I’m assigning two required readings for Tuesday, February 9 on Nasser’s Arab socialism. One of them is on the St. Edward’s Library website, so you’ll need to log in to view it. It’s located here. The second is a reflection on the Arab Spring and the legacy of Nasser, located here. I’m also providing this optional reading for anyone who wants the challenge of reading advanced scholarship on authoritarianism and democratization in Nasser’s Egypt.
The big question I want us to answer through our discussions on Tuesday is: What lessons can we learn from Nasser’s Egypt that we can bring to the debate on democratization?
I’ll take a few minutes at the beginning of class to explain some things about the Muslim Brotherhood and its conflicts with Nasser. We’ll spend some time then analyzing the consensus on democratization from CIG and then using what we learn from the articles to see how the two authors would view the status of democracy in Nasser’s Egypt.
We’ll watch a couple of videos to start off today.
Nationalization of the Suez Canal:
Nasser debating Naguib on revolution and democracy:
Nasser on the Muslim Brotherhood:
Here’s how we’ll handle our discussion of the CIG chapter and the readings on Nasser:
In some medium-sized groups (maybe 5 or 6 people), imagine that you’re President Eisenhower’s cabinet in the late 1950s and you’re evaluating the idea of US support for Abdel Nasser’s government in Egypt. In terms of the debate on democratization, what rationale would your group give to say that the US should or should not support Abdel Nasser, and if so in what ways would you? Consider whether you believe that democratization or security are stronger ideals for the United States.
It would be ideal, as usual, if someone in each group would post notes of your group’s discussion on this blog post as a comment.
perspective 1:
Nasser should stay and promote democracy from a western perspective. Would benefit the United States.
Nasser was very liked by his people. Democracy would create a possible ally.
perspective 2:
Causing more trouble than good. Nasser prefers nationalism so it wouldn’t benefit outside states. Democratic nations tend to collapse faster than monarchies. Missing public dialects would just oppress the people. Nasser would want resources for themselves, wouldn’t want to give them to the U.S.
U.S. would gain no resource benefits but would still be allied with Egypt which could help in future.
Knowing the state and mentality of the United States at the time was an important factor in our decision. Just coming out of World War II we advise Eisenhower to not directly act or support Nasser, but let them create there own identity. At the point where their identity threatens any of our interest we will then reconsider acting. Indirectly, Eisenhower took other preventative actions in the Middle East.
Group Members: Courtney Guy-Barnett, Mary Kathryn Cook, Jennifer Hernandez, Mutlaq Alshammari, Chris Thomas
Currently no, the current state of Egypt under Nasser does not have the infrastructure necessary to necessitate a democracy. We would lend support because we would want to build a long term plan to build a democracy, but first we need to let them grow infrastructure in accordance to remaining neutral. Democratization is a strong ideal for the US.
Ana Acosta
Michael Portier
Phillip Valdez
Samantha Foster
Eyad, Collin, Miles, Jack and Audrey
We agreed that democratization wouldn’t necessarily result in success because of the religious tensions with their neighbors in Saudi Arabia. During the 1950’s what was more concerning to our national security interest? The spread of communism into Asia or extremism? As we saw w/Egypt, their “free elections” resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood taking the leadership, completely controlling the military and responsible for significant corruption. Egypt developed the non-alliance pact: developing states as an alternative super power; gave no allegiance (1956) before nationalizing the Suez Canal. During the time, Nasser disagreed with communism, which was our largest threat to national security, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Nasser was a viable ally. The United States has repeatedly shown its inability to police the world’s issues, and our paternalistic efforts to “save” regimes or countries are not always realistic long-term. The very fact that our elections potentially provide a new president every term can demolish foreign policy aid or efforts to instill democratization in another country is not guaranteed. Inviting Nasser to participate with NATO would be the best option.
Our decision was to get involved at a distance. We want to support democratization without getting overly involved. The goal is to get them on our side without them wanting to join the Soviets. To do this, we hope to give them monetary funding and public aid – money to buy weapons.
We want to get involved but it is also a matter of security. It’s a very dicey situation. Each option has repercussions. On one hand, we want to get involved especially to better ourselves in terms of security and building a relationship/ally, but on the other hand, we don’t want to get too involved to the point where we are no longer letting them operate on their own terms as a country. We want to support democratization as much as possible.
Joe Pouttu, Austin Marshall, Nathalie Phan