The West.. Political Guardianship as a Reflection of Philosophical Arrogance

The British-American philosopher Bernard Lewis views Arabs and Muslims as corrupt, chaotic, and incapable of civilisation religious and ethnic components. If these components were left alone, they would invade Europe and America and destroy Western civilisation. He believes that the solution lies in striking them and occupying their countries, in order to train them in democratic practices and eliminate the “corrupt Islamic beliefs” that prevent them from becoming civilised.

Many Orientalists preceded Lewis in these ideas, drawing their ideas from the Western perceptions or “concepts of the East,” according to Edward Said. These ideas revolve around issues of racial and cultural superiority of the West over the other, the Easterner, racially and culturally, which gives the “capable Westerner” the right to guardianship over the “incapable Easterner.”

In 1945, the United Nations established a trusteeship system for countries that were under the mandate system established by the League of Nations. The trusteeship also included other countries, to manage their political, economic and social affairs. According to the mandate, protection and trusteeship systems, we witnessed countries that were claimed to be independent, and these countries or colonies were called “protectors” in a form of control over the resources of different peoples with shiny “value” names.

The concept of protection is based on the existence of an authority that manages its country, under the protection of a foreign army that does not interfere in the management of the country’s affairs. However, this is the theoretical definition, and the reality was completely different, as the foreign army controlled the countries under protection, while the concepts of mandate and trusteeship are based on the management of the affairs of countries under mandate or trusteeship, with the mandate system of the League of Nations later transforming into the trusteeship system of the United Nations.

Although the United Nations ended the trusteeship agreement for the last territory, the Pacific Islands (Palau), which was administered by the United States, in 1994, different forms of trusteeship and protection were and are being implemented before and after the termination of the Palau agreement, as these concepts came to serve the powerful who wanted to maintain their power at the expense of the less powerful, while preserving - formally - the values included in their constitutions and in international norms and covenants.

These conflicting desires are what generate this enormous amount of hypocrisy and the subjugation of concepts and terms in favor of the powerful, so that the powerful can achieve their conflicting desires: to control and dominate, and to appear humane and civilized, belonging to the values of goodness, truth, freedom, and justice. Hence, the occupation was exported in the name of protection, and control was exported in the name of guardianship.

The mandate, protection and guardianship systems reveal a racist, supremacist mentality, which was brought out in moral and legal frameworks, in order to prepare for its exploitation by those in charge of it to consolidate the interests of Western colonialism, which was creative in reversing facts and concepts, by plundering the wealth of peoples in the name of developing countries, and by occupying the land under the pretext of protecting peoples, and this is what happened in a history whose witnesses are still alive.

Protection, mandate and guardianship are not abstract political concepts, but rather they are fundamentally concepts with intellectual foundations that are deeply rooted in the philosophical and political mind of the West, in its view of the Eastern other in particular, despite all the intellectual, scientific and cultural transformations that human civilization has undergone during the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, as these transformations have not succeeded in finally getting rid of the traditional orientalist view that is based on the vast difference between the East and the West, according to the English poet Rudyard Kipling, who said: “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” and on the basis that the East needs the West, as a “minor” needs a “guardian” to take him by the hand towards physical, mental and emotional growth.

The problem with the concepts of mandate, protection and guardianship lies in the fact that they are based on the existence of peoples who have not yet reached the age of majority, and the management of their political, economic and social affairs is handed over to authorities from other countries who play the role of mandate, protection and guardianship, until the immature peoples reach the age of majority, after which it is possible to consider handing over the reins of their affairs to these peoples.

The problem here is that these