The Fall of the Johannesburg Wall
Japanese Imperial Navy defeats its Chinese counterpart at the Battle of Yalu. Japan was the first non western power to join the 'Berlin Consensus'. It is also one of the most homogeneous Asian societies.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. The GDR citizens flooding the streets of West Berlin was an image that sent a powerful message throughout the world: it symbolized the end of the alternative socio-economic development model of the Communist Bloc. Those states and regimes which until then had been reliant on Soviet force projection and/or which had based their economies on state driven principles suffered a shock. The Moscow elites did away with the USSR and prevented a counter-coup soon after, in order to as quickly as possible, adopt the western liberal-democratic model. The same happened throughout the communist bloc, with socialist federations falling everywhere and giving place to democratic capitalist states.
For the next two decades the Washington Consensus reigned supreme. In fact, the US model of development inspired and imposed itself not just on the ‘east’ but also on the ‘west’. During the Cold War, in spite of American leadership, an offshoot of sorts developed in the west which disputed the reasoning of the ‘leaders of the free world’. The isolationist strain of the Capitalist Bloc resisted the narrative of the superpowers and oriented its efforts towards the possible preservation of the pre Cold War status quo. The entente which intermittently gathered France, South Africa, Israel, Portugal, Rhodesia or Taiwan, was actually the first incarnation of the authoritarian-capitalist model and sought at times to resist the Atlantic-Warsaw-Bandung narrative which ended up changing the world order by subverting the old European establishment.
A first Bandung had been attempted by Japan during the Second World War. Throughout the Cold War Beijing simply replaced Tokyo’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with its self proclaimed leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement. In any regard, the purpose was the same: to gather the non-European world against the European colonial powers – USSR and USA included…
The Suez crisis was the last attempt to preserve some part of the European order but whereas London decided to join America in the lead of the capitalist bloc, Paris chose to trade isolationism from the new narrative for the preservation of its own territories and interests. This more staunch defence of the old order was able to on occasion, resist the antagonism of the new order. The Biafra war is perhaps the best example in which this entente was confronted, not with one of the two Blocs but by the two plus the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
However, the twilight of European global rule was the defeat of Germany in the two world wars. The utter defeat of the two Reich denied the west European naval power projectors, their traditional source of capital and technology, and the replacement of German financiers with American ones replaced also the old narrative for a post-modern extra-European one.
Thus, what can be called the ‘Berlin Consensus’ – which emerged out of the Berlin Conference of 1884 – of mercantilist imperialism ended up being replaced by the Washington Consensus seventy years later, itself spawning from the San Francisco Conference, which in creating the UN, ensured the tools for the international law which was to regulate decolonisation. This new International Law also ensured that the world was bound by the standard of the Atlantic revolutions given that the UN Charter was almost a facsimile of the American and French constitutions.
The Niponic 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' was for all intents and purposes a proto-Bandung
Like the Bandung regimes and the US, the Soviet model aspired to replace the European one but proved in time to be inferior to the American. It was inferior economically but also politically and socially. The west however seems to have only apprehended the defects of the two first instances.
In fact, both the communist and capitalist models were socially multicultural by nature and here lies one of the great stress tests for the Washington Consensus because in a multipolar world, no one pole aims to compete for global supremacy and the need to appeal to universal values fades. This in turn, creates room for identity politics. The stress test comes from the danger that the west’s Achilles Heel may very well be its multicultural model of society, emulating the American ‘melting pot’.
Multiculturalism is a feature of the Anglosphere as a whole but America’s victory – by attrition – in the Cold War, did much to anchor the belief that it was an essential component of a prosperous and modern society. Following the collapse of the USSR, it was thought that the ethnic strife which immediately plagued the communist federations was a by-product of economic depression and undemocratic regimes but nowadays, after the Bush 43rd Administration’s demonstration of American hubris there has been a backlash in the world which is increasingly questioning the Washington Consensus.
Many now point to the possible emergence of a Beijing Consensus which based on authoritarian capitalism and hegemonic ethnicity, can rival with the American model of development. Recent events in Burma, Sri Lanka and the Sudan would seem to indicate that not only China is willing to accommodate regimes which are strategic for Chinese interests but that these regimes may even inspire themselves on the Chinese example: in Sri Lanka the government has just militarily defeated its long term Tamil minority rebellion (with Chinese aid), in the Sudan, the Arab government has been trying to establish its authority over African Darfur and in Burma the government tries to keep the state united by establishing a ruling ethnicity while fighting the centrifugal minority resistance movements.
