Anatol Lieven, right or wrong? By Emanuele Ottolenghi. openDemocracy, October 19, 2004.
Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. The Guardian, November 28, 2003. Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews.
Europe’s “Good Jews.” By Emanuele Ottolenghi. Commentary, December 2005.
Making Sense of European Anti-Semitism. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. Human Rights Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (January-March 2007).
The Real Palestinian Vision. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2011.
Review of Anatol Lieven, “America Right or Wrong.” By Michael Hirsh. NJBR, January 24, 2013.
America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. By Anatol Lieven. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Also here.
Ottolenghi (Lieven review):
Many
liberals will find Anatol Lieven’s book America
Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism a refreshing read: in
smooth style, Lieven impressively articulates familiar arguments against United
States foreign policy since 9/11 – especially, but not exclusively, in the
middle east.
Lieven
employs a formidable armoury of qualities: wit and sarcasm, a knowledge of his
critics that enables him often to preempt their likely counter–jibes; and
frequent (albeit tactical) empathy for opposing views, which reveals a genuine
attempt to diagnose the illnesses of US foreign policy and propose remedies.
But
wit, rhetoric, and sarcasm – even when spiced with empathy – are ingredients
for sermons and motivational literature, not rigorous analysis; and in the end America Right or Wrong is nothing more
than preaching to the choir.
In his
book, Anatol Lieven targets what might be called the usual suspects: the
pro–Israel lobby, the neo–conservatives, the Christian right, and anyone
disagreeing with his worldview. His solutions are equally predictable: the
United Nations, liberalism, international law, a broader role for Europe, and
settling the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by pressing Israel into more
concessions.
These
simplicities come into their own in the last full chapter of his book,
“American Nationalism, Israel and the Middle East”. Here, Lieven’s argument is
trite and old: nationalist Israel is a danger, primarily to itself; Palestinian
terrorism is unlike al–Qaida and therefore deserves understanding; and
anti–semitism is a bogey – those waving it are either paranoid or manipulative,
it is a marginal phenomenon even in the Arab world, and what there is will fade
once Israel leaves the territories.
The
conclusion follows: if only Israel – and its uncritical American supporters
–could mend its ways, the ensuing peace would pave the way to more effective
policies to face the region’s problems, above all terrorism.
A failure of liberalism
The
immediate question raised by Lieven’s argument relates to the defence of
dissent that should be at the heart of liberalism. The Arab states and the
Palestinian cause are responsible for a litany of abuses of basic civil and
human rights: a lack of basic freedoms, oppression of women, criminalisation of
homosexuality, widespread use of torture, active support and moral
justification for terrorism, discrimination against religious and ethnic
minorities, and the systematic persecution of dissent.
How, in
short, can one be a liberal and broadly support the Arab world and the
Palestinian cause in their grievances against the United States and Israel, two
states which, with all their shortcomings, embody many classic liberal values
and ideals?
Here,
Lieven is hardly persuasive. He labels those liberals who happen to disagree
with him – like Alan Dershowitz or Paul Berman – as “self–described liberals”;
the qualifier is justified by their support for Israel, their characterisation
of Islamic radicalism as “Islamofascism”, and their view of the present crisis
as a war of ideas counterposing the free world against a new form of
totalitarianism.
Lieven
probably has a persuasive explanation for his preference, as do Dershowitz and
Berman for theirs. He cites anti–colonialist feelings and the sense of
grievance pervading the Arab world. He is right, but this pervasiveness neither
justifies nor explains the crimes and horrors committed by post–colonial Arab
regimes; liberals with anti–colonialist feelings should not be blind to the
ubiquitous illiberalism of the Arab world just because of the west’s colonial
past.
This
puts the question about dissent and liberalism in a new light. Who is the real
“self–described” liberal – Berman, Dershowitz, or Lieven himself? Lieven is
free to disagree, he can easily formulate a good counter–argument, but his
dismissive labelling of dissenters betrays dogmatism. For Lieven, they are
“self–described” not because they are not liberals, but because they disagree
with him: hardly an expression of liberalism.
