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The former president was excommunicated from Iran’s political elite—but he’s using grassroots economic populism to revive his career.

Conceptual overview

What is water scarcity? At a conceptual level, water scarcity can be defined as “the lack of access to adequate quantities of water for human and environmental uses.” Attempts to measure or quantify scarcity have taken on a variety of forms from cubic meters per person of renewable water, to water availability compared to water infrastructure. While multiple conceptualizations of water scarcity allow for flexibility in assessing vulnerability, the absence of a universal definition encourages wide variations in interpretation. In turn, variability in measurement makes comparisons across contexts more difficult, thus impeding transparent discussions about this issue.

Is water scarcity a new phenomenon? Examples of water scarcity can be found throughout the history of humanity. As the earth’s climate has evolved, so too has its ecological composition and resource availability. Historically, in response to water stress, civilizations occupied greater geographic space, or dispersed and mobilized as smaller groups. In fact, as early as 5,000 BCE, water management practices were being used and adapted to serve local needs. While some of these methods eventually proved unsustainable, many technologies have been adapted for use in today’s water management activities.

Why has water scarcity become a top issue on the global agenda? 2005-2015 marked the UN Water for Life Decade. This initiative sought to place water on the global agenda by highlighting the integral role water plays in health, agriculture, economics, energy, and development. Framing this in the context of growing populations and consumption in developing countries, projections of water scarcity estimated the impacts would expand “beyond the capacity of already inadequate water supply…infrastructure and services.” Presently, water scarcity is estimated to impact 2.1 billion people.

Furthering the scarcity narrative post-2015, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designated clean water and sanitation as one of 17 goals in need of global action. As with the Water for Life Decade, the SDGs point to excess water stress as the precursor for future water scarcity and, therefore, a major barrier to sustainable development. For development practitioners, governments, and private sector entities alike, orienting work around the SDGs has become commonplace.

 

Utility of water scarcity

What are the historical implications of framing contexts as scarce? Often, scarcity signals an assertion that there is not “enough”— there is not enough water to meet demand; there is not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt to this challenge without an intervention; there are not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. Narratives of scarcity follow what geographer, Diana K. Davis, argues is an environmental imaginary, or “ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape…that commonly includes assessments about that environment as well as how it came to be in its current state.”

In the MENA region, colonization brought a different set of environmental imaginaries which were then rationalized in a completely different environmental context. French colonialism in North Africa for example, highlights how the country evolved from an explicit form of water management in colonies (hydroimperialism) to a softer approach (hydrodiplomacy) in the post-colonial age. Hydroimperialism refers to the “ways water, hydraulic knowledge, and water management practices both revealed and reproduced unequal power relations predicated upon an expansionist mentalité.” In the case of the French, hydraulic knowledge exchange moved back and forth between the colony and Europe, eventually formalizing into technical expertise. In the postcolonial era, imperialism manifested into hydrodiplomacy, or technical aid.

The example above is not unique to colonial interventions in the MENA. From the 19th to 20th centuries, European powers framed the region as a “degraded landscape facing imminent disaster.” This ‘strange and defective’ region needed help to ‘improve,’ ‘restore,’ ‘normalize,’ or ‘repair’ the environment.” The effects of such narratives can be seen across the region today. Notably, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) initiative to “green” the emirates, primarily through aforestation. Additionally, this plan seeks to modernize the state and attract western business and tourism. While some link this goal to the Islamic ideal of paradise as a green garden, it also suggests a stronghold of European imaginaries, which historically have advocated for “normalizing” the desert environment with more vegetation and water.

How does this narrative impact interventions, particularly in the MENA region? In many ways, the MENA region remains the poster-child for water scarcity, as much in the field of international development as in environmental imaginaries. The power of such imaginaries to influence and legitimize the narrative of desertification and water scarcity as a function of mismanagement has tremendous implications for aid interventions. As numerous analyses demonstrate, the “dryness” of the region alone threatens livelihoods and productivity. While this is not to say that Middle East’s water supply does not pose any challenges for further development, or has never been mismanaged, these sweeping statements do not always do the region justice in terms of water management.

With the narrative of scarcity in mind, it is only natural that development practitioners gravitate towards the Middle East as the region where interventions will have the most impact. Much like the aspirations of the UAE, development practitioners have bought in to the idea of ‘rolling back the desert.’ In doing so, their actions parallel the colonial experience. For example, indigenous populations were often well aware of shifts in equilibrium based on rainfall and water availability, and were thus much more adaptive to uncertainty. However, in an era of a global agenda set around modernizing and developing in a very specific, predominantly western-oriented way, these water management traditions become stifled and potentially lost.

