Disordered World, page 7
I sometimes reread a dense little text published in 1973 by the British historian Arnold Toynbee shortly before his death. Surveying the trajectory of humanity, to which he had devoted a magisterial study in twelve fat volumes, A Study of History, he distinguished three phases.
In the course of the first phase, which corresponds more or less to prehistory, people’s lives were the same because ‘however slow communication was, the pace of change was even slower’. Every innovation had time to spread to all societies before another came along.
During the second phase, which according to Toynbee lasted around four and a half millennia from the end of prehistory to about 1500 CE, change became more rapid than the speed of transmission, with the result that human societies became markedly different. It was during this phase that distinct religions, ethnicities and civilisations came into being.
Finally, from the sixteenth century, ‘because the speed of change has been outstripped by the acceleration of the speed of communication’, our habitat has begun to unify, at least technologically and economically, ‘but not yet on the public level,’ Toynbee observed.
This approach has the same value as all theories: each term, when examined closely, can give rise to criticisms, but the vision as a whole is thought-provoking. Especially when considered in the light of the last few decades. The acceleration has been dizzying, brutal and inevitably traumatic. Societies which had followed different courses throughout their histories, which had developed their beliefs, languages, traditions, feelings of belonging, their own sense of pride, found themselves catapulted into a world in which their autonomous identity was jostled, eroded and seemed under threat.
Their reaction has sometimes been violent and disordered, like that of a drowning person whose head is already under water and who struggles without hope or discrimination, ready to drag down with him anyone his hands grab hold of, whether would-be rescuers or aggressors.
From the end of the Cold War to the end of the 1980s, the evolution described by Toynbee towards an integrated civilisation progressed at a quite different pace and in an appreciably transformed strategic environment.
One government, that of the United States, found itself taking on the role of de facto global authority; its value system became the universal norm, its army the planet’s police force, its allies vassals and its enemies outlaws. It is a situation without historical precedent. Certainly in the past there have been powers which at their height achieved some sort of primacy; which, like the Roman Empire, dominated the known world or extended so far that it was said the sun never set on their territories, such as the Spanish empire in the sixteenth century or the British empire in the nineteenth. But none of them possessed the technical means which would have allowed them to intervene at will all across the globe or to thwart the emergence of rival powers.
This process, which might have stretched out over several generations, was astonishingly accomplished in the space of a few short years. The whole world is now a unified political space. Toynbee’s third phase has come to an abrupt, premature end and a fourth has begun which looks set to be stormy, troubling and eminently dangerous.
All of a sudden, the question of power and legitimacy has arisen at global level for the first time in history. If this essential fact is rarely expressly mentioned, it is constantly present in what is not said, in recriminations and at the heart of the most brutal conflicts.
In order for different peoples to accept the authority of a sort of global government, that government has to possess a legitimacy in their eyes other than that which stems from its economic and military power. And in order for individual identities to become part of a much larger identity and for particular civilisations to integrate into a planetary civilisation, it is imperative that the process take place in a context of equality, or at the very least of mutual respect and shared dignity.
I deliberately mixed different aspects in my previous sentences. The reality of today’s world is only comprehensible if all these facets are constantly borne in mind. From the moment at which one civilisation predominates, carried by a single global superpower, transcending civilisations and nations can no longer happen in an atmosphere of serenity when a single civilisation prevails, led by a single global superpower. Peoples who feel themselves threatened with cultural annihilation or political marginalisation inevitably listen to those who call for resistance and violent action.
Unless and until the United States persuades the rest of the world that its pre-eminence possesses moral legitimacy, humanity will remain under siege.
II. Lost Legitimacy
Chapter 1
As I write, an image comes into my mind which is trivial yet unforgettable: that of a polling station in Florida during the US presidential election in November 2000. A scrutineer is holding a ballot paper up to the light to work out from the perforations and twists in the paper whether Al Gore or George W. Bush should receive the vote.
Like millions across the world, I was hanging on the result of this count and the legal quarrel that accompanied it. In part, I admit, it was out of curiosity at watching an exciting political soap opera, but mainly it was because my own future and that of my nation were at stake in these elections. Back then I had an inkling of it, and today I am certain: that vote in Florida was to change the course of history in my native land, Lebanon.
I chose this spontaneously as my first example, as it closely affected me. I could have begun with many other more prominent examples, whose implications for the whole planet seem more obvious. For example, it is reasonable to suppose that the attacks on 11 September 2001 would still have taken place if Al Gore had been in the White House rather than George W. Bush. But it is also reasonable to suppose that Washington’s reaction would not have been the same. There would inevitably have been a ‘war on terror’, but with different priorities and slogans, and different methods and alliances. There would probably have been less determination, but also fewer mistakes. The president would not have spoken of a ‘crusade’ nor an ‘axis of evil’, and prisoners would not have been detained in Guantanamo. The war in Iraq would probably not have taken place. That would have made life very different for the people now caught up in it, as well as for US relations with the rest of the world. It is also probable that the Syrian army would not have had to leave Lebanon in 2005 and that the confrontations taking place in my country would have taken a different turn.
