As I turn 75, there’s no simpler way to put it than this: I’m an old man on a new planet — and, in case it isn’t instantly obvious, that’s not good news on either score.

I still have a memory of being a camp counselor in upstate New York more than half a century ago. I was perhaps 20 years old and in charge of a cabin of — if I remember rightly — nine-year-old campers. In other words, young as they were, they were barely less than half my age. And here’s what I remember most vividly: when asked how old they thought I was, they guessed anything from 30 to 60 or beyond. I found it amusing largely because, I suspect, I couldn’t faintly imagine being 60 years old myself. (My grandmother was then in her late sixties.) My present age would have been off the charts not just for those nine year olds, but for me, too. At that point, I doubt I even knew anyone as old as I am now.

Yet here I am, so many decades later, with grandchildren of my own. And I find myself looking at a world that, had you described it to me in the worst moments of the Vietnam War years when I was regularly in the streets protesting, I would never have believed possible. I probably would have thought you stark raving mad. Here I am in an America not just with all the weirdness of Donald Trump, but with a media that feeds on his every bizarre word, tweet, and act as if nothing else were happening on the face of the Earth. If only.

A demobilizing world In those Vietnam years, when a remarkable range of people (even inside the military) were involved in antiwar protests, if you had told me that, in the next century, we would be fighting unending wars from Afghanistan to Somalia and beyond I would have been shocked. If you had added that, though even veterans of those wars largely believe they shouldn’t have been fought, just about no one would be out in the streets protesting, I would have thought you were nuts. Post-Vietnam, how was such a thing possible?

If you had told me that, in those years to come, the American military would be an “all-volunteer” one, essentially a kind of foreign legion, and that those who chose not to be part of it would endlessly “thank” the volunteers for their service while otherwise continuing their lives as if nothing were going on, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had also pointed out that economic inequality in America would reach levels that might have staggered denizens of the Gilded Age, that three Americans would possess the same wealth as the bottom half of society, that a CEO would, on average, make at least 361 times the income of a worker, and that for years there would be no genuine protest around any of this, I would have considered it un-American.

If, in those same years, you had assured me that, in our future, thanks to a crucial Supreme Court decision, so much of the money that had gushed up to the wealthiest 1%, or even .01%, of Americans would be funneled back, big time, into what still passed for American democracy, I would have been stunned. That a 1% version of politics would essentially pave the way for a billionaire to enter the White House, and that, until the arrival of Bernie Sanders in 2016, protest over all this would barely be discernable, I certainly wouldn’t have believed you.

In sum, I would have been amazed at the way, whatever the subject, Americans had essentially been demobilized (or perhaps demobilized themselves) in the twenty-first century, somehow convinced that there was nothing to be done that would change anything. There was no antiwar movement in the streets, unions had been largely defanged, and even the supposed “fascist” in the White House would have no interest in launching a true movement of his own. If anything, his much-discussed “base” would actually be a set of “fans” wearing red MAGA hats and waiting to fill stadiums for the Trump Show, the same way you’d wait for a program to come on TV.

And none of this would have staggered me faintly as much as one thing I haven’t even mentioned yet. Had I been told then that, by this century, there would be a striking scientific consensus on how the burning of fossil fuels was heating and changing the planet, almost certainly creating the basis for a future civilizational crisis, what would I have expected? Had I been told that I lived in the country historically most responsible for putting those carbon emissions into the atmosphere and warming the planet egregiously, how would I have reacted? Had I been informed that, facing a crisis of an order never before imagined (except perhaps in religious apocalyptic thinking), humanity would largely demobilize itself, what would I have said? Had I learned then that, in response to this looming crisis, Americans would elect as president a man who denied that global warming was even occurring, a man who was, if anything, focused on increasing its future intensity, what in the world would I have thought? Or how would I have reacted if you had told me that from Brazil to Poland, the Philippines to England, people across the planet were choosing their own Donald Trumps to lead them into that world in crisis?