 

Moving forward

Often, scarcity signals that there is not “enough”— not enough water to meet demand; not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt; and not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. It is this narrative that has fostered the aspirations of the UAE, and development practitioners alike, towards ‘rolling back the desert.’ Further perpetuating this imaginary is the global normalization of water scarcity as an undeniable fact; obscuring the climatic, cultural, and environmental histories of regions defined by scarcity. Ironically, this diverges from the values of sustainable development, inhibiting innovation and the ability to leverage context-specific knowledge so deeply desired for a sustainable solution to flourish.

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Créée en 1936, Politique étrangère est la plus ancienne revue française dans le domaine des relations internationales. Chaque vendredi, découvrez « l’archive de la semaine ».

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L’article « L’opinion publique française et les relations internationales » a été écrit par le secrétaire général de la COFACE de l’époque, Jérôme Cazes, et publié dans le numéro 4/1989 de Politique étrangère.

L’opinion publique est un acteur des relations internationales : dans les pays démocratiques (et même dans certains pays non démocratiques…), les géographies mentales de l’homme de la rue influencent les politiques extérieures.

Les sondages donnent une idée de ces géographies mentales. Certains les dénigrent (ce sont parfois les mêmes qui pensent que les diplomaties seraient plus efficaces sans élections…) et il est vrai qu’un sondage isolé ne signifie rien. Mais une approche transversale comparant des enquêtes à différentes dates ou dans différents pays met à jour des éléments instructifs. Cet article s’y essaie à partir des sondages publiés en France sur les questions internationales.

Il se présente moins comme une démonstration que comme un panorama autour de deux dimensions principales, l’une active et positive, celle de la projection de la Nation à l’étranger, l’autre passive et négative, celle de la menace que l’étranger exerce sur la collectivité nationale.

Narcissisme et autodénigrement

Comme tous les peuples, mais peut-être un peu plus que d’autres, les Français se placent au centre de leur vision du monde. Ceci s’exprime en particulier par un rejet massif des modèles étrangers : japonais (70 % des Français refusent qu’en France on travaille comme au Japon), américain (66 % des Français en 1977, 74 % en 1987 refusent qu’en France on vive comme aux États-Unis, Agoramétrié), ou soviétique.

En revanche, les Français pensent que les autres s’intéressent à eux. Interrogés par exemple sur neuf thèmes d’intérêt Nord-Sud, plus d’un Français sur trois cite sans fausse pudeur : « ce que les gens du Tiers-Monde pensent de nous » ; un quart seulement des autres Européens affichent le même désir (Faits et opinions, EC AD, 1987).

Le narcissisme des Français n’exclut pas un goût certain pour l’autodénigrement : c’est l’orgueil autocritique de Cyrano de Bergerac. Les Français se disent fiers de la France et d’être français, niais leur fierté n’a rien à voir avec les certitudes nationalistes britanniques, espagnoles ou surtout américaines. Ils sont prudents dans leurs jugements sur les Français : pratiquement seuls dans la Communauté, ils témoignent à quatre autres peuples européens plus de confiance qu’au leur (Faits et opinions, Eurobaromètre) .

Le thème du déclin de la France revient de façon récurrente dans le débat national. Il traduit probablement une inquiétude et une certaine frustration, un décalage entre envies et moyens, plutôt qu’un pessimisme foncier dont il n’est pas prouvé qu’il soit plus fort que chez nos voisins : la question « votre pays aura-t-il plus ou moins d’importance dans le monde dans vingt ans ? » divise par moitié aussi bien l’opinion française que les opinions allemande ou britannique ; ceci contraste avec l’optimisme des Américains, des Japonais ou des Brésiliens (Gallup International, L’Express, 1984). Les jeunes Français ne paraissent pas plus sombres : interrogés sur les mots qui définiront la France en l’an 2000, un sur dix seulement cite « le déclin », et un sur dix « la grandeur » (Louis Harris, L’Express, 1987).

Une France peu compétitive

Ce manque relatif de confiance naît semble-t-il du sentiment que la France perd pied dans la concurrence économique internationale.

Les Français tiennent pour acquis le rayonnement culturel de leur pays ; ils sont par exemple les plus persuadés parmi les Européens de la prééminence de leur littérature (SOFRES, Figaro Magazine, 1989). Mais ils considèrent que c’est son économie qui assure aujourd’hui le rayonnement d’un pays. Un résumé de différents sondages illustre ce décalage : l’économie est à la fois pour les Français la qualité numéro un d’un pays et celle dont la France serait la plus mal dotée.

