David Brooks in the NYTIMES informs the readers that “Arab nation-states have withered.” The point is unassailable because they obviously have. But the statement deceives by what it excludes: all nation-states have been eroded. It looks differently from one region to another but the phenomenon is global.
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It is true that all nation states have declined. But, the Arab world has had two particular problems that made its collapse there more intense. First, what was the nation. Was there a single Arab nation with multiple states that should unify? Or were Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt all distinct nations that just happened to share a common Arabic language and other elements of culture? The Palestinie National Convenant adopted a dualism that stated that Palestine was the Homeland of the Palestinians, but part of a greater Arab nations. Here is article one of the Convenant
“Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian Arab People; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”
Needless to say a single Arab nation-state never got very far. Pan-Arabism has for a long time been in even worse shape than Pan-Africanism. Instead there were a lot of artificially created states in the wake of World War I whose borders split the Arab nation into numerous states. Many of these states proved to be quite weak especially after the revival of political Islam in the early 1980s began to displace Arab nationalism in the region. Lebanon was one of the first states to be torn asunder but, later Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria have experienced serious internal conflict. The idea of a Libyan or Iraqi nation state along the lines of France or Germany during the late 19th century is very distant today.
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I believe that this is yet another reason for the anger of the Arab world to grow. Before the people could even come up with functioning nation-states, the very model started withering. And yet again, the feeling of being left behind by forces of history results in confusion and anger. It’s a very similar rage that the one Russians feel.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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