Where’s the Manhattan Project for climate change? Here, let me leap the almost half-century from that younger self to the aging creature that’s me today and point out that you don’t have to be a scientist anymore to grasp the nature of the new planet we’re on. Here, for instance, is just part of what I — no scientist at all — noticed in the news in the last few weeks. The planet experienced its hottest June on record. The temperature in Anchorage, Alaska, hit 90 degrees for the first time in history, mimicking Miami, Florida, which was itself experiencing record highs. (Consider this a footnote, but in March, Alaska had, on average, temperatures 20 degrees warmer than usual.) According to figures compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), not just that state but every state in the union has been steadily warming, compared to twentieth-century averages, with Rhode Island leading the way. Europe also just experienced a fierce heat wave — they’re coming ever more often — in which one town in southern France hit a record 115 degrees. India’s sixth-largest city, under its own heat emergency, essentially ran out of water. The sea ice in Antarctica has experienced a “precipitous” fall in recent years that shocked scientists, while a glacier the size of Florida there seems to be destabilizing (bad news for the future rise of global sea levels). As a NOAA study showed, thanks to sea-level rise, flooding in coastal American cities like Charleston, South Carolina, is happening ever more often, even on perfectly sunny days. Meanwhile, the intensity of the rainfall in storms is increasing like the one that dumped a month’s worth of water on Washington, D.C., one recent Monday morning. That one turned “streets into rivers and basements into wading pools,” even dampening the basement of the White House — and such storms are growing more frequent. Oh yes, and the world’s five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2014, with 2019 more or less a surefire add-on to that list on a planet on which the last 406 consecutive months have been warmer than the twentieth-century average. (By the end of the month of January 2019, that same planet in only 31 days had already set 35 records for heat and only two for cold.) And that’s just to start down a longer list of news about climate change or global warming or, as the Guardian has taken to calling it recently, the “climate emergency” or “climate breakdown.”

In response to such a world, sometimes — an exaggeration but not too much of one — it seems as if only the children, mainly high-school students inspired by a remarkable 16-year-old Swedish girl with Asperger syndrome, have truly been mobilizing. With their Friday school strikes, they are at least trying to face the oncoming crisis that is increasingly our world. In a way the adults of that same world generally don’t, they seem to grasp that, by not mobilizing to deal with climate change, we are potentially robbing them of their future.

In that sense, of course, I have no future, which is just the normal way of things. Our lives all end and, at 75, I (kind of) understand that I’m ever closer to stepping off this planet of ours. The question for me is what kind of a planet I’ll be leaving behind for those very children (and their future children). I understand, too, that when it comes to climate change, we face the wealthiest, most powerful industry on the planet, the fossil-fuel giants whose CEOs, in their urge to keep the oil, coal, and natural gas flowing forever and a day, will assuredly prove to be the greatest criminals and arsonists in a history that doesn’t lack for great crimes — and that’s no small thing. (In those never-ending wars of ours, of course, we Americans face some of the next most powerful corporate entities on the planet and the money and 1% politics that go with them.)

Still, I can’t help but wonder: Was the Paris climate accord really the best the planet could do (even before Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would pull out of it)? I mean, at 75, I think to myself: Where, when it comes to climate change, is an updated version of the Manhattan Project, the massive government research effort that produced (god save us) the atomic bomb? Or the Cold War version of the same that so effectively got Americans onto the moon and back? It was possible to mobilize at a massive level then, why not now? Imagine what might be done in terms of renewable energy or global projects to mitigate climate change if the governments of Planet Earth were somehow to truly face the greatest crisis ever to hit human life?

Imagine being the Chinese government and knowing that, by 2100, parts of one of your most populous regions, the North China Plain, will likely be too hot to be habitable. Grasping that, wouldn’t you start to mobilize your resources in a new way to save your own people’s future rather than building yet more coal-fired power plants and exporting hundreds of them abroad as well? Honestly, from Washington to Beijing, New Delhi to London, the efforts — even the best of them — couldn’t be more pathetic given what’s at stake.

The children are right. We’re effectively robbing them of their future. It’s a shame and a crime. It’s what no parents or grandparents should ever do to their progeny. We know that, as in World War II, mobilization on a grand scale is possible. The United States proved that in 1941 and thereafter.

Perhaps, like most war mobilizations, that worked so effectively because it had a tribal component to it, being against other human beings. We have little enough experience mobilizing not against but with other human beings to face a danger that threatens us all. And yet, in a sense, doesn’t climate change represent another kind of “world war” situation, though it’s not yet thought of that way?

So why, I continue to wonder, in such a moment of true crisis are we still largely living on such a demobilized world? Why is it increasingly a Trumpian planet of the surreal, not a planet of the all-too-real?

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com (where this article originated) and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War (Dispatch Books).

Copyright ©2019 Tom Engelhardt — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 18 July 2019
Word Count: 1,962
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It was April 5, 1946, when the USS Missouri — a major battleship remembered as the setting that formally ended World War II — anchored in Bosporus, Istanbul. It had sailed from New York on a special mission — carrying back the remains of Mehmet Munir Ertegun, ambassador of Turkey, who was a dean of diplomatic corps in Washington.