Paul
Berman’s and Alan Dershowitz’s case is symptomatic, and not only because Anatol
Lieven’s discussion of Israel and the middle east conveniently quotes mostly
Jewish sources as if the entire matter of US policy in the region impinges
principally upon Jews. In a book that obsessively refers to the pro–Israeli
lobby as the prime mover of things (whereas Arab pressure–groups are
unmentioned) it is hardly surprising that the author’s worldview reflects the
misguided, and dangerous, belief that the future of the middle east ultimately
depends on what Jews and Israel will or will not do.
It may
be significant that Lieven conveniently ignores Christopher Hitchens – perhaps
the most glaring defector from the “left” consensus – a writer who is neither a
Jew nor someone who deserves the disparaging qualifier “self–described”. But
that is precisely the point: Hitchens, a former Trotskyist with strong
left–liberal credentials, no sympathy for Ariel Sharon, and no love for the
right, is as far from Lieven’s worldview as Berman and Dershowitz are.
Lieven’s
language does not reflect a nuanced awareness of the complexities of the issues
at stake. He systematically discredits opponents to dismiss their arguments,
painting them as caricatures of themselves. “Bush country”, the Christian
right, and pro–Israel sentiment – all are the object of much derision and
little illumination. He deems America simply to be wrong, and dismisses
dissenters with no hearing. A liberal who decries the polarised moral vision of
George W Bush does not offer any advance in wisdom by inhabiting an equally
Manichaean world. The real task is to appreciate that the moral difficulties
and dilemmas we all face, liberals and conservatives alike, offer no easy
answers.
Lieven’s
inability to cope with dissent – his failure of true liberalism – is at the
root of the permeating dogmatism of his argument. An ability to respond to
complexity and dissent with seriousness might lead Lieven to the realisation
that America’s foreign policy is not necessarily dictated by a cocktail of
American and “chauvinist” Israeli nationalism.
It is
possible (for example) to be a liberal and
to have supported war in Iraq in spring 2003; to be a liberal and to support Israel; to be a liberal
who is horrified at Abu Ghraib and
still approve of Saddam’s overthrow; to be a liberal who sees a difference
between Abu Ghraib (an aberration that will be prosecuted) and Saddam’s reign of fear (a state–sanctioned system of torture
and mass murder). In truth, the argument over current American foreign policy
divides the liberal community. These are serious liberal arguments and serious
liberal dilemmas. Lieven’s dismissal of opponents is neither serious nor
liberal.
In the
labelling game, one more thing emerges. Anatol Lieven’s got this thing for
Jews. His obsession, mostly latent, occasionally comes to the surface.
Referring to Washington Times
columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave, Lieven mentions that de Borchgrave is “in part
of Jewish descent”, as if ethnic origin somehow makes opinions more or less
valid.
Lieven
uses de Borchgrave’s origins to support his own arguments: this Jew agrees with
him, making his Jewishness a crucial asset that validates Lieven’s viewpoint.
But if being Jewish lends legitimacy to opinions (itself a highly questionable
implication), why is Jewish descent good only when Lieven agrees with de
Borchgrave but not good when other Jews disagree with Lieven? Lieven labels
Melanie Phillips a “British Jewish journalist” and Phyllis Chesler a “Jewish
liberal American feminist” to insinuate the partisan nature of their support
for Israel, and thus discredit their writings in its favour.
Why in
these cases too is it necessary to know their ethnic affiliation and religious
persuasion? The point is that being Jewish is immaterial to an opinion’s
validity. Reference to ethnic origin should never appear in a serious polemic:
ideas are at stake, not the skin–colour, religious beliefs, gender, sexual
inclinations or ethnic origin of our supporters and opponents. To make these
factors relevant to arguments reflects an intellectual confusion that dangerously
borders on prejudice. Lieven’s discrediting efforts are grave enough when he
labels opponents for their ideas, graver still when the label refers to their
ethnic or religious affiliation.
A flawed view of the middle east
What of
Lieven’s views on wider matters of peace in the middle east? On a central
issue, Lieven is right: peace will come only through territorial compromise.
