The new Middle East, ISIL and the 6th Revolt against the West.

• Author: Yesiltas, Murat

Introduction

It has become commonplace to speak of the map of the Middle East as being re-written, and regional politics undergoing an ongoing radical transformation since the so-called Arab Spring' Contemporary geopolitical commentaries often endorse a new language to describe the perplexing state of affairs, tethering it to such concepts as 'the new Middle East' The latter was originally coined by Condoleezza Rice, who, during the latest Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, dismissed the country's suffering as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." (1) Soon afterwards, politicians of various stripes turned it into a slogan; the term also proved appealing to the literati, giving rise to an ever-expanding series of books and articles that have since blossomed in reference to 'the new Middle East.'

This paper aims to provide an analysis of the 'new' in 'the new Middle East' After a brief perusal of the existing explanations, we argue that what is 'new' is the revolt against the West currently underway in the contemporary Middle East, which is dead earnest about challenging the dominant Western values of statehood and personhood. The paper identifies the novelty in the politics of radical antagonism, apocalyptic geopolitical imagination, the re-birth of extra-territorial subjectivities and the politics of resistance, which together shatter the existing political logos. Two particular empirical cases animate our discussion; namely the Arab Spring and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A case study on the challenges posed by ISIL seeks to illuminate how the organization constitutes the 'sixth revolt' against the Western state system. By providing such groundwork, the paper also hopes to point to new avenues for further research that would go beyond the confines of narrow, ethnocentric accounts of 'the new the Middle East'

Debating the New in 'the New Middle East'

When the Arab uprisings began to dramatically reshape the political spectrum of the Middle East, the term 'new' gained additional purchase in the form of volumes of new titles, including Fawaz Gerges' The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World, Shadi Hamid's Temptations of Power, Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, Marc Lynch's The Arab Uprisings: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East and Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad's Dispatches From the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East. Let no one think that publishers were slow to pick up on that trend.

It therefore comes as no surprise that many scholars are grappling to understand, conceptualize, and theorize the new historical transformation by looking at different domains of Middle East politics. There are many different, conflicting arguments though, concerning the nature of the transformation in the Middle East. Most of these arguments are directed by two models of explanation: spatial and temporal models, respectively, that seek to lay bare the sources of the said transformation in Middle East politics. While the first model directly refers to outside forces or external actors with their putative influence in the region, the second model draws a parallel between the past and the present, or an analogy between history and contemporary Middle East politics.

The first model is best represented by Christopher Hill's, The End of the Arab State, which focuses on political transformation--the border changes and ideological divisions--and mainly blaming American interventions in the region. On such bases, Hill claims the dissolution of the Arab nation-state (2) and accordingly the degeneration of political identity in the Middle East. The resulting vacuum has been predominately filled by sectarian divisions, which have plunged the region into total anarchy. Hill asserts that sectarianism had been present in the region the entire time; however, the rulers, as in the case of Ba'athism in Iraq, had resorted to policies mainly focusing on civic identity so as to bar sectarianism and to preserve Iraq. According to Hill, the U.S. attacks on Iraq, alongside the Arab Uprisings, became the main catalysts for destroying the region's political unity and opening the path to the old sectarian divisions.

Another argument, focusing mainly on the impact of external actors in the region, is the so-called post-Ottoman syndrome. The latter assertion can be found in the book Shifting Sands: The Unraveling of the Old Order in the Middle East by Avi Shlaim, who argues that history is going backwards and the roots of the current conflict may be found in the post-1918 peace settlement which was further evoked following the Arab Uprisings. (3) The book shifts the onus mainly onto Britain and France, through the Sykes-Picot agreement, which demolished the old Middle East political order, the consequence of which is the contemporary chaotic state of affairs.

Another contention is articulated by Bobby Salman Sayyid. Analyzing the current order in the Middle East, he asserts that, "Arab Middle East is part of the idea of this geographical construction through which any order expresses itself or tries to express itself [....] What is clear is that the conflict right now is between the post-Western regional order and the status-quo." (4) Sayyid claims that because it is not in the interest of Western states to allow the regional states to be sovereign and independent, they generally do not support governments that enjoy the support of the people. That is, the issue is not really about democracy or its external promotion, but rather about who is going to best serve the interests of Western powers, an agenda which leaves weak states precariously close to collapse. In such an environment it is much easier for actors (such as ISIL) to gain control and become stronger by the day.

Considering the second model, which aims to make sense of the perplexing political context of the Middle East by way of finding historical antecedents, the prominent argument is Hass' The New Thirty Years' War. Explicating the Middle East's current political imbroglio, Hass draws a parallel with one of the most devastating periods in Europe's history, namely the Thirty Years War, to contemplate the future of the Westphalian order in the region. From Hans Morgenthau (5) to Friedrich Kratochwil, (6) many scholars have considered the Westphalia treaty as the turning point for modern international politics. While the treaty itself did not herald the end of the conflicts in Europe (taking into consideration the Balkan wars or the World Wars), a significant principle emerged regarding the recognition of the sovereign equality of states. According to Hass, the 'representative of the Bohemian Protestants' in the modern Middle East, Mohamed Bouazizi, triggered a conflict whose end, even after four years now, is highly questionable and vague. 'The Arab Middle Age' is considered to be still in its infancy, an era where chaos and unrest prevail, as they did during the pre-Westphalian era in Europe. Whereas the Europe of the 17th century gradually evolved into a state system, moving towards a Westphalian inter-state order and society of states firmly interlinked through institutions of diplomacy, international law, alliances and inter-state war, the new Middle East has descended into sectarian civil wars and societal anarchy. The religious-sectarian struggles and wars--be it civil or proxy--are the main elements that reveal such a transformation. Hass claims that, "the region's trajectory is worrisome: weak states unable to police their territory; the few relatively strong states competing for primacy; militias and terrorist groups gaining greater influence; and the erasure of borders." (7) The master concept of this perspective is the "Arab Middle Age" and the analogy is to the 'dark Middle Ages.'

Mohammed Ayoob similarly asserts that the Arab Uprisings incited sectarian clashes in Middle East, as in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia and Egypt. Ayoob too explains the new order in terms of an old experience, namely the 'cold war,' now mainly conducted along two axes: Iran-Saudi Arabia and Russia-U.S. (8) The first regional axis--Iran and Saudi Arabia--is mainly based on sectarian, economic and strategic differences in perspective. Thus Iran supports Assad's regime, Hezbollah, Shia militia groups in Iraq, and Houthis in Yemen; while Saudi Arabia, feeling threatened by a strong Iran in the region, supports the opposition forces in Syria, the Sunnis in Iraq and the opposition forces in Yemen. The second axis is perceived mainly at the global level, where America's support for Saudi Arabia and Israel may be balanced by Russia's support for Iran and the Assad regime.

While these studies shed light on some of the new dynamics of regional politics, limiting analyses to finding different parallels between the present and the past, or even blaming the past for what the Middle East faces today, is simplistic and scarcely captures the complex nature of the new Middle East. Rather than providing a more comprehensive picture, such analyses tend to generate more questions than answers regarding the process of transformation per se. What, then, are the characteristics of the 'new Middle East'?

Understanding the New in 'the New Middle East'

Considering the three pillars of the Westphalian international order (sovereignty, territoriality and secularism), it can be said that it is these very foundations of order that seem to have collapsed the 'new Middle East,' hence challenging the main contours of modern statehood and regional order. At first sight and from a narrow realist and materialist perspective, the Arab Uprisings have failed to change the overall balance of power in the regional state system. The distribution of power among five regional powers: Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, remains basically the same. At a closer look, however, many facets and outcomes of the Arab Uprisings...