The visit had a higher symbolism and would come to be remembered as a breaking point. It marked the beginning of a new world — marked with a long Cold War all over it — taking shape and the value the United States placed on Turkey.

Six years later, February 18, 1952, Turkey had officially become a member of NATO. In 1954, a special bilateral treaty gave the United States the right to establish bases and keep military staff on Turkish soil.

In a way, July 12, 2019, could come to be seen as significant as the visit of the American warship 73 years ago.

As the first shipments of the sophisticated Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defence systems arrived in Murted Air Base in Ankara, the sense of a historic shift hangs in the air.

Turkey’s insistence on acquiring the batteries from a NATO adversary, defying the basic principles of “interoperability” of the alliance, despite open and unified threats from Washington on severe sanctions, raises inevitably the question of whether Ankara is determined in deorbiting from the alliance for good.

Comparisons between USS Missouri and S-400 are not far-fetched. History is filled with such events. Perceived threats from Joseph Stalin’s Russia pushed Turkey to the West then. Now, in one way or another, it is the other way around.

Nobody can argue that the decision-making that led to the Turkish obstinacy to proceed with buying the Russian missile defence systems was based on reflexes.

The underlying reason seems apparent: Since the collapse of the Warsaw Bloc and end of Cold War, Turkey bears a major part of the responsibility for an alienation from NATO. For three decades its discontent has been brewing along with its inability to transform into a democratic state, which failed to develop into a predictable, accountable, rights-based one.

Turkey has insisted on the years-long argument that it was a special case requesting special treatment, refusing to handle its bleeding issue — the Kurds. Coupled with the failed attempts to meet the Copenhagen Criteria and a myopic EU leadership, it has perceived the West as the one discriminating.

When the ruling Justice and Development Party and its leader, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proved unable to unify the society under benevolent political management, the country became a ship adrift.

When its rudder was broken by an attempted coup, Turkey in 2016 turned into a state, if not a rogue one, seeking a port where autocracy was the norm. This is where those ruling in Ankara see the interests of the country and themselves.

The rift that developed between Washington and Ankara has a background that strengthens the thesis of a historic breaking point. Since 1989, it was the — then mighty — Turkish generals who felt their long-hidden frustration with the United States come to the surface. They developed theories that it was the Americans who pushed Turkish Islamists more and more to the centre stage of politics in Turkey.

In their dark illusion, they remained in denial that the profound corruption that rotted the Turkish political class and bureaucracy was the reason the voters sought alternatives. When Erdogan and his party rose to power, allying themselves with the Fethullah Gulen Movement, they were subjected to revenge by trials and a slow-motion demotion from the centre stage. The military, whose main bulk had always American-sceptic features, didn’t blame Islamists for the mistreatments they faced but the Americans.

Paradoxically, after a while, Erdogan — once an adversary of the officers — came to believe the same. When he fell out with Gulen, he faced one challenge after another, with the murky coup attempt in 2016 as the peak point. Erdogan may have been blaming the Gulenists for the act but he believes the Americans are seeking to topple him from power.

The profound disbelief — if not hostility — towards the United States is the force that brought the so-called Eurasianist generals and Erdogan together, approximately since 2014-15. Although this alliance that supports the presidential system may be short-lived, the challenge to NATO and rapprochement with Russia are its products.

Turkey is determined to face the consequences now expected — mandated US sanctions and farther marginalisation within NATO — but the complexities of its objectives will remain: Erdogan and his Eurasianist allies in the administration have different views on Syria, jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

It should be argued that with the S-400 components having landed on Turkish soil, adventurism in Ankara has escalated much more dramatically. Turkey is facing, layer upon layer, a deepening crisis that will shatter its domestic political ground. Let’s see what the opposition can do.

Yavuz Baydar is a senior Turkish columnist, and news analyst. A founding member of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24) in Istanbul, he has been reporting on Turkey and monitoring media issues since 1980. A European Press Prize Laureate in 2014, he is also the winner of Germany’s ‘Journalistenpreis’ in 2018. 

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 16 July 2019
Word Count: 817
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The week started with the Trump administration’s ill-judged attempt to lure the Palestinians into throwing away their political aspirations in exchange for the promise of $50 billion over a decade. It ended with the US president attending the G20 summit in Japan, where the host advanced a three-point global cooperation agenda that goes against the views of Donald Trump.

In between, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, declared himself unwilling to sign off on the G20 communique unless it mentioned the Paris climate agreement, which Trump withdrew from in 2017.

