Rethinking the Arab Spring in the context of geohistorical transformations

Clash of empires in the region MENA

Despite the historical twists and turns, by the 17th century, two powerful empires were finally formed and established in the MENA region-the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire (see figure 1 and 2). Historian William McNeill calls them gunpowder empires since it was gunpowder and firearms that helped defeat the nomads and begin the process of military-political expansion for the Ottoman dynasty and Safavid dynasty. Also, in addition to military-technical superiority, a prerequisite for dominance at the stage of conquest and creation of an empire was “strengthening their administrative and commercial classes at the expense of the landowning aristocracy” (Goldschmidt & Al- Marashi 2018: 105). If for Safavid Empire everything was easier, since it began the process of empire-buiLding based on the already existing Persian world, The “Persian World” should be understood as a socio-cultural conjuncture, which began to take shape during the emergence and formation of the Achaemenid State and was finally strengthened with the formation of Islam as an official religion. That is, it is a social, cultural, and political space that has specific features and structures the system of power relations. In part, such a world can be called hegemony, since the population agrees with it and it is reproduced by the political elite. This map was used from source: https://www.britannica. com/place/Ottoman-Empire. This map was used from source: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/TalkSafavid_dynasty/Archive_10. then for the Ottoman dynasty the situation was the opposite.

The future Ottoman Empire needed not only to conquer vast territories, but also to create an imperial world with a constituted imperial order, and this was a complex process, given the multiplicity of political formations in the region:

In 1450, the Ottoman Empire was an important Local power, dominating western and northern Anatolia and a large part of the Balkan peninsula. In much of this area, however, the suLtan exercised his power through vassaLs or semi-independent marcher lords. In the context of the Middle East, the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo was probably more powerful and certainly more prestigious. As rulers of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the Mamluk sultans could claim first place among all Islamic monarchs. (Imber 2003: 27)

Martin Bunton and William Cleveland note in their work A History of the Modern Middle East (2018) that the Ottoman Empire was preceded by four principles that formed the basis of the organizational structure of power relations and contributed to the strengthening of imperial power over a vast and heterogeneous territory. The first principle is the military organization of the Ottoman dynasty, which was extrapolated to command structure, army discipline and control as mechanisms for the spread of power. The second principle is the legacy of urban Islamic civilization, which contributed to the establishment of a monarchical form of government and the legitimization of imperial power. The third principle is the local custom, which was the formula “as long as taxes were remitted and stability was maintained, the Ottomans were content to tolerate a wide variety of Local practices” (Ibid.: 75). The fourth principle is the division of society into rulers and ruled, that is, the creation of a hierarchical and structured political system with Limited access to the redistribution of resources of power and influence, to symbolic power in a broad sense.

Therefore, to create a centralized and static system, the rulers of both empires chose a military method of organizing power, which relied on the army and the military elite. In other words, it was military power, in the understanding of the sociologist Michael Mann, that became the basis for building a system of power relations and control. Here it is necessary to designate the author's position, which differs from the position of Mann: political power is a centralized, territorial regulation of public life (Mann: 10). However, territory is inapplicable as a category for an empire since an empire is a space. Therefore, the political power of an empire is a centralized and spatial regulation of social and political reality, in which one of the sources of power always dominates. For example, military power, which is a social organization of concentrated (mobilized and focused) lethal violence (Ibid.: 9).

Here we find the first component of the future Arab Spring-the administrative management represented by governors who were either military officers on duty, or representatives of specific tribes, clans, families, clans. As historian Colin Imber notes, “governors received from the sultan's appanages, or confirmation of appanages already held, in return for which they provided military service, commanding the troops of their province on the battlefield” (Imber 2003: 178). Though, any military power has two weak points: the first is the constant and structured use of violence in a specific territory, the second is the need to wage war or military campaigns to provide the army with jobs and wages. In this case, the imperial power put itself in a stalemate when it was necessary to maintain the legitimacy of its own power through a devoted army and military forces; and when it was necessary to maintain control over the local governors, who very often sought to secede from the empire and create their own political organization.

