The Sovereign

By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News

10 November 13

he Arab Spring, it seems, has turned into a winter of discontent. In virtually all nations that witnessed a democratic awakening - Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Syria, Tunisia - state violence or conflict among competing religious/secular, ethnic, or tribal constituencies dominates the political landscape. Many in the West consider such turbulence an Oriental or Islamic predilection. Bigoted explanations abound. In 1848, however, Europe also witnessed spontaneous transnational revolts that, though they legitimated the principle of parliamentary democracy, were wracked by internal conflicts and ultimately produced authoritarian governments like those led by Napoleon III and Bismarck. Even worse were the civil wars that emerged as the modern state arose. Ongoing conflicts between France and England during what was known as the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) led to slaughter on a massive scale while the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) cost Germany and Central Europe nearly one third of its population. Of course, these primarily religious wars are mostly forgotten (especially by the bigots). Memory is usually jogged only by thoughts of the famous soliloquy from Shakespeare's Henry V celebrating the English victory at Agincourt in 1415 or through watching Schiller's Wallenstein. Catholics and Protestants butchered one another over the proper road to salvation until finally the resulting Treaty of Osnabruck and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ushered in the modern nation-state and the controversial concept of sovereignty. The English Civil War (1642-1649) reflected this larger European conflict and, in that context, Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan (1651).

Sovereignty in the modern sense is predicated on the ability of the state to legitimately represent the (always elusive) national interest, supplant the primacy once given to other institutions, and act independently of external influence. To speak of the sovereign then is to speak less of an individual leader than a regime that is accepted as legitimate by its citizens and other regimes. Of course, the state can manifest itself in many regime types. But, whatever the form, the sovereign-state is a political phenomenon representative of the public and thereby profoundly interconnected with the actions and values of the society it serves. All institutions and associations other than the state (whether religious or commercial or ethnic) are private by definition since they express only particular interests. According to the standard definition by Max Weber, therefore, only the state can have a monopoly over all sources of coercion. Or, put another way, the sovereign must have the power to sanction public policies. Rigid categorical separations between politics and economics, therefore, make little sense: political action by the sovereign can have economic consequences and vice versa. The Western assumptions that underpin sovereignty are matters of crucial importance for understanding the prospects of a democratic polity and the obstacles facing its creation in the Middle East.

Hobbes' classic work of political theory privileges both the new state form as sovereign and "the people" as its source of legitimacy. Witnessing the English civil war and the "long parliament" (1640-1648), which he described in his other great work: Behemoth (1681), Hobbes was appalled by the barbaric clash of uncontrolled religious passions and private interests. This he creatively transformed into a "state of nature" marked by the "war of each against all" where the lives of individuals are "poor, nasty, solitary, brutish and short." Alleviating that condition requires a sovereign power. Driven by unrelenting insecurity and fears of death in the state of nature, following the logic of material self-interest, Hobbes believed those engaged in the senseless war of each against all will ultimately prove rational enough to negotiate a "social contract." This is predicated on each of them handing over their rights and powers - and, above all, their arms - to the person whom they choose to constrain private passions and enforce stability. The costs seem minimal. Anticipating the tendency of European liberals in the second half of the 19th century to support authoritarian regimes, so long as they did not interfere with free trade, Hobbes believed that the average person was basically unconcerned with politics. Thus, he considered monarchy unobjectionable since it tends to foster stability and provide the state with ideological legitimacy.

Authoritarian rule is embedded in Hobbes' outlook. This would later make him a favorite of staunchly anti-democratic thinkers like Carl Schmitt who in his Political Theology (1934) insisted that "sovereign is he who decides in the emergency situation." Schmitt understood that, ironically, Hobbes paved the way for what would become an increasingly democratic view of the social contract by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (1938) by Carl Schmitt is a penetrating study of what serves modern authoritarian purposes and the supposed dangers attendant upon the anti-authoritarian elements of Hobbes' thinking. Contradicting claims about "the divine right of kings," thereby earning him the hatred of those same aristocrats and monarchs whose rule he supported, Hobbes insisted that the source of sovereignty is the people. The authoritarian power structure is justified in terms of exigency rather than divine ordination. Hobbes also maintained that the sovereign has no particular features or qualities that somehow entitle him to his position or make him different from other citizens. With his emphasis on popular sovereignty, therefore, those excluded from the original contract (women, people of color, those without property etc.) can in principle demand inclusion. Almost in spite of himself, therefore, Hobbes legitimized some basic principles underpinning the liberal rule of law and a democratic society.

