Congrès Mondial des Études sur le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord

Barcelone, du 19 au 24 Juillet 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: University of Padua / University of Florence (Italy)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Massimiliano Trentin & Matteo Gerlini

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The Cold War rivalry had never been merely a conflict between two superpowers with competing geopolitical ambitions: the US and the USSR carried the flag of capitalist and socialist paths to modernity and the two alternative ideological systems soon translated into geopolitical realities. The end of colonial empires, the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the birth of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) contributed to set the framework for a global, bipolar competition: the main issues at stake for establishing a new standard of conduct in international relations were political independence and economic development. Both concepts were structurally embedded within the notion of modernity because the sovereign, fast-growing nation-state was to be the basic unit for political action and economic organization. The need for change in the so called Third World was first emphasised by the rising postcolonial elites who were generally aware of the opportunities as well as of the risks: they could exploit the competition to extract the best possible offers, but their national priorities could well be undermined by the politics of the bipolar conflict. If the NAM tried to set up a common framework, such issues translated differently in every single region: in the post-colonial Middle East, security mainly involved central state consolidation over centrifugal forces and defence against external interventions, while development primarily meant industrialization as a strategy for national production and social reproduction.
The Panel Series bring together scholars who willfocus on the interplay between diplomacy, politics and economics which shaped the international relations of the Middle East from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s: of particular interests will be contributions dealing with the changes in the patterns of diplomatic dealings, the political salience of the transfer of technology and know-how as well as of models of industrial development and institutional reform.

The first subpanel will deal with four contributions concerning the process of state-building and economic development in Syria, Sudan, Algeria and Jordan in the period stretching from the mid-Fifties to the early Seventies of the XX century. All the papers will focus on the dynamic interplay between the domestic factors and the external influences which shaped much of the economies and politics of those states.
Far from being neutral issues, economic development and the paths to achieve it differed greatly along the region and their control was crucial in the struggle to change or consolidate the elites’ rule within the countries. Moreover, the region was neither isolated nor “exceptional” to the economic and political trends spreading all over the world: though the doctrines of central planning and free-market economy being “captured” by the superpower rivalry, actually, state-led development proved quite a common feature for all the economies concerned. Thus, the papers will highlight how international trends were domesticated to the economic and political priorities of the states under scrutiny.

Chair: Prof. Marta Petricioli (University of Florence, Italy)

Paper presenter: Massimiliano Trentin (University of Padua, Italy), “Die pragmatische Politik des improvisierten Sozialismus. The GDR advisors in Syria, 1965-1972”
After political independence in 1946, debates arose in Syria over which patterns of development the country should take, as well as which foreign experience could be accounted as a suitable reference: most of the political élites still related to the Western Europe. However, after recovering from the ruins of WWII and enforcing speedy patterns of growth and industrialization, the socialist states offered themselves as alternative models for development and postcolonial states. The German Democratic Republic played a significant role in the Middle East that was quite peculiar to it. Excluded from any direct military engagement abroad, it could focus foreign intervention on two key-fields: technological and capital transfer and vocational training for political and administrative elites. The rise in power of the Ba'th Party in 1963 favoured the GDR in transferring its organizational models for state-building. For thetime being, centralization of power in state-building process and political rationality attached to industrial growth were some of the core features of the Ba'thist reforms. The GDR contributed by sending several advisors both at technical and ministeriallevels: most of their suggestions were later translated into law and partially shaped the new Syrian regime and the related state power (Staatsmacht). However, their contributions were deeply affected by Syrian domestic dynamics: the nationalizations in 1965, the June 1967 defeat, power dualism (izdiwajiyyat is sultah) and the eventual success of Hafiz al Assad and his 'Corrective Movement'. The paper will offer an insight on the theories as well as the actual practices concerning the GDR consultacy from 1965 to 1972 when reforms and counter-reforms followed quickly and set many of the most enduring features of the Syrian regime. The paper will exploit the research that the author developed for his doctoral thesis. The primary sources are based on the German federal archives in Berlin (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisation der DDR), on German and Syrian published collections, on regional and international literature as well as on oral interviews with Syrian and former GDR officials.

Paper presenter: Giulia Tantini (University of Florence, Italy), “Algeria, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Bipolar System: State-building and Development models, 1962-1976”
The development of independent Algeria got through the influence of the bipolar competition, but also reflected the widespread features, the peculiarities and the diplomatic evolution of post-colonial countries. Yet before independence, Algeria joined the Non Aligned Movement in 1961, thus rejecting allegiance to Western and Eastern blocks. The strong revolutionary character of the Algerian independence became an example for other NAM countries, and the political leadership was affected by the nationalist and/or leftwing ideological strands discussed since the Bandung conference.
The Algerian path to socialism was first inspired by the Yugoslavian model of self-management and forced industrialisation, which were deemed to be necessary to build up a modern state. In the process of strengthening the state and the FLN party and with the aim of national unity and regional stability, the defence of anti-imperialism, the struggle against racism and the support to Panafricanism and Arabism all brought Algeria under the umbrella of the Sovietaid system: Algiers became the latter’s second African receiving country after Egypt. However, loyal to the principles of “Active Neutrality”, the US grew into the first economic partner of Algiers in the ‘70s, providing the know-how and technologies for the exploitation of oil and gas.

Paper presenter: Jamie Allinson (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom), “Jordanian alignment in the Nasserist era: rethinking 'the State and the Tribe'”
The survival of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan through the Arab nationalist upsurge of the 1950s confounded the expectations of domestic and foreign observers alike. Unlike other Arab monarchies, during the popular mobilizations in Jordan in 1955-8 the lower army ranks remained largely loyal, consequently determining Jordan’s alignment in the ‘Arab Cold War’ and forming a pivotal moment for inter-Arab politics. Yet existing accounts of the sources of Jordanian foreign policy - Stephen Walt’s balance of threat, Laurie Brand’s budget security and Curtis Ryan’s regime security models - remain bound to implicitly or explicitly neo-realist assumptions that do not adequately explain Hussein's successful response to the Arab nationalist threat. This paper argues instead that the sources of Hussein's successful response to Arab nationalism lay in the historical sociology of Transjordan, and specifically in a Middle Eastern version of the process of ‘uneven and combined development. The paper identifies two phases in the Jordanian Hashemite response to Arab nationalism: 1) an initial turning towards Nasser and an opening towards the JNM that comprised the rejection of the Baghdad Pact, the expulsion of British Officers from the armed forces, the election of a JNM government and the abrogation of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty 2) A return to a decisivepro-Western alignment based on the ‘palace coup’ of April 1957 and confirmed with the acceptance of US aid under the Eisenhower doctrine and the formation of the Arab Union with pre-revolutionary Hashemite Iraq in February 1958.This paper will argue instead that these variations in alignment are best explained by the clash of social forces produced by uneven and combined development. The paper follows Tell in examining the material basis of the King Hussein’s support in the military. It identifies the pattern of land settlement as a major factor in the militarization of the bedouin as a pro-monarchical force. Further, it is argued that the origins of this land settlement are best viewed through the concept of uneven and combined development, by which capitalist property norms were adopted and adapted in the Trans-Jordanian steppe. The paper draws on fieldwork carried out in Jordan in 2008-9 to make this argument.