Oxford Professor Eugene Rogan: The Arab World's Biggest Challenge Is Building a Transparent, Accountable Government (Part 2) | Interviews

This interview runs in two parts. This is the second, mainly about nationalism, the transformation of Arab states, and Professor Eugene Rogan's intellectual formation and life.

Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University and Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College — one of the best-known Middle East specialists in the world today. He works on the late Ottoman Empire and the modern history of the Arab world. His books include Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, The Arabs: A History, and The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914–1920.

Like the Middle East he studies, Eugene Rogan's own life has been varied and complicated.

He was born in California in October 1960. His father worked for the aerospace company Northrop, so the family moved to Paris when he was six, and later to Rome. In 1971 he moved again with his father, this time to Lebanon. There he lived through the Fourth Arab-Israeli War of 1973 and the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, which forced the family out of the country. He then spent three years in Egypt.

"Living and studying in the Arab world shaped my whole life," he told QDaily.

He had been drawn to Middle Eastern culture and history since childhood, but when it came time to pick a university major, Eugene Rogan first wanted to go into business like his father, and read economics at Columbia. He found he had no real interest in economics, so he went to Harvard for a master's in Middle East Studies — and discovered he loved history. He stayed at Harvard for a PhD in Middle Eastern history, and his academic career began.

In 1991 Eugene Rogan came to Oxford, where he has taught ever since. Oxford's Middle East Centre and Harvard's Middle East Centre were both founded in the 1950s and are the oldest Middle East research institutions in the world. He was trained at Harvard but teaches at Oxford, where he worked with the great Middle East historian Albert Hourani and learned a great deal from him. Hourani, he says, founded modern Middle East studies at Oxford, influenced him more than anyone else, and was his mentor.

That influence shows in his later work. Eugene Rogan went on to become Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, inheriting Hourani's mantle; and his The Arabs: A History was written to complement Hourani's masterwork A History of the Arab Peoples. That book runs from the birth of Islam to the modern Arab world but treats modern history briefly, so Eugene Rogan's The Arabs picks the story up from the Ottoman era and carries it to the Arab world of today.

The Arabs first appeared in 2009, and the book's story ended in 2009 as well. It was about how Arabs, on entering the modern era, had to submit to rules set by one power after another — the rules of the European imperial states, the rules of the Cold War, the rules of the United States. What came next we know: the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, the fighting in Iraq, political upheaval in Egypt, the rise of the Islamic State. Eugene Rogan came to see that Arabs had not only been forced to follow other people's rules; they had also been looking, all along, for transparent and accountable government. So in 2018 he published a new British edition of The Arabs, heavily revised and expanded.

As for the future of the Arab world, Eugene Rogan thinks the biggest obstacle to accountable, transparent government is military rule in the Middle East. Tunisia is the one hope at the moment, but Tunisia is a fragile success. "Given the violent conflict and the failed governments across this region, it will be very hard to see other countries follow Tunisia's example and build accountable governments in the next 10 or 20 years. I think trying to repair the broken governments of the Middle East will be a long-term job."

In 2018 we met the 58-year-old Professor Eugene Rogan in Beijing. Silver-haired, in black-framed glasses and a blue shirt, he talked with us about the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, nationalism and the transformation of Arab states. There was too much material for one piece, so we are running the interview in two parts. This is the second, mainly about nationalism, the transformation of Arab states, and Professor Rogan's intellectual formation and life.

"I think that in the 21st century the Arab world can achieve its greatness. But I worry about how they get there from the low point they're in now," he told QDaily.

State Nationalism and Arab Nationalism Exist in Tension and Collision in the Middle East

QDaily: How do you see the part nationalism has played in modern Middle Eastern history? On one hand it let many peoples in the Middle East win self-determination and found their own states; on the other it has caused problems, and stirred up a great deal of hatred and violence. How do you see that complexity?

