The Burden of Old Countries
Iran, Israel, USA, and the things young countries can learn from old ones
Old countries have seen it all, the rise and fall of multiple empires, rulers and tyrants of every stripe, wars and power struggles, triumphs and great tragedies, and over the years the idea of the ‘country’ emerges as the maintenance of a civilisational spirit across these thousands of years of evolution. I come from an old country in which countless cultures have risen and fallen, languages were born and have died, an engine of cultural production that has been in continuous operation for more than 3000 years - it is the thread that ties me to my ancestors and my land.
You might remind me that the modern nation-state occupying this land today is young, not quite a century old, and that is true. The nation is a bureaucratic construct, but the country is something else. It is the cultural memory of our ancestors living on in our hearts and minds, a guilty pride, a lingering sadness about things we no longer remember having lost. The weight of history rests heavily on our shoulders, pushing our feet into the earth - it’s a type of rootedness we accept as inevitable, rather than actively seek.
What does all this have to do with Israel, the United States and Iran? As this long expected game of geopolitical tit-for-tat intensifies, I think it’s a good time to remind ourselves of their histories, the ideological narratives guiding their actions, and reflect on what it can tell us about the difference between young and old countries.
Bolstered by technological dominance and economic heft in recent years, the US and Israel have clear ambitions of establishing hegemonic control over the Middle East, advancing the project with cocksure chest thumping and bravado. A lot of this rhetoric is based on a narrative of invincibility that is unfortunately divorced from historical perspective. In fact, perhaps the most egregious intelligence failure on the part of the United States and Israel is failing to understand how history works. All empires fall eventually, and the reasons why can only be grasped in retrospect. As a young country, and the world’s newest empire, the USA has yet to face its first reckoning, the trial by fire that could either eviscerate it, or cement its name in history as one of the great civilizations of the world.
The USA turns 250 next year, still enough of a spring chicken that many of its citizens continue to bear hyphenated identities. That is, the consciousness that they have come from elsewhere, even if they can never go back to it. Do they hate the natives because of their absolute sense of belonging that they themselves lack? That appears to be the case for at least some. The white man of the settler state is an awkward, anxious creature, and all us old world folk recognise it. They seem to sit lightly on their land, which is the best way in which I can explain what I felt during my time as an exchange student in the US many years ago. I got the impression that most Americans were not burdened by the weight of history in quite the way we were, which I still acknowledge as quite a positive thing.
America has always been a future-oriented kind of place. What they lack in history, they’ve made up for in their searing newness, making it a hotbed of innovation, of outrageously novel ideas, new religions, new identities, new everything. What they lack however, is the caution and cynicism that comes from the repeated collapse and rebuilding of Empire. Still young enough to fear their own destruction, they have spent decades pre-emptively bombing and toppling governments they feared would one day pose a threat to them. The Red Scare, Vietnam, the Middle East, China - someone somewhere is always on the verge of annihilating America and Western civilisation. It is a very new country sort of sentiment.
Iran meanwhile went through its imperialist expansionist phase about two millennia ago. In its heyday the Persian Empire was the largest civilisational entity in the known world, with their influence stretching from Egypt to Northern India. But like all empires, it too fell - not once but several times. The Achaemenids, the Parthians, the Sassanians and the Safavids all came and went, in a long and hoary procession. I get the feeling that its restrained diplomatic response in the wake of current aggravations stems from the hard lessons of history.
You might think that’s silly, that the fates of ancient empires could have any bearing on contemporary geopolitics, but someone from an old country will tell you otherwise. The past leaves its mark on the collective unconscious of our societies, it manifests in our cultural practices, belief systems and societal values. It appears in our world-weariness, and our ancestral wisdom.
Its recklessness and toxic nationalism reveal a society unmolested by history, lacking the good sense that comes from failure and its repercussions.