But he errs in assuming that this compromise can only follow United States
pressure on Israel, and in claiming that US support for Israel only worsens the
situation in the region. In the end, Israel’s many mistakes notwithstanding,
the main impediment to peace is the inability of Palestinian and Arab
nationalism to come to terms with a non–Arab sovereign presence in their midst.
No, the
United States should not pressure Israel. It should pressure the Arab world to
take responsibility for its pitiful condition: the lack of human development,
the inept elites that dominate its politics, the social injustice that feeds
into terrorism, the failure to produce viable governance and economy. The US
should confront the Arab world with the need to take responsibility and make
choices. This embrace of responsibility, not even more evasion of it, is what
the region desperately needs today from its leaders and citizens alike.
His
approach on this point means that Lieven “essentialises” the Arab side and
denies it agency in relation to past and current events. Blaming the victims
for their own suffering leaves the perpetrators, and the socio–political and
ideological milieu that gives rise to their murderous intents, without
responsibility. This patronising approach is revealed in the way that Lieven
expects only America and Israel to change, and mend, their ways; his demand for
a different course of action from the Arab world is, by contrast, perfunctory –
theirs is an inevitable, almost mechanical reaction to events.
Lieven
would probably object to these last remarks, invoking (as his book does) the
Arab League’s 2002 initiative on the Israeli–Palestinian issue. But he would be
wrong, for three reasons.
First,
the Arab League initiative left the refugee issue open (here, Lieven sides,
surprisingly, with Israel).
Second,
the initiative was hijacked by the Passover massacre which killed forty Jews on
the eve of one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar – yet the Arab League
did not condemn Hamas (after all, the prime mover of the initiative was Saudi
Arabia, a key Hamas financial supporter), but denounced Israel’s military response
instead.
Third,
when in May 2003 the Aqaba summit included reference to Israel’s right to exist
as “a Jewish state”, the Arab establishment and Arab intellectuals loudly
protested.
A misunderstanding of American foreign
policy
Anatol
Lieven’s critique’s is most glaringly flawed in relation to changes in
America’s foreign policy in the middle east after 11 September 2001. Before
that date, America was a status quo power in the region, intent on dual
containment vis–Ã –vis Iran and Iraq and connivance with authoritarian regimes.
At least one of these regimes (like Saudi Arabia) were intimate allies selling
oil and investing trillions of dollars in western economies and western
ambassadors; some (Egypt, Jordan and Morocco) were friends and recipients of generous
aid; others (like Syria) could be persuaded to become friends to improve the
other policies.
America’s
policy of dual containment was an abject failure: daily images of Iraqis
suffering from the post–1991 sanctions regime were beamed into Arab homes for a
decade, while the US was bombing Iraqi targets and enforcing no–fly zones over
Iraq, but Saddam Hussein survived in power. Elsewhere, US–backed tyrants
depleted their countries’ resources to fund extravagant lifestyles while
repressing their domestic opposition, thus preventing the rise of an Arab civil
society and leaving radical Islam as the only remaining organised social and
political force. Arab regimes then brutally crushed the Islamists as they had
crushed communists decades before, and the ensuing hatred for the regimes’ main
patron, the United States, simmered quite independently of the dynamics of the
Palestinian–Israeli peace process.
Islamic
radicalism has deep historical rhythms of its own that predate and will long
outlive Osama bin Laden. In the face of its recent manifestations, Lieven may
well argue that American foreign policy is responsible for sins of omission and
occasional commission. But to underplay its other dimensions, as he does –
Saudi funding, Pakistani connivance, the self–inflicted wounds of a region that
democracy has largely passed by, the dark seduction of Islamism itself at a
particular moment in history – suggests that Lieven, in his urge to excoriate
America’s ignorance and hubris, himself has plenty of both.
Lieven
lambasts the United States’s backing for Israel on the grounds that America’s
commitment to democracy – which he cites as a reason for strong US–Israeli
relations – clashes with Israel’s occupation policies, thus undermining US
advocacy of democratisation elsewhere in the middle east. But he does not apply
the same logic to America’s close ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Morocco, and the Gulf principalities. Here, there is no suggestion that US aid
and arms sales to these Arab countries compromises the US’s democratic
credibility in Arab and Muslim eyes.
