The Middle East's precarious balancing act: a conversation with Robert D Kaplan

From the cafes of Cairo to the corridors of power in Tehran, renowned historian traces the region's path between anarchy and empire

Historian and journalist Robert Kaplan participates in a panel discussion during the first day of the I Economic and Social Forum of the Mediterranean, at the Palau de les Arts, on 26 June, 2024 in Valencia. GettyShow less

In his latest work, The Loom of Time, renowned American historian and political scientist Robert D Kaplan weaves a complex tapestry of the Middle East's dance with modernisation.

The book was the centrepiece of a lengthy conversation he had with The National this week.

It is spectacularly erudite, gleaned from decades spent as a Middle East-based foreign correspondent for American news organisations. Those experiences ranged from observing the region in peacetime to dangerous assignments covering the Iran-Iraq and the Soviet-Afghan wars of the 1980s.

Kaplan has enjoyed close friendships with some of the world's most influential historians, diplomats and experts whose careers had a significant impact on the region, including Henry Kissinger and Bernard Lewis.

His books have been read by Bill Clinton and he was close associate of the George W Bush administration, whose decision to invade Iraq in 2003 he supported, a fact which he has since come to deeply regret, he told The National.

Like these towering figures, he has attempted to pull his understanding of the region into broader theories.

The power of globalisation

Kaplan posits that globalisation is the most pervasive force in the historically fragmented region, one which will determine whether it accomplishes prosperity or falls into anarchy.

“Globalisation is uniting and making more similar upper-middle classes throughout the world, in Cairo and in Omaha, Nebraska,” he explains.

“In the Middle East, you see a cosmopolitan class sprouting all over the region. People on their iPhones, listening to music that's popular in other parts of the world. Then you have sectors of society which are rejecting globalisation. They don't like it, or they cannot compete, or it offends their values.”

The book's eleven chapters, each focusing on a specific country, offer invaluable descriptions of Middle Eastern cities, including Cairo, Tehran, Istanbul and Addis Ababa, in the 1970s and 1980s, juxtaposed with more recent visits detailing what these cities are like today.

A poster of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo, 1976. Getty

Kaplan's keen eye for detail is evident in his observations of Cairo in 2022: “Women and men still walked in packs, sometimes arm in arm, but now in western clothes rather than in faded striped kaftans and turbans as in the 1970s. Quite a few young women wore both hijabs and tight black leotards, their arms bare in a few cases, revealing themselves and covering up at the same time.”

But the Middle East's progression towards its more globalised present goes beyond iPhones and women's clothing. Kaplan reminisces that when he first came to the region, it was widely accepted that “Jews could not be expected to report objectively about Israel” and that Arabs were “thought to lack the emotional distance of staff correspondents”.

Signs of progress

Today, Arabs have risen to become the main authority on their own affairs, allowed to tell their own stories without the need for input from western voices – an unmistakable sign of progress, especially considering the region's history with European colonialism. In Israel, a number of publications offer sharp criticism of the war in Gaza.

This shift, Kaplan argues, was made possible largely through the work of Edward W Said, the late Palestinian-American academic and progenitor of post-colonial studies.

Said's seminal work, Orientalism, called into question centuries of historiographical studies of the Middle East, ushering in an intellectual inquisition into western writing about Arabs that remains in swing today.

Speaking of Said's critiques, Kaplan warns against discarding the works of 19th century Orientalists such as Richard Francis Burton, Charles M Doughty and T E Lawrence, despite them being lambasted by Said as mired in insulting or simplistic East-West power dynamics.

Works that have fallen out of academic favour because of increased political correctness comprise a sizeable portion of the material Kaplan draws on in The Loom of Time.

But first-hand accounts by natives of the region also constitute another sizeable chunk of Kaplan's sources.

“There was this great Egyptian political activist in the 1920s named Saad Zaghloul, and during the 2011 Arab Spring in Cairo's Tahrir Square, you almost never heard his name mentioned,” Kaplan says.

“Yet there had been this Arab Spring that happened in the 1920s against the British that people had apparently forgotten. It's amazing how important aspects of history can fall through the cracks.”

The rise of more moderate and religiously inclusive interpretations of Islam is another sign of the region's progress in Kaplan's view, admiringly described in the chapter on Saudi Arabia.

Kaplan, who visited the kingdom in 2021 while writing The Loom of Time, praises an order by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to send a delegation from the Mecca-based Muslim World League to Auschwitz and other concentration camps in Poland as a means of paying respects to the world's Jewish community.

It was a step towards alleviating religious tensions in a region marked by successive wars between extremist Muslims and Jews.

Mohammad Al Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League and David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), visit the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz I in Oswiecim, Poland. Reuters

Reactionary risk

However, religious extremism remains one of the forces that threaten to consume the region and undo decades of shaky progress, he argues. These are the forces for whom globalisation is anathema, as it constitutes an erasure of their culture.

Though globalisation does not have to necessitate the erasure of culture, Kaplan explains, it has more to do with that culture's ability to engage with others in a beneficial way.

“A country that loses its culture is going to be more politically unstable. Being without culture is not civilised. The countries that will thrive are those that remain rooted in their culture while simultaneously adapting and integrating with the fast-paced, globalised world.”

As more Arabs join the increasingly interconnected global cosmopolitan elite, there remain millions in the Arab world who have not been allowed to enter this global class due to economic hardship or incessant warfare. Faced with little choice, these people are usually enticed by reactionary, conservative politics.

“It's not just happening in Arab or Islamic countries. But in the United States as well, you have an upper-middle cosmopolitan class at odds with the other half of the country, which has been left behind, which cannot compete in a world of globalisation and for various reasons, rejects that cosmopolitan vision,” Kaplan says.

This rejection of globalisation is reversible, according to Kaplan, if more of this marginalised majority is brought into the globalised fold.

However, the region must first overcome more immediate challenges of economic inequity. Much of the region remains largely in the hands of dictators whose ideas are derived from the politics of the past, Kaplan writes.

Great man theory?

Kaplan, whose previous writing in praise of empire has garnered mixed reviews, does not see authoritarianism as inherently evil, especially in a region whose culture often necessitates hierarchies to be topped by strong male leaders.

Instead, he reasons that the most detrimental kind of authoritarianism today is one that seeks to control the economy, which thrives through egalitarian flat hierarchies.

“Rulers, even democratic ones, head towards disaster when they see themselves as larger than life. A wise ruler is always thinking about what can go wrong.

“I think the countries who will do best in the Arab world are those who will adapt their economies to the global standards of entrepreneurship and innovation,” Kaplan reasons.

Hope remains in the new generations of Arabs, he explains, more of whom are increasingly educated and are forming an integral part of the global community. One of these could be the next great moderniser who could uplift the region out of its turmoil, an Ataturk-like figure, he muses.

“All we've been talking about so far have been vast impersonal forces, economics, culture, globalisation, but there's also the power of individuals in history to move things in one direction or another.”

As the Middle East continues to navigate the complex landscape of globalisation, Kaplan's insights in The Loom of Time serve as a valuable guide to what may come next.

The book's nuanced exploration of the interplay between tradition and modernity in the region, as well as its acknowledgment of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, make it essential reading.

While the path forward may be fraught with obstacles, Kaplan's work offers a glimmer of hope, suggesting that with the empowerment of new generations, the Middle East can not only adapt to, but also thrive in the era of globalisation.