Eugene Rogan: That's a very good question. As I was growing up and doing my early research, I always saw nationalism as a progressive force, bound up with opposition to imperialism and the fight for freedom. I never questioned it. After the Cold War ended, nationalism showed what it could produce: the collapse of the communist bloc in Eastern Europe; the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, which set off extremely brutal wars, such as the war against the Bosnian Muslims. That was an object lesson in what nationalists can do. Suddenly you began to see nationalism as a force that puts one people above another and lends legitimacy to exclusion and armed conflict. It is an unhealthy force. Today we often link nationalism with hostility and hatred toward foreigners.

So over the past 25 or 30 years we have come to look at nationalism from a very different angle. In the Middle East, nationalism has been a powerful force for the past hundred years. It is hard to say how deeply people in the Middle East understand nationalism, but it shows best in their ambitions. For many Arabs there is one natural, whole nation. The history of the Arab empire goes back to the early Islamic order — they wanted to carry on the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic conquerors. In that world, Arabs ruled an entire empire, with capitals including Umayyad Damascus and Abbasid Baghdad, and later all the smaller successor empires that ruled around the Mediterranean, including the Umayyads of Spain, the Fatimids of Egypt and the Mamluks. So the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabic-speaking parts of North Africa make up the Arab world, a natural whole. For them, the strongest form of nationalism is Pan-Arabism. And they see the imperial borders that cut the Arab world into a set of small states as the obstacle to that ambition.

But for others, inside their own borders, there were struggles against colonial rule and for independence — Syrians against French rule, Iraqis against British rule. Over decades of fighting for independence, loyalty and attachment to these smaller nation-states became important. Before independence, the elites of these countries fixed their interest on frontiers and resources — Iraq, for instance, handed out oil wealth to the people in order to hold on to power over the territory it governed. In the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser we saw a real collision between the nation-state and the wider idea of Arab nationalism. The United Arab Republic, which lasted from 1958 to 1961, had already shown the whole Arab world how hard it is to build a larger Arab union. When Syria joined Egypt and a new state was born, the result was not Syrians and Egyptians building an Arab future together. Egypt's colonization of Syria drove Syria away politically. In 1961 Syria broke off from Egypt. At that point you could see clearly the contradiction between the ideal of Arab nationalism and the reality that political elites wanted to rule their own countries.

In many ways I think the awakening of both state nationalism and Arab nationalism pushed many Muslims in the Arab world to look to Islam as a larger bond — a bond that would tie together not just Arabs but Muslims everywhere. That way, Muslims would win respect and power in the modern world. I think that even today we live in an age in which, for many people, a universal Islamic movement is the strongest political bond there is.

But I still think nationalism inside national borders is a very strong force. That is why Iraq has been so deeply divided. Many countries in the Arab world are mired in conflict — Syria has been wrecked in many ways, Yemen is very fragile, Libya has collapsed — and yes, I don't think they will change much; they will go on surviving inside their borders. The past few centuries have turned those states into monarchies, and that makes it very hard for a state to decide on its own to change its borders. Even in those conflict zones, I believe nationalism remains a powerful force.

QDaily: I've read Michael Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging. He distinguishes civic nationalism (liberal nationalism) from ethnic nationalism, and argues that the first is the answer to the problems nationalism creates. What do you make of that?

Eugene Rogan: I think ethnic nationalism is the most dangerous political ideology there is. It is exclusionary; it pushes people toward sameness. That harms many cultures and societies. Our societies are rich and various. So people who look for ethnic boundaries are working against a vision of a diverse, inclusive society.

Liberal nationalism, so long as it protects civil rights, is fine. Nationalism can in fact be a progressive force. Many constitutional states around the world pursue the rule of law and try to benefit every citizen while respecting the rights of minorities. That is a genuinely progressive nationalism.

I think that is the kind of nationalism the United States or France aspires to. But inside their societies there are always people who take a narrower, ethnic view — the French far-right party the National Front, for instance, speaks for people who want the French government to promote the welfare of the French nation and no one else; Trump has shut out immigrants, barred Muslims from entering the United States, and is building a wall with Mexico, all in the name of making America great again.