The second component is in the ideological cut, namely in the religious antagonism of Shiism and Sunnism. The weak spatial structuring of empires, as well as the need to constitute and legitimize the political order, needed ideological consolidation. This, on the one hand, gave additional legality to the power of the Sultan or Shah in the eyes of the elite and the population, and on the other hand, it minimized the normative and value costs of power. In other words, religion helped codify the system of power relations and create full-fledged hegemony, that is, an (un)conscious consent to obey, not involving excessive violence. Military power is needed to build an imperial order and create a system of control over the observance of this order, and ideological power is needed to legitimize power structures and establish a new normative-value system of society as a whole. As Andrew Newman rightly notes:

... the longevity of the Safavid project may be most usefully explained in terms of the success with which Safavid society, as these earlier undertakings, expanded to recognize, include and transcend the diverse elements and discourses extant in the region at the time. (Newman 2008: 128)

It is also necessary to clarify that ideological power is not Limited to a specific religion or ideology. Ideological power is an aggregate, a plurality, which includes both the official ideology and religion, the normative value system of society, and socio-cultural practices. Ideological power is a set of mechanisms for codification and universalization of socio-political space, in which ideology is not just a form of consciousness, but a set of social practices of interaction and social networks, something teleological and societal. Ideology always strives for some kind of hegemony, for domination not so much economic or political, but cultural, normative. Hegemony is, rather, a complex of stratified social attitudes in which social groups have their own purpose and internal group logic.

The Ottoman and Safavid empires were two forms of imperial order in which political power was based on military and ideological, respectively. The various dominant political structures of empires played a key role in the process of their disintegration. As a rule, the disintegration of an empire is an inertial process, during which the periphery, gaining political independence, is in a political and ideological vacuum, for a way out of which there are only two options.

When the imperial order collapses, the periphery, which has gained political independence, may be capable of creating its own political order with a normative-value system and structures for codification, optimization, and universalization of the socio-political space. The first option-the intensive one-means not just the creation of a new independent state, but rather the construction of an autonomous political system based on the instruments of control over the political order. In other words, the created political system is a form of control over the territory, population, and security of both the territory and the population.

The second option-extensive-consists in extrapolating the imperial order to the boundaries of the newly formed political system, when the center-peripheral socio-political relations are transferred from the imperial system to the state one. In this case, the center of political power is the local political elite and structures of power relations, and the periphery is the population with its socio-cultural structures. As a rule, with this variant, the inertia of imperialism occurs, therefore the content and structure of the political system does not change. The extensive option is unstable and rather vulnerable to both internal social movements and external (geopolitical) influence.

This is exactly what happened in the case of the periphery of the Ottoman Empire, when after gaining independence, for example, in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, the process of reproduction of the logic of imperial military power continued. The local political elite extrapolated the model of the Ottoman Empire for the management and administration of the territory (Itzkowitz 1980), relying on particular socio-cultural and military groups. If “Turkey was able to break out of the Ottoman mold, to create a Turkish national community of manageable-and defensible-size, and to resist ambitions to create a regional hegemony” (Black & Brown 1993: 186), then independent political organizations created a situation in which the practice of establishing hegemony within the political system was impossible. However, attempts to establish hegemony in the region also failed. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire is the legitimation of the right of local rulers not just to control the movement of taxes, income, and capital, but to political power itself-sovereignty.

Successful modernization of centers and failed modernization of peripheries

As already mentioned in the introduction, when understanding modernization as a phenomenon and process, I proceed from the fact that modernization is a process of codification and optimization of the political space, whose regulatory and functional support is updated or improved in accordance with the external geopolitical situation. Here I would like to make a few personal clarifications, which, in my opinion, will be appropriate.

Modernization should not be seen solely as a process of transition to democracy or as a way to create a democratic system. There are examples of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, where there is either “managed democracy” or modernized authoritarianism. However, these countries can hardly be called exclusively democratic in the interpretation of Western European liberal thought. Also, modernization should not be perceived as a one-sided process characteristic of the centers of empires or developed states of Europe, Modernization of China, Japan, Taiwan in the 20th century; modernization of the Safavid Empire, Mughal Empire or Russian Empire in the 17-18 centuries. but not characteristic of the periphery. Modernization must be interpreted from the point of view of geopolitics, since it is geopolitics that constitutes the imperative of modernization: those who do not want to be conquered or subordinated must modernize their own political system. Therefore, modernization should not be understood from the standpoint of exclusively economic determinism, since the economic factor is one of many other factors: political, social, cultural, ideological. It is not the percentage of economic growth that is important, but the political mechanisms and institutional instruments for achieving a situation in which economic growth will have positive dynamics.