In truth, the fight between the liberal and socialist narratives throughout the Cold War, contributed only to empower the third narrative, that of the 3rd world represented in the NAM. Incidentally, both the NAM states in general, and their long time spokesman China in particular, have been quite proficient at securing hegemonic ethnicities: there was such a trend in Africa where white European settlers were ‘incentived’ to leave – Ian Smith for example was quite right in claiming that for the africanists and communists, the problem with his government was not that it was a minority ruling a majority but that it was a white minority at that – in Indonesia where the Javanese elites transformed the United States of Indonesia into the Republic of Indonesia and in China where the Han ethnicity is the core of the empire.
Democracy, being a natural guarantor of rights regime is usually quite deadly for multi-ethnic states. Yugoslavia, Russia and the west European naval powers all lost a great deal of strategic assets with democratisation. It would seem that the Washington Consensus was just as toxic for the third world – such trends can be seen in Bolivia, Nigeria or the states already mentioned.
In such a context, there is a significant possibility that the fall of the west will not be brought about by financial troubles in Wall Street or the City but by severe national incoherencies in the social fabric of western society.
The American melting pot model was based on a fallacious premise: that because different nationalities and ethnicities produced a viable new nation-state, all states can extrapolate and achieve the same multi-cultural miracle in whatever circumstances. In fact, the Chinese coolies, the Amerindians or the Hispanics were only integrated as long as they remained minorities against the prevalent WASPs. It is one thing to integrate a society when it is made up of intra-civilisational ethnicities and when the Anglophone ethnicity remains the hegemonic core of the state, it is another when different civilisational ethnicities are incompatible – see Israel. What is being attempted today throughout the world under American and European auspices is blind universalism. If the dismal failure results in another Wilsonian ‘republic’ like Kosovo, the rest of the world will logically conclude that the benefits of liberal society are not worth the risk of state disintegration.
British troops take Johannesburg from the Boers thus laying the seeds for Anglophone multiculturalism
The imminent collapse of Belgium and the significant integration and assimilation difficulties of muslim minorities in the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Germany or the UK, further heighten fears for the western social model. In America, more and more the different racial groups separate geographically from each other. The Baptist African-American (Black Anglophone Baptists – BABs?) in the southeast, the WASP in the north and the Hispanics in the southwest.
It is in South Africa that the western model’s adaptation to the third world has more been praised. It is here that Lib-Dem universalists make their case for the possible coexistence of incoherent civilisational ethnicities. Curiously it is also here that mismanagement on the part of the affirmative actioned black elite is more visible. South Africa remains a poor country with a huge economic divide. More importantly it is in South Africa that we find one of the world’s biggest racial divide. In order for a nation to have a future, miscegenation is a must; alternatively, a federal political model and a long multi-ethnic traditional coexistence would be needed.
If the Washington Consensus’ social model goes critical, South Africa is the country to watch since if it goes wrong there, there’ll be little incentive left for states around the world – Europe included – to keep applying it.
Is it a matter of time before the Johannesburg Wall of tolerated racial divide comes down?
‘Strategic Depth’ ?…
Ankara has now clearly inverted its geopolitical priorities and chosen to realign. It distanced itself from US first in 2003 when it refused to allow America’s second front in Iraqi Freedom. The US Congress recognized the Armenian genocide and made things worse and then the Bush administration chose not to sanction Turkey’s operations against the PKK in Iraq’s Kurdistan – thus sealing the break. The friction with Israel was a mere consequence of Ankara’s new prerogatives and not a consequence of Jerusalem’s intransigence.
Throughout the Ottoman years, Istanbul attempted to revive the Roman and Byzantine polities by controlling the Mediterranean. The Turks never went beyond the ‘Eastern Empire’ though and depended on occasional ententes with European powers in order to keep their naval empire. They allied with France against the Habsburgs, the British against the Russians, etc..
Fierce rivalry with Persia and Russia were constants and the alliance with the Central Powers in World War I was meant to reacquire lost territory in the Balkans and the Caucasus while balancing the power of the west European naval powers.