To understand what I mean, we only need to look at Israel. Just by observing closely one can tell, without a shadow of doubt, that it is a young nation, a veritable child. Its actions speak for themselves. Its recklessness and toxic nationalism reveal a society unmolested by history, lacking the good sense that comes from failure and its repercussions. Unfortunately, its infantile tantrums could unravel the whole nation-building project long before they discover any authentic sense of identity. The fledgling state appears unaware of how the world works, and that would be fine if they were willing to learn. But they insist on being the problem child - they don’t care for rules of engagement in a conflict, and lack the dignity and poise of those rooted in a land and in history. Look at them burning down the ancient Palestinian olive groves. What kind of responsible adult does that to their own so-called ‘home’?
Their concept of ‘nation’ is held up by an artifice of rhetoric and symbols that ultimately ring hollow. Of course, Jewish identity is meaningful and ancient, but let’s be real and admit that Israeli identity nowadays is hardly the same as Jewish identity. Jewish identity does not need Israel to survive, because like Iran it was forged in the deep pits of time, and bears a torturous and admirable heritage.
This is exactly why any attempt to circumscribe the whole of Jewish identity within the zionist nation-state is foolhardy and futile. Israeli identity is tenuous at best, a slapdash assemblage of regional identities, which leads to deep insecurity, and consequently, recklessness - like a teenager without a fully developed sense of self acting out against the world. It would be funny if its actions weren’t so horrifying. In the face of their immature belligerence, Iran has reacted with exasperated caution, in the manner of an adult who thinks, ‘someday you’ll grow up and understand, you little punk.’
The images of thousands of Israeli citizens fleeing at the first sign of danger during the recent conflict, are the clearest signs of Israel’s fragile hold on nationhood. The Iranians on the other hand, like the Palestinians, have nowhere else to run. This is the double-edged sword of true belonging. The absence of an ‘elsewhere’ to run away results in a remarkable resilience, pride and dignity even in the face of overwhelming horrors.
As this conflict began to intensify, we could hear western commentators stating that Tehran could fall in a week. They seemed confident that its people would capitulate to foreign interests and support regime change at all costs. What this revealed to me is that young countries have no idea how old countries work. It indicates a shallow notion of nationhood, a superfluous, utilitarian identity articulated in the language of capitalist interests and cynical realpolitik. It will be many generations before this evolves into something more rooted and resilient.
Israel and to a lesser extent, the United States have to contend with many more cycles of growth and collapse, dominance and disillusionment, reckonings and revivals, before they secure their place in the world. In this regard I do believe the latter is better poised to make it through, despite currently being drunk on absolute power. At least the founding principles of the nation are purportedly based on universalist human values. Despite its deplorable history of slavery and indigenous genocide, the US has nevertheless welcomed the world onto its shores, and comes closest to being a truly global society. So while the crisis, when it comes, will be bleak and punitive, it seems likely that the US will ultimately survive.
The same can’t be said for Israel, whose existence is threatened by its own actions. It is such a tragedy that the Jewish people, after centuries of persecution, pogroms and the Holocaust, now find themselves in a position where they have to justify a genocide of another people in order to secure their own survival, the logic of a thoroughly traumatised society that has played into the hands of its original oppressors, who despite all the hand-wringing post-WW II, ultimately succeeded in evicting them from Europe, cynically offsetting their ‘burden’ onto the unsuspecting Arabs of the Levant. That Zionism’s primary and sole intention was the permanent isolation of the Jews, or that Israel is in a true sense the largest Jewish ghetto in existence, an artificially created ideological nightmare, is a fact that most people, especially Israelis themselves, largely choose to ignore.
This is a perilous path to take towards nationhood, and the Israeli people need to exercise great caution, or their entire project will collapse like a house of cards. Unfortunately, it seems like they are poised to commit the same mistakes that many old countries already committed centuries ago, including many whose names we no longer remember If they want to live on as something more than a mere footnote in history, they would do well to grow up, stop antagonising their elders, and prepare to embrace the burdens of old countries - humility, cautious pride, and a reverent indebtedness to their land.
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