If the Democrats had won in November 2000, several other important issues might also have been handled differently — climate change, for example, or stem-cell research, or the role of the United Nations. This would have had significant consequences for the future of the planet. But it would be risky to take these hypotheses much further, and pointless to try to determine whether the world would now be in a better or worse state. I have pondered that famous vote in Florida over the years, and sometimes come to the conclusion it was disastrous and sometimes that it was providential.
In any case, one thing is certain: what the voters in Tampa and Miami were voting on in that symbolically significant first year of the new millennium was not just the future of the American nation; it was in large measure the future of every other nation as well.
The same thing could also be said of the next two presidential elections, in the course of which we experienced extreme situations. In 2004, the whole world wanted President Bush to be beaten, but his fellow citizens chose to re-elect him; the disaffection between America and the rest of the world was then at its height. Conversely, in 2008, all the nations on earth were in love with Senator Obama and when the vote went in his favour there was a torrent of admiration — entirely justified in my view — for the United States, its people, their political system and their ability to manage ethnic diversity. Such a convergence of opinion — linked to Obama’s rhetoric, his African origins and the world being tired of the Republican administration — will not recur any time soon. On the other hand, it is highly likely that every US election henceforth will give rise to a global psychodrama.
That clearly poses a problem. I would even go as far as to say that beneath the anodyne, trivial exterior, the repercussions of US presidential contests are one of the hidden aspects of the political and moral disorder which characterises our times.
Before going any further, I should take account of two objections to which these thoughts could give rise. It is true, one could argue, that the US president is powerful today. His political decisions affect the fate of the whole planet, and therefore those who elect him find themselves in a role which is not theirs by right, since the choices they make so often prove decisive for the future of the peoples of Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. In an ideal world, it should not be thus. But why get worked up over a problem without a solution? After all, the people of Colombia, Ukraine, China and Iraq can’t be granted the right to vote in US presidential elections.
I agree that would be absurd and it is certainly not what I would advocate. What other solution is there? At this moment, I can see none. But the fact that there is no realistic solution does not mean that the problem does not exist. I am convinced that it is entirely real and is already having devastating effects, and that its seriousness will become more and more apparent in the coming decades.
I shall explain my reasons for these concerns in what follows. First I would like to deal with another possible objection. If the first was the perennial ‘What’s the point?’, the second is the no less enduring ‘It has always been thus!’
Since the dawn of history, it will be objected, some nations have imposed their will on others: the powerful decide; the oppressed submit. For generations, the vote of someone in New York, Paris or London has counted for more than that of a voter in Beirut, La Paz, Manila or Kampala. If the present day has brought changes, they have tended to be in a positive direction, since hundreds of millions of people who have previously been muzzled can now express themselves freely; this is notably the case throughout most of Latin America and Eastern Europe, and in some African and Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia.
That may be so, but it is deceptive nonetheless. Past empires may have been vast and powerful, but their grip on the world remained weak because their weapons and means of communication did not allow them to maintain effective control far from the centre, and also because they all had to contend with rival powers.
Today, extraordinary technological advances have made possible much tighter control of the globe and contributed to the concentration of political power in a small number of capitals, and in one in particular. This explains the emergence for the first time in history of a government whose ‘jurisdiction’ covers the whole planet.
This unprecedented situation naturally generates equally unprecedented disparities as well as new balances — or rather imbalances. And suicidal resentment.
Clearly something has changed radically in the fabric of the world, something that has profoundly damaged relations between people, diminished the significance of democracy and blurred the path of progress.
If we want to examine this change more closely to try to understand its origins and mechanisms and to grope our way out of the deadly labyrinth, the concept which might serve as a beacon is that of legitimacy. In some people’s eyes today, it is a concept which is outdated, forgotten and even somewhat suspect, but it is indispensable to any discussion of the question of power.
Chapter 2
Legitimacy is what enables people to accept, without excessive constraint, the authority of an institution, represented by individuals and embodying shared values.
That is a broad definition capable of embracing very different situations: a child’s relationship with its parents, an activist’s with the leaders of his party or his union, a citizen’s with his government, an employee or a shareholder’s with the directors of a company, a student’s with his professors, a believer’s with the leaders of his religious community, and so on. Some forms of legitimacy are more stable than others, but none of them is immutable; legitimacy can be won and lost according to one’s talent or to circumstances.
