With the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, fleeing the lands he and his family governed for almost 50 years, Syria is now a failed state in the definitional sense. Although being dysfunctional for most of the past century, the collapse of the Syrian government is another case in a series of failed states in Sub-Anatolian Arabia. It is obvious that Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel are incapable of building, maintaining and developing effective and sustainable governance systems – let alone efficient ones. The Sub-Anatolian rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula are in the midst of a covert collapse since the moral and cognitive demise of those societies are covered up by the material wealth that came with the utilisation of energy resource and the diplomatic concessions needed to retain some value form those resources. Regardless of how far we move back over the last century, the said regions constantly either faced civil war, international war, massive corruption, exploitation, diaspora, terrorism, separatism or multiple of those political disasters. This was not always the case. During vast periods before the 17th century, Arabia and its society led global scientific and cultural progress and was able to translate it into tangible developments through architecture, literature, art, music and trade. The achievements of the Arab are so significant to our understanding of the world and the utilisation of this enhanced understanding, that they must be regarded as irreplaceable steps on the global ladder of civilisational progress. Considering how close Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina are to one another geographically, the density and continuity of genuine knowledge production during many centuries is all the more impressive. Moreover, this was maintained through a variety of political settings; many kingdoms and empires ruled over Sub-Anatolia with different approaches, goals and policy – even with significantly more heterogenous demographics. Certainly, this is in stark contrast to the dysfunctionality of Sub-Anatolian Arabia today. After a century of political misery, it is necessary to articulate the following conclusion: Sub-Anatolian Arabia is incapable of achieving political success within the framework of the nation state.
The Current State of Affairs in the Levant
It is wrong to euphemise the state of affairs in Sub-Anatolia. The Arab lands are war-ridden and with the high biological reproduction rate of the population, paired with inaccessible education and productive perspective to apply obtained education, Arabia is set to intensify its downfall further. We can observe an intensifying power vacuum in the Levant region which triggers the emergence and rise of ever-more group interests that are enforced by violence. There are many different small and mid-sized organisations that formed to claim territories with different normative footings. Traditionally, there are different religious movements that led to the formation of armed groups that seek to claim lands in the name of their respective religious setting. On the other hand, there are far-left terror groupings that occupy lands in North Levant. The affected governments are faced with many interests: they try to secure their borders, keep infrastructure and economic conduct intact and also expand their territorial influence. As the Syrian government failed, surrounding states will naturally seek to enforce those interests in the region. Wining parties will have additional resources to improve their power-political position in the Levant, while other nations and organisations will become weaker which leads to further instability in the region. In other words, it might well be that the collapse of the Syrian government leads to extensive conquests in Sub-Anatolia. Israel is already quite active in expanding its borders into Lebanon and Syria. Türkiye has gained full control over the Turk-populated regions of Northern Syria and is also actively securing additional regions in the North to minimise the presence of terror groups. Naturally, those terror groupings will seek to claim more Southern lands in Syria but also in Iraq, where they have also extended presence. With such a shift, conflict of interest with other actors that claim those territories will arise. In short: All groups seek to extract maximum territorial gain from the instability in Arabia. Türkiye is reclaiming Turk-populated regions and providing security in terror-laden regions. Lebanon and Iraq mainly try to survive. Israel strives for the control of more land due to believe to subordinate other races. Religious military groups try to enforce their niche beliefs without regard for demographics. Saudi-Arabia and Gulf States aim for neutrality to shield their economies. Jordan and Palestine are jointly interested in the strengthening of the Palestinian people. Except for Türkiye and the Gulf States, said nations are developmentally extremely far away from the mode of genuine knowledge production. In terms of the devletist stages of foreign policy, most of the nations and groups are currently somewhere between stages one and four. This article holds that those developments are natural consequences of a disconnect between the Arab society and currently governing structures that are based on the notion of the democratic nation state.
Arabs and Politics
Successful political systems are based on the cultural core of the society that developed into the materialisation stage of their intrasocietal conduct. A successful state, khaganate, sultanate, kingdom or empire is the product of its own people and develops with them. How many people rule the society, what the borders of the political entity are, how extensive the powers of rulers are, how the ministries are structured and with whom foreign policy is made more closely, or not, are all determined by a society’s culture. Political systems fail when the systemic structure is derived from a different culture. This was the case with Sub-Anatolian Arabia after the retreat of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. A similar power vacuum, as described above, emerged and territorial struggles among shattered groups and few state actors dominated the post-war era. Because the nation state notion proliferated during that time in other regions, more powerful state actors from those regions enforced this governance model, which was also very happily accepted. Until then, Arabia was ruled in more supranational structures, such as sultanates, caliphates, empires, kingdoms or partially even khaganates. Even when the rulers were Turks or Persians, Sub-Anatolian Arabia developed splendidly. To understand why Arabia is dysfunctional under the nation state but strives under supranational political systems, we need to understand the Arab, first.
