1 - The Greater Middle East should
attempt to recreate most of the Islamic Caliphate that existed between the 8th
and 12th centuries, the Golden Age of Islam when the Muslim Middle East was the
centre of world civilisation and culture.
2 - This new Islamic Caliphate would at a minimum create a
contemporary version of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched across most of the Middle East and provided hundreds of years of relative
stability in the region - a situation that was preferable to the current
fragmentation and chaos.
3 - This new Middle Eastern Union (MEU) would be more
effectively able to defend the interests of the region and its inhabitants - it
would not be at the mercy of external powers such as Russia,
the U.S., Europe and China. After
the Ottoman Empire collapsed subsequent to WWI, Europe
deliberately fragmented the Middle Eastern region so that the West could
control and dominate it. The only effective response for Middle Easterners is
to reverse this fragmentation.
4 - The MEU would be similar in organisational structure and
scope to the European Union - based on cooperation and not overly dominated by
any one state. The EU's capital is in Brussels,
not Paris, London,
Berlin or Rome. Similarly, the capital of the MEU would
not be in Cairo, Riyadh,
Teheran or Istanbul, but rather somewhere like Amman in Jordan
- this would symbolise the fact that the MEU cannot be dominated by any of the
major regional states - neither Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Iran or Turkey
is on its own powerful enough to control the Middle East.
5 - Extremism and fundamentalism are responses to weakness
and humiliation - if the Middle East could
regain its strength, stability and pride through an MEU, it would be able to
develop on its own terms and provide better lives for the people who live
there. The result would over time be less extremism and fundamentalism. If
the region was more prosperous and stable then there would be less reason for
people to emigrate from it to other regions.
6 - You wouldn't know it from the hysterical media coverage,
but even over the last decades much of the Middle East has actually been
modernising rapidly beneath the surface - life-expectancy has increased,
literacy has increased, female literacy has increased, high fertility rates
have declined and gleaming hyper-modern cities have sprung up out of nowhere in
places like Doha and Dubai. Much of the current extremism and religious
fundamentalism is a hysterical, desperate and ultimately futile response to
this underlying fact of modernisation. If population increase continues to
decline, then the number of angry young men with nothing to do will also
decline, and that will also reduce violent extremism.
8 - A Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza would be a member of the MEU. The MEU
would recognise the state of Israel
in return for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian State.
Israel
would then have full diplomatic relations with the MEU, and even eventually
become an associate member, perhaps even becoming a full member over time.
9 - The West should give up any fantasies it has about
controlling and dominating the Middle East.
The West does not have the power to do this, as was demonstrated in the fiasco
of the recent Iraq War. If the West stopped invading and militarily occupying
Muslim countries then tensions between the West and Islam would decrease. The
principal reason many Muslims resent the West is that the West keeps invading
and occupying their countries.
10 - I am not arguing that the above is necessarily going to
happen – just that it should happen and could happen.
This is an interesting piece, Brain. I thought it was a joke when I first read the title. If I might be very blunt here: many in the West have observed what Islamic states are willing to do by way of supporting terrorism and murdering minority groups and we fear that an MEU would be no different (despite rising literacy, etc.) Furthermore, it seems that you have here, by way of analogy, a football team (whichever you prefer) which has a winning percentage below 10% over the past 10 seasons and we are thinking, "If only we call them league champs, then they would feel better and everything will be good - and they will start winning." My point here is that we would need in the Middle East populations that did not hate each other, that wanted unity, that were willing to eschew violence, etc. None of that now exists and we can not even see such things on the horizon. The Middle East looks like Europe in the 1550's. Peace is far off in the futhure, and no one alive will live long enough to see it.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Timothy E. Kennelly
One scenario for the future is a long catastrophic Middle East centred war, or series of wars, followed by the establishment of a Middle Eastern Union (MEU) when the wars are over - so the Middle East will follow the example of Europe. The other alternative is to skip the wars and just go ahead and create the MEU, which is going to be the outcome anyway. In either case, the indefinite continuation of the current unstable situation is highly unlikely, and the eventual establishment of something like an MEU is highly likely. For most of its history the region has had some form of unity (Persian Empire, Islamic Caliphate, Ottoman Empire etc.). The recent short period of fragmentation is more of an historical anomaly - one in which the Middle East has been very weak and at the mercy of external powers. Are Middle Easterners gong to tolerate this situation indefinitely when they have a long history of unity and autonomy? The only way for the Middle East to gain independence and control over its own destiny is through regional union. The logic of this will eventually prevail one way or another.
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