Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Deepa Kumar
November of 1898, included not only figures like Mark Twain but also prominent mainstream politicians. This trend of opposition in the mainstream was mitigated over the course of the twentieth century; nevertheless, it gave rise to an image of the United States as being a different kind of world power—different, that is, from the “old-style imperialism” of Europe.
This dynamic was played out concretely in the postwar era. The upheavals of World War II weakened the older empires and created a bipolar world oriented around two new powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In this context, the United States hoped to loosen the aging imperial powers’ grips on their colonial territories. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations therefore claimed to support anticolonial national liberation movements; concretely, they announced their intention to aid developing nations by supporting projects that would build infrastructure and foster economic growth. But this economic aid came at a price—they demanded political allegiance. For instance, the United States first sought to bring Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt under its wing through promises of financial aid. Nasser flirted with the Soviet Union, though, and the Eisenhower administration punished him by reneging on its promise to provide funding for the construction of a dam in Aswan. Nasser promptly nationalized the Suez Canal, which led Britain, France, and Israel to launch a war on Egypt. The United States (and the USSR) then intervened on Nasser’s side, allowing Egypt to finally get rid of its former colonial master—Britain. This example reveals the carrot-and-stick approach that the American elite employed again and again during the Cold War: using monetary incentives to win allies, punishing them when they strayed, but also acting to weaken the hold of former colonizer nations when possible.
Secretary of state John Foster Dulles said of the Suez crisis that what “the British and French have done is nothing but the straight, old-fashioned variety of colonialism of the most obvious sort.”33 In contrast, the United States crafted a new model of imperialism on the basis of what Melani McAlister has called “benevolent supremacy.” This model was premised on the notion that an American-dominated world would ensure liberty and democracy for all through the mechanism of free-market capitalism. Henry Luce, publisher of the magazines Life and Time, captured this new global role for the United States in an editorial titled “The New American Century.” He argued that the United States was a “Good Samaritan” that would bring about “Freedom and Justice” around the world in the postwar period.34
McAlister states that, at the policy level, “benevolent supremacy” meant linking “US economic and military strength to a program that was anticommunist, anticolonial, and supportive of free markets.”35 The policy of anticolonialism was about supplanting the old colonial powers and was therefore highly selective. The United States supported anti-colonial struggles in some cases where its aims coincided with those of the anticolonialists but thwarted other struggles (for instance, it came in on the side of France in Algeria and Indochina), and it had a few of its own colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Above all, newly decolonized nations were not to oppose economic imperialism and the United States’ access to markets and investment opportunities around the world. Sidney Lens explains that Washington’s strategy revolved around three goals: to establish an “open door” policy that allowed the United States to enter into otherwise blocked-off markets and to establish multinational trade as the pillar of economic policy; to weaken and isolate forces that opposed the open door (which included the former colonial powers as well as radical nationalists and communists); and to gain, as President Kennedy put it, “influence and control” over pliant governments, typically right-wing, through “grants and loans with conditions attached to them, military aid, equipment and training of puppet armies, military pacts, CIA-sponsored revolts, and on occasion, when these other methods were inadequate . . . direct intervention by U.S. armed forces themselves.”36
This new form of imperialism required a new language; that language was called “modernization theory.” Area studies in the United States were dominated by this approach from the 1950s to the 1970s. Modernization theory draws on the work of Max Weber, distinguishing between “traditional” and “modern” societies. Traditional societies were agricultural and rural, slow to change, and politically authoritarian. Modern societies, on the other hand, were seen as industrial, quick to change, and politically democratic and egalitarian. The scholars who developed this approach offered various explanations for why traditional societies did not progress; some pointed to cultural factors, others to economic ones. At the end of the day, it was agreed that change would not come from within these societies but had to be brought from outside.
In short, it was a new way to divide the world into “us” and “them.” According to the theorists of modernization, “our” society was dynamic, scientifically oriented, rational, supportive of individual development, democratic, and egalitarian, whereas “their” societies were static, hidebound, despotic, and authoritarian. What was needed, then, was Western intervention to “help” traditional societies make the transition to modernity. This view was not so different from earlier Orientalist notions, but it was wrapped in the credibility of social science. Modernization theorists didn’t speculate about contemporary societies based on classical texts: they conducted empirical research and gathered data which was evaluated using quantitative data analysis techniques. This time it was real science—it had to be correct!
Daniel Lerner, author of the highly influential book The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, argued that people who live in modern societies are distinguished by their personalities, which he explained in psychological terms. Modern individuals have “empathy,” which allows them to see themselves in the shoes of others and therefore to visualize and make possible social mobility. Traditional individuals do not have this capacity and are therefore in need of Western influence to help them shed their old, static ways.37 Lerner’s method of analysis was based on social scientific methods and the use of quantitative data. In the field of mass communication, Everett Rogers published Diffusion of Innovations, which studied how new ideas could be spread in traditional societies. Rogers concluded that those who were not open to “innovation” introduced by the West were best understood as “laggards.”38 In short, those who resisted Western propaganda/“innovation” were seen not as individuals acting in their own interests but rather as hidebound traditionalists blocking progress.
While Orientalism and modernization theory each had its own research traditions and methods, both shared a polarized view of the world: the East was inferior and the West was superior. Since neither theory could see change coming about internally in Eastern societies, both argued for Western intervention, which they claimed would benefit native/traditional peoples. Overall, few if any questioned the premise that research on the Middle East (and in area studies in general) should be tailored to meet the needs of the US government. This was the dominant trend until the 1970s. At that point, various factors, particularly the impact of successful national liberation struggles on the field of Middle East studies, led to a flurry of books and articles critical of both Orientalism and modernization theory.
Despite these critiques, the Orientalist and modernization schools of thought continued to flourish. In fact, they came together in the form of Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist. In an essay published in the influential journal Foreign Affairs in 1968, Huntington drew on modernization theory to justify the United States’ massive bombing of the Vietnamese countryside. Later, in the post–Cold War world, Huntington developed Lewis’s concept of the “clash of civilizations” and helped to popularize Orientalist scholarship.
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This chapter focused on the birth of Orientalism in Europe during the period of modern colonialism, discussing the ways in which Orientalism as a body of thought was tied directly to the project of imperial conquest. While the story starts in Europe, it continues in the United States, which took over the mantle of colonial overlord in the “Muslim world” after World War II. The United States envisioned itself as a different kind of world power than “old Europe,” and its imperial interests were projected through the lens of “benevolence.” In essence, this meant anticommunism and free-market capitalism. Modernization theory emerged in this context to serve the needs of the “new” empire. Yet Orientalism’s prestige and the emigration of Orientalist scholars from Europe to area studies programs in the United States meant that it too was influential in the political