The whole history of human societies can even be told from the viewpoint of crises in legitimacy. Following dramatic change, a new source of legitimacy emerges which replaces the one that has just collapsed. But how long that new legitimacy lasts depends upon its successes. If it disappoints, it will begin to fail fairly quickly, sometimes even before its supporters realise it.
For example, at what point did the tsars stop appearing legitimate? And how many decades did it take for the credit of the October Revolution to run out in its turn? In recent times, Russia has been the scene of a spectacular loss of legitimacy which has had worldwide repercussions. But it is just one case among many. Legitimacy only appears unchanging; whether it belongs to a man, a dynasty, a revolution or a national movement, there comes a point at which it no longer works. It is at that point that one power replaces another, and a new legitimacy replaces the discredited one.
For the world to function reasonably harmoniously and without major disturbances, most people should have legitimate leaders in charge; they in turn would be answerable to a global authority which is itself regarded as legitimate.
Clearly that is not the case today. In fact it is almost the opposite: many of our fellow human beings live in states whose rulers are not the winners in fair elections, nor inheritors of a respected dynasty, nor continuing a successful revolution, nor architects of an economic miracle, and therefore do not have any legitimacy. And they live under the control of a global power whose legitimacy people do not recognise either. This is particularly the case for the vast majority of Arab nations. Is it a coincidence that this is where the men who committed the most spectacular acts of violence at the start of this century came from?
Questions of legitimacy have always played a major part in the history of the Muslim world. The most significant example is probably that of religious factionalism. While in Christianity there have been constant divisions — and sometimes massacres — over the nature of Christ, the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and the form of prayers, the conflicts in Islam have usually centred on quarrels over succession.
The major schism between Sunnis and Shi’ites did not come about for theological reasons but for dynastic ones. At the death of the Prophet, a group of the faithful declared their support for his young cousin and son-in-law, Ali. Ali possessed a brilliant mind and had many unconditional supporters who were called ‘shi-’a-Ali’, the party of Ali, or simply ‘shi’a’. But he also had many critics, who succeeded on three occasions in having representatives from the opposing party named ‘caliph’ or ‘successor’. When Ali was finally chosen as the fourth caliph, his enemies rose against him immediately and he was never able to reign peacefully. He was assassinated four and a half years later. Then his son Hussein was killed at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE an event still commemorated with great fervour by Shi’ites. Many of them hope that a descendant of Ali will soon appear among them: an imam hidden from us today who will return power to its rightful owners. This belief is held with a messianic zeal which the passing centuries have not diminished.
Onto this dynastic quarrel have been grafted — as was the case with the theological quarrels of Christians — considerations of a different order. When Rome condemned as heresy the beliefs of the patriarch in Alexandria or Constantinople, when Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church or a German prince supported Luther, there were often political considerations and even commercial rivalries — conscious or otherwise — which played a hidden role. In the same way, the tenets of Shi’ism have often been adopted by peoples who wanted to mark their opposition to the powers that be. In the sixteenth century, for example, when the Ottoman empire, which was implacably Sunni, was enjoying its greatest expansion and claimed to unite the majority of Muslims under its authority, the Shah of Persia transformed his kingdom into a bastion of Shi’ism. It was a way for him to preserve his empire and for his Persian-speaking subjects to avoid living under the domination of a Turkish-speaking people. But just as the king of England showed his independence by speaking of the Eucharist or Purgatory, so the Shah marked his difference in affirming his attachment to the family of the Prophet, as a guarantee of legitimacy.
Today, genealogical legitimacy retains a certain importance, but another form of legitimacy has been added to it — or sometimes replaced it — which could be called patriotic or combative legitimacy. In the eyes of some Muslims, legitimacy belongs to whoever leads the fight against their enemies. This is similar to the case of General de Gaulle in June 1940: he spoke for France not because he had been elected or because he held effective power, but because he bore the torch in the struggle against the occupier.
This comparison is necessarily approximate. However, it seems to me to hold a useful key to decoding what has been happening in the Arab-Muslim world for several decades — perhaps for far longer, but I prefer to stick to what I myself have noticed as someone born in Lebanon into a family of teachers and journalists, who then emigrated to France and who has never tired of observing the region of his birth and trying to understand and explain it.
From the moment I first opened my eyes, I have seen a procession of different people who believed they possessed patriotic legitimacy, who spoke in the name of their people, or of all Arabs, and sometimes even of all Muslims. The most important of them all was incontestably Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt from 1952 until his death in 1970. I am going to talk at length about him — his meteoric rise and equally spectacular fall and sudden disappearance — because it seems to me that the crisis of legitimacy that Arabs are experiencing today dates from his time. It is a crisis which is contributing to our disordered world and to the drift towards uncontrolled violence and decline.