Just as Hobbes stripped away the ideological veil of the monarch, however, he expressed what is weakest about liberal political theory. For the question remains: how is it that the asocial criminal types living in the warlike "state of nature" can forge a social contract in the first place? Francis Ford Coppola depicted such a scene in Godfather III where rival gangsters supposedly give up their guns before entering a suite to negotiate a pact -- with murderous results. These gangsters may share a mutual enemy in the police but they show no loyalty to one another let alone some future sovereign. Hobbes rips the social contract from history. In anticipation of liberal political theory, he views the state, property, and civil society as appearing ex nihilo. His work also expresses liberal assumptions about human nature and self-interest (always "rightly understood") as well as the behavioral and attitudinal consensus on which the sovereign state relies.

Emphasizing stability and holding revolution in contempt, enmeshed in abstract claims and ignoring prejudice, unconcerned with what might help the exploited overthrow their exploiters, his work has had little resonance outside the West. But that is actually unfortunate since he has much to teach. Imperialism may have been fought by national liberation "fronts," or coalitions comprised of often competing organizations with sharply different ideologies, but anti-imperialist solidarity rarely translated into loyalty for the new sovereign once the colonizers were defeated. Bloody conflicts between former allies cost hundreds of thousands of lives and shaped much of the post-imperialist world beginning with India/Pakistan and Algeria. Hamas and Fatah, whatever their common contempt for Israel, today participate in a formal coalition while substantively engaged in a civil war. There is a warning that derives from Hobbes' work: the extent to which a popular consensus on the sovereign is lacking is the extent to which the need arises for the sea monster that he wryly termed the "leviathan" (or an all powerful state).

Hobbes knew well enough that forging the social contract was a purely hypothetical event that provided the sovereign with legitimacy. The old fox was well aware that the sovereign usually came to power through military conquest. But he also understood that legitimacy was important for constructing a state capable of transcending particular interests and traditional loyalties. He believed that individuals all share the same fear of death and the same desire for security: all other issues are secondary. That is what enabled him to assume that each will prove willing to place the state above any emotional associations that he may have with his tribe, ethnic group, class, religion or even family. Commitment to the state is the precondition for citizenship. Hobbes thereby sets the stage for the rigorous distinction between public and private that marks all social contract theorists. The sovereign is the incarnation of "politics" while his subjects contentedly pursue their private business concerns guided by what the Canadian thinker C.B. Macpherson termed "possessive individualism."

Leviathan was the product of a war-weary world. A burgeoning bourgeoisie was advocating the new capitalist mode of production and becoming increasingly contemptuous of old aristocratic prejudices and religious dogmas. This new class understood that the state would incarnate the national will in a way that tribal associations and religious institutions could not. An organic process took shape whereby the sovereign state became the agent of modernity thereby generating the growth of bureaucracy and expertise, democracy and diversity, science and secularism. That process never really took hold outside the West if only because the nation-state was externally imposed by imperialist powers. Admittedly, these powers did not run their colonies themselves. Everyday activities were controlled by a "comprador" bourgeoisie that was educated in the West and (without undue concern about solidarity) did its business at home.

An internally generated bourgeoisie supportive of the modern state never congealed in most colonies. At best, the comprador class was later buttressed by elites in the imperial country, multi-national firms and often an oil industry that primarily served the interests of familial monarchies as in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The sovereign was thus condemned to walk the tightrope between past and present. States came into existence. But they rarely provided a source of identity or loyalty for the sovereign. They were incapable of contesting the traditional feelings of belonging offered by the tribe, ethnicity, or religion. Especially from the standpoint of the West, however, the state remains the point of political reference for foreign policy. The contradiction thereby becomes palpable. Its impact is crucial with respect to the prospects for instituting the liberal rule of law and establishing the sovereign.