America’s
“realism” before 9/11 was interest–driven, unsentimental and brutal; it was
devoid of the romance, the illusions of democratisation and the benign
imperialism that Lieven now criticises. Along with its annual aid to Israel,
America’s generous aid packages to Egypt and Jordan (including the latter’s
debt–cancellation in 1994) were stabilising mechanisms meant to strengthen
middle–east peace, yet another pillar of US foreign policy in the region. The
price was support for authoritarian regimes whose treatment of their subjects
was not exactly in harmony with America’s commitment to democracy elsewhere.
Lieven’s
approach would imply that for America to be true to its democratic principles
and avoid moral incoherence, it should stop supporting its undemocratic
middle–eastern allies, even impose sanctions on them or deny them aid until
they reform. This would presumably apply even more to unfriendly regimes like
Iran, where Lieven regrets the US refusal to engage with Tehran. If America
sought confrontation with Iran, the region might descend into chaos, which
Lieven would eventually blame on America; but who would pay the price of such
absolute consistency of democratic principle?
Lieven
decries America’s support for Ariel Sharon’s policies in crushing the second
Palestinian intifada and America’s
present lack of involvement in peacemaking. But in doing so, he forgets recent
history: solving the Arab–Israeli conflict was also a pillar of US foreign
policy, and the deep American involvement in peacemaking (itself an ongoing
commitment at least since the 1950s) was shipwrecked in 2000 mainly by
Palestinian intransigence. America’s disengagement in 2001 was the consequence,
not cause, of diplomatic failure.
It is
easy to decry American nationalism and warn against its association with what Lieven
calls, without much explanation, “a chauvinist version of Israeli nationalism”.
But the collapse of the peace process, to which two successive US
administrations devoted ten years and much of their prestige, happened during
the tenure of two of the least nationalist or chauvinist rulers, Bill Clinton
and Ehud Barak.
Moreover,
Barak’s negotiating teams included the most liberal Israelis of any negotiating
cycle – Yossi Beilin, Yossi Sarid, Shlomo Ben–Ami and Uri Savir. The process
still blew up in their (and Bill Clinton’s) faces. To advocate now a return to
the policies of the 1990s is not merely an unrealistic aspiration for current
or future US leaders and policies; it involves a real failure of historical
imagination.
Israel’s
settlement policy was, and remains, a huge impediment to peace. But a balanced
observer could not possibly reduce the failure of the peace process only to one
factor: this is essentialising.
A fair
observer would at least include Palestinian terrorism – and terrorism did not
start with the intifada, or the Oslo
process, but long precedes Israel’s conquests.
An
acute observer would also add Yasser Arafat’s ambiguities with terror
organisations such as Hamas. His pandering to Islamist audiences and Arab
nationalists – for example his 1994 Johannesburg speech which qualified Oslo as
a ruse – might have equally contributed to the collapse of the peace process.
But
Lieven is not balanced, fair nor acute.
A misreading of anti–semitism
The
fact that Lieven is pushing an ideological agenda successfully rehearsed only
among like–minded people shows best in his treatment of anti–semitism. Lieven
is right to dismiss more extreme accounts of the phenomenon that view today’s
Europe as little–changed from the 1930s. This, however, does not imply that
anti–semitism poses no threat; and Lieven seems unaware that between Auschwitz
and a truly tolerant society there are infinite shades of grey.
Lieven
falters on anti-semitism. He condemns it, true, and he recognises that it
exists. But he then dismisses the vast amount of literature identifying and
diagnosing it as a paranoid reaction meant to censor legitimate criticism of
Israel. A serious approach to the problem would have tried to identify those
forms of criticism that are legitimate - and thus attacking them on grounds of
anti-semitism is disingenuous - and those forms of criticism which exploit old
anti-semitic tropes to foment hostility toward Israel and its Jewish supporters
in the west.
There
is much of the former, but just as much, if not more, of the latter going
around. Lieven’s contribution is thus lamentable, because it only helps
dismissing the problem as a form of Jewish hysteria and will push even many
Jews who are uncomfortable with Israel’s current policies to defend the Jewish
state no matter what.
