Closed Circle- Reviews

Reviewer:

Timothy Ritter (Colorado) - See all my reviews

Although it makes one pessimistic about prospects for the Arabs, THE CLOSED CIRCLE gives answers to a lot of the questions that people have about that part of the world, question such as: Why the lack of heavy industry? Why the disdain for higher learning? Why the obsessive hatred of Israel? Why the hopelessly inept militaries? and Why the grandiose bluster they use in place of effective militaries?

Pryce-Jones wondered, too, for a lifetime, then took three years to produce this "interpretation", which is more comprehensive and lucid than any of the other works I've seen on the subject. His thesis is fairly simple: the Arabs, more than any other society, are bound by a code of shame and honor, which prevents them from advancing in nearly every field of human endeavor. The only dynamism in their sclerotic society is what Pryce-Jones calls "power challenging", the process by which one despot knocks another off his pedestal and assumes it himself, though even this can hardly be called dynamic, since one is just like another. They all operate according to these rules of power challenging, which may more simply be called the law of the jungle.

The shame/honor and power challenging theses explain a wide range of phenomena that can be baffling to an outsider. On one of the lowest levels, the village, Pryce-Jones gives the example of a local leader who decides to install an irrigation pump to improve agriculture. When a consultant warns of technical problems, the leader avoids the shame of appearing ignorant by pushing ahead with his plan, heedless of the warning. The pump over irrigates, leading to salinization, which ruins the village agriculture. But instead of being blamed by the village for the ruin, the local leader is honored for getting his way.

On a larger scale, why is it that Saudi Arabia, whose total revenues from oil some time ago passed the trillion dollar mark, needs the USA to defend it, needs American and European technicians to operate its oilfields, and needs imported labor from South Asia for any non-technical work? Simple: "Technical tasks, and of course laboring in all forms, demeaningly connote low status, and therefore shame." Thus, the Saudi squadrons of AWACS and other warplanes, and tanks, and sophisticated naval equipment, etc., are virtually useless to them, because while the purchase of such stuff brings honor, the maintenance and operation of it is low class and shameful. A fighter jet is little more than a trophy to show off to ones friends-and enemies. Rather than use a jet to defend themselves, "Al Saud prefer the technique of using money defensively...and to convert possible challengers into clients...the Saudis extend their money-favor nexus over the whole Middle East, enmeshing into it the entire spectrum of Arab power holders and challengers. The daily task of the Saudi ruler consists in assessing friends and opponents and then buying or holding them off, estimating and apportioning subsidies, bribes, subventions, the whole gamut of open or concealed transfers of money."

Pryce-Jones goes methodically through each Arab society, even one, Turkey, that is not technically Arab, and finds the same pattern in each: leaders that grab their power through violence, and hold onto it through violence and money. Even the much-heralded "Man of Peace", Anwar Sadat, began his career as a Nazi sympathizer, writing glowingly of Hitler in 1953 that the German had "become immortal in Germany" and that was "reason enough for pride". Sadat's subsequent protean career as a power holder took him through "pro-Nazi, pro-Soviet, socialist, capitalist, Jew-hater, and peacemaker" phases, the one constant being his always-cunning response to power challengers. After finally being murdered by a determined group of challengers, Sadat was commemorated by a handful of American presidents in his last permutation, that of peacemaker. His power holding legacy is carried on by Mubarak with Sadat's methods of repression and ample amounts of money, gotten not from oil, but from US foreign aid-payoffs for peace.

Pryce-Jones' thesis is not that all Arabs are murderous and power hungry. It does seem to be that one can't rise beyond a certain level in Arab society without being so. All of the leaders are authoritarian. None of the polities are open and democratic. Anyone who has traveled anywhere in the Middle East or Maghreb has met gentle and hard-working Arabs. Many Arabs would admire a leader such as Martin Luther King. But it would never occur to the leaders of the Arabs to take anything but a venal or violent approach to a problem. It's impossible to conceive, for instance, of Yasser Arafat leading a non-violent protest march through Israeli checkpoints on a day when Gaza was sealed off. Even if he were convinced that such an act would get him what he wanted politically, he would be unable to carry it out because of the enormous shame he would feel at being shown in such an ostensibly powerless position. What is shown in CLOSED CIRCLE is that it is impossible to take power or hold power in Arab society without employing the despotic methods of Gaddhafi or Sadat or Sadam or Faud or Arafat.