L’exportation des produits français est l’élément qui a le plus d’importance dans l’influence de la France à l’étranger, loin devant le rayonnement de la culture ou de la langue françaises (SOFRES, Le Quotidien de Paris, 1988). En revanche, la présence de la France sur les marchés mondiaux n’est classée qu’en huitième position parmi les points forts de notre pays (SOFRES, L’Expansion, 1985).

Les Français se jugent créatifs mais moins travailleurs que les Japonais, les Américains ou les Allemands (mais quand même plus que les Italiens…) (RES, L’Usine nouvelle, 1988). Trois salariés sur quatre sont d’accord avec l’idée que, « en France, les salariés sont accrochés à leurs avantages acquis et manquent de souplesse » (SOFRES, Le Figaro, 1989).

Cette question de la compétitivité est d’ailleurs l’une de celles qui préoccupent le plus l’opinion française. A partir d’une série d’enquêtes, on peut risquer le classement suivant des thèmes internationaux :

1 – le terrorisme (en recul depuis un an) ;

2 – la compétitivité de l’économie française ;

3 – l’immigration (en hausse) ;

4 – l’armement nucléaire ;

5 – l’Europe ;

6 – la politique de défense ;

7 – le Tiers-Monde.

L’hypothèse d’un désir de projection internationale des Français bridé par la piètre estime dans laquelle ils tiennent leur compétitivité économique peut expliquer à la fois leur sympathie pour la coopération économique en général (du moins entre pays développés), pour la coopération européenne en particulier et, au sein de l’Europe, leur goût pour l’Allemagne.

Le désir de projection internationale

Les Français sont plus favorables que la moyenne à la construction européenne et leur soutien a crû régulièrement (avec des oscillations qui annonceraient un minimum… vers 1993 !) (Eurobaromètre).

La Communauté est pour les Français un instrument de projection collective ; 83 % sont d’accord avec l’idée que « la construction européenne est le seul moyen de peser sur la scène internationale », contre 15 % qui maintiennent que « la France est une grande puissance et a donc un poids suffisant » (SOFRES, Pèlerin magazine, 1987). Le rêve de grandeur nationale s’est déplacé : pour 40 % des Français, l’Europe des Douze sera la première puissance mondiale dans vingt ans, devant les États-Unis (21 %) ; première pour la qualité de la vie, la culture, la science, l’économie et même le militaire ! (Louis Harris, L’Express, 1989).

Les Français ne voient pas de contradiction entre la France et l’Europe. Deux Français sur trois pensent que l’appartenance à la CEE est une bonne chose pour la France ; ils sont nettement plus optimistes à cet égard que les Britanniques ou les Allemands. Ils sont aussi les plus nombreux à s’affirmer prêts à élire un étranger chef de gouvernement de l’Europe (Eurobaromètre). Les jeunes diplômés français préféreraient même une nationalité européenne à la nationalité française (SOFRES, L’Expansion, 1987).

Les Français sont à la fois nombreux à mettre beaucoup d’espoir dans le marché unique (23 %, contre 11 % en RFA et 12 % en Grande-Bretagne) et à ressentir un peu ou beaucoup de crainte (37 %, 25 % seulement pour la moyenne européenne) (Eurobaromètre, printemps 1989). Leur pessimisme s’est semble-t-il aggravé en 1988, mais il ne doit pas être exagéré : sur dix-huit secteurs ou professions, les Français estiment que les effets positifs l’emporteront dans quinze (seuls perdants : la sidérurgie, l’agriculture et les agriculteurs). Mais il illustre un autodénigrement économique, qu’expriment également nos chefs d’entreprise : ceux-ci sont au sein de l’Europe parmi les plus inquiets avec les patrons grecs (CEE, rapport Cecchini, 1988). L’opinion des Français pourrait peut-être se résumer ainsi : l’Europe peut pallier notre faiblesse économique, mais si nous étions trop faibles pour tirer notre épingle du jeu ? […]

Lisez l’article en entier ici.

Découvrez en libre accès tous les numéros de Politique étrangère depuis 1936 jusqu’à 2005 sur Persée.

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With the decline of the old colonial powers such as Great Britain and France after World War II, the Soviet Union stepped into the stage of the Middle East as the major superpower. The process was hastened through the advent of various forms of movements and revolutions for independence in the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviets, who previously had hardly any chance for colonizing the region, found their propitious moment to present themselves as champions of the cause of “anti-colonialism” and “anti-imperialism”, and by that to embark upon their own full-fledged project of expansionism in the Middle East.

