The idea that there is an Arab world that, because of the heritage of the Arabic language, shares many cultural traits is almost universally accepted amongst most of the region’s political classes in the area extending from the Gulf to Morocco.
However, stark differences in the conditions of the countries of this region make the notion of Arabness contested in different ways and also put the Arab countries on different trajectories.
Arab nationalism has been the most prominent political manifestation of Arabness over the past 200 years. But all variants of Arab nationalism, from the Hashemite attempt at creating a united Arab kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century to the ideas that brought a few Arab countries together into the Arab League immediately after World War II to the Nasserite project in the 1950s and 1960s, have now largely been consigned to history.
Some still pay them lip service, but there is no serious political project in the Arab world today that is inspired by, let alone adheres to, any of the tenets of Arab nationalism in any recognisable definition of that term.
Arab nationalism is not so much bankrupt as discredited. It is seen as belonging to a bygone era in which global geopolitics and Middle Eastern dynamics were very different from what they are today.
There is a view that this is a loss to the Arab world, for at the core of all the manifestations of Arab nationalism lay a sense of belonging to a group of societies that shared more than a language and the cultural implications that emerge from that. This sense was neither an illusion nor a fabrication by the political powers of the time.
Instead, it was anchored on a largely common, or at least similar, reading of the histories of the peoples of the Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa over the past five centuries. This guided the consciousnesses of these societies towards quite similar objectives in terms of the liberation from foreign influence and the need for real development to catch up with a modernity that seemed far from their grasp.
The coming together of these societies in the Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa under this collective sense enriched the meaning of their struggle, for it made them believe that they were part of a nation, and it made them come across to others as one, and this at several times in their modern history strengthened their collective or individual bargaining power.
Today, while very few in the Arab political classes would dismiss the notion of Arabness and the real, if vague, sense of an Arab nation, very few of them would embrace it seriously, and not rhetorically, or imbue it with anything more than an awareness of common cultural traits.
Arabness and the notion of an Arab nation have arrived at destinations very different from where they set out to go. This partly explains why the Arab countries today are on different trajectories towards different destinations.
The Maghreb region largely looks north towards Europe for economic integration, primarily through energy and infrastructure and industrial value chains, for example. This makes sense, since this economic connection has proven to be the one offering the highest economic and developmental yield for it over the past four decades.
Some countries in the Maghreb, particularly Morocco, have also achieved notable successes in building valuable strategic, political, economic, and cultural presences in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, investments that are already starting to accrue significant benefits, again notably for Morocco.
As a result, all eyes in the Maghreb are focused on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and in some cases also on opportunities south of the Sahara. The Arab Mashreq, on the other hand, seems distant from them, not only geographically but also increasingly politically, economically, and culturally.
Many of the Arab countries in the long arc extending from the western reaches of the Levant to the North-Eastern Mediterranean and down to East Africa are facing acute economic problems. Few have a chance to discern ways out of their economic labyrinths and to emerge as agents in their own right that are able to participate in shaping their neighbourhoods.
Another set of countries in this arc might be able to escape such challenges if they can manage to redesign their political economies to be more competitive and relevant in an international and regional economic landscape that is being rapidly transformed. But these inescapable transformations will entail problematic internal realignments of power, which could well keep these countries reactive to what is happening around them and struggling to find roles for themselves that will make their markets destinations for foreign and regional investment.
The rest of the countries in this arc will likely remain mired in challenges that will not only further tax their own societies but could well also exacerbate polarisations that have been growing for years if not decades. Some of the countries in this group might even cease to exist in the coming decades.
The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are in a different place. Something extremely important has been happening there over the past 15 years. While most of the Arab world has been arduously navigating the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings and their political and economic consequences, bringing to the fore acute problems and the consequences of mismanagement during long decades before them, most of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula have been on a fast-paced upward developmental trajectory.
This has been true not just in urban development, finance, and technology, but also in education and exposure to the rest of the world, both east and west. Crucially, a new generation of young Arabs in the Peninsula, better educated by far not just when compared to any prior generation there but also to the vast majority of their counterparts in the rest of the Arab world, has been taking centre stage in various political, economic, cultural, and artistic domains.
The quality of their work has been miles ahead of that in other parts of the Arab world, and that is why it has much more potential to be integrated into international economic and technological networks than that emerging from other parts of the Arab world.
Money helps. The now almost-certain future demand for oil and gas, after a period when the move to renewable energy seemed to be a serious threat to hydrocarbon fuels, has meant not only colossal present revenues for the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Crucially, it has also secured their economic prospects for the foreseeable future. This instils confidence and strengthens their positioning in the global political economy at a time when the US, most of Europe, and even several of the rising Asian powers face political, economic, technological, and even demographic challenges.
All of this has widened the gap between the Arabian Peninsula and most of the rest of the Arab world in terms of wealth and living standards, as well as of exposure to the rest of the world. They have a different way of interacting with the key Western and Eastern powers, and they have different opportunities open to them. This gap will likely continue to grow, because the countries of the Arabian Peninsula will probably improve and strengthen their positioning in some of the world’s most promising economic and technological networks, by default strengthening their political positioning in key decision-making circles in the rest of the world.
As that gap widens, many in the Arabian Peninsula, especially among the younger generations that have at best tenuous links to the notion of Arabness, will likely feel that their mindsets are in different places than those of most other Arabs.
They will likely feel much more comfortable interacting with counterparts in the US, Europe, and Asia than with fellow Arabs. There is a chance that a generation from today, large segments of the societies of the Arabian Peninsula will be mentally and culturally more related to parts of the West and the East than to the rest of the Arab world.
These diverging trajectories are giving rise to new geopolitical realities in the Arab world, and these will be presented in the next article in this series.
The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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