It's a pity that a book of this stature should be out of print in hardback. Something this vital ought to be available with one of the print-on-demand publishers.

Reviewer:

Donald N Anderson (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews

Mr. Pryce-Jones has written an essential description of the honor-shame nexus that is so central to Arab culture. Those who view honor and shame as people in the West do, must read this book to understand the very different properties honor-shame has in this culture.

His description of power relationships is exemplary. He provides many examples of the dangerous consequences to which these power seeking conspiracies lead. The implications are discouraging, but having knowledge of probable consequences is much better than pursuing goals in ignorance. Perhaps we can then select goals and approaches that have some hope of success in this very different culture.

I only hope any of our diplomats charged with a Middle East assignment understand the content of this book. I have recomended this book strongly to all my friends who have any interest in the Middle East

Reviewer:

givbatam3 "givbatam3" (REHOVOT Israel) - See all my reviews

Although this book came out in 1989, events since then have, unfortunately, only confirmed what is written in it. The thesis of the author is that the Arab world has been unable to break the shackles of its ancient tribal-clan organization of society and build a new civil society found in other parts of the world, particularly in the democratic West. While it is true that in the distant past, all societies were more or less organized on these tribal and clan lines, the more advanced cultures moved onwards and developed societies in which interpersonal and later international relations were based not only on blood kinship but rather on a feeling of mutually-shared responsibility for the world outside their immediate surroundings. Tragically the Arab (and to a large extent, also the Islamic) world has not yet made this shift of mind, whereas others outside Europe and America such as East Asia have succeeded. The author shows that relationships between individual people and countries in the Arab world are made up mostly of suspicion and fear of those outside the "closed circle" of the clan (or country) and this prevents the development of the type of civil society necessary for the development of freedom, democracy and economic prosperity. As a result, all Arabs countries have autocratic or tyrannical regimes that repress their own populations, stifle economic development and are in constant conflict with their neighbors, both Arab and non-Arab.
In what the author calls the "careerist" mentality, he points out that the Arab leaders cynically exploit various Western and non-Western ideologies in order to advance their own personal ambitions, and then they jettison these ideologies once they have the power of the police state behind them which ensures the permanence of their rule. For example, both Syria and Egypt have governments which are called "revolutionary, socialist and progressive", but which, in reality simply confiscated the wealth of the old, pre-revolutionary elite and put it into the hands of a new elite indistinguishable from the old one in its rapaciousness and greed, not benefiting the average citizen in whose name the revolution was carried out. Syria by the beginning of the new century had reverted to being a hereditary monarchy and Egypt was also on the way to becoming one. The book also shows how Baathist ideologue Michel Aflaq first modeled his political ideas on Nazism and Fascism and then easily shifts towards Marxism. Arafat first espouses Marxism and allies himself the Soviet Union but, today, he is running a terrorist regime with a semi-Islamicist ideology under the sponsorship of the Europeans and to some extent the Americans.
The book shows how the corrupt autocrats in power shift the blame for the poverty and underdevelopment of their countries from themselves onto fanciful "Zionist-Imperialist" conspiracies and "colonialist exploitation" without explaining how countries like Japan and Germany became prosperous despite having been under foreign military occupation much harsher than anything the Arabs had experienced.
Finally, the author shows great foresight in predicting that the terribly diseased regime and society in Saudi Arabia was not only oppressing its own citizens, but how it would become a threat to the whole world.

Although I would have preferred that the author go into more depth in some areas, especially the effects of 20th century urbanization on the clan identity of the Arabs (in other parts of the world, moving to the cities broke down existing links and sentiments of the people involved), this book is must reading for someone who wants to understand the turbulence of the Arab world