The Arab structures his societal affairs in clans. This is a collectivist approach, seen in many cultures that differ slightly. For example, Turks and Italians structure societal relations around the family. African societies are structured in tribes, which are more isolated and smaller. Jews are organised in gangs which function more like cooperative groups. White cultures, in turn, do not rely on interpersonal group structures to govern intrasocietal conduct as they are individualists; therefore, they rely on legal structures. In the Arab example, the clan is an interest-based hierarchical group structure. The only membership requirement is to be an Arab Muslim (similar to Jews; unlike Turks and Italians). The head of a clan is entrusted to provide security and wealth, and as long as this is given, the head of the clan is accepted as such. There is no normative value attached to the head of the clan as a person, which is why there are also so few distinctly known Arab caliphs/emperors, apart from Prophet Muhammed. Once the head of the clan changes, the next person receives the acceptance as the previous person, given security and wealth is secured. In exchange, the clan members work for the clan. So, the Arab clan is like a hierarchical cooperative organisation, where the head of the clan decides on how to use the resources provided by the members to achieve two simple goals: security and wealth. Historically, the most successful political systems that governed Arabia display this distinct feature. Most prominently, the Ottoman Empire was merely an administrator of Sub-Anatolia that was able to provide security and wealth. Without interfering in cultural affairs, the Ottoman rule emphasised the development of statecraft instead of enforcing Turkish culture in other regions. Protection, expertise and development was granted in exchange for taxes and military capacities. On the other hand, we can also see that the Arab society constantly sought to implement the clan system in contemporary political settings, though obviously less effective. Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq, and now Bashar al-Assad are both examples of leaders who acted as clan leaders of their Levantine societies. As long as they provided security and wealth, they were accepted. Building cults around their persons did not work like in other contexts, such as South Africa, for example. The clan structure is something that a political system in Arabia must encompass. This underlines the hypothesis that current Arab struggles arise from a disconnect between culture and politics massively.
The Solution: Politics in Arabia
Another factor that plays into the design of politics in Arabia is the high homogeneity of the Arab society. Racially, the Sub-Anatolian Arabs are highly similar. Distinctions are generally made on different religious interpretations of the Holy Kur’an. Paried with the past successes of supranational structures in governing Arabia, the most logical approach must be that the fragmented Arab nations need to be combined and be governed in a supranational political system. Other than the United States of America, Arabia should not be designed as a union of different states, but directly as one. The racial and societal homogeneity, as well as the same expectations from politics, does not allow to imply the existence of different nations. It does not even necessarily need to be an Arab supranational hegemon, as we have seen in the Ottoman period. As long as Arabs are considered as one, treated fairly in cultural terms, are protected and retain a certain level of affluence, an external power could administer Arabia, too. Considering the advance of the idea of self-determination, however, this is unlikely to work as well as under the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, the ideal political solution for Arabia is a centralised political system that includes modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan and the Arabian Gulf states. Given the territorial advances and the successful defence of the claimed lands, Israel needs to be excluded from such a supranational construct.
There are two problem in establishing such a political system: foreign interests and lack of statesmanship. Especially over the past three decades, it has become evident that Arabia is heavily exploited by Europeans and Neo-Europeans for energy resources. Even the most fundamental moral principles are constantly disregarded by the invaders to extract as many resources at the lowest possible cost. Imagining the establishment of Arabia as a political entity will surely lead to massive military and diplomatic attacks. Of course, these are completely unjustifiable. However, this does not alter the high probability of such reactions, since those (Neo-)Europeans are structured as non-devletist states. A recent historic parallel can be drawn to the large-scale institution-building by (Neo-)Europeans in the 2000s when former President of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, advocated for a Union of African nations. In an attempt to instigate a revolution in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi, the so-called Arab Spring emerged as a spill-over effect that mostly affected Sub-Anatolia and triggered the long-lasting Syrian Civil War, which now ended in the failure of the state. As long as there are no powerful nations that would shield Arabia from being attacked in their attempt to build a new political structure, or a binding international agreement would secure its military, economic and societal peace throughout the first four stages of devletist foreign policy, the transition phase would leave the Arab society more vulnerable than ever before.
Secondly, Arab politics has very little state culture. Although there have been periods of rather powerful caliphates and empires, the durability of those entities was quite low. Most of the Arab governance history falls back to structures and innovations from other civilisations, mainly Turks, who governed the lands effectively. This lack of state culture is very difficult to make up for; especially, in the context of such a relatively old society, as the Arabs. Continuity and organic development of governance systems is very important for the success of politics because fine-tuning mechanisms have amplifying effects on political effectiveness after the fundamental systems are functioning at a high rate of automation. For example, because the military history of Türkiye dates back 2500 years without major interruption, if any, Türkiye has the most effective and efficient army in the world. Similarly, because the Chinese were among the first to develop structured manufactures, their production culture is still acknowledged. Arabs, in turn, have very little governance experience. Also, a lot if it was lost during this last century of war re-orientation after the Ottoman Empire. Here again, foreign nations would need to help building expertise and craft suitable policy solutions to, at least, create the necessary fundamental structures for Arabia. Both problems, however, show how dependent the Arab society is from the global state community. Anecdotally, the Palestinian struggle displays the same dependency features in military, diplomacy and public discourse.
Final Remarks
The Arab nations have failed. Regardless of what was tried in the region over the past century, it has not worked or is going to fail eventually. The best solution for the people of Sub-Anatolia is to delete the idea of the nation state and return to the structures that made them once great. Arabia can assume different forms and features, and it lays beyond my capacity to sketch more of such a political entity than outlined in this essay – ultimately, this must be done by the very people of Arabia. Arabs have gifted the world many important innovations and cultural enrichments. All came in times of genuine knowledge production which the suitable structures ensured. It is not the Arab that failed in those war-ridden nations, it was the idea of the nation state.
