https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-9710
![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper challenges ‘the myth’ of the demise of Arab nationalism after the Arab–Israeli War in 1967 that appears in the scholarship of international relations of the Middle East (IRME). I argue instead that Arab nationalism plays a constitutive role in ideologically linking the issue of Bahrain’s post-colonial state sovereignty and foreign policy on alignment, showing its political salience after 1967 in what I call ‘the Juffair dilemma’: the Al Khalifa regime’s dilemma in aligning with the US after Bahrain’s formal independence. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s ‘national-popular collective will’ to re-conceptualise Arab nationalism, the paper further argues that the impact of Arab nationalism on Bahrain’s alignment was revealed through a political struggle between the Al Khalifa regime and the Bahraini New Arab Left, corresponding to wider regional and international anti-imperialist movements in the context of the Cold War. This struggle manifested Arab nationalism as a non-collective will, in which ideological disconnections existed between ‘the people’ and the regime, in Bahrain. It then created the context where the issue of alignment was related to the contestation of sovereignty and the Palestinian question, which was the source of the Al Khalifa regime’s dilemma in making alignment with the US.
Acknowledgements
I appreciate Andrew Hom, Andrea Birdsall, Sissela Matzner and Kai Oppermann for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I also thank my former supervisors, Ewan Stein and Juliet Kaarbo, for their dedication and patience in guiding my intellectual journey.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 “Palestine: The Arab ‘Deal of the Century,’” Al Jazeera, June 18, 2019.
2 Ajami, “End of Pan-Arabism”; Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century.
3 For the discussion of the New Arab Left, see Al-Kubaisi, “Arab Nationalist Movement 1951–1971”; Ismael, Arab Left; Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World, 20–23; Takriti, Monsoon Revolution; Chalcraft, Popular Politics in the Making; Haugbolle and Sing, “New Approaches to Arab Left Histories.”
4 Ajami, “End of Pan-Arabism.” 357.
5 Barnett, Dialogue in Arab Politics, 31.
6 For critiques of the intellectual foundation of such a dichotomous reading of Arabism and sovereignty, see Stein, “Beyond Arabism vs. Sovereignty.”
7 Fred Halliday, “State and Society in International Relations.”
8 Stein, “Camp David Consensus”; Stein, Representing Israel in Modern Egypt.
9 Stein, “Ideological Codependency and Regional Order,” 678.
10 AlShehabi, “Divide and Rule in Bahrain.”
11 Amin, Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles.
12 Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders.”
13 Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State.
14 Ibid., 7–8.
15 Ibid., 25.
16 Ibid., 148.
17 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 130.
18 Ibid., 126.
19 Ibid., 131.
20 Ibid., 131.
21 Ibid., 132.
22 Ibid., 132; emphasis in original.
23 Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Selections from Political Writings, 442.
24 Ives and Short, “On Gramsci and the International,” 637.
25 Holliday, “Legacy of Subalternity and Gramsci’s National-Popular,” 921.
26 AlShehabi, “Contested Modernity: Divided Rule”; AlShehabi, Contested Modernity: Sectarianism, Nationalism, and Colonialism.
27 Fuccaro, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf, 117.
28 Ibid., 176–88; Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, 196–217; Khalaf, “Labor Movements in Bahrain,” 24–5; Lawson, Bahrain: The Modernisation of Autocracy, 47–72; Joyce, Bahrain from the Twentieth Century to the Arab Spring, 19–25; AlShehabi, “Political Movements in Bahrain.”
29 Im, “Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in Gramsci,” 132–3.
30 Hinnebusch, “Revisiting the 1967 Arab–Israel War,” 593.
31 Amin, Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles, 65–80.
32 Peterson, Anglo-American Policy toward the Persian Gulf, 8–9.
33 Nakhleh, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernising Society, 113.
34 The People’s Front in Bahrain, Gulf Studies No. 2, 22.
35 Interview, Manama, November 29, 2015; emphasis added.
36 Takriti, Monsoon Revolution.
37 Stein, “Camp David Consensus,” 739.
38 Gani, Role of Ideology in Syrian–US Relations, 15–6.
39 Mufti, Sovereign Creations, 5–6; Hinnebusch, International Politics of the Middle East, 92.
40 Stein, “Camp David Consensus,” 739–40.
41 Stein, Representing Israel in Modern Egypt, 125–6.
42 Said Zahlan, Palestine and the Gulf States, 42.
43 Ibid., 53.
44 FCO, “FCO 8/1822 Political Situation in Bahrain.”
45 FCO, “FCO 8/3308 Bahrain External Relations.”
46 Reuters, June 12, 1978, “Bahrain Fiche, Arab World Documentation Unit (AWDU), Exeter University.”
47 Gulf Mirror, September 29, 1978, “Bahrain Fiche, AWDU.”
48 Jaipal, Non-Alignment, 113.
49 FCO, “FCO 8/3308 Bahrain External Relations.”
50 Ibid., October 20, 1979.
51 Ibid., October 5, 1979.
52 FCO, “FCO 8/3493 Bahrain External Relations,” 1980.
53 Peterson, Anglo-American Policy toward the Persian Gulf, 81.
54 Said Zahlan, Palestine and the Gulf States, 72.
55 Razvi, “Fahd Peace Plan,” 48.
56 Kostiner, “Saudi Arabia and the Arab–Israeli Peace Process,” 85.
57 Stein, Representing Israel in Modern Egypt, 161.
58 Alhasan, “Role of Iran in the Failed Coup of 1981.”
59 Mabon, Saudi Arabia and Iran; Mabon, “End of the Battle for Bahrain,” 37.
60 FCO, “FCO 8/3493 Bahrain External Relations.”
61 Marschall, Iran’s Persian Gulf Policy, 71.
62 Ibid.
63 FCO, “FCO 8/3897 Bahrain External.”
64 Telhami and Barnett, “Introduction,” 14–16.
65 Kerr, Arab Cold War: 1958–1964.
66 Gause III, International Relations of the Persian Gulf, 42–3.
67 Stein, “Camp David Consensus.”
68 Teschke and Wyn-Jones, “Marxism in Foreign Policy.”
69 Cantir and Kaarbo, “Contested Roles and Domestic Politics”; Kaarbo, “Foreign Policy Analysis Perspective.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Hsinyen Lai
Hsinyen Lai is an Associate Lecturer at the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews. His research interests lie at the intersection of politics of the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region, and international historical sociology. He is currently working on a book manuscript, re-conceptualising the social origins and evolution of Arab nationalism in Bahrain through the insights of Antonio Gramsci.