Orientalism and East and West Conflicts

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
East-West and Ethnicity
East-West Conflict
Global Conflict
A Marketing Ploy
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Orientalism and east and west conflicts remain one of the many offshoots of individualism and an attempt at a deeper understanding to improve cosmopolitanism. While these conflicts may be traced through historical accounts about the Greek, Roman, and or even the Ottoman empires, it has today evolved into a more economic structure that is either translated into war or terrorism depending on who is accusing and who is the accused.

Today, the lines are blurred as to determine whether it should be an east or west conflict as it could also be any form of war against one ethnic group by a whole nation or a whole group of a World Trade Organization. It could also be a “war on terror” or a war against a certain house on one street identified by the US Home Defense or Security as a “terrorist den.”

What it has become is a matter of discretion, and to whose discretion the masses of the world will never really point on too.

This paper shall try to provide a personal understanding and interpretation of written discourses on Orientalism and east and west conflicts.

Discussion

“Orientalism”, it seems has been popularized by the publication of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” book that somehow presented views on the attitude of Western scholars on “eastern” peoples in general. As Sered (1996) commented, the book underscored the Western depictions of “Arab” cultures with “the Arab” as irrational, menacing, untrustworthy, anti-Western, dishonest, and prototypical. These, it seemed are ideas into which Orientalist scholarship has evolved which until today still has an impact on modern conflicts between nations, or even groups within a certain locality.

East-West and Ethnicity

About Pamuk, a summation of The White Castle is that it is a fiction that tries to bridge an understanding between whatever “east-west” analogy concerned individuals may have. It is in dialogue format a novel about modernization and narrated by a young Venetian scholar and engineer. The narration unfolds about the early 17th century when the narrator was captured by the Turks and taken to Istanbul. He becomes the slave of a minor Turkish courtier called Hoja or a teacher obsessed with restoring the superiority of the Ottoman Empire over the Europeans. Hoja forces the narrator to teach him science starting with the truth — Ptolemaic astronomy. The teacher and the narrator spend a lot of their time trying to get inside each other heads trying to complement the East-meets-West theme with vivid mind-games

They discuss the construction of orreries, about weapons on mass destruction, among other things including mutual moral abuse. A plague arrives but is halted by public health measures instituted by the narrator and Hoja. There are scenes of piles of dead bodies and scenes about the decadence of courts, and an opportunity for Hoja to put his ideas into practice, in the form of a weapon to be employed against the Poles, symbolism of White Castle. But it turns out a failure that reverses fortune.

East-West Conflict

Kaplan (1993) has pointed out that much discussion of international affairs has been based on the misleading assumption that the world is fraught with primordial ethnic conflict. Ethnic groups nourish age-old hatreds and restrained powerful states. Fragmentation of the world into small tribal groups, a face-off among several vast civilizational coalitions as fueled by age-old ethnic loyalties and cultural differences are predictions.

Bowen (1996) contends that diverse people can coexist making “ethnic conflict” a misguided way to speak about any or all violent confrontations between groups of people living in one locality. While some of these conflicts involve ethnic or cultural identity, many are about having more power, land, and other resources. An ethnic conflict then boils down to false assumptions of: first, those ethnic identities are anachronistic and unchanging; second, those identities drive people to persecute and kill; and lastly, that ethnic diversity leads to violence.

It has been proposed that ethnicity is a product of modern politics; that people have had identities either derived from religion, birthplace, language, or any form of culture. Citing the Balkan conflict between Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians, Bowen (1996) proposed that violence does not lie in primordial ethnic and religious differences but in modern attempts to rally people about nationalist ideas so that ethnicity becomes nationalism. Beneath are aspirations to gain a monopoly of land, resources, and power, a learned and frequently manipulated set of ideas.

Global Conflict

Amnesty International and the Trans Arms, however, proposed another interesting view that the world’s weapon producers soak up meager funds badly needed by the third world and war-torn economies (Africa Research Bulletin, 2006), mostly defining the eastern and western divide. The report said, “…businessmen based in the West are supplying arms to the conflicts through highly lucrative ‘grey market’ […] The role of private contractors has become increasingly important in this rampant free market, particularly in the 35 countries whose exports make up 90% of the arms trade […] What laws do exist are primarily intended to protect the West, and the US in particular, from the threat of terrorism, rather than to prevent human rights abuses elsewhere…”

A view on east-west or even global conflict is about the ‘just war tradition’ understood as an extended conversation exploring the legitimacy of war, a justification to abandon talks in favor of violence. Discourse presented by Bellamy (2006) includes legality versus legitimacy pf which legitimacy balances three sets of values embedded in the just war tradition: positive law, natural law and realism or law, morality, and politics. He describes the views of jurists, theologians, philosophers, and prices in developing and applying ‘just war’ principles.

The most recent east-west divide is the recently but not yet concluded war on Iraq.

Roy et al (2006) provides a very interesting if not the exact view needed to clearly understood what Amnesty International and trans Arms imply. It samples a kind of marketing psychology that war economies prefer, underlying east and west issues.

A Marketing Ploy

Roy et al (2006) proposed that the global war on terror or WOT roots in the assessment that terrorism is to be found in the Middle East and that Iraq tops the list of the worst worrisome and troublesome country thereby earning the unnecessary attention of the American present regime. While the priority was only to topple Saddam Hussein and establish a stable, democratic Iraq, the plan failed with many negative effects.