And then there was Trump’s war of words with Iran and the unwillingness of Britain and France to entertain American requests to join in a military operation.

Add to that the news about Russia’s booming stock market and currency, despite facing US sanctions for years. And the fact that Nicolas Maduro is able to stay in power in Venezuela, in defiance of Trump’s attempt to remove him.

All of the above gives the impression of an ineffectual American foreign policy, which is failing to achieve Trump’s goals. Even America’s coercive power seems unable to guarantee results — think Russia and Venezuela, as well as Turkey and India’s decision to buy Russian S-400 missile systems despite US objections. And America’s ability to effect wholesale change in global trends appears to be limited, going by disparate countries’ determination to pursue climate-friendly policies as well as plurilateral free trade deals.

In all sorts of ways then, Trump’s America is less commanding than before. Two-and-a-half years into the Trump presidency, his country is neither able to reliably secure the administration’s goals nor enforce unquestioning and abject obedience to its will.

In fact, the Trump administration’s single biggest initiative — the 96-page “Peace to Prosperity” economic plan for the Palestinian territories — has drawn excoriating criticism and enormous ridicule. “Instead of self-determination,” read one satirical tweet in reference to Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s background in real estate and hotels, “could I interest you in our Premium Occupation Plus package?” And Hady Amr, who worked on former US Secretary of State John Kerry’s economic initiative for the Palestinian people from 2013 to 2017, slammed the Trump-Kushner plan’s blindness and insensitivity to the reality of Palestinian lives. Investment would be a “smart” thing “for the economy of an ordinary country,” Amr said. “But the Palestinian people don’t live in an ordinary country or situation. For decades, the Palestinian people have languished in quasi-autonomous areas where their lives are sadly subservient to Israeli needs.”

Altogether, there is a growing sense American foreign policy is discordant. Most countries are working to the principle that Trump administration pronouncements and diktats are best dealt with diplomatic niceties and action only when necessary or in one’s self-interest.

The new mood to sidestep America is not because its real power is waning. The United States is still the world’s richest, most powerful country. And the dollar continues to enjoy what former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing once called the “exorbitant privilege” of serving as the main international reserve currency.

If Trump’s America is failing, it is on another count. This was best described earlier this month by 37-year-old Pete Buttigeg, the youngest candidate in a crowded Democratic field of contenders for Trump’s job. In a speech titled “America and the World in 2054,” Buttigeg offered a long-term view of America’s place in the world. Its “greatest strategic advantage,” he said, is that it “has stood for values shared by humanity, touching aspirations felt far beyond our borders.”

Interestingly, Buttigeg said he picked 2054 as the vantage point to view America’s engagement with the world because it is “the year in which I hope to retire, after reaching the current age (73) of the current president.” Buttigeg missed, by one year, falling into the category of millennial — those born between 1981 and 1996. However, it is his generation that will live with the consequences of America’s rise or fall on the world stage. That is the context of his appreciation of American strength — “more than military power — it’s our power of inspiration.”

With all its other strengths intact, it is failure to inspire that is leaving Trump’s America increasingly powerless.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 03 July 2019
Word Count: 693
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ISTANBUL — Following a landslide win for the opposition in a mayoral election in the metropolis Istanbul, some Turks wonder whether President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can recover from the most stinging defeat.

Kadri Gursel, a prominent opposition journalist, called the result of the June 23rd election a “political tectonic shift.” Author Tayfun Atay commented Turkey was “at a point of ‘impending death’ of an exhausted government.” At least one lawmaker from Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) demanded “self-criticism” and called for a return to democratic principles, in reference to Erdogan’s authoritarian tendencies.

As the results became clear, parts of Istanbul erupted in celebrations, with people dancing in the streets or honking the horns of their cars.

Opposition politician Ekrem Imamoglu, a 49-year-old former businessman and mayor of the Istanbul district of Beylikduzu, won 54% of the vote in the election on June 23 for mayor of Istanbul, nine percentage points or 800,000 votes ahead of the AKP’s Binali Yildirim, who reached 45%.

Imamoglu’s victory means that Istanbul, a city of 16 million people that is home to a third of Turkey’s economy, will have its first non-Islamist mayor since 1994.

The election was a re-run vote after the electoral commission, under pressure from Erdogan’s government, annulled the regular poll of March 31, which Imamoglu had won with a narrow margin. Critics accused the 65-year-old Erdogan, who started his career in Istanbul when he became mayor 25 years ago, of refusing to give up control of the city, a crucial source of patronage for the AKP.

