Turning Point: The Arab World's Marginalization and International Security After 9/11

by Robert Daniel Tschirgi

Overview

The danger raised by the terrorist threat is real, existential, and vital to the United States. But the attacks on 9/11 have been broadly misunderstood. In assessing the meaning and significance of the war on terror, Tschirgi raises many issues related to the Middle East and American policy toward that area. For example, he debunks the entire exceptionalist approach to the Arab world (the presumption that Arab societies fail to be fathomed by Western social science). While Tschirgi stresses the need for resolving the war on terrorism favorably, he also suggests two broad policy recommendations. First, he argues that while the United States should maintain its firm commitment to Israel's preservation as a Jewish state, it has no corresponding duty to support Israeli expansionism. U.S.-Israeli relations should proceed on this basis and should be informed by a greater American reliance on principles of international law. Second, Tschirgi concludes that an American withdrawal from Iraq must be effected as early as possible.

Tschirgi's provocative thesis is that the attacks of 9/11 were not as unique an event as we commonly believe. Rather, they were understandable—though deplorable—human reactions to a combination of factors that fueled the Arab world's marginalization and led to a generalized feeling among the people of that region that the West (and particularly the United States) posed a mortal threat to their identity. Employing three case studies of marginalized violent conflict—Mexico's Zapatista conflict, Egypt's struggle against the Gama'a al-Islamiyya in Upper Egypt, and Nigeria's fight against the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta—Tschirgi demonstrates the dynamics through which traditional peoples have in modern times opted to wage hopeless struggle against objectively more powerful states. The parallels between the dynamics that informed each of these situations and those marking the international Muslim insurgency against the West are striking, as are the significant differences between the two phenomena. The parallels are found in the mechanics of marginalization and resistance. The differences lie, first, in the Muslim insurgency's identification of the West as a total enemy and the struggle with it as having a zero-sum nature and, second, in the modern terrorists' potential access to lethal means of mass destruction. Both the parallels and differences that mark the two phenomena help deepen a real understanding of the meaning of 9/11.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275999568
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/30/2007
Series:	Praeger Security International
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Dan Tschirgi is Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. He is the author of The Politics of Indecision: Origins and Implications of American Involvement with the Palestine Problem (Praeger, 1983), The American Search for Mideast Peace (Praeger, 1989), and (with Ann Lesch) Origins and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Greenwood, 1998).

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: THE UNITED STATES AND 9/11
1. The Mystification of 9/11
2. Responding to 9/11: The Implications of Action and the Limits of Discourse
PART II: A TYPE OF ASYMMETRICAL CONFLICT
3. Mexico's Zapatista Rebellion
4. Upper Egypt and the Gama'a al-Islamiyya
5. The Niger Delta's Ogoni Uprising
PART III: THE QUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
6. The Arab World as a World Problem
7. Turbaning Point: Toward Global Security
Notes
Further Reading
Index

What People are Saying About This

Raymond William Baker

"You don't have to agree with all the policy recommendations—I don't—to recognize that Tschirgi has provided an original and insightful comparative analysis of the global challenge of asymmetric warfare we face in the wake of 9/11. This bold and uncompromising assessment provides new insights, such as the startling link between the war in Iraq and the problem of Palestinian refugees, as well as a compelling general case for the logic of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. At a time when dabblers and dilettantes all too often dominate, how fortunate to have this thoughtful work from an established scholar with decades of experience in the complex world he analyzes."

Tareq Ismael

"Although 9/11 is widely recognized as a turning point in world history, the event has become shrouded in narratives of blame and contention. Professor Tschirgi's work restores the integrity of social scientific analysis by forsaking the intellectual blind spots that becloud rational discourse on the topic. Turning Point is a sophisticated work that will generate healthy debate about policy alternatives for other scholars to build on and policy makers to ponder. It is an important and welcome addition to the literature on 9/11."

Bennett Ramberg

"Dan Tschirgi's Turning Point provides an important new intellectual tool to contextualize the implications of 9/11 and move beyond. Applying his novel Marginalized Violent Internal Conflict Theory to three cases—Mexico's Zapatista conflict, Egypt's struggle against the Gamaa al-Islamiyya and Nigeria's fight against the Ogoni People in the Niger Delta—Tschirgi uniquely elucidates the roots of today's Islamic insurgency against the West through the struggles other marginalized peoples have faced to preserve their own identities. The resulting insights inform an action plan that policy makers cannot ignore."

Editorial Reviews

It makes sense to understand the reasoning of those you oppose-even if doing so exposes you to truths about yourself that you do not want to see. Tschirgi rejects simplistic slogans-particularly the idea the Arab world is somehow exceptional, or that 9/11 is a product of an unreasoning hatred of American freedom-and offers a comparative analysis of the conditions underlying asymmetric conflict….The writing is a model of clarity, the arguments are well reasoned, and whatever one thinks of its conclusions, it is a book that deserves a wide audience. Recommended. All readership levels.” —Choice

“…U.S. policymakers would have done better, Dan Tschirgi asserts to recognize a peculiar form of 'asymmetrical war' that characterizes the contemporary world (p.70). This kind of warfare, the topic of the second essay, includes the Zapatista uprising (chapter 3), the activities of the Islamic group al-Jama'ah al-Istalmiyyah (chapter4), and the emergence of the Ogoni movement (chapter 5). Each of these conflicts erupted out of widespread frustration engendered by the impact of globalization on peripheral and thereby disadvantaged locales: Chiapas, Upper Egypt, and the Niger River delta, respectively. The primary 'lesson' of these episodes is that 'chronic marginalization can eventually promote the option of launching an asymmetrical conflict against all odds, and that possibilities of such a decision increase when the insurrectionary ideology is linked to a worldview that sees empirical reality as subordinate to the dictates of a higher transcendental reality' (p.115).” —Political Science Quarterly

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