Lieven’s
treatment of anti–semitism in the Arab world further proves his lack of
understanding of the problem. Though he censures the phenomenon, he cautiously
suggests the solution is simple: “This tendency must be combated as part of
general efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, to improve its level of
education and public discourse, to lay the foundations for democracy and help
it develop in other ways – and in Europe to help integrate . . . Muslim immigrants
into Western society.”
This is
all very well, but given Lieven’s scepticism about efforts to bring democracy
to the region, how much time must pass before the ugly spread of medieval
anti–semitism can be reversed? For Lieven, most incidents in Europe involve
disgruntled Arab and Muslim immigrants who have reacted against “what they saw
as Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians . . . Their views of these atrocities
were exaggerated; but equally, their criminal behaviour was a response to
events as well as the product of a warped intellectual background.”
If the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict was settled, and Europe’s problems of integration
solved, anti–semitism will vanish, Lieven seems to suggest. But Europe’s Jews
also see violent acts committed against Jews in Israel and elsewhere (including
Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, attacks on synagogues and
cemeteries, atrocities like the beheading of Daniel Pearl).
But if
European Jews responded to attacks on them by burning mosques, desecrating
Muslim cemeteries, or attacking Muslims in subways, would Lieven be inviting
the “understanding” he seeks in relation to anti–semitism? One hopes not:
humans, at least those who believe in freedom, are free agents and thus have a
choice. Those who choose to vent their anger through acts of violence inspired
by ancient prejudices must be held responsible for their crimes and offered no
attenuating circumstances or “understanding.”
Anti–semitism
thrives in today’s Arab states – the only place in the world where the old
forgery of the Protocols became a
popular TV series and where Holocaust denial enjoys academic status.
Anti–semitism has also found legitimacy in many European forums, some of which
are not as extreme and marginal as Lieven believes. Its appearance should not
be dismissed as a transient phenomenon. Rather, it should be condemned
forcefully and the effort made to seek to distance a worthy cause – Palestinian
self–determination – from the stain of prejudice.
A blindness over nationalism
Lieven’s
underestimation of anti–semitism is no surprise in the light of his
characterisation of nationalism, which is unreservedly negative. This has a
direct bearing on his approach to Israel: for he sees Israel’s occupation as
both the result of nationalism and the cause
of anti–semitism.
However,
anti–semitism cannot be dismissed as an offshoot of anti–colonialism, or the
product of Zionist settlement. Arab nationalism, after all, has historically
been hostile to the national aspirations of indigenous people in the region who
are not Arabs or Muslims. The Kurds (hardly a European settler population), the
Copts in Egypt, the Berbers in north Africa, and Sudan’s non–Arab and
non–Muslim peoples are only a few examples.
Arab nationalism
was never open to competing national claims, and remains uncompromising to this
day, regardless of whether the opposing nationalism is indigenous. Even had
Jews been a majority in Palestine before Zionism, their aspirations would (like
Kurdish nationalism) have clashed with the chauvinist nature of Arab
nationalism, because Arab nationalism did – and does not now – recognise the
rights of national minorities in its midst.
Lieven’s
portait of nationalism as chauvinist might be expected to lead him to condemn
Palestinian nationalism as well, and to advocate a post–nationalist middle
east: after all, that is the basis of his criticism of American and Israeli
nationalisms. But on Palestinian nationalism he is silent.
Lieven
argues that: “More than any other factor, it is the nature and extent of this
nationalism which at the start of the twenty–first century divides the United
States from a largely postnationalist Western Europe.” This is surely correct,
especially (if not entirely) when in defining western Europe as
post–nationalist, although Europe’s “post–Christian”
dimension also reveals the growing chasm between the United States and Europe.