The decision to repeat the election upset many AKP members as well. Provisional results on June 23 showed that Imamoglu received majorities even in districts of Istanbul known to be AKP strongholds.

Even though Erdogan did not run in the election he was a central figure because he pushed for the annulment decision and took part in the AKP campaign with a last-minute decision to hold rallies in Istanbul when opinion polls started to show Imamoglu’s solid lead in the days before the vote.

The president, who has won almost all elections in Turkey for more than a decade, appeared to be stunned by the result. For the first time since his AKP came to power in 2002, Erdogan did not face the cameras after an election, congratulating Imamoglu via Twitter instead.

Karabekir Akkoyunlu, a Turkish academic, commented on Twitter that Erdogan had suffered a massive setback. “After 31 March, I said Erdogan would either lose Istanbul or legitimacy,” he wrote. “He managed to lose both. Incredible.”

In his first public appearance since the AKP’s defeat, Erdogan vowed on June 25 to listen to the “nation’s lessons” and to find out why the party fared poorly.

A high-ranking opposition lawmaker said that “nothing will be the same” in Turkish politics after the Istanbul election. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the lawmaker said it was hard to understand why Erdogan had insisted on repeating the Istanbul election in the first place.

Deniz Zeyrek, a respected journalist, said in a television interview that former Finance Minister and AKP co-founder Ali Babacan was preparing to set up a new party that could attract AKP lawmakers and voters. Ahmet Davutoglu, a former prime minister, is expected to present his own party before the end of the month, the daily Sozcu reported.

Analysts say the loss could set off a cabinet reshuffle in Ankara and adjustments to foreign policy. It could even trigger a national election earlier than 2023 as scheduled.

Turkey’s economy is now in recession and the United States, its NATO ally, has threatened sanctions if Erdogan goes ahead with plans to install a Russian missile defence system, S-400.

Speaking after meeting his US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan on June 29, Erdogan said Turkey would stick with the S-400 project. Delivery was expected to start in the first half of July, Erdogan said, adding that Trump had reassured him there would be no US sanctions.

But Trump said after the meeting that US concerns remained. Washington says that if by July 31 Turkey does not give up on the S-400 system, Ankara would be blocked from purchasing F-35 fighter jets and Turkish pilots currently training in the US would be expelled. “It’s a problem, there’s no question about it,” Trump said about Turkey’s plans.

Imamoglu told his supporters that he would work for all people in Istanbul, regardless of their political preferences.

“Today, 16 million Istanbul residents have renewed our faith in democracy and refreshed our trust in justice,” Imamoglu told supporters.

Imamoglu, who waged an inclusive campaign and avoided criticising Erdogan, said he was ready to work with the AKP to tackle Istanbul’s problems, including its transport gridlock and the needs of its more than 500,000 Syrian refugees.

“In this new page in Istanbul, there will from now on be justice, equality, love, tolerance, while misspending (of public funds), pomp, arrogance and the alienation of the other will end,” he said.

Ates Ilyas Bassoy, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) strategist behind the Imamoglu campaign, said in an interview that the party had answered Erdogan’s fierce rhetorical attacks with “smiles.” Bassoy, who calls his concept “Radical Love,” said the CHP won because it took voters’ issues seriously and refrained from aggressive and dividing rhetoric.

The handover of power in the mayor’s office could shed further light on what Imamoglu said was the misspending of billions of lira at the Istanbul municipality, which has a budget of around $4 billion. CHP officials say the AKP’s city administration of Istanbul handed millions of dollars’ worth of subsidies to organisations that are close to Erdogan.

The AKP’s defeat came almost exactly one year after Erdogan and his party scored major victories, winning parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24, 2018. That election ushered in a presidential system that critics say has led to a one-man-rule under Erdogan and could be part of the reason the AKP lost on June 23.

The result could increase tensions within the AKP. Bulent Turan, an AKP lawmaker from Canakkale in western Turkey, said on Twitter those responsible for the defeat should be held to account. Mustafa Yeneroglu, another AKP member of parliament, called for “self-criticism” and a return to policies concentrating on “rationality, the rule of law, the separation of powers and basic rights.”

Thomas Seibert is an Arab Weekly contributor in Istanbul.

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 July 2019
Word Count: 1,058
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BEIRUT — The death today of former elected President Mohammad Morsi of Egypt should be seen as perhaps the single most iconic moment of modern Arab political history. For he represented everything that is good and bad about political authority and governance in the past century of Arab statehood. Yet his legacy will only be fully clarified in the decades ahead when the fate of the ongoing Arab uprisings is also clear.