Personally, I would fight ethnic nationalists, because they destroy the values I believe in: the rule of law, civil rights, protection for minorities, equality for all.

The Biggest Challenge to Accountable, Transparent Government Is Military Rule in the Middle East

QDaily: How do you see the process of transformation in Arab states? Where are the difficulties, and where is the hope?

Eugene Rogan: I think the biggest challenge for people in the Arab world is trying to build a transparent, accountable government. I avoid the word "democracy," because people in the Arab world don't like it. Recent American policies to promote democratization in the Middle East have come to look to people there like a form of rule rather than liberation. If the point of invading Iraq was to advance democratization in the Middle East, the result was the exact opposite, and it left many people suspicious of such policies. But I do think the Arab Spring was a movement by Arabs who wanted an end to dictatorship. They wanted to be rid of the fear in their daily lives; they wanted a government answerable to them; they wanted power to change hands without a revolution.

The biggest challenge to accountable, transparent government is military rule in the Middle East. As you know, in modern Arab history the revolutionary fervour of the 1950s and 1960s troubled many regimes across the Middle East. Those regimes were monarchies closely tied to the West, and the revolutions against them were led by local military commanders — in Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Military culture is nothing like the culture of liberal democracy. Military culture is a hierarchy: the junior must obey the senior. So soldiers give society orders and expect society to obey. In an army, if you disobey an order you can go to prison, or even be put to death. They carried those values into government, so citizens who disobeyed the government could be sentenced and could be tortured. And if such people turned into a real threat, they could be executed.

After the revolutionary fervour of the 1950s and 1960s, these military governments made themselves strong enough to control both society and the economy, which in a sense made them very hard to overthrow. The military's place in Egypt's economy and government is so important that people can hardly imagine trying to overthrow military rule there. That is also how I understand Sisi's rise to power in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mubarak were removed: military power secured continued control of Egypt's government and economy. In any country or region where the military has firmly established itself, accountable government faces an enormous challenge.

So where is the hope? Tunisia is the only country to come out of the Arab Spring with a political transition. Interestingly, Tunisia's army was never part of the government. The dictator who was overthrown, Ben Ali, was propped up by the Interior Ministry's police, not the army. Tunisia's armed forces refused to intervene against the demonstrations aimed at President Ben Ali. They would not fire on Tunisian civilians to protect the president. They let the president fall and let the people carry out constitutional reform. Their only mission was to protect Tunisia's independence and territorial integrity, not to get involved in politics.

After extraordinarily hard negotiation and dialogue, Tunisia elected a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, then elected a parliament and a president under the new democratic system. Tunisia's experiment is still going, and so far it has survived. Tunisia faces plenty of challenges now, of course: many parties at home oppose the new government, and economic growth cannot meet the demand of well-educated young Tunisians for a better life. So Tunisia is a fragile success.

But if Tunisia does succeed, it can show Arab countries and the international community that Arabs are also able to build accountable government. And Tunisia and its experience could become a goal other Arab countries aim for in future. As of 2018, though, the hope is very thin. Given the violent conflict and the failed governments across this region, it will be very hard to see other countries follow Tunisia's example and build accountable governments in the next 10 or 20 years. I think trying to repair the broken governments of the Middle East will be a long-term job.

How Does a Society Rebuild After the Deep Trauma of Division?

QDaily: From what I've read, you have two projects in hand. One is a biography of the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. Why write that book? How would you sum up Zaha Hadid?

Eugene Rogan: I never wrote a biography of Zaha Hadid. I once thought about writing a book about making architecture with Zaha Hadid. I knew her well, and I know her brother too; we were good friends. For nearly ten years I was immersed in the life and the world of one of the most creative minds in the Arab world.

