Footnotes

 

 

  1. Reinhold Niebuhr; The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr; Yale University Press, New Haven; 1986; p.p. 170-171.

 

  1. For all his political ideas, Karl Marx was a decent equilibrium economist. Describing the workings of the international capitalist system in the 19th century, Marx believed that competition in the market system would progressively lower wages, resulting in the revolution of the proletariat. What he neglected was the ability of the capitalist system to reform itself and its ability to produce new products and services, to escape the iron law of commoditization.

 

  1. Inglehart and Welzel; Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy; Cambridge University Press, New York; 2005; p. 76, model 2. That economic variables (GDP per capita and percentage employed in the service sector) explain 61% of the variation in societal values shows that economic development is very important. This study is mainly cross-sectional.

 

In The Future of Freedom (2003), Farred Zakaria studied the historical experience of the English with modernization. He points out that in England liberalism grew out of the country’s political culture of shared power (our comment, there were a few difficulties along the way), that was strengthened by the rise of capitalism in the 18th century and the bourgeoise. Only in 1930 did the democratic franchise become universal (p. 50).

 

He writes, “…one might conclude that a country that attempts a transition to democracy when it has a per capita GDP of between $3,000 and $6,000 will the successful….No one factor tells the whole story, but given the number of countries being examined, on different continents, with vastly different cultures, and at different historical phases, it is remarkable that one simple explanation – per capita GDP – can explain so much.” (p.70)

 

GDP explains a lot, all things being equal; but to stress our main point again – cultural history also matters. Culture is not as “malleable,” as might be assumed; cultural history variables are significant independent variables in the Inglehart study. For example, the Arab Mideast has a notable mercantile tradition; but the political structure of the nation-state does not easily contain the existing social structure of cultures and tribes. This is not a problem unique to the Mideast.

 

  1. The Inglehart study also illustrates in detail that democratic institutions result from social values, rather than the reverse (p.p. 178-185). The authors write, “These findings strongly support a cultural explanation for democracy and disconfirm an institutional explanation of political culture” (p. 209).

 

  1. “How America Does It”; Josef Joffe; Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 1997; p. 16.

 

  1. CNN; September 24, 2006.

 

  1. Joffe; ibid; p. 27.

 

  1. Bob Woodward; State of Denial; Simon and Schuster, New York; 2006;

           p.p. 118-119.

 

  1. The Washington Post (1/14/07); Robert G. Kaiser.

 

  1.  Tony Smith; A Pact with the Devil; Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: New York; 2007; p. 158.  

 

  1. Ali A. Allawi; The Occupation of Iraq; Yale University Press, New Haven; 2007; p.p. 13,14.

 

       Why is there so much continued fighting in the Mideast? Bernstein (2008) writes:

                     

The harsh and lawless environment of the desert shaped both economic and religious life on the Arabian Penninsula and has to this day left its mark on the culture of the Muslim world. Survival in Arabia, with its lack of a central authority, was, and remains, utterly dependent on the good efforts of the family and the tribe.

 

Western notions of individual autonomy and rule of law simply do not apply in the desert. An attack on one tribesman is an attack on all…..When the first recourse of victims is to their cousins, and not to the police or to an independent judicial system, poverty and political instability are the usual outcomes. (p. 67)

 
                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

There is, of course, much more to Arab civilization and Islam than this stark description of desert political culture. Bernstein also describes, “…the power of (9th century) Islam (which was founded in the 7th century) to tie together the Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and Indians into a commercial system whose customs and laws were well understood by all between Baghdad and China.” (p. 85)

 

World trade did not begin with the Renaissance Age of Exploration in the 15th century. At that time, there was already a flourishing, centuries-old trading system stretching from Rome to China along three main routes: The perilous land route along the Silk Road; the Red Sea with its pirates, dangerous shoals and winds; and across the Syrian desert, through Baghdad, and then to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. The fantastic adventure stories from the Arabian Nights originated from this culture. 

 
               

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

             

       12. Allawi; p. 458.

        

 

 

     

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