WISHFUL THINKING,
OPTIMISM, SELF-DECEIPT -
SHORTCUTS TO TROUBLE
At what point does political optimism
turn into dangerous folly ? Simple
observation of
everyday life provides a plausible
answer. When I buy a lottery ticket I do so in an optimistic
frame of mind. The likelihood of missing the big prize does not deter
me – the risk is not grave.
If I win nothing I shall live to try another time. If at some
point however the risk becomes too
great, as in gambling at the casino, it
will (or should) check my optimism and make me think
about the risk. Choosing a marriage partner, a business
associate, or engaging a new cashier
are even more
complex matters. They call for careful enquiry and sober reflection.
In
international politics decision making involves risks of an entirely different
magnitude.
They can affect the welfare, freedom, even
the fate of an entire nation, or part of it, Examples
in our century are numerous. In 1933 the
British mandatory government in Iraq, installed
there and sanctioned by the League ofr Nations after World
War I, promised that country
political independence. When the Assyrian-Christian community
there (a.k.a. Nestorians, or
Chaldaeans), afraid of violence of the Muslim majority,
learnt of Britain’s plan they sent a
delegation to London to ask that guarantees for their safety
and protection be included in the
projected independence declaration. The British government,
believing the Assyrian fears to
be unfounded or
politically inconvenient, refused.
In their despair the Christian petitioners
appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury for support. He
dismissed their fears as far too
pessimistic.
In 1935 Britain ended its League of Nations mandate in Iraq, stipulated
no safeguard for the
the Christians and recommended Iraq for admission to League of Nations
membership. In the
absence of British police or military frenzied Muslim mobs fell on their
Christian fellow
citizens and massacred
thousands of them. Bodies of the
victims were seen floating down the
Euphrates
river. Some public men in Britain were embarrassed. During World War I the
Assyrian Christians had sided with Britain, had given its expeditionary
force in Iraq military
help and, every humane consideration apart, were owed also a debt of
gratitude. But either an
excess of optimism or perhaps some frivolus reason of expediency
prevailed in London. The
League of Nations was enlisted to evacuate survivors by ship to South America.
In the
thirties British governments based its foreign policy on the Continent on the
expectation
that Hitler
could be appeased by accommodating German grievances dating back to the
Versailles
peace
treaty. “I brought you peace with
honour”, exclaimed prime minister Neville Chamberlain
optimistically on his return from Munich in 1938. He harvested an ovation in the House of
Commons whose
uncritical, politically correct members, Conservatives and Labour alike, were
led to
applaud appeasement by the largely uncritical press (excepting only a few dissenters, one
of them
Winston Churchill). World War II
and some 60 million dead later the causes and fateful
consequences
of prevailing British and French
political convictions are still reverberating to this
day.
Lord
Mountbatten , Viceroy of Britain in India in the forties, predicted that
partitioning India
into two
states, Hindu and Muslim, would be a peaceful event if accompanied by some
population
exchanges.
This time informed and sceptical Britons thought that expectation rather
unrealistic.
Parliament and the Crown
approved the “Indian Independence Act”, and on August 15, 1947
the Indian
Empire of Great Britain passed into history. It was instantly followed by
mutual
massacres in
which hundreds of thousands of
Hindus and Muslims perished.
In the
strong grip of tradition the British Foreign Office and the U.S. State
Department (other
Western
chancelleries too) have remained loyal to political optimism. Recurrent
failures in this
century
failed to shake it. The U.S., thinking of itself, and thought of, a as a
superpower, is taking
its security
and safety everywhere for granted. The State Department failed to protect
adequately
even sites
of its own foreign service, as in Kenya and Tanzania recently. Where next? It believes
in the
feasibility of peace in the Middle East, and Secretaries of State Warren
Christopher and
Madelaine
Albright kept flying to Damascus
to sweet-talk Syrian president Hafez Assad into an
agreement
with Israel. We know of few places
on the globe where optimism and excessive zeal
are more misplaced
and often counter-productive than in the Middle East.
After all
the misfortunes the Jews in Europe have suffered in this century it is rather
surprising that
even those
in Israel have not become immune to political optimism in the conflict with
their Arab
neighbours.
“Territory for peace”, the formula they believe will lead to peaceful
coexistence, is a
kind of
optimistic self-deceipt, similar
to Britain’s and France’s hope that an appeasement policy
towards Hitler in the thirties will preserve peace in
Europe. Such an addiction to
wishful optimism
is all the
more surprising since Muslim religious leaders, not hindered by the niceties
of diplomatic
courtesy and
evasiveness, are quite frank and outspoken in their belief that a true believer
must look
on the
Middle East as exclusively Arab territory and that the existence of a
non-Muslim state there
is an
intolerable affront to Islam.
Even the
intrusion into Muslim space of
Western (especially American) radio, TV, the Internet,
the presence
of military bases and commercial enterprise is resented by the suggestible
majority under
the
influence of charismatic religious leaders and indoctrination at all
educational levels. Simmering
resentment
bursts into terrorist action as happened in Teheran against the U.S. embassy in
November
1979, after
the overthrow of the Shah and the assumption of power by the uncompromising
Ayatollah
Khomeini. An incident of
this kind, not a new phenomenon in the East, surprised the U.S. State
Department
experts. The captivity in Teheran
of the American embassy staff, over fifty men
and women,
for nearly 15 months; an abortive military rescue attempt and U.S. compliance with
Khomeini’s
conditions for the release of the hostages, have left an indelible impression
on Muslims
everywhere
and convinced them that “Western
imperialism” is not invincible.
At the
bottom of this resentment against the West is a gnawing consciousness of the
undeniable
and manifest superiority of
the West in science, technology, military and economic power, and the
lack of
these advantages in the Muslim countries.
In bygone times the Middle East was a cultural
and in some
periods even a military superpower. How it came to decline to its present
weakness and
lag behind
the West was analysed by the intuitive and literary genius of J.W. Goethe (1749 – 1832).
How he
arrived at his diagnosis, valid to this day, without ever meeting an Arab or
any other Muslim
is the
subject of a separate report on
this site.