Personally, I have great respect for her work as an architect. I think people who met her in person found her far more interesting than the reputation — the great genius who was difficult and stubbornly unyielding. But I never wrote that book; it was too personal. Her death was so sad, so sudden, and none of us saw it coming. Do you know her work? She did a great deal in China — many buildings in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, including the Guangzhou Opera House, which has been very influential. I think she was outstanding.

QDaily: The other is "Sectarian Conflict and Reconstruction in Nineteenth-Century Damascus: Reflections on the Massacre of 1860." Why write that book?

Eugene Rogan: In the summer of 1860 there were massacres of Christians in both Lebanon and Damascus. It was violence against a minority on a scale never seen before. In many ways it is one of the founding events of modern Lebanese history, though it may mean less for Damascus. Still, these events are treated as the starting point of modern Middle Eastern history, and as the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's engagement with the challenges of modernity.

My own starting point was a set of documents written during the massacre by a remarkable intellectual, Mikhail Mishaqa. I have been collecting archival material from Damascus and from the Ottoman Empire, with a plan to write a monograph that looks not only at the massacre but at its roots. Some well-known scholars have already written on this, and written well.

But what interests me more is this: how does a society rebuild after the deep trauma of division — violence, massacre, mass killing? That is a question for modern societies too. So many societies have faced violence aimed at one community, a community that afterwards has to come back together and live with the rest. Think of Rwanda after the genocide: Tutsis and Hutus had to come together again to rebuild Rwandan society and get past the deep trauma of the genocide. In many ways, I think, the Ottomans rebuilt Damascus successfully, and the Christian community was reintegrated. It is a success story, and it means a great deal today.

When you first come to modern Syrian history, I think you run into conflict between religious sects. The Syrian civil war has split Sunni Muslims off from the minorities in a way that would once have been unimaginable. If we look ahead to Syria's future, this society will have to be rebuilt, all its communities reintegrated, and the terrible trauma of this civil war overcome. I don't want to claim that the experience of 1860 resembles Syria's experience in the 21st century in every respect, but the history of reconstruction and reintegration matters more now than it ever did. I wish I had written this book 20 years ago.

I feel this story has caught up with its moment. The material is extraordinarily rich, and heartbreaking. But I want to do justice to the history held in this extraordinarily rich body of Arabic and Turkish material. It is a history full of violence and fear, and also of the difficulty of rebuilding and the success of reintegration — and it can offer hope and a future to Syria and to other communities in the 21st century.

Britain's Middle East Policy Today Cares More About Keeping Britain Prosperous in Future

QDaily: You've said the British government now works with academics more and more, and that this has given you a chance to study British Middle East policy. Can you tell us what you think of that policy? Do you see problems with it?

Eugene Rogan: Britain has a long and complicated relationship with the Middle East: it was a trading partner and a colonial power there, and today it is an ally of so many countries in the region. But after the Arab Spring of 2011 the British government faced change far faster than anything it had prepared for. So what you describe matches what I have seen. Since 2011 the British government has invited me to discuss the Middle East more often than in any earlier period. Every branch of government — the Department for International Development, the Prime Minister's office, Parliament, the Foreign Office — gets excellent intelligence from British diplomats and MI6. So I'm not saying I know more than they do; rather, they clearly recognise that they need to go beyond their traditional sources and reach out to a wider range of academic institutions and think tanks, to get a fuller sense of the trends shaping the Middle East. On the whole, Britain follows very good principles in its relations with other countries.

But since Brexit, Britain has been going through great change. That change will test the British economy, and Britain needs to keep its economic strength. In the short and medium term, Brexit is bound to damage the British economy. So next to keeping its relationships with important trading partners, Britain is now doing less diplomacy and less to stabilise the situation in the Middle East. Britain is keen, for example, to go on selling weapons and industrial goods to the rich Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. That means Britain may not push those countries very hard to settle their differences, and that has produced a badly destabilising crisis across the Gulf. Saudi Arabia and the UAE boycotted Qatar, which put pressure on Kuwait, Oman and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is where you would expect Britain to do more to help resolve the problem.