Fierce battles still rage over what institution should ultimately decide on policy in the emergency situation. The sovereign can prove to be the mosque, the tribe, some paramilitary force, or a narrow ethnic organization. Whatever the sovereign, however, it is representative less of a general or public than a particular or private interest. And, if only for this reason, the sovereign will lack legitimacy among the populace at large. Instability is consequently built into even the most authoritarian states of the Middle East. Modernizing military rulers may first find themselves in coalition with traditionalists opposing (or supporting) democracy or even mass movements opposing (or supporting) traditionalism. It's also possible that secular democrats and religious traditionalists will join together in opposing the military or, as in Egypt following the fall of the hated Mubarak regime, that the military will make a bid for sovereignty against both. Especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, it has become evident that traditional ideological alignments have often broken down resulting less in compromise than confusion. Institutional preconditions are still lacking that might enable new democratic constituencies to make good on their ideals while traditionalists remain skeptical about the implications of modern politics. Secular dictators are caught in the middle. They can neither assume the loyalty of forces looking forward to a democratic future nor backwards to an enchanted past.

For all that, however, Western pundits should not feel smug. Modernizing colonial elites often accepted the Western model of the sovereign nation-state in good faith. They wished to break the stranglehold of the sheiks and tribes that ruled the region and condemned it to economic underdevelopment. The conclusion of World War I along with the break-up of the Ottoman Empire seemed to provide them with an opportunity. As colonial protectorates were constructed, and national boundaries were arbitrarily drawn, the ideal of national self-determination seemed to project a new sovereign and a new rallying point for resisting the exploitative ambitions of the "great powers." National self-determination might also contest the hegemony of Islam and legitimate the integration of diverse tribal and religious constituencies such as Christians and the Druze. Modernizing elites also understood that sovereign states were required to nationalize the huge regional oil reserves and maximize the benefits of still unexplored natural resources. Nevertheless, the national approach was seen by many as an alien construct and an imperialist ploy for dividing and conquering the region.

Pan-Arabism seemed to provide a different way of thinking about sovereignty. As understood by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former president-dictator of Egypt, it served as an alternative to both the Western state model and the traditional idea of a caliphate even as it incorporated elements of both. Pan-Arabism was intended to strengthen a regional understanding of sovereignty and fuel the creation of a new bloc of states capable of confronting both sides during the Cold War. But such hopes were misplaced. Transnational religious conflicts between Shia and Sunni quickly arose and parochial political interests undermined the quest for a broader unity. Pressure from both sides in the Cold War mixed with the ambitions of local and narrowly national politicians who feared an incursion upon their power as well as Islamic traditionalists skeptical about the secular (and blasphemous) character of the new enterprise. It was under Nasser that Egypt witnessed the rise and quick repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel defeated an army of combined Arab forces in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 pan-Arabism lost its cachet.

Pan-Arabism skirted the question of sovereignty, what institutions might best represent it, and which actor would decide on the emergency situation in the last resort. At the very least, however, this transnational outlook offered an inspirational vision and a radically different understanding of solidarity. There is nothing comparable today. The sovereign is usually content simply to invoke tradition or raison d'etat. Even that is saying too much: sovereignty probably involves little more than the will to power and the need to protect particular interests. That was clearly the case with Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and a host of other monarchs and dictators. Where imperialist nations once bribed and coerced the comprador bourgeoisie, and where multi-nationals and oil companies built on that foundation, the sovereign today employs that same mixture of methods to hold together rival private religious, tribal, or ethnic interests. The state bureaucracy thereby turns into a means for sanctioning various forms of patrimony or the exchange of favors. Economic progress did take place (often as a by-product of the process), consumer goods were introduced, religious institutions lost their privileged standing, and new educational and vocational opportunities opened for women. But this all occurred in concert with omnipresent corruption and, above all, the ever-present threat of political repression. Little wonder that the authoritarian sovereigns in power prior to the Arab Spring were usually held in contempt or that the old transnational caliphate or religious community (umma) with its insistence on Sharia law should have appeared increasingly attractive to traditionalists. Not simply the liberal or authoritarian state, but the sovereign as such became the target not just for those urban intellectuals and incipient bourgeoisie seeking political freedom but also for reactionaries lodged in agrarian constituencies, pre-capitalist classes and religious institutions who considered themselves losers (or collateral damage) in the march of progress.