But
what Lieven misses is that the romantic vision of a post–nationalist world to
which many Eurocrats and European liberals subscribe is not what isolates the
United States from the rest of the world – the latter, in Lieven’s mind, is
still very much Europe and little else – but what isolates Europe from the rest of the world. Even apart from the Middle East,
nationalism is still a dynamic force in Russia (Lieven’s more familiar ground),
the Indian sub–continent, Latin America, south–east Asia and in particular
parts of Europe. It has lost its grip only in liberal Europe, and liberal
Europe as usual wants to shape the world in its own image.
Anatol
Lieven sees Europe’s post–nationalist identity as a response to the pernicious
nature of nationalism, which sealed Europe’s tragic fate in the 20th century;
and as opening the way to an era of prosperity and peaceful coexistence. But
this no doubt accurate diagnosis of European success is not applicable to the
middle east, or to American policy there.
Lieven
is right to comment that: “The Western European elites . . . essentially
decided that the correct response to Nazism and to the hideous national
conflicts which preceded, engendered and accompanied it was to seek to limit,
transcend and overcome nationalism.” As a result, Europeans look at Zionism
with condescension and growing impatience, and demand that Zionist Israel and
those still supporting it see the dangers inherent in nationalism, and make the
effort to transcend it.
But
this is not Israel’s problem with nationalism, it is Europe’s (and Lieven’s) problem with nationalism: the inability to
understand that what did not work for Europe works for others. That is today’s challenge in the middle
east – not to transcend nationalism, but to foster a form of nationalism that
is not exclusive, racist, aggressive and chauvinist.
Here is
the missing component of Lieven’s argument. For Israel to transcend nationalism
following a European post–nationalist model, Israel would need a middle–east
region that is ready, like Germany and France in post–1945 Europe, to do the
same. Nobody seems ready for that, east of Jerusalem. Indeed, how can the
Palestinians be expected to transcend national aspirations they have not yet
realised, in order to embrace a European model with no assurance of success
outside Europe?
Europe
has a further problem with nationalism. Nationalism is not only a dark,
negative, exclusive force, defined by “its ability to feed off a very wide
range of other resentments, loyalties, identities, hopes and fears”.
Nationalism is also an expression of identity, what some collective population
chooses to be. It is love of the land, a sense of community, a bonding based on
common stories, common memories, solidarity and a feeling of a shared fate, and
a fondness for similar things.
Lieven
rightly dismisses the debate about the birth of a Palestinian national
consciousness: what matters now is that a strong national identity has taken
roots. But he does not similarly recognise that on the Jewish side a similar
process has occurred, that Zionism is not merely a product of survival
instincts, what Lieven calls “the understandable but deplorable choice” made by
Jewish intellectuals after 1945 in favour of nationalism.
Nationalism
succeeds where there is a nation to embrace it. Artificial identities – as is
currently the case with European identity – fail to develop if they fail to
persuade. Thus, it was not just a tragic imperative that drove Jews to embrace
nationalism, the culmination of a decades–long process of growth of national
consciousness, whereas Europeans recoiled from it in fear.
What
distinguishes the Jewish national cause in the last six decades, and what drove
and drives many Jews across the world to identify with and support Israel, is the
inner logic of a nation–based identity – not the cosmopolitan and assimilated
acculturation that distinguishes those Jews whom Lieven frequently consults and
sentimentally invokes. Israel is valued not for its policies – on which Jews
and Israelis disagree and will continue to have robust arguments – but for its
very existence and what it means to most Jews.
An old
adage suggests that it takes two to tango. Lieven has plenty of dancing wisdom
to offer America, Israel and their supporters, but none for their dancing
partners. Are there any? Under what circumstances will they dance? Should
America force them to dance? Should it teach them the steps? Should it walk
away if they refuse to engage? Shouldn’t they be the ones, initiating the
dance? And who’s to blame, if they do not tango in the end?
Lieven
does not say, primarily because he fails to ask. And it is that failure to ask
the right questions that ultimately makes this book hardly inspiring. Choosing
sides, as well as policies, in the current global predicament is a matter of
preferences and priorities, as such choices reflect a complex world of
difficult, tragic and often impossible dilemmas, where some values are
sacrificed over others in a prioritising game that will never do full justice
to lofty ideals. Lieven’s tirades do no justice to these complexities and thus
offer little choice and little comfort.