But Britain does not want to offend Saudi Arabia and the UAE right now, because it wants good trade relations with them before Brexit. I think many diplomats out there are frustrated. Britain's ambassadors are excellent diplomats who want to play a more constructive part in regional diplomacy. But they have to follow the government's priority, which is to keep trade relations solid. So in many ways this is going to be a hard period for British diplomacy in the Middle East. They want to do business; they don't want to be drawn into thorny diplomatic problems.

We saw this in the way Britain marked the Balfour Declaration in 2017. By rights, Britain bears a historical responsibility to Palestinians and to Israelis alike, because it was Britain that encouraged the creation of a Jewish state, and Israel followed. And let's not forget that the suffering of the Palestinians also has its source in the Balfour Declaration. Many diplomats in the Middle East hoped Britain would take a more balanced position in marking the Balfour Declaration. Britain should not simply have commemorated the birth of Israel; it needed a more balanced approach, committed to helping Palestinians achieve their national ambitions. We really talk far too little about what Palestinians want. But in fact what Prime Minister Theresa May commemorated was Israel's achievement.

So rather than caring about the question of historical responsibility, Britain's Middle East policy today cares more about keeping Britain prosperous in future.

QDaily: On the other side, as an American, can you tell us what you think of U.S. Middle East policy? Do you see problems with it? A lot seems to have changed since Trump took office. What are your thoughts?

Eugene Rogan: I can't answer briefly, because it's a big question. If we're going to talk about U.S. Middle East policy, and especially the changes since Trump took office, it would take at least 30 minutes.

Living and Studying in the Arab World Shaped My Whole Life

QDaily: Looking back over your life, what is your intellectual capital?

Eugene Rogan: Living and studying in the Arab world shaped my whole life. I was lucky: I left my own country, the United States, as a child and grew up in Europe and the Middle East. In 1971, at ten, I moved to Lebanon. Lebanon was full of ideology and politics, and war was remaking it; shock and fear were everywhere. In 1973 we lived through a war that ran across the Arab world — the Arab-Israeli War (the Fourth Arab-Israeli War). Because we lived in Lebanon, we then lived through civil war there too, the Lebanese Civil War, and we were forced to leave the country and move to Egypt.

In the three years I lived in Egypt, I watched Anwar Sadat fly to Israel to negotiate peace with the enemy they had always had. I watched it on television with my Egyptian neighbours. It was a great shock; my Egyptian friends did not know whether to call Sadat the greatest Arab hero or the worst Arab dealmaker.

Later I went back to the United States and studied at some of the best academic institutions in the world — Columbia, Harvard — where I could learn from the very best scholars in the field. After that I went back to Jordan and lived there for two years, learning the language, experiencing it first hand.

Since I became a professor at Oxford in 1991, I have had lively and continuous contact with the whole Middle East. For me it has shaped my worldview, and it means I deal with the Arab world with respect. I talk with Arab intellectuals to understand how they see the Arab world. I also argue with them, bringing a very different view to the region, that of an American scholar. Those arguments have been lively, and constructive.

In a way, coming to China excites me too. I have met many Chinese scholars, and I find more and more people in China working on the Middle East. Every time I come to China and talk with Chinese scholars, I appreciate how different their angle on the Middle East is. My Western colleagues and I have gained a lot from it. So my work here keeps being renewed, and keeps being exciting. The part I am most excited about now is working on the Middle East with my Chinese colleagues. I hope it goes on. Having my work published in Chinese is also a good opportunity for deeper discussion. So as you can see, my life has been full of excitement, and contact with China is its newest source.

QDaily: Who has had the greatest influence on you? Why?

Eugene Rogan: That's easy. The person who influenced me most, beyond any doubt, is Albert Hourani. He worked on Arab history at Oxford and was a great professor. When I was a student at Harvard I read every book of his. By the time I was doing my PhD I had the great honour of meeting him while I was still a student. He was a very kind man. I was nervous the first time I met him, but he was so calm that he put you at ease at once. He really helped me settle on my goal of becoming a scholar. So when I finished my PhD and was looking for work, I was astonished to be invited to Oxford to work alongside Hourani. When I got the job, Hourani congratulated me.