Not surprisingly, it is in Egypt that his life and death capture the main lines of the modern Arab political struggles for stable statehood and citizenship. Three, in particular, stand out from 1952 until today, and they continue to shape the trajectories of power, the sources of political legitimacy, and the fate of entire societies. These are the rule of the armed forces, the opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, and the counter-revolutionary onslaught of conservative Arab monarchies against democratically elected governments after the 2011 overthrow of the former Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The first and most important of these has been the penchant for Arab military offices and allied security services since the 1950s to take over governments and economies, and mostly run them into decrepitude. The non-stop governance of Egypt under military rule since then, with only the 2012-13 interlude of the elected Morsi government, is not only a structural weakness of the Arab region that reveals itself widely in the form of shattered economies and many destroyed cities. It is also a growing threat because the heavy-handed nature of the rule of Field Marshall-turned-President Abdel Fattah Sisi since 2013 has added new layers of hard authoritarianism and abuses of ordinary citizens and civil society. The rule of the officers continues to harden, amazingly.

The second important symbolic dimension of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood Society is that they have consistently spearheaded two critical but failed aspects of modern Arab political life since the 1930s: the quest for good governance that promotes citizen rights and values and stable, prosperous societies, and open opposition to autocratic Arab governments, foreign colonial powers, and Israeli Zionism. Many other movements and forces have reared their heads and sought to govern well or to challenge dictatorships and family rule in Arab lands, but only the Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots, including a few militant ones, have consistently shown the courage, self-confidence, and persistence in their mission that explains why they have lasted so long and succeeded in a few instances, while all other opposition groups faded away.

Morsi was a symbol of the ultimate success that they had always sought: to govern the biggest Arab country, and to do so with the legitimate approval of the citizenry, which no other Arab government could boast — with the exception of Tunisia (where another Islamist party, Al-Nahda, was the big winner in the elections after the overthrow of the former regime).

Yet, tragically, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood broadly also have been political failures and amateurs. They repeatedly proved unable to use power effectively when they won it through elections or assumed it through appointments by the military, in countries like Egypt, Yemen, Kuwait, Sudan, Jordan and others. Morsi and his colleagues were neither prepared nor qualified for political incumbency in Egypt in 2012, and it showed in their mismanagement of almost every sector of life and society. They had no idea how to mobilize the immense public support they enjoyed, nor how to respond to the military when it started working to overthrow them in 2013.

The third dimension of the political symbolism of Morsi’s life, overthrow, imprisonment, and death is what these reveal about the aggressive wave of neo-authoritarianism that now ravages more and more Arab societies. For it was the advent of the elected Morsi government in 2012 that so frightened the Egyptian generals, the deep state behind them, and their fellow travelers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and caused them to join forces to overthrow Morsi and then make sure that nothing like that Islamist success ever happens again. These forces now smash the Muslim Brotherhood wherever they can, wipe out almost all active elements of independent civil society and media, and jail tens of thousands of citizens for their political views and for daring to speak their minds independently.

That resurgent Arab force of regressive conservatism and authoritarianism, with its popcorn machines in cinemas to keep the youth happy, now threatens many other ‘moderate’ Arab societies that do not buy into either the Egyptian model of military rule or the Wahhabi-Saudi-Emirati model of states that manage the minds of their citizens alongside their malls and highways. The elected President Morsi mattered because he was the frightening reality — legitimate, populist, Islamist, and incumbent — in the biggest Arab country that scared these ultra-conservative officers and Gulf leaderships who then unleashed the beasts of political regression.

So Mohammad Morsi was much more significant than being a legitimately elected president who was overthrown. His life and death tell a much bigger tale: the continuing agony of Arab political cultures that insist on seeking a life of dignity, freedom, and prosperity, yet remain unable to do so in the face of the much stronger and moneyed forces of fear and authoritarianism.

The ongoing mass struggles for democratic pluralism and civilian authority in Algeria and Sudan, and regular demonstrations against government incompetence in half a dozen other Arab countries, remind us that Mohammad Morsi’s successes and failures — like Egypt and its people themselves — represent something much bigger that continues to play itself out today in most Arab countries.

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow, adjunct professor of journalism, and Journalist-in- Residence at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. He can be followed @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2019 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 June 2019
Word Count: 929
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What is the state of Sudan now that activists have called off a general strike and civil disobedience campaign after a 2-month standoff with the military?