When using the term modernization, a methodological (and, possibly, ontological) incident arises, which forces us to use this category exclusively as a derivative of “Modernity,” which limits the chronological framework of the study, neglecting the period before the Renaissance. Then a completely logical question arises: can the reforms of Octavian Augustus or Trajan in the Roman Empire be called the modernization of the political system? Alberto Martinelli rightly notes that “from its very inception, the term modern has been carrying some normative implications, insofar as it implied a depreciation of the old and traditional” (2004: 5). Modernization is not an antagonism between traditions and modernity, as insisted by Shmuel Eisenstadt (1963), on the contrary, modernization should be understood and perceived as changes in the specifics of the functioning of the symbolic and institutional structures of society. However, the key feature of modernization is the creation of an autonomous political system that can provide itself with resources, reproduce the political order, constitute a symbolic space, and ensure control over the population.

Modernization and empire tend not to get along well with each other. Modernization, as mentioned earlier, presupposes institutional changes, a rethinking of the Logic of power and the transformation of social space. This, in turn, Leads to a rethinking of the political order. For an empire, order is the basis of the empire's existence, it is its main argument and a way of justifying itself. Therefore, it is possible to identify several vectors for the implementation of modernization, which are somehow connected with empires.

1) Modernization is used as a geopolitical For example, Russia under Peter I, Japan under Emperor Mutsuhito (Meiji), Germany under Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck, the Dutch Golden Age, and the process of colonization. foothold for empire building. The political organization is carrying out modernization to create an autonomous system with the necessary number of resources for expansion and the imposition of an uncontested political order.

2) Modernization is used as a way of integrating the periphery into the imperial political and economic (economic) system. In this case, modernization is used as a tool for the production, control, and redistribution of resources necessary for the development of the empire. In addition, the center of an empire can become a dynamic structure for modernizing the periphery.

3) Modernization is used as a mechanism for getting out of the state of imperialism. After the collapse of the empire, when a political vacuum arises, the center and the periphery can use (but do not always use) modernization to develop a new social and political order with the aim of creating an autonomous political system-the modern state.

The success and failure of modernization depends on two possible configurations, as stated by Cyril Black & Carl Brown (1993). The first of them is geopolitical autonomy and consistency in carrying out modernization (autonomous factor); the other is geopolitical interference (the colonization factor). In the first configuration, the political organization relies on its own resources, while building a completely autarkic administrative system. In the second configuration, domestic political desires are limited by foreign policy requirements.

Turkish nationalism. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the center of the empire - modern Turkey - began the process of transformation of the post-imperial system. The Kemal Ataturk reforms are an extensive modernization of the political system, which was characterized by (1) the standardization of social relations, (2) the secularization of religion from the state, (3) the industrialization of the economic economy, (4) the codification of political governance, (5) the unification of the normative- value space, (6) rethinking and filling the symbolic space. Modernization requires two main factors-the political will of the leader and the collective action of the elites, which is reflected in the work of Alberto Martinelli: efficacy and strategic ability depend in turn on two fundamental requisites: (1) an administrative structure and an efficient bureaucratic class capable of negotiating with outside interests (using international ties as opportunities rather than as constraints) and controlling indigenous interest groups; (2) a political leadership favorable to economic development, legitimized by the cultural traditions of the country and sufficiently autonomous from the main social classes and interest groups. (Martinelli 2004: 75)

The Turkish version of modernization is a tectonic shift in the political administration of the state, the main goal of which is the construction of a new architectonics of power. During the modernization, “there was a coalescence of changes in the symbols and patterns of legitimation of regimes, in the composition of the ruling class, in the bases of access to the center, in center-periphery relations, and in positions of control over resources” (Eisenstadt 1984: 8). Architectonics, that is, the composition of political power, was built on a combination of all types that Michael Mann offers for analysis. However, the ideological power-secularized nationalism-was chosen as the centrifugal force both for modernization and for building a modern state. By ideology, I mean a set of strategies and practices that are used by an individual as variable. At the same time, the legitimacy of ideology is confirmed not by a conscious desire to agree with an established social order, but by an unconscious adherence to an established goal. In this context, the ideas of ideology and ideological power proposed by Michel de Certeau and Louis Althusser are relevant.

A break with religion was necessary to fill the social space with new symbols and forms that are easier to produce, reproduce, and control. On the one hand, nationalism broke with the authenticity of Islam and its impact on collective identity. On the other hand, it helped symbolize political power in the person of the state, and not a specific leader or political elite. In contrast to the isomorphic “colonial nationalism” that alternately circulates between the territorial boundaries of each such nationalism and the territorial boundaries of the former imperial administrative unit (Anderson 1991: 132), modernized Turkish nationalism is allomorphic.