In the meantime, the emergence of the Jewish State in the former British colony of Palestine precipitated the Russian intervention in the Middle East. Contrary to what might be popularly believed, during the initial phases of the life of modern Israel, the Soviet Union assumed a favorable stance towards it. Though the Communists were suspicious of the Zionist movement lest it provoke the Jewish Russians and Ukrainians, the Soviet Union voted in favor of the UN partition plan for Palestine in 1947. In addition, when the first all-out war broke out between Jews and Arabs in 1948, the Soviet Union stepped in again to supply the Jews with much-needed arms.

Whatever the reason for this initial assistance to Israel, the Soviet Union eventually found its main allies in the Middle East not in the Jews but in the Arabs who, as it happened, were partly provoked to a high-pitched revolutionary nationalist mood as a consequence of the rise of a highly nationalist-conscious Jewish State in their neighborhood. Indeed it can be said that Stalin’s gambit with Israel paid off with pulling the Arabs towards the Soviet pole in the long run.

In that climate, the Tsarist “civilizing mission” that, as a principal part of the Communist ideology in the Soviet Union, had now become couched in the pompous claim of “historical responsibility” of “liberating the oppressed nations”, would appeal to many Arabs and would most significantly turn into a constant of the Arab revolutions and the states that emerged from them. By then, the Ba’ath ideology, which mingled a highly distilled Arab Nationalism with a somewhat diluted Soviet Communism, became the most apparent manifestation of Russophilia in the Middle East.

The roots of the Ba’ath go back to the early 1940s when two Syrian Communist intellectuals, namely Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in their desire to make an “Arab Renaissance” after the dismantling of the ancient colonial empires, started to draw the contours of an eclectic Arab revival. Ba’ath itself means “renaissance” in Arabic. Ba’athism promoted as its most basic principles anti-imperialism, anti-Israelism, Pan-Arabism, Arab unity, Arab Nationalism, and Arab Socialism. In a traditional culture where old family and tribal ties played the most significant part in power politics, as a result of which the majority of the population would have to stay out of politics and only watch their betters act, the Ba’ath ideology promised a new hope for social justice.

Syria and Egypt were the first Arab states to embrace modified forms of Arab Socialism/Ba’thism, and later Iraq, Yemen and Libya would follow suit. Riding the popular waves of revolutions and coups against obsolete and corrupt monarchies, the socialist military rose to power in those countries. That is why the backbone of Arab Socialism was – and still is – militarism. While the ancien régime would prop itself up on the support of the land-owners and propertied middle class, Arab Socialism would find its most vocal proponents among the ranks of the poor and the working class as well as the intellectuals.

However, despite its profession to socialism, in reality Arab Socialism would mostly depend on populism, charismatic rule, and militarism. Already nurturing the seeds of despotism, from the early 1960s all kinds of Arab Socialism, including Ba’athism, drifted towards ruthless dictatorships. The bloody 1958 coup in Iraq that brought to power General Abd al-Karim Qasim and then the 1966 coup in Syria that laid the foundations of the future Assad autocracy manifested such developments in the Ba’ath ideology towards a more authoritarian form of government, which in distinction to Ba’athism proper is usually called “Neo-Ba’athism.”

The civil war in Yemen that was sparked as a result of a Communist takeover was another major trend towards the rise of the more authoritarian form of Arab Socialism. When the Communist army officers deposed Imam Muhammad al-Badr, the king of Yemen, and established a revolutionary government in the Republic of North Yemen, Badr sought the assistance of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the two foremost Arab monarchies at that time, to make war on the revolutionaries. Naturally, Egypt would militarily intervene on behalf of the revolutionary government while the Soviet Union would provide strategic and technical assistance. The proxy war between the old-guard Arab Monarchists and the vanguard Arab Socialists continued up to the late 1960s when the Arabs’ confrontation with Israel would put a necessary stop to the conflict among themselves.

Egypt’s dramatic change of policy towards Israel and the Soviet Union, which effectively terminated the project of Russian expansionism in the Middle East, had dire consequences for Ba’thism. Thenceforward, with the gradual decline of the Ba’ath ideology and the fall of most of the Ba’athist despots and dictators like Saddam Hussein, the Soviet cultural hegemony would also recede from the region. As a result, the last bulwark of that trend of Russophilia in today’s Middle East proves to be the Assad regime in Syria, where Russians have a stake: their last Middle Eastern naval facility in the Syrian port of Tarsus. It’s no wonder why President Putin of Russia is intent upon keeping the genocidal Assad in power at any cost.