It’s not clear if a transition to civilian-led democratic rule has become more likely. There is no certainty the Sudanese military, which removed President Omar al-Bashir from power in April during the popular uprising against his 30-year rule, will be minded to complete the process of wholesale change. All that can be said is that Sudan is in transition. But to what?

Gilbert Achcar, Lebanon-born professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said the best hope is a long-term revolutionary process, albeit with uncertain results. Achcar has written more than a dozen books on the Middle East and North Africa region, focusing particularly on the “Arab spring” and what he calls the “morbid symptoms” of Arab uprisings from 2011.

He said the Sudanese protest is “the most progressive of all the uprisings we’ve seen in the region,” the most advanced in terms of organisation as well as politics. This, because the Sudanese movement includes disparate progressive forces, not least professional and workers associations, leftists, feminists and liberal Muslim groups.

Unlike in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria, Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalists couldn’t hijack the uprising because they had been in collaboration with al-Bashir. The rank and file of the Sudanese Army remains in broad sympathy with the politics of the revolt.

Going by the above, Sudan should technically be a template for the successful exercise of people power in the Arab world but it isn’t, not yet.

Achcar, one of the few scholars to disdain “lazy” evaluations of Arab street protests as a spring analogous to Prague 1968, said the region is “in the midst of a long-term revolutionary process born out of the region’s very deep structural crisis.” This is a “social and economic blockage brought about by the combination of [International Monetary Fund] IMF-sponsored neoliberalism and the rotten authoritarian political systems that impose it throughout the Middle East and North Africa,” he said.

Accordingly, it would be quite wrong to view regional uprisings as a spring, Achcar said, “that would, just like the season, last a few months and end with mere constitutional changes or end in failure.”

By that doleful measure, the region seems doomed to struggle on — quiet if not really peaceful — and with ordinary people occasionally forcing the battle against a uniquely resilient state. Does Sudan 2019 really mean little or nothing, then?

Despite Achcar’s gloomy predictions, three things distinguish Sudan from other regional protests.

First, the protesters’ refusal to empty the public squares after celebrating the ruler’s downfall. Mindful of the lessons from Egypt, the Sudanese have stayed with the script, which seeks the return of political power to civil society through democratic means, including elections. They’re still at it, albeit in a more nuanced way, one that gives the army a chance to collaborate.

Second, the need to maintain the nonviolent character of the movement. In the first wave of protests, starting in 2011, protesters chanted “Silmiyya, silmiyya” (Peaceful, peaceful”) to signify they were peaceful but the Sudanese have been especially careful not to provoke the military powers into justifying a massive crackdown. That it still happened — on June 3 — and the internet was switched off is nothing compared to what might have been.

Third, the Sudanese street is wary of foreign intervention of any kind. This is wise considering the only state to collapse after 2011 was Libya, where foreign intervention by the United States and its allies tried to co-opt the insurgents’ struggle. It led to a many-sided, well-armed conflict that continues, supported at various ends of the spectrum by disparate foreign powers.

That said, it’s not clear how long Sudan will remain a relatively organic struggle, with only the Saudis and Emiratis serving as “foreign” interested parties. On June 12, the US State Department dispatched Tibor Nagy, assistant secretary of state for African affairs to Khartoum. He was accompanied by the newly appointed US special envoy for Sudan, retired veteran diplomat Donald Booth.

American analysts such as Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Finance and Designations at the State Department, argue for greater US involvement but the best hope for Sudan and the region is Ethiopian mediation.

Whatever happens, Sudan’s transition will be a lengthy process.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly. She blogs at www.rashmee.com and is on Twitter @rashmeerl

Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 June 2019
Word Count: 726
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Two leading actors in the modern world-system — Donald Trump and Theresa May of England — sound like broken records. They say the same thing each time they talk, knowing full well that their case is extremely weak.

Why have they done this? They have no better choice if they wish to remain leading actors. They are cheating, asserting that they are proposing something possible. In fact, it is the opposite. They are asserting as possible their ability to alter a situation, one that is virtually impossible to change.

More and more people come to understand what is happening. They see that they no longer participate in decisions. They react by withdrawing from participation at all. This withdrawal in turn alters the situation in a way that is not friendly to leading actors.

Why do the leading actors do this? They do this because there is no better alternative.

So, what is the bottom line for all of us? We can at most guess the possibilities, but there is no way we can be absolutely certain of knowing what will happen.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2019 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 June 2019

Word Count: 179

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BEIRUT — The last thing the Middle East needs is another $8 billion of American armaments in the hands of Arab autocrats, and thousands of additional American troops here, which Donald Trump has decided to send us as he ratchets up the U.S.’s exaggerated and mostly hysterical confrontation with Iran. Such decisions by the Trump administration in recent weeks, combined with supporting roles by autocratic Middle Eastern governments, are central reasons for why our region continues to spin incoherently in its maelstrom of turbulence, destruction, violence, state collapse and massive human suffering.