Kemalist Turkey chose to coalesce with the Allies – the core of what would become NATO – in order to resist the advances of the USSR (with CenTO/Baghdad Pact) and the Arab emergence. The Atlantic Alliance allowed Turkey to preserve control of the Bosporus, it kept Ankara technologically updated and it helped protect the Turkish secular regime. The balancing act in the Middle East brought the pro-American Turkey, Israel and Iran to odds with the revolutionary Arabs – Baath Arabs in Iraq and Syria, pan-Arabist in Egypt and Libya.
A number of factors have changed: the demographics of Turkey have evolved in such a way that the kemalist secular elite was slowly outnumbered by the Islamic masses and the redistribution of power following the 1989 shift, after a couple of decades of American preeminence, has now given place to a multipolar world. Russia is no longer a superpower, the Arab League is powerless and divided, Iraq is destroyed and incapable of projecting force and the Islamic Republic has been weakened by decades of embargo and isolation.
In this context, Turkey has little to fear from its traditional regional rivals. Ankara has even gone to the limit of co-opting a financially weak Greece and staging a reconciliation with Russia dependent Armenia. The European Union’s postponement of and malaise with a possible Turkish accession has only motivated the Anatolian power to pursue an autonomous path, one which has also led to a magnanimous sentiment for Muslims and an empathy towards the Turkic peoples. Palestine and China’s Turkic Xinjiang thus becoming the causes of a new soft power projection approach, Turkey’s Ostpolitik – or should we say Doğupolitik.
While revealing of the new reality, Turkey’s actions are not entirely sensible. How far does populism affect this new stance? How far does prejudice?
On the long term, to keep regional rivals close and potential external allies at a distance makes little sense, not to mention that it would have little to fear from Israel in the Near East given that while a regional power, Israel’s traditional antagonism with the Arab world would never allow it to vie for regional dominance or hegemony. Quite to the contrary, Turkey’s anti-Israel stance might bring the Jewish lobby in the US, closer to the Greek and Armenian ones in a detrimental fashion to Turkey. Not to even mention all the dire consequences that a state with separatism problems might face after endorsing the Kosovo and Palestine – and dishonestly, Turkestan – secessions.
If true that for example in Mauritania, the influence of the Aqaba Concert was replaced with that of the Tehran-Ankara tandem it is also true that any expert knows that such a shift is one coup d’état away from historical oblivion.
It is in this context that the latest round of sanctions against Iran is successfully voted in the UN with the opposition of Turkey and Brazil.
No one doubts Brasilia and Ankara are rising powers but their self-sufficient foreign policy has just rewarded them a diplomatic humiliation. Is a separate dialogue with Iran a better policy than coordination with the EU3 the US and Russia? Is tolerance towards the Shia Crescent – which clashes with the westerners in the Mediterranean and in the Gulf – wise? Is it rational to band together regional powers against world powers? Is this …’strategic depth’?
Fundamental(ist) Nuances
What is the guiding philosophy of the jihadists? This time we explore the ideological fractures among the jihadist movement.
The differences are primarily theological for in Islam, separation between Church and State is not a given and even more so in semi-theocratic movements such as that of the jihadists. ‘Jihadist’ however is a simplistic term. The complexity of those who fight the West and other Muslims in the name of Islam, must be understood.
Beginning with the militant Salafis – fundamentalist conservatives – of Al-Qaeda, they are by and large of Qutbist – a fundamentalist and pan-Islamic political ideology – and Wahhabi – a sub-school of the Hanbali ‘fiqh’ or jurisprudence branch – tradition. Qutbists in particular believe Muslims who suffer from ‘jahiliyyah’ – unconscious corruption by western values and modernism – are valid targets of ‘Jihad’. It is not altogether clear that wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia would endorse such a policy but the militant salafis’ doctrine is not strictly the same as that of the wahhabi in Saudi Arabia. The theological platform of Al-Qaeda – many of their leaders go by the honorific sheikh, which conveys elderly wisdom as well as scholarly authority – is not always formally recognised in the Islamic world, it is not official or …legitimate. They can indoctrinate, but they cannot build an academic school of thought. The militant salafis are also radically anti-shia and anti-republican. Their doctrine clearly states that the shia are not Muslims, that no government is legitimate except for the one anointed by God.
They uphold that to interpret the Qoran is anathema and that the meaning of words and expressions can only be literal. Hence, the Jihad concept is reduced to its militant component and the centuries old theology that divides it into greater and lesser Jihad (the former translating into the effort to comply with Islamic Law, or inner struggle) is disregarded. Both qutbists and wahhabis clash with the Maaturidi and Ashari ‘aqidah’ – or theological schools – traditions for instance, precisely because of their contempt for the metaphysic the eclectic and the esoteric, and their obsession in claiming to know the absolute truth by studying the Qoran.
