the breach when there are no meaningful forms of political organisation and participation to involve oneself.It seems significant that the politics of fear came to the forefront of American foreign policy in the early 21^st Century. The space which was once filled by Communism was now a slot occupied by Islamism. It became the new enemy we must vanquish in the name of freedom. This closed down the End of History narrative which began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The old question of whether the future will be socialist, fascist or capitalist could be put aside. It was the triumph of liberal democratic capitalism, the only system left and the world was now beyond politics.

As Slavoj Žižek notes Kansas was once the bedrock of American leftism, after the triumphs of Reaganomics and the subsequent stultification of US politics Kansas has become another centre of Christian fundamentalism. The same can be said of Afghanistan, which was once a moderate Westward looking monarchy before the Communist coup and subsequent Russian invasion to which the primary resistance came from radicalised Muslim groups supported by the US. It was the US that founded the Mujahideen in 1978 and later financed the Taliban to secure plans for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to Pakistan. In Pakistan the US supported the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq which carried out an extensive radicalisation of Pakistani society in the 1980s. The military junta was conceived in a coup that unseated the comparatively liberal Bhutto government. The US actually went as far as to produce Jihadist manuals, printed at the University of Nebraska, to be distributed in Pakistan.

It is no coincidence that the rise of radical Islamism in the Middle East coincides with the failures and decline of Arab nationalism combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In part this came down to the deliberate destruction of nationalist alternative to secure the hold on the oil spigot through the theocracies on the Arab peninsula. The involuntary euthanasia of Arab nationalism also served to defend Israeli expansionism and insulate rejectionists from meaningful negotiations for a peaceful settlement and the international consensus which supports it. The radical Islamists were empowered by this decline as the Arabs turned from one identity-marker to another. The only form of association and identification became religious rather than national in what was left of the political realm. In the Middle East it has been the major form of the politics of resistance to American and Israeli military power in the region for far too long. It took the place of left-wing and nationalist movements often with the blessing of Washington.

Hope in Democracy.

Everywhere you look in the Middle East there were currents of secular nationalism that have been destroyed. In Iran the nationalist government of Mossadegh was overthrown in 1953 to install the Shah which acted as a bulwark to the various forces in the country until 1979 when radical Shi’ite Islamists seized the state in the midst of revolution.Hezbollah came out of the Amal movement on the other side of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which disarmed the Lebanese Left and the PLO. The Amal movement was a Shi’ite communalist movement, not fundamentalist, until it underwent radicalisation with Hezbollah as a splintered off-shoot with the sponsorship of the Iranian state. The Israeli government even supported Hamas in its early years to undermine the secular Left and particularly Arafat. Similarly in Egypt Sadat supported the emergence of radical Islamic groups to undermine the more left-wing Nasserites. It backfired and Sadat was killed by Islamists in 1981 for the peace treaty he signed with the Israelis.

After 30 years of Mubarak the Egyptian brand of nationalism has discredited itself fully and the halcyon days of Nasser remains a distant memory. Mubarak stuffed his family’s accounts with an estimated $70 billion while the majority of Egyptians have had to survive on less than $2 a day.The lowest moment came at the height of the Tahrir protests Mubarak got down on his knees and begged Netanyahu to invade Egypt so that he could hold onto his position as a ‘heroic Arab leader’. What he didn’t know was that the generals were listening in on his phone calls and Mubarak was soon dethroned. Ultimately the democratic uprising of 2011 that dethroned Mubarak gave birth to a neutered Islamic administration with a coterie of generals around it. It seems significant that the democratic nationalist Sabahi was knocked out of the race quickly, leaving the Egyptian people to choose between a felool and a fanatic. The nationalist alternative was dirtied far too much to be revived even in a dissident form.

The Arab Spring is an opportunity for the people of the Middle East to re-politicize. This does not mean a return to 'proper politics'. In the original Greek sense polis means more than a community as Mike Marqusee notes "It was a self-conscious unit of self-administration (independent of empires) and from the start was made up of separate, contending social classes." He goes further to note that Athenian democracy was itself the product of a class struggle and class compromise between aristocrats and artisants who had become 'free citizens'.  Politics emerged as a distinct activity concerned with the affairs of the polis in separation from any tribal loyalties. The polis was not to be conflated with the oikos, the economy was a private realm from the radical democratic polis. Depoliticization can open up greater space for capital's rule. The future of the Middle East is not in the anti-politics of theoconservatism, rather it is in the democratic opening which will give room for greater organisation at the grass-roots. This is only the beginning of a long process.