We saw each other often for two years before he died in 1993. He contributed in many ways: his view of constructive engagement with the Middle East, and the respected histories he wrote out of Arabic sources. We brought Western historical writing and the analytical skills of Arabic-language scholarship into an active, constructive engagement with the region, and built a bridge between Western and Arab scholars. That shaped not only my work as a scholar but my work as Director of Oxford's Middle East Centre. I want to keep Hourani's legacy alive. I'm delighted to hear that Imaginist will publish a Chinese edition of Hourani's great book A History of the Arab Peoples. I think it is a superb book. I can't wait for Chinese readers to have it. Without any doubt, my mentor is Albert Hourani.

QDaily: Which books have influenced you most over the years?

Eugene Rogan: If you came to my office at Oxford you would see books on all four walls. I have so many that they are not only on the shelves but stacked on the floor of the room. People come in and ask me, have you read all of these? There isn't a book on my shelves I haven't read, but I would probably say I have read a third of them properly. I can't point to any one book. For me, understanding a field means reading a whole library — the Middle East is as varied and complicated as that.

I can think of good books in my field, and I have already mentioned Hourani. Anyone who wants to understand the history of the Arab world from the rise of Islam to the modern age can use his A History of the Arab Peoples as a superb guide. But so many books have influenced me. Come to my office! I'll show you my library. You'll understand what Arabic, Turkish, English and French books have done to me.

QDaily: If you could meet any writer, living or dead, who would it be? What would you want to know?

Eugene Rogan: If I could meet a writer from any period it would certainly be Shakespeare. Because although we know his plays well, we know very little about his life. A lot of research says the plays were not all written by him alone. So a conversation with Shakespeare would be wonderful. I would want to know everything about him — his life, his view of the world. I think he would be a wonderful person to meet.

QDaily: If a young person is interested in modern Middle Eastern history and wants to go deeper into the field, what advice would you give?

Eugene Rogan: I have two pieces of advice for young people in China. First, learn a local language. If you read Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Hebrew, you have a way into Middle Eastern material and can build a bridge of knowledge between the Middle East and China.

Second, they must dig into China's own archives. We are very interested in reading the history of dealings between China and the Middle East, based on the archives of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As far as I know, those archives are open to Chinese scholars. One of my students at Oxford, who reads Chinese and Arabic, wrote an outstanding doctoral thesis on the history of relations between China and the Arab world, looking mainly at Egypt and Algeria. He found some very interesting documents in the Chinese Foreign Ministry archives. I would like to see Chinese scholars go into their archives, publish their work, and then we translate it into English. That way we could learn much more about the history of China and the Middle East from Chinese sources. It would be a real contribution to Middle East studies.

QDaily: Do you have worries about this society?

Eugene Rogan: I have many worries. But as you can probably tell from this interview, I am a very optimistic person. I am always looking for signs of hope and progress. Still, I think the Middle East after the Arab Spring is a zone of conflict. In this period the international community has scattered and stopped intervening; the fires of war burn on and nobody puts them out. I worry deeply about the rights of the Palestinian people in this period. Throughout it, the Israeli government and the American government seem to show no respect at all for their legitimate rights. The conflict between the two sides has lasted so long that the hope of settling it grows dimmer and dimmer.

I think it is unjust. And it becomes a source of tension not only in the Middle East but in international affairs. My feeling is that violence in the Middle East is now in a downward spiral, and it has not hit bottom. I won't be optimistic about this region until I see the dispute settled and the spiral stopped. The international community has given the Arab world an abundance of human resources: well-educated young people. With their help, the Arab world can rebuild a better future. I think that in the 21st century the Arab world can achieve its greatness. But I worry about how they get there from the low point they're in now.

Cover image: a still from the film Where Do We Go Now?, via Douban.