Robert D. Kaplan has
long been among America’s most insightful analysts of global trends. I'd
rather argue with him than agree with most others. Right now, I’m going
to do a bit of both.
In "Toxic Nationalism," an essay published in
The Wall Street Journal last week, Kaplan observes that "Western
elites" regard their beliefs as "universal values." Because they approve
of "women’s liberation," they conclude that all thinking people from
Albania to Zanzibar believe in women’s liberation. Western elites place a
priority on “human rights,” assuming that their views must be the
consensus view. Western elites are convinced that international
organizations are breaking down the remaining “boundaries separating
humanity,” so that must be what they’re doing, and what they seek to do.
These are, Kaplan
understands, illusions: “In country after country, the Westerners
identify like-minded, educated elites and mistake them for the
population at large. They prefer not to see the regressive and
exclusivist forces — such as nationalism and sectarianism — that are
mightily reshaping the future.”
As an example, he cites
Egypt, where the hope that decades of dictatorship were giving way to
liberal democracy has faded. His explanation: “Freedom, at least in its
initial stages, unleashes not only individual identity but, more
crucially, the freedom to identify with a blood-based solidarity group.
Beyond that group, feelings of love and humanity do not apply. That is a
signal lesson of the Arab Spring.”
I think Kaplan is right
on all points save one: The Islamists who are coming to power are not a
“blood-based solidarity group.” They are a religion-based solidarity
group. Egyptian Islamists feel no solidarity with Egyptian Christians,
despite blood ties tracing back millennia. This is a crucial
distinction, one which makes “Western elites”— Kaplan included —
profoundly uncomfortable. So they ignore it.
Kaplan, who currently
holds the catchy title of “chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a
private global intelligence firm,” goes on to worry that in Europe there
is now “a resurgence of nationalism and extremism.” He’s not wrong on
that, but is it remotely conceivable that the skinheads and neo-Nazis in
Finland, Ukraine and Greece pose as serious a threat to freedom and
human rights as the jihadists of al-Qaida and Iran, or even the more
gradualist Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Similarly, in Asia,
Kaplan sees China, Japan and other nations “rediscovering nationalism,”
undermining the conventional wisdom that “we live in a post-national
age.” He adds: “The disputes in Asia are not about ideology or any
uplifting moral philosophy; they are about who gets to control space on
the map.” True, but is the revival of such nationalistic sentiment
really a crisis or even a major problem? Meanwhile, much more
significantly, Islamists are offering an alternative to both the old
nationalist and newer post-nationalist models.
Islamists insist that
one’s primary identity is, and must be, based on religion, not
nationality, not citizenship, not race and not class. More to the point,
they demand that their religion be acknowledged as superior to all
others. They are committed to making their religiously derived ideology
the basis for revolutionary transformation not only in the so-called
Muslim world but also in Africa, Asia, Europe, the U.S. — anywhere there
are Muslims who can be recruited to join the struggle. As Hassan
al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood succinctly put it: “It is
the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated; to impose its law
on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
They see the global map
not as fractured into blood-based nations squabbling over “space” but
divided into just two spheres: Dar al-Islam, the realm where Muslims
rule, and Dar al-Harb, where infidels still hold power, which must be
fought and, in time, decisively defeated so that Dar al-Islam can become
universal.
I am confident that
Kaplan knows all this. By not taking it into account, he ends up in some
odd cul-de-sacs. For example, he charges that among Russians there is a
high incidence of “race-hatred against Muslims.” No, Muslims do not
constitute a race.
That said, there may be
conceptual utility in Kaplan’s vision of a global “battle between two
epic forces: Those of integration based on civil society and human
rights, and those of exclusion based on race, blood and radicalized
faith.” Note that in this last phrase Kaplan has at last acknowledged
the disconcerting fact that religion is shaping the international
conflict now underway. Exactly.
Indeed, by including
Islamists among the forces whose ideologies are based on exclusion and
antipathy toward human rights, he is reopening the idea — “politically
incorrect” and therefore rejected by Western elites — that Islamism is a
version of fascism, albeit one based on religion rather than race or
extreme nationalism. If Western elites, not least those on the Left, can
accept that unpleasant reality, perhaps they can find the will to
combat it. Along those lines, Kaplan argues that the “second force” can
and must be overcome. But to achieve that, one “must first admit how
formidable it is.”
“To see what is in
front of one’s nose,” George Orwell once wrote, “needs a constant
struggle.” By calling attention to a dangerous truth from which Western
elites prefer to avert their gaze, Kaplan has rendered a service. But
there’s more to it than he has acknowledged and less time than we might
like to get it in focus.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.
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