Re-visiting history should never be underestimated as an aid to the present in practice and in theory. It is useful not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as a necessary means to understand the forces that shape the world around us.

Sometimes, hypothetical questions are needed to explain the course of events at certain junctures of human development. It is not important whether one sees history as linear or cyclical; what is important is what lessons we can extract with hindsight.

In the latest developments in Syria and the most recent terror attack in New Orleans, the world is reaping the effects of what was sown decades ago. When the nascent US superpower inherited the legacy of the defunct European empires, it followed the course of destabilising the rising independent states of the Middle East. It fought the nationalists by supporting feudal autocracies and rising Islamic fundamentalists.

A recent book by US-Lebanese scholar Fawaz Gerges that examines US and Western foreign policy in our region after World War II is very timely in this regard. Titled “What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East,” the book focuses on two examples: How the US and its Western allies disrupted the government of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in the early 1950s and the regime of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.

In his introduction to the book, Gerges refers to the work of US historian Elizabeth Thompson on the years that followed World War I and how the then European empires crushed early attempts by Arab patriots to establish democracy following their role in defeating the Ottoman Empire.

“Led by Emir Faisal, the Syrian National Congress approved a liberal democratic constitution that enshrined the rights of all people, Muslims and non-Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs,” he notes. But that did not suit Britain and France, which partitioned the region into spheres of influence.

The irony is that what was a promising start almost a century ago has now been reversed, with the heirs of the Ottomans now about to take back control of Syria and again with the Americans and the West condoning it. Of course, there is no real similarity between what happened following the World Wars and what is happening now after the continuous aggression by the West-sponsored Israel and the popular uprisings at the start of the last decade. But digging into the past is still essential to understanding the present and shedding some light on the future.

Choosing the two examples of Mossadegh and Nasser gives Gerges the opportunity to present a very interesting analysis of the US and Western foreign-policy mistakes that led us to the position we are in today. “My goal is to engender a debate about the past that can make us see the present differently,” he says.

The West’s favouring of “reactionary” political forces in the region goes back a long way before the War. It was a fundamental part of the traditional colonialist policy of “divide and rule.” Political Islam was not a product of the Ottoman Empire’s occupation of the region but was nurtured under the British and French occupation.

Gerges concludes his book by asking what would have happened if the West had acted differently after World War II. How would the course of developments in the Middle East have differed and led to a better present? It is not a luxury to ask “what if” in this regard, since it is essential to face tough critical junctures if we are serious about improving the current situation. This is one of the great virtues of studying history. Gerges is one of the few scholars who is well-equipped with the necessary academic skills and passionate insight to do this job.

Apart from the academic significance of Gerges’s book and its conclusions, there is another point that I think deserves to be highlighted. The author was earlier among a group of prominent theoreticians who adopted the approach of legitimising Political Islam, with this also including academics like John Esposito and the Frenchman Francois Burgat and non-academics like former CIA analyst Graham Fuller.

They promoted, in different degrees, the notion that the Islamists are an important component of the political scene in the region. This provided the theoretical framework for the US and the West to court the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, culminating in supporting its militants in Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan in fighting the Soviet occupation of the latter country in the 1980s.

US allies in the region, mainly the oil-rich autocracies, provided finance to these groups under CIA auspices. But what was considered just a temporary tool to achieve certain goals ended up mushrooming into more sinister groups like the Islamic State (IS) group and others that have now become an intrinsic part of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere.

Explaining how the rising US empire followed the same mistakes as the traditional European colonialists in destroying the possibilities of building sound post-independence states in the region is really a sort of theoretical correction.

It might be straightforward for academics and thinkers to change their views as they examine and re-examine the evidence. But a change of policy is more difficult, especially when arrogance and superficiality are now apparently more acceptable than ever on the world stage.

What the US and the West have done will not be easy to correct and has by any measure caused insurmountable disruption.

The writer is a London-based seasoned journalist.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly