Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism (Hoover Institution Press Publication (Hardcover))

201 Pages·1.235 MB·English

by  Charles Hill

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HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP
ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Many of the writings associated with this
Working Group will be published by the Hoover Institution.
Materials published to date, or in production, are listed below.
essays
Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape
Joshua Teitelbaum
Islamism and the Future of the Christians of the Middle East
Habib C. Malik
Syria through Jihadist Eyes: A Perfect Enemy
Nibras Kazimi
The Ideological Struggle for Pakistan
Ziad Haider
books
Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad
Russell A. Berman
The Myth of the Great Satan: A New Look at America’s Relations with Iran
Abbas Milani
Torn Country: Turkey between Secularism and Islamism
Zeyno Baran
Islamic Extremism and the War of Ideas: Lessons from Indonesia
John Hughes
Crosswinds: The Way of Saudi Arabia
Fouad Ajami
The End of Modern History in the Middle East
Bernard Lewis
The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism
Charles Hill
Jihad in the Arabian Sea
Camille Pecastaing
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HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER
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World Order and Islamism
(cid:2)
Charles Hill
HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS
STANFORD UNIVERSITY | STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
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The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded
at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went
on to become the thirty-fi rst president of the United States, is an
interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic
and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are
entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect the views of
the staff, offi cers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.
www.hoover.org
Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 607
Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University,
Stanford, California 94305-6010
Copyright © 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission of the publisher and copyright holders.
First printing 2011
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
Requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. ∞
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-8179-1324-3 (cloth. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8179-1326-7 (e-book)
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To Fouad Ajami and John Raisian
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The Hoover Institution gratefully acknowledges
the following individuals and foundations
for their signifi cant support of the
herbert and jane dwight working group
on islamism and the international order:
Herbert and Jane Dwight
Stephen Bechtel Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Clayton W. Frye Jr.
Lakeside Foundation
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Fouad Ajami ix
Prologue 3
On a Ship to Oman 3
On the Train to the Army-Navy Game 6
CHAPTER ONE
Two World Orders 9
Christendom and Caliphate 11
Duality or Unity? 13
“The Turk” and “Oriental Despotism” 17
Three World-Historical Events 25
CHAPTER TWO
The Modern Ordering Takes Shape 29
1648 30
The Enlightenment Views the Prophet 32
The Sick Man of Europe 38
CHAPTER THREE
The Wars on World Order 49
The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars 49
The Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1866 52
The American Civil War and the Utah War 55
The Franco-Prussian War, 1870–1871 59
The Great War 63
World War II: Imperial Japan and the
Third Reich 69
The Cold War 76
The Indian Mutiny and the International System 83
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viii Contents
CHAPTER FOUR
An Islamic Challenge Takes Shape 89
1979: Iran 89
1979: Saudi Arabia 91
1979: Pakistan 92
1979: Afghanistan 93
1979: Egypt 93
1979: Saddam’s Iraq—Bonfi re of the Pathologies 94
The Lost Decade of the 1990s 99
The Islamist War on World Order,
Well Underway 103
Saddam Overthrown 106
Saddam’s Strategy 109
CHAPTER FIVE
The Shock of Recognition 115
Centers of Gravity 121
Legal 123
Military 123
The State 126
Women 131
Democracy 134
Nuclear Weapons 138
Values 140
CHAPTER SIX
In the Matter of Grand Strategy 145
Religion in World Order Revisited 153
Epilogue: On the Road to Oxiana 162
Bibliography 165
About the Author 171
About the Hoover Institution’s
Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group
on Islamism and the International Order 173
Index 175
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FOREWORD
F
or decades, the themes of the Hoover Institution
have revolved around the broad concerns of political,
economic, and individual freedom. The cold war that
engaged and challenged our nation during the twentieth cen-
tury guided a good deal of Hoover’s work, including its archival
accumulation and research studies. The steady output of work
on the communist world offers durable testimonies to that time
and struggle. But there is no repose from history’s exertions, and
no sooner had communism left the stage of history than a huge
challenge arose in the broad lands of the Islamic world. A brief
respite and a meandering road led from the fall of the Berlin
Wall on 11/9 in 1989 to 9/11. Hoover’s newly launched project,
the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and
the International Order, is our contribution to a deeper under-
standing of the struggle in the Islamic world between order and
its nemesis, between Muslims keen to protect the rule of reason
and the gains of modernity and those determined to deny the
Islamic world its place in the modern international order of
states. The United States is deeply engaged, and dangerously
exposed, in the Islamic world, and we see our working group as
part and parcel of the ongoing confrontation with the radical
Islamists who have declared war on the states in their midst, on
American power and interests, and on the very order of the
international state system.
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