To underscore the effects of this east-west issue, there was a diversion of troops and resources of a western country the US from another eastern country Afghanistan. Then, Roy et al (2006) pointed out that a second mistake was in using the war as a real strategy as compared to a metaphor. Another individual target, Osama bin Laden is alive, and that Al-Qaida works without state support. The western armies are taunted to be overstretched and incapable to address new long-term threats and challenges where the WOT has increased tensions, enhanced both religious radicalism and Arab nationalism, as well as promoted Iran as the current leading country in the area.

The paper focused on the failure of democratization that among others should be rooted in nationalism and Islam and give political legitimacy to the whole process. It has also underscored the failure attributing it to the hesitance in increasing military pressure by the Bush administration in Iraq. It criticized that “The Israeli army has been unable to disarm the Hezbollah. The United Nations troops will be unable and unwilling to do it. Civil war is increasing in Iraq, and Iran seems to have a rather free hand in the area. But there is no real endeavor from Washington to draw practical conclusions and engage local actors with a clear political agenda.” (Roy et al, 2006, p. 7).

Likewise, Roy et al (2006) wrote that “The mix of arrogance and impotence leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy: Conflicts that have their specific roots (Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq) and that could have and should have been dealt with separately are now lumped together into a “global jihad.” (Roy et al, 2006, p. 8).

While they proposed that, “The ultimate issue is how to prevent angry young Muslims (underscore mine) from connecting with their mainstream co-religionists. The answer is to separately address the different issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, democratization of the Middle East and Islam in the West,” (Roy et al, 2006, p. 8).

Bowen (19960 has a better opinion: “What the myth of ethnic conflict would say are ever-present tensions are in fact the products of political choices. Negative stereotyping, fear of another group, killing lest one be killed–these are the doings of so-called leaders, and can be undone by them as well. Believing otherwise, and assuming that such conflicts are the natural consequences of human depravity in some quarters of the world, leads to perverse thinking and perverse policy. It makes violence seem characteristic of a people or region, rather than the consequence of specific political acts. Thinking this way excuses inaction, as when U.S. president Bill Clinton, seeking to retreat from the hard-line Balkan policy of candidate Clinton, began to claim that Bosnians and Serbs were killing each other because of their ethnic and religious differences. Because it paints all sides as less rational and less modern (more tribal, more ethnic) than “we” are, it makes it easier to tolerate their suffering. Because it assumes that “those people” would naturally follow their leaders’ call to kill, it distracts us from the central and difficult question of just how and why people are sometimes led to commit such horrifying deeds.” (Bowen, 1996, p 13)

Conclusion

When it comes to Orientalism, or the east-west conflict if ever there is one that exists, has many academic expositions intelligent enough to promote pacifist, to prefer talks over arms. But elsewhere, it has been admitted that economic and marketing forces are the stronger of the voices.

There are many such talks about division, ethnicity, conflict, and separation of groups or individuals when global trade is pushed without boundaries as Moslems with credit cards purchase in a matter of seconds goods or services from Christians or atheists located in the United States, or Europe, or within the NAFTA group.

One amusing discourse is of Roy and company about Iran as a leading country in the Middle East. This could well be easily outshone by the fact that Iraq or its people are still reeling and dying due to the atrocities of the WOT. Then, there is the study provided by Amnesty International and the Trans Arms about stacking and distribution of Western weaponry among conflicting “ethnic groups” in countries outside weapons manufacturers (western).

Another issue of note is the currently continuing harassment done by the US government towards Iran and its unproven weapons of mass destruction.

If we study closely, “weapons of mass destruction” have always been pointed and blatantly used against “other” countries. However, weapons of mass destruction as academic and economic resources prove are sourced from western suppliers and that it has not yet been proven that ‘eastern’ antagonists used these weapons at all, or that there are concealed, secret manufacturing sites for these at all.

The US, and its allies, continue to provoke ‘uncooperative’ “eastern” nations to abide by their “trade” rules characterized by mass production of goods consumed mainly in Western countries while eastern countries have to consume leftovers from Western countries, if not need more “sophisticated” gadgets and technologies that make them globally competitive. Competition, of course, would encompass internal strength and weaponry. Otherwise, “war economies” would collapse, and there ends the east and west divide.

It is therefore necessary that “east-west conflicts” be regarded as just another marketing tactic that is needed as much as “weapons of mass destruction” are coined to promote arms consumption. Trade has crept on every loophole of the human system to exploit and tempt consumers from all walks of life, living or half-breathing included. War economies will remain as competitive in their marketing strategies, as sooner or later, “young angry Muslim” consumers might soon become educated, if not learned, and start outing down their arms. Let us all strive for the day.

References

Bellamy, Alex (2006).Just wars: from Cicero to Iraq. Cambridge: Polity Press
Bowen, John R., (1996). “The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict” Journal of Democracy 7.4 (1996) 3-14
Pamuk, Orhan (1998). “The White Castle.” (Trans. from the Turkish Beyaz Kale by Victoria Holbrook). NY: Vintage.
Kaplan, Robert (1993) The Atlantic and in his Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History New York: St. Martin
Grimes, William (2006). “The West Studies the East, and Trouble Follows; [Review].” New York Times, 2006 p 8
Roy, Olivier, James Woolsey, John McCain, Tariq Ramadan and Benazir Bhutto (2006). “Terrorism Now.” NPQ Spring.
Sered, Danielle (1996). “Orientalism.” Postcolonial Studies at Emory, Fall. Web.

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