Hobbesistan is here – and so is a competition to control it

Brian M Downing

Large swathes of the Islamic world, from West Africa through the Middle East East to Central Asia, are no longer under the control of any government, save for self-proclaimed ones. Uprisings, insurgencies, and foreign interventions have broken the Islamic world into pieces. Nigeria, Mali, Libya, the Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan no longer exist as unified countries. Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan have serious fissures and may soon fragment themselves.

The region is increasingly lawless and violent, akin to Hobbes’s state of nature where there is a war of all against all. There is no leviathan in sight to bring order, however fair or arbitrary. There is only a slew of emirs, warlords, tribal overlords, and Islamist militants. Failed leviathans are responsible for the reemergence of Hobbes’s state of nature in the Islamic world – Hobbesistan.

Failed leviathans

Since becoming independent of empires, countries in the Islamic world came under the control of feckless kings, family cliques, military bureaucracies, and narrow oligarchies. They all failed to integrate their populations into a national community. They failed to ensure futures for the staggering number of people born into their realms over the last quarter century. Most of them failed to build sufficiently powerful armed forces to hold the country together, whether by unifying myth or repressive power.

The economy, like the army and state, are controlled by cliques, who amass immense fortunes and secret them abroad. Typically, the army, state, and business cliques form a national board of directors, a cosa nostra, a power elite. They are governments of, by, and for the cliques, and they are falling.

Oil revenues improved popular perceptions of rulers, as they disburse immense amounts of money in social spending. They nonetheless face opposition from Islamists, who see them as vassals of the US, and from reformists who see them as robed fops from a bygone era.

Some rulers allowed autonomous regions in their realms. Pakistan and Egypt accepted tribal independence. But autonomy today often forms the basis of resisting, and attacking, the army and state for impiety, collaboration with the West, or expanding their reach into the periphery. The Pashtun are in revolt against Pakistan. Tribes along the Egyptian periphery are increasingly hostile to Cairo and aligning with Islamist bands. The uprising against Qaddafi shifted power to regional and tribal militias.

Competition for empire

Nature abhors vacuums, but states have a natural attraction to them, offering as they do, opportunities for greater wealth and power. Fighting Islamist militancy and advancing national interests will go hand in hand.

Saudi Arabia is seeking to expand its influence in the Islamic world. It has already done so in Pakistan where the nuclear program was funded from Riyadh. Pakistani combat troops have long been stationed inside the Kingdom. More recently, the Saudis have used economic leverage to destabilize the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and bestow money upon the military once it took power.

The Saudis are trying to win control of Sunni rebel forces in the Syrian and Iraqi region of Hobbesistan. If successful, Saudi princes will have say in the armies of Egypt, Pakistan, Syria, and Iraq – the best the region has ever fielded.

The Saudis face competition from Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, which have aligned for many years to limit Saudi influence in the region. The two are livid at the Saudi-backed coup in Egypt and eager to thwart Saudi signs in Iraq and Syria. It scarcely needs noting that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been badly hurt by plunging oil prices and have had to cut spending at home and abroad.

Russia stabilized the Assad government through an economical use of airpower. Moscow has raised its stock in the Shia world but badly damaged it in most of the Sunni world. The Syrian and Turkish Kurds are notable exceptions. Russia has begun supporting Syrian Kurds with air support against ISIL and rebuked Turkey for waging a pointless war against Turkish Kurds. The goal here is to gain influence in the region and to antagonize a NATO partner and weaken the treaty organization that spread into Eastern Europe.

Russia and China share concerns and interests in Central Asia’s Hobbesistan. Both see Islamist militancy spreading into Tajikistan and the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Both also see Central Asia as a land rich in resources and devoid of resources to exploit them. China has already acquired a good deal of the oil, copper, and iron resources of Afghanistan. Central Asia will be in its sphere of influence in coming years – if it can, in conjunction with Russia, build or form a leviathan in that part of Hobbesistan.

Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing

Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.