Arab countries must adapt to form modern Middle East
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People's Daily, September 1, 2011
The Libyan War is coming to an end, but the people who are paying attention to West Asia and North Africa do not feel relaxed at all. For some countries, the risks of internal conflicts and external interferences still have not been eliminated, and it is also unclear whether a stable regional development will show.
The background of the group turbulences of West Asian and North African countries are complex, but these regions' obsolete concepts, lack of systems and dislocations with globalization are important causes of the turbulences. Due to the traditional authoritarian culture, leaders of these countries have ignored reforms to the political and social systems and disregarded social development.
Facing the dramatic changes, the leaders of these countries, who are entering or have entered their later political lives, are more interested in keeping the power in their hands than anything else. Therefore, their countries have lost vitality, and a lot of youths of the countries cannot find the right course.
For many developing countries, globalization is a course of pursuing the modernization. All the countries participating in this course are pushing forward their social reforms in a timely fashion. They are transitioning and actively adjusting their internal and external strategies by self-repair, self-upgrades and self-enrichment. Unfortunately, most Arabian countries hold an attitude of repelling globalization, and their practice of globalization is passive. What the Arabian elites have seen more are the negative effects of globalization, and they are worried by the impact of cultural globalization on their traditional culture.
The Arab world has long been a passive receiver of globalization. Certain countries have ascribed various contradictions and problems in the modernization process of Arab countries to the negative effects of globalization and played up the inability of the Islamic culture to adapt to changes and to draw on foreign development experience. The Arab people's relatively closed attitude is not in line with the trend of the times or the objective laws of social development and has cost Arab countries the development opportunities brought by globalization.
With the development of information technology, more young Arabs have learned about the gaps between their motherlands and other countries. This has exerted a profound influence on the young people and made them a major force in the recent wave of unrest in West Asia and North Africa.
The Arab world has taken some measures to adapt to the increasingly globalized world. After the Iraq War, the United States introduced the "Greater Middle East" strategy, which led to growing calls for reforms among Arab countries. Certain Arab elites wrote that Arab states would not be able to adapt to the rapidly changing world if they did not carry out political reforms immediately.
In March 2004, Arab countries signed the Alexandria Declaration at the Arab Reform Conference in Alexandria, Egypt. Egyptian representatives said at the conference that Egypt would carry out a series of democratic reforms based on the people's needs and national stability, and serve as a proving ground for such reforms, so other Arab states could draw on its experience. After Arab states passed a 13-point reform plan at an Arab League summit in May 2004, "democratic reform" quickly became a buzzword among the Arab media.
However, it turned out that most Arab countries just paid lip service and did not implement any practical democratic reforms for two reasons. First, these countries are in an unfavorable geopolitical environment and are thus busy dealing with external challenges. Second, the rulers of these countries are worried that once democratic reforms violate traditional religious or cultural practices, their bases of power may be shaken, leaving them limited room for concessions or compromise.
The Arab world needs to seriously take into account the issues concerning the way to reform their rigid long-standing systems, make the development directions conform to their own history, religion, culture and social realities and complete the modern transformation. Modern transformation is a dynamic process involving all aspects of society.
The Arab world first needs to transform their traditional culture. In particular, they need to adjust the part of their traditional culture that curbs the individual and social development from a whole-new angle so as to enable their traditional culture to develop and continue to play its significant roles in regulating behaviors and setting values.
In this respect, the greatest challenge facing the new generation of Arab politicians is how to lead their countries to make stable economic, political and cultural transformations and explore political systems and development paths. Remaining unchanged or simply introducing technologies and systems from the outside world will not change the current unrest. They can only prevent themselves from being further marginalized by the current of the globalization by becoming modern countries with sustainable development capacities.