Which institution then is sovereign? Is it the (Shiite or Sunni) Mosque, the tribe, the (Baath or Hezbollah) party, the paramilitary organization (al Nusra Front), the state (or community) or the authoritarian leader who considers himself (or his office) sovereign? There is no definitive answer and, because they are often mutually exclusive in their aims, sovereignty cannot result from some mechanical combination of their interests. Tensions between urban and secular as against agrarian and religious forces have become manifest in Tunisia as well as in Iran where the Islamic Republic rests on the power of the revolutionary guards. In Iraq, paramilitary organizations of Sunnis and Shia fighting for power engage in running battles and bombings occur daily. Turf wars between rival tribes (each with its own chieftain) are taking place in Afghanistan and Libya, while organized gangs enter the mix in Somalia. Tightly knit Islamic extremist vanguards like al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad in the Egyptian Sinai and elsewhere refuse to recognize any more encompassing sovereign power. It is a bitter irony that so many Tunisian and Iraqi liberal activists, who worked so hard for a constitutional order, should have been assassinated by the very groups that they had helped bring into the public realm. The implication is clear: the weaker the sovereign the more absolute the claims of rival religions and tribes the more probable the success of ideologically motivated paramilitary organizations and the greater the likelihood of violence.

Western humanitarians as well as hawks require a bit of humility. Memories of times past render suspect all claims that foreign intervention alone can solve the question of sovereignty and produce stability in the Middle East. Citizens of former colonies undoubtedly think less about promises of human rights than Bechtel, XE, or oil companies making a killing. They will surely resent the arrogance of those who (once again) refuse them the right to develop their own traditions and who forget that it took more than a century-long bloodbath to secure the triumph of the sovereign state in Europe. There is simply no reason to assume that once colonized peoples will be happy about foreign soldiers on their soil, entering their homes at will, desecrating their mosques, ruining their economy, and killing their friends. Little wonder that, while the intervening power may strengthen its domestic ally in the short-run battle for sovereignty, a legitimacy deficit for the state will usually arise over the long haul. Intervention tends to weaken sovereignty almost by definition and those organizations that readily accept support from the outsider are, more often than not, condemned as puppets or traitors by their domestic enemies. Hospitals, housing, food and other forms of humanitarian aid by Western nations will go a long way toward creating good will and increasing their influence. Nevertheless, self-styled realists are skeptical of "soft" power though the use of "hard" power has rarely enabled the intervening nation to impose a legitimate sovereign.

These unrealistic realists often refer admiringly to the tough-minded Hobbes. They draw from his work the implication that, since the war-like state of nature exists where there is no sovereign (such as the international arena), foreign intervention is necessary and ethical constraints on political action are superfluous. With an eye on the Middle East, Robert Kagan argued in Of Paradise and Power (2004) that the United States must embrace this Hobbesian outlook while Europe, now reduced to secondary status, has no choice other than remain content with following Kant's regulative ideals in championing diplomacy and respect for international law. For all the tough talk, however, these realists ignore Hobbes' most basic lesson, namely, that only chaos and bloodshed can come from dislodging a sovereign without having a legitimate substitute waiting in the wings. That has certainly been the story of American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and, somewhat less dramatically in Libya where the attack at Benghazi, along with half a dozen others that received less media coverage, served as a response to an American-assisted rebellion in which thousands were killed amid the emergence of a political power vacuum.

