ISIL and the Geopoliticsof the ‘Middle East’

GEOG 220 - Geopolitics

This week

• Geopolitics of the ‘Middle-East’

• The ‘Islamic State’ / ISIL / Daesh

The invention of the ‘Middle-East’

• ‘Middle East’: a term coined by Alfred Mahan (1902) in “The Persian Gulf and International Relations” National Review (London)

• Between ‘Near East’ and ‘Far East’

• Referred to the area between Suez Canal and Singapore

Mahan / Mackinder

• Advocating for British Naval Bases in Persian Gulf/Gulf of Aden region to counter:– Russian southward expansion– German Berlin-Baghdad railway (1890s)

=> Threats to US-UK interests, esp. trade routes (access to Suez Canal) and oil (commercial interests since 1870s)

=> Middle East as a geostrategic referent, compared to ‘the Orient’ as a cultural object

Þ Middle East (or sometimes ‘Persian Gulf’) as development of “classical” geopolitical reasoning in the late 19th century

Þ largely a product of technological changes and colonial territorial expansion

Þ great powers interests framed by understanding of the world as a “closed-system” at the global geographical scale

Middle East ‘exceptionalism’

“Middle East represents a territorial exception to globalization. Regardless of how globalization is defined or understood, the Middle East is often referred to as disconnected from its processes and resisting its effects. More specifically, the region is commonly viewed as having been excluded from the post-Cold War trends towards economic liberalization, global market integration, and democratization that more closely integrated the West with other regions of the globe.”

Waleed Hazbun “The Middle East through the Lens of Critical Geopolitics: Globalization, Terrorism, and the Iraq War”

• ‘Exceptionalism’ explanations:– Oil wealth: rentier states => reduced economic

incentives for competitiveness and political accountability?

– Arab-Islamic culture => return to an idealized tradition?

• Mideast exceptionalism as geopolitical imaginary

• Identities and inter-subjective understandings

… dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree" – the tension between the globalization system and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community.

Jihad versus McWorld

… with the end of global strategic confrontation between superpowers, the Middle East must now, on its own, resolve the political, economic, cultural, and societal problems that have prevented it from advancing toward freedom.

Alternative geopolitical narratives…

• “McJihad” – Timothy Mitchell => alliances between Western powers and autoritarian conservative Islamic regimes (esp. Gulf States)

meeting between King Abdulaziz and President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Febuary 14, 1945 set the stage for close Saudi-U.S. relations.

A brief historical perspective

– Cross-roads– Birth place of dominant monotheist religions• Judaism (2000 BCE)• Christianism (1st AD)• Islam (7th AD)

A crossroads coming under

variousimperial rules and

religious faiths

Historical conquests?

Dismantling the Ottoman Empire• Rise of ‘Arab nationalism’ instrumented by

European powers in the context of WWI

Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)

Franco-British-Russian secret agreement to see a dismantling of the Ottoman/Turkish empire as goal of WWI (Triple Entente vs Triple Alliance + Turkish empire)

British eager to see French rule rather than Turkish to the north of British areas that would include Jewish ‘national homeland’

Betrayal of Arab allies hoping to rule not only ‘Arabia’ but ‘Greater Syria’

British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Arab nationalisms

• Arab uprising (1915-18)

• Iraqi uprising (1920s)

• Syrian uprising (1920s)

• Palestinian uprisings (1948-)

US interventionism

• 2003 Invasion• Reification of sectarianism in the midst of a

security and regime legitimacy vacuum• Siding with Al Maliki

Abu Bakr(close Companion of the Prophet)

=> Caliph

Ali(son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet)

=> political and spiritual Caliph

Geopolitical representation of Islam in early 8th century - 1884