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BOOK REVIEW
A flawed picture
Forces of Fortune by Vali Nasr
Reviewed by Kaveh L Afrasiabi
This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect
the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world,
strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and, to a
lesser extent, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
As the full title of the book indicates (Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New
Muslim Middle Class And What It Will Mean For Our World), the central
theme that frames the narrative is how economic modernization and the
concomitant rise of an urban middle class (dubbed the "critical center")
connects with the
resurgence of Islam as well as the issues of democracy and globalization. This
is a bold undertaking providing a wealth of information that, irrespective of
its multiple flaws mentioned below, sheds light on the shifting ideological
landscape underway in significant parts of today's Middle East and beyond.
According to Nasr, Islamic fundamentalism in its extremist forms is on the
verge of being eclipsed by a more moderate version embraced by a "new pious
middle class" that is "rising to prominence" (pg 144) and thus bound to
accelerate the region's retarded globalization. An avid believer in the
"transformative power of markets", Nasr strongly advocates a "capitalist
revolution" and the unfettering of private sectors whereby liberalization
through capitalism could spur "direct foreign investment, trade and the free
flow of goods" (pg 256).
In making its case for a broad-based economic change centered on the middle
class, the book journeys to the historical past, dissecting the region's
"twisted path to modernity" (pg 87) reflected in various authoritarian models
of development that have bred a state-dependent bourgeoisie too often incapable
of acting as the engine for political modernization. In the case of Turkey, the
author credits both the political foresight of the country's moderate Muslim
leaders as well as the infusion of capital from Europe as the principal reasons
for Turkey's success story, hailed as an "exemplary case of capitalist and
democratic development in the region".
Nasr is equally impressed by Dubai, whose "growth represents an enormously
appealing new model of development" (pg 32) that is based on a new pattern of
state-private partnership and the questioning of "a long history in the Middle
East of state control and disdain for pure capitalism" (pg 37).
Obviously, Dubai's recent financial meltdown and the sudden bursting of its
economic bubble raises legitimate question marks on such unbridled
mercantilism, seeing how even such US ideologues of capitalism as Allen
Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, have openly admitted that there
are serious "flaws in the free market economy"; many developing nations,
including in the Middle East, have rightly resorted to greater market
regulation and even protectionism in reaction to the current global economic
crisis.
In comparison with hard-hit Dubai, the relative isolation from the world
economy of some other economies in the region has to some extent shielded them
from the negative impact of the global financial crisis. To his credit, half
way through the chapter on Dubai, Nasr amends some of his own outlandish
praises of the early pages in order to give an account of Dubai's unprecedented
crisis. But this indicates a hasty revision and only gives the chapter a split
personality without a coherent causal analysis of what went wrong and how this
may impact the author's "unfettered capitalism" penchant.
Nasr's analysis falls outside the parameters of a Marxian class analysis and he
dispenses with the methodological questions altogether; the whole book has a
journalistic flavor that may make a timely travel companion for Western
policy-makers touring the Muslim Middle East to preach economic reform, yet has
scant social scientific value, rambling for too long on the familiar territory
of fundamentalism, Kemalism, etc, with precious little on a systematic
assemblage of economic facts. These are compounded by several factual errors,
such as claiming that "most" of Iran's regional trade is with Central Asia -
not true. [1]
Nasr draws heavily on his personal observations, which is fine except that the
interlocutors are nearly always from the upper stratum, reflecting his own
middle-class predilections that lead him to draw too close a connection between
political extremism and lower classes and poverty, smacking of both economic
determinism, not to mention na๏ve globalism. On the other hand, the
recent expansion of the "war on terror" to Somalia and Yemen, a country
described by US President Barack Obama as ravaged by "crushing poverty and
deadly insurgencies", indicates that Nasr's predictions of the growing demise
of extremism may be wishful thinking.
The chapters covering Iran are largely uninteresting and stale, rehashing the
known arguments about the Islamic revolution, "tragic" failure of secularism,
etc. Yet in addition to the total lack of originality, the more egregious
problem is that the book recycles the prevalent Western stereotypes regarding
the Iranian regime as a sponsor of terrorism and nuclear proliferator intent on
regional dominance, waging "wrong-headed policies" led by a "populist", namely
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Nasr fails to mention that the United Nations' International Atomic Energy
Agency has made extensive inspections of Iran's facilities and has found no
evidence of military diversion. His sharp distinction of democracy and
authoritarianism is also conceptually untenable, and his claim of "heavy
taxing" of the merchant class by the Tehran regime invites criticism in light
of the hitherto successful opposition of the former to the latter's mild tax
increases.
The book pays almost no attention to the role of Iran's legislative branch, the
regular albeit restrictive elections or the country's strategic and national
security outlook, presenting instead a caricature of Iran that in the end makes
the book a poor product from which Western diplomats might glean information
for their Iran policies.
What is more, with all its legitimization of a soft Islam, the book's main
defect is its Western-centrism, reflected in its prescriptions, for instance,
on how the West should "cajole" the Iranian leaders to "rethink their national
interests", as if Western powers know any better or always have the country's
best interest in mind.
Mainstream thoughts nearly always end in the snares of their own conformism.
Nasr quotes approvingly former British prime minister Tony Blair, one of the
architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and wants us to believe that the West
today has placed a "high premium" on democracy in the Middle East, a
questionable assertion given the absence of any pressure on the oil sheikhdoms,
or friendly authoritarian regimes, to democratize.
Indeed, the whole weltanschauung exhibited here is a fundamental step
back into the bosom of (Edward) Saidian Orientalism that cannot possibly be
received by the Muslim intelligentsia as anything other than indicative of a
Western-centric mindset, thus making the author, an advisor to the US
government, part of the problem and not the solution.
That aside, in his romanticization of the "forces of fortune", Nasr gingerly
forgets that instead of the shining chariots of liberalism, they can also be
the forces of greed, nepotism, corruption, class oppression and stateism
(Bonapartism), especially when there are threats from below featuring sharp
class divisions. But Nasr, with his bourgeois bias against populism - claiming
that in Iran it is "laying waste to state institutions” and representing
"backlashes" against his cherished business classes - is simply incapable of
providing an objective and analytical account of such complexities, or
deciphering the positive values of "economic populism".
He prefers instead to paint a rosy and triumphant picture of the middle classes
while sidestepping the issues of class struggle. But who is to say that the
working classes are not more important or politically successful, since they
often have the numbers on their side. For instance, they defeated the largely
middle-class "green movement" in Iran at the polls last June. This is still too
hard to swallow for mainstream academics issuing their solidarities from their
ivory towers, paying only scant attention to the durability of Islamic populism
founded on a potent mixture of religion and (anti-hegemonic) nationalism.
In conclusion, despite the book's egregious shortcomings, readers should
appreciate the author's efforts to tackle a difficult subject and to improve
our understanding of the world of Islam today.
Note
1. For more on Iran's regional trade, see Abbas Maleki and Kaveh Afrasiabi, Reading
in Iran's Foreign Policy After September 11 (Booksurge, 2008).
Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class And What It Will Mean
For Our World, by Vali Nasr. Free Press (September 15, 2009). ISBN-10:
1416589686. Price US$26, 20 pages.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry,
click here. His
latest book,
Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing
, October 23, 2008) is now available.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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