Hibr

The broken promises of US-Arab relations

Fairweather friends: the broken promises of US-Arab relations

Greeted by an electricity cut as he took the stage, Dr. Ussama Makdisi of Rice University, USA, crammed an impressive amount into a seventy minute talk on Thursday, March 24 at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Based on his latest book, "Faith Misplaced: Broken Promises of US-Arab Relations”, this young professor of history with roots in Lebanon covered three periods of US-Arab relations. Routinely switching from “them” to “us”, it was difficult to tell whose side he was on, or if indeed he was trying to take a side at all.

He began with the early 19^th century when American Christian missionaries first arrived in the Arab region. Young and idealistic, they arrived with ambitions to convert Arabs to Protestant Christianity. Yet, by the mid-19th century they had relinquished their hopes for universal conversion and had begun to adapt to the region's cultural and religious landscape. American Christian missionaries later established the AUB in 1866. Makdisi contrasted this Christian humanitarianism with the so-called Christian Zionists of domestic America who were defined by the inability to reconcile the words of the Bible with the realities of the region.

Woodrow Wilson and self-determination

Makdisi went on to discuss United States President Woodrow Wilson's aspirations for the Middle East. Set in the context of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian genocide, Wilson set up the King/Crane commission in 1919 to investigate the Arab peoples' desires. While Wilson neither shared nor approved of the colonial aspirations of European powers, he did not envisage giving the Arab nations immediate, unqualified freedom, which he dubbed “self-determination”. Instead, he sought a gradual process of Arab/U.S. cooperation that would eventually lead to this "self-determination".

This gradual process was contrary to the desires of the Arab people. The King/Crane commission, described by Makdisi as “paternalistic”, was later ignored by Wilson, allowing British and French colonial ambitions to be realized. As a result, Palestine submitted to Zionism.

Palestine

The final part of the talk covered US President Harry Truman’s efforts in the Middle East post World War Two. Makdisi sought to contextualize Truman's support of a Jewish State, explaining that he was concerned by the homeless Jewish population. As a result, he felt compelled to act. His advisers saw this as deeply impractical and warned him against such a decision but, in the end, the displacement of a few hundred thousand Palestinians was seen as meager in comparison with the millions who had died in Europe during the Second World War. Despite this internal opposition, Truman took the decision to support the creation of the State of Israel.

After several questions from the audience, some nuanced and others blunt, the final question came from a young man in the back. It regarded the United State's use of language pertaining to the region, be it the aforementioned Wilsonian ideal of "self-determination" or the US State Department's more recent recognition of the "legitimate aspirations" of the Arab people. In other words, is it fair to reduce the impetus for recent revolutions to "legitimate aspirations?" Makdisi, after reminding the audience that he was an historian and not a political scientist, admitted his own cynicism but cited this present moment in history as a time when Arabs can re-establish themselves in the world. "The narrative is finally on the [Arab] side," he concluded. "Those who are arguing for the status quo seem radically out of sync as Arabs, even in the US, are taking the lead in law, dignity, and respect."