Modernization has contributed not only to Turkey's geopolitical stability, but also to a rethinking of political power and its mechanisms. The military aristocracy that initiated the reforms was replaced by a rational bureaucracy-professional politicians seeking to govern the state from a position of administration rather than military discipline. In other words, the forceful nature of modernization led to the emergence of a bureaucracy that needed to legitimize its structure, and therefore the military source of political power was replaced by an ideological one-pan-Turkism in geopolitics and nationalism in the domestic political space.

The ideological content of the political system has created the conditions under which the system can reproduce itself, and also uses the tools of universalist control over borders, population and territory. Therefore, it is only natural that “the Turkish government was not simply a passive observer on debates and controversies concerning its policies, but was rather actively involved in efforts to influence public opinion” (Bein 2017: 140). Because for any modern state, control is a teleological necessity and a mechanism for the reproduction of the political order.

Iranian theocracy. The Iranian modernization project We are talking about attempts to reform the socio-political system by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 60-70s of the 20th century. in the middle of the 20th century, which is most often called Westernization, turned out to be untenable due to both the extreme influence of Shiite traditions in particular and Islam in general, and the heterogeneity of the reforms carried out (the pathos of the authorities overshadowed the authenticity of those submitted). To a greater extent Islam in 20th century Iran has acquired the character of fundamentalism, which substantiates socio-political and cultural processes: the new state attracted a mixed reception. For some Iranians and outside observers, it brought law and order, discipline, central authority, and modern amenities - schools, trains, buses, radios, cinemas, and telephones - in other words, development, national integration, and modernization which some termed Westernization. For others, it brought oppression, corruption, lack of authenticity, and the form of security typical of police states. (Abrahamiam 2008: 91)

The result of the failure of modernization (Westernization) was the Islamic Revolution of 1979 (for example, Axworthy 2013), which abolished the monarchy, created a theocratic system of government, and initiated a new modernization in the context of the clerical Islamization of the state. Theocracy, as the supremacy of religion over politics and society, became the ideological rationale for legitimizing the political regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. However, it must be understood that Islamic modernization in Iran is predominantly a geopolitical project aimed at the decolonization of the state, as well as the creation of a centralized political system with a universal system of control.

The basis for the creation of the new state was the clerical Islam of the Shiite persuasion, which constituted the social space. But, despite the fundamentality, authenticity and tradition of theocratic power, it is also characterized by democratic principles, which consist in the institution of parliament and the president, general elections, and an extensive system of administrative structures. This “managed democracy” has created a barrier to protect power. Any ideology that is based on religion is very strong and it can be delegitimized only if an ideology, alternative in strength and significance, is proposed. In a sense, the combination of “managed democracy,” the Islamization of society and theocracy as a method of government created the hegemony of Iranian power within limited / semi-open borders. Hegemony is a state where an individual has nowhere to go, so he / she agrees to obey. Iranian hegemony in a specific territory, combined with the autarkic nature of the political system, created the conditions for a strong government capable of quickly reacting to bifurcation processes.

Peripheral patrimonialism. The former periphery of the Ottoman Empire, in particular Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, chose the option of extrapolating the political order of the Ottoman Empire to their states. This extrapolation consisted in the fact that within the created states a system of center-peripheral relations was reproduced, which was based on patrimonial practices, which, for example, are typical for the post-Soviet space (for example, Fisun 2012; Zguric 2012; Heydemann 2013). In other words, the institutional design has not changed meaningfully, only new structural variables have appeared in government governance. In all other respects, the independent states remained the aggregates of the military elite, which was based on clan, tribal, professional, or other methods of social identification. The structure of social networks and collective action in these networks constituted the normative value legitimation of the political regime.

ShmueL Eisenstadt, analyzing administrative management in the periphery of the Ottoman Empire, pointed out that “the most distinctive of the elites were the military- religious rulers who emerged either from tribal and sectarian clement or from the institution of military slavery, which created special channels of mobility” (1984: 13). After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the same algorithm for the formation of the local political elite was preserved, for example, Muammar Gaddafi and his entourage in Libya, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak and their entourage in Egypt, Saddam Hussein and his entourage in Iraq, Hafez al-Assad and his entourage in Syria. Any collapse of the empire is always accompanied by the privatization For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the privatization of the former republics by the so- called nomenklatura or “red bureaucracy;” the collapse of the British Empire and the privatization of the periphery in Africa by the military; the collapse of the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America and the privatization of the periphery by the military; the collapse of the Mongol Empire and the privatization of the periphery by the relatives of Genghis Khan. of the periphery by local elites, depending on what type of power dominated in the empire, or what type of power the center of the empire used in the administrative and managerial context.