Foreign military engagements and posturing in the Middle East during the past five decades or so have usually led to catastrophic consequences. These include destroyed cities, ruined states, long-running dictatorial regimes, rampant corruption that comes with billions of dollars of arms spending, money siphoned away from basic human needs and developmental priorities, and — as the UAE-Saudi-UK-US war in Yemen shows — the proclivity to use the weapons systems you accumulate, often in criminal ways.

Also, in Arab states that only stay alive thanks to U.S. and other foreign arms providers and funders, governments tend to pay more attention to the wishes of the foreign powers than to the rights and aspirations of their own people. The 2010-11 Arab uprisings were a major signal that most citizens would no longer accept that, as are the current uprisings in Algeria and Sudan.

Militarism is at the heart of aggressive policies that foreign powers use across the Middle East. These include arms sales, prolonged wars, isolated attacks, sanctions, troop build-ups, creating fantasy coalitions of like-minded states to confront an imagined enemy, and inventing fake local militias that you dream up, initiate, equip, train, feed, sustain, and then designate as your “allies” in a noble mission to repel evil and fight the battles that keep America safe — or, in the case of this White House with some of its wacko quarters, battles that immensely please the Lord.

The United States has been the main culprit in this legacy of knee-jerk militarism in recent decades, though this sickness now includes most major foreign and regional powers. Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, the U.K., and the United Arab Emirates all directly participate in military action inside Arab countries. Other less militarily powerful Arab states in recent years, like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, and Sudan, have offered military support for groups fighting in Arab lands (like rebels or governments in Syria and Libya), while major non-state powers like Hezbollah also engage in warfare in neighboring lands.

Hundreds of smaller groups now spring up in many Arab countries to get the support from abroad that allows them to buy some snazzy uniforms, join the battle, make some money, hire some unemployed young men, get the world’s attention, and perhaps get invited to a peace negotiation in London, Paris, Sochi, Doha, Muscat, or Amman. Militarism and militias are the growth industry of this decade across the Middle East.

Here are the four main consequences of foreign powers pouring money and guns into the hands of Arab autocrats whose citizens have no meaningful political rights and cannot hold power accountable: 1) steady physical destruction of numerous and ever larger swaths of Arab societies due to war, 2) mass pauperization and marginalization of a large majority of Arab nationals (65-75% of whom are now poor and vulnerable), 3) the expansion of political extremism alongside the birth and growth of terrorist and other violent groups that are often a natural offshoot of military groups, and 4) mass frustration, humiliation, and helplessness among a majority of ordinary citizens who do not know where to turn to survive, let alone live a normal life, and whose desperation inevitably fosters more political extremism and violence, and ultimately the fragmentation or even collapse of some countries.

About half the 22 Arab countries today are in dire straits. Half a dozen of them have collapsed into all-out civil wars and open warfare that attracts regional and foreign fighters at will (Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and parts of Sudan, Palestine, Sinai, and the frontiers between the Maghreb and the Sahel regions). Another half dozen or so states have so badly mismanaged their national development and state-building opportunities that they are deeply in debt and insolvent, and must rely on the financial handouts — and accompanying political orders — of any autocratic regime that offers to help keep them afloat, whether that lifeline comes from within the region or from abroad.

What does the United States expect to achieve by sending us more troops and guns, after 25 years of direct warfare in the Global War on Terror, whose failures and unintended consequences are so obvious now? The U.S. military and its political masters in Washington are still floundering in pockets of Syria, and trying to figure out how to exit the mess they created in Iraq. And Al Qaeda and “Islamic State” today regroup, expand, and reconfigure their criminal actions, while tens of thousands of their trained fighters scatter to more lands around the Asian-African continents than ever before.

More ironic, the alleged threats from Iran’s expanding regional contacts that Washington says it wants to counter mostly represent Iranian opportunistic strategic ties with assorted parties in the region — ties that usually occur in the wake of disruptive and failed foreign militarism by the U.S., Israel and other foreign powers that opens the door to Iran’s engagement with assorted Arabs.

So Donald Trump is sending us a few thousand more American troops and $8 billion more arms this week to do what, exactly?

Rami G. Khouri is senior public policy fellow and adjunct professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. He can be followed @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2019 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 27 May 2019
Word Count: 924
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