Without even referring to Afghanistan where the Taliban was replaced by the US supported regime of Karzai, whose family is tied to the opium trade, in Iraq the American government and media blithely accepted the claims of Ahmed Chalabi (an Iraqi businessman in exile), that he had the support of the populace and that the Iraqi people would welcome American troops with open arms. When elections were held, however, Chalabi received about 2% of the vote while the invading army was not exactly greeted with joy. When a semi-democratic regime dominated by Shia was finally installed by the United States its ensuing lack of legitimacy produced a situation where American troops were not only attacked by Sunni paramilitary organizations opposed to the existing Iraqi regime but by disgusted Shia militia as well. In Libya, meanwhile, the dislodging of Momar Qaddaffi led to a disintegration of sovereignty, low level fighting between tribes, and lingering resentment against the United States that exploded in the assault on its embassy by al Qaeda affiliated elements. There are good reasons for taking seriously the quip by Erich Hobsbawn, the great historian, that "nothing is more dangerous than a superpower that claims it is doing the world a favor."

Attempts by the United States to arrange a new social contract that would legitimate a new sovereign have all been counterproductive. It's foolish to think that the outcome would be different in Syria. Internecine squabbling is taking place among a completely disorganized rebel opposition that is lacking a nationally recognized leadership, falling under the sway of Islamic extremists in the al Nusra Front, and unclear about the type of regime it wishes to substitute for the dictatorship of Assad. The United States takes for granted the sovereign state in formulating its foreign policy. In the Middle East, however, sovereignty is continually being weakened by a host of transnational and regional factors including religious, tribal, and even familial loyalties. In Syria, for example, thousands of foreign fighters from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon are participating actively in the civil war and in fragmenting the country. The Syrian conflict has already destabilized Lebanon and it has divided the Islamic world. Hezbollah and Iran support the government of President Assad, which retains a Shia and Alawite base, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already spent more than $3 billion to advance Sunni interests. They have armed a dysfunctional and disorganized Syrian opposition in which centralized and transnational vanguard groups like al Qaeda are flourishing. So far, wisely, the United States has basically kept its distance. With thousands killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by drone attacks, the United States can only make the situation more explosive by further intruding upon the sovereign of nations in the region.

Intervention has become what David Bromwich has called a "rationalized addiction" for the United States. Justifications for intruding upon the sovereignty of other states are usually based on preventing chaos, protecting human rights, or serving the national interest. But they are hollow. American intervention in Afghanistan and then Iraq together resulted in thousands of civilians killed, nearly 1.5 million wounded, roughly double that number in exiles, wrecked economies, unimaginable environmental devastation, and ongoing civil strife. That all of this somehow furthers human rights (even in the long run) is an easy claim to make when others pay the price. It is also difficult to argue that the American national interest has been served when roughly 6,700 American soldiers have been killed, 50,000 wounded, and trillions of dollars have been spent for seemingly no purpose. Use of torture, mercenaries, and rendition have also undermined the moral standing of the United States and, by subverting the sovereignty of other nations, generated feelings of national humiliation that will take a long time to disappear.

The leviathan looms large. The difficulties of transferring an Occidental construct into an Oriental context have become ever more apparent. But few thinkers are as relevant as Hobbes for indicating the preconditions for creating a stable and legitimate sovereign. To condemn him for the current state of nature or the new authoritarian tendencies in the Middle East is to kill the messenger. If nothing else the Arab Spring suggests that there is a deep desire on the part of the peoples in that region to shape their future in democratic fashion. Some obstacles standing in the way of sovereignty derive from the decisions of foreign powers but others are domestic in origin. Long after colonialism has faded, the Arab world is still being denied the chance to develop on its own, make its own mistakes, and generate its own institutions appropriate to the modern age. The sovereign is thereby seemingly always imperiled in the Middle East if only because sovereignty appears as little more than an artificial construct to those who count: the citizenry.

This article first appeared at: Logos.

Stephen Eric Bronner is Distinguished Professor (PII) of Political Science and Director of Global Relations at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights - Rutgers University. Senior Editor of the internet journal, Logos, and author of more than twenty books, his writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He was the recipient of the 2011MEPeace Prize from the Middle East Political Network based in Jerusalem.

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