That is, the political elite of most of the created states in the MENA region were military, and therefore the political power itself relied on the military source of power. In addition, an important feature of such political organizations was the geopolitical orientation of the elites towards the MENA region as a whole. An example of such geopolitical ambitions is the sponsoring of terrorist organizations, attempts to create a pan-Islamic state or regional military-political alliances, religious contradictions between Sunnis and Shiites, cooperation with the global hegemonies of the Soviet Union and the United States, constructing the image of the enemy-the State of Israel, influence on world oil prices.

Equally important was the fact that in most countries in the MENA region, the military came to power as a result of either a revolution or a military coup. As a rule, the leaders of social movements, descendants of the military elite, were charismatic representatives of the “new generation” who wanted to change the old order and bring peace, prosperity and order to the country. However, any charismatic power in one way or another depends on the leader's ability to maintain the legality and, most importantly, the legitimacy of his own rule.

The leader is recognized and followed if there is a demand for him, as long as there is a need for his virtues or the ability to charm social groups, to lead them. At the same time, the charismatic government needs to create informal social and political ties. In the case of the countries of the Middle East, such ties have become elite systems of interaction between elites by means of kinship, blood, faith, or friendship. Excessive abuse of such informal practices, as well as the loss of the leader of his former charisma, leads to the creation of an authoritarian regime on the territory of the state, which very often borders on dictatorship or kleptocracy.

Further, it is necessary to point out the fact that the aforementioned states were secularized political units, for which Islam was not so much a mechanism for legitimizing political power as a geopolitical tool, a catalyst for political projects in the region. Any policy is an action that takes place in a specific place, at a specific time, and serves as a way to break with the established social order. This action should not be confused with a bifurcation point or political performance. Here politics acts as a kind of singularity point, according to Alain Badiou, in which the potential of the entire society is concentrated. In this context, sponsoring terrorism, regulating world oil prices, even the Arab Spring itself as a social movement are politics. The nature of any political action is the subjectivation of reality, in which a new ideology must be formed. Islam did not become the ideological basis for new political regimes, since they were produced by professional military officers, and any military power is incapable of developing any ideology other than the ideology of war. War and enemy image construction are ways to legitimize military power as they point to issues of security, order, and the territorial integrity of a state. As we know, war is the continuation of politics by other means. Since the period after World War II, military actions have taken place in the Middle East every decade: the Arab-Israeli War (1947-1949), the Second Arab-Israeli War (1956-1957), the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition (1967-1970), 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Lebanon Civil War (1975-1990), Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Gulf War (1990-1991). However, attempts to redistribute power in the region by military means were unsuccessful due to the interference of geopolitical players (USA, USSR).

Therefore, the focus was on terrorism as an immanent political practice, the purpose of which is to achieve certain goals. Consequently, supporting terrorism required resources for reproduction (for example, Levitt 2002; Bj0rgo 2005; Kim & Sandler 2020), and had consequences in the form of a geopolitical reaction (sanctions, military intervention, exclusion from the international system). Terrorism is an example of a choice between the internal political balance and the geopolitical ambitions of a particular political regime. The use of terrorism, on the one hand, leads to an increase in the autarky of the political system, and on the other hand, to the production of bifurcation points within the political system.

In parallel with the use of terrorism practices in the foreign policy space (see Schumacher & Schraeder 2021), the political elite of the Middle East countries (for example, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria) resorted to the use of populist practices in the domestic political space. We have already noted earlier that populism is “methods of political communication with the obligatory construction of an unstable and differentiated discursive field in which the mechanisms of inclusion or exclusion are reproduced” (Zaporozhchenko 2021).

The processes of modernization, which were carried out, for example, in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Algeria, were formal and concerned, first of all, the economic sector. Any power needs resources to support itself, therefore oil, trade or industry is an opportunity to control, redistribute resources to provide power structures. Given the importance of center-peripheral relations in the governance of the states of the MENA region, one can see how the centers developed and the periphery remained underdeveloped (Bratkiewicz 2005; Khondker 2011; Pascoe 2015). Modernization was unsuccessful in most of the states in the region, as it ran counter to the official ideology of the military elite that was in power. Modernization is always a rethinking of social and political order, and rethinking an order means its institutional change.