The Taliban on the other hand are a neo-Deobandi – a sub-school of the Hanafi fiqh – movement which derives from Islamic revivalist traditions dating back to the anti-colonialist struggle against the British Empire in India but many of the Taliban conscripts originate in Pakistani madrassas financed by international Muslim organisations from Gulf states which inculcated extremist Arab sunni principles.
Thus, there is a mix of ideologies but suspicion of al-Qaeda though, seems to be consensual. The more elder deobandis come out of sufi traditions and look down on the militant salafis literal interpretation of the Qoran – namely the controversy of Allah’s physical or metaphysical manifestation, militant salafis being accused of being ‘mujassimah’ i.e. anthropomorphists. A source of veiled uneasiness between deobandis and wahhabis for instance, is the level of attention given to the graves of the great fallen such as the Rashiddun (the well guided Caliphs). The deobandi jurisprudence approves of pilgrimages to the graves, the wahhabi does not.
These differences are present even within the Pakistani Taliban where the attitude towards shias, although commonly disfavourable is more extreme among salafis than deobandis.
On a more ideological tone, even Mullah Omar values the power of ethnic identity and nationalism, which he has used in his propaganda war against ISAF, by appealing to the Afghan identity, and which has been criticised by al-Qaeda spokesman Ayman al-Zawahiri, as pandering to nationalist lobbies in detriment of the transnational jihad. The militant salafis are irredentist and universalist, their qutbist/wahhabi fundamentals drives them always to speak for all Muslims first and the specific ethnicities/nationalities second. Palestine for example, is important for its Muslim victimisation character but not necessarily for the merits of its statehood/nationhood project, of which Al-Qaeda has nothing to say except for appeals to the destruction of Israel; a logical stance given that Fatah and Hamas are republican, the Islamic Jihad is sponsored by Iran and jihadist movements such as Jund Ansar Allah have been aborted by mainstream Palestinian movements.
However, both wahhabis and deobandis reject ‘shirk’ (polytheism) ’bidah’ (innovation) in Islam, namely they reject hadiths (extra-qoranic compilations of the words of the Prophet), other than the Hanbali and that of Wahhab. Both accuse shias of aposthasy, both tend to promote religious governments and denounce republican and secular ones and both promote primitive interpretations of sharia and are against the rights of women. All this of course explains why Al-Qaeda was able to so easily establish a partnership with the Taliban’s ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’.
Another strand of jihadism is that found in central Asia and the Caucasus. The Naqshbandi are a sufi ‘tariqah’ (religious order). Sufism is a mystical tradition movement or ‘tasawwuf’ that ascribes specific rites to the daily Islamic practices. The naqshbandi tariqah is known for having been intolerant of other mystical orders that drifted closer or were tolerant of Hindu or Sikh values.
Some in this mystical movement share with groups like the Taliban a distaste for dancing. In addition, the mystical movements of the Turkic world have a historical competition with Persian shia tradition and the naqshbandi order is today quite prevalent in central Asia and the Caucasus. Another reason is the Saudi support for the Chechen rebellion which led Saudi money but also values into the borders of Russia. The common rejection of bidah further consolidated the alliance.
The naqshbandis are sufi though and this means that they differ from the salafis in the role of the sheikh which the salafis accuse of shirk since in the sufi tradition, the sheikh is an intermediary between the believers and the ‘hidden’ meaning of the Qoran – which the salafis deny altogether countering that only the literal meaning of the Qoran is valid and everything else is bidah.
Thus, the qutbist and wahhabi inspired Al-Qaeda differs from the deobandi inspired Taliban and both differ from the militant naqshbandi IMU and Chechen rebels.
That which is important to conclude is that while jihadists tend to come from salafi, wahhabi, deobandi and naqshbandi backgrounds, only qutbists can be ascribed as extremists and jihadists by normative definition. There are many salafis, wahhabis, deobandis and naqshbandis who do not go into jihadist militancy.
An issue to continue exploring is how these theological and even ecclesiastical differences, will translate into political ideology.
An important final note is that while many of the theological and ideological divisions mentioned are important, in many cases these
differences approach more the nature of prejudice and superstition (against unknown or mysterious traditions) rather than crystal clear, written disagreements.
The Westphalian Post 