PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
1.Of course it is not just Muslim nations that enter and leave relationships, alliances.
There is the famous and factual quote from Lord Palmerston:
“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
2.Which brings us to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The shortest description is the former as the ‘army of the Arabs,’ and the latter as ‘keeper of the holiest sites.’ But, sometimes you need soldiers, and sometime, oil.
“In his first official trip abroad in March 2018, Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman chose to visit Cairo, where he was greeted by President Abdel Fattah Sisi as "a dear guest in his second home, Egypt."[1] The two agreed to enhance bi-lateral cooperation across the political spectrum, implementing ambitious development projects and strengthening bilateral strategic ties. This collaborative mood notwithstanding, the two states have yet to overcome weighty strategic and foreign policy differences that over the past decade often marred the bilateral relationship, first and foremost: What constitutes the gravest threat to regional stability."
Cairo and Riyadh, Vying for Leadership
“Saudi Arabia and Egypt have each claimed a leading regional role, and their relations have long swung between cooperation and indirect confrontation.” Ibid.
3. Other ingredients in the ebb and flow of Middle East politics are the United States, Russia, Israel….and Iran.
And the radical insanity of Islamofascism.
Some are tempted to see totalitarian ideologies- communism, fascism, Nazism- as being unrelated to Islamic fundamentalism, and that would be a mistake.
Communism was the first of the new mass movements in Europe, and the first to flourish in the Middle East as well.
a. Baath Socialism had its myth of man and history, the Arab nation was it’s people of God, corrupted and polluted by forces within and forces without. From Michel Aflaq, the founder and greatest of the Baathi theoreticians: "The philosophies and teachings that come from the West invade the Arab mind and steal his loyalty.”
b. And the people of evil who corrupted the nation of God, were, of course, the Jews. Pan-Arabists of one kind or another were responsible for the anti-Semitic outbreaks of the ‘40’s and ‘60’s.
The Arabs, in this projection, would return to their “pure, original nature” by revering the revolutionary Leader who embodied the “Arab Spirit,” the spirit one embodied in the Prophet Muhammad himself. This meant unlimited mass obedience, and this implied following the political organization, or the state.
This view was not only totalitarian, but another element that traces back to the Enlightenment- nihilism.
Berman, “Terror and Liberalism.”
The relationship of Egypt and Saudi Arabia is of great importance to the United States.
A great mistake would be ignoring the relationships of these two nations.
There is the famous and factual quote from Lord Palmerston:
“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
2.Which brings us to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The shortest description is the former as the ‘army of the Arabs,’ and the latter as ‘keeper of the holiest sites.’ But, sometimes you need soldiers, and sometime, oil.
“In his first official trip abroad in March 2018, Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman chose to visit Cairo, where he was greeted by President Abdel Fattah Sisi as "a dear guest in his second home, Egypt."[1] The two agreed to enhance bi-lateral cooperation across the political spectrum, implementing ambitious development projects and strengthening bilateral strategic ties. This collaborative mood notwithstanding, the two states have yet to overcome weighty strategic and foreign policy differences that over the past decade often marred the bilateral relationship, first and foremost: What constitutes the gravest threat to regional stability."
Cairo and Riyadh, Vying for Leadership
“Saudi Arabia and Egypt have each claimed a leading regional role, and their relations have long swung between cooperation and indirect confrontation.” Ibid.
3. Other ingredients in the ebb and flow of Middle East politics are the United States, Russia, Israel….and Iran.
And the radical insanity of Islamofascism.
Some are tempted to see totalitarian ideologies- communism, fascism, Nazism- as being unrelated to Islamic fundamentalism, and that would be a mistake.
Communism was the first of the new mass movements in Europe, and the first to flourish in the Middle East as well.
a. Baath Socialism had its myth of man and history, the Arab nation was it’s people of God, corrupted and polluted by forces within and forces without. From Michel Aflaq, the founder and greatest of the Baathi theoreticians: "The philosophies and teachings that come from the West invade the Arab mind and steal his loyalty.”
b. And the people of evil who corrupted the nation of God, were, of course, the Jews. Pan-Arabists of one kind or another were responsible for the anti-Semitic outbreaks of the ‘40’s and ‘60’s.
The Arabs, in this projection, would return to their “pure, original nature” by revering the revolutionary Leader who embodied the “Arab Spirit,” the spirit one embodied in the Prophet Muhammad himself. This meant unlimited mass obedience, and this implied following the political organization, or the state.
This view was not only totalitarian, but another element that traces back to the Enlightenment- nihilism.
Berman, “Terror and Liberalism.”
The relationship of Egypt and Saudi Arabia is of great importance to the United States.
A great mistake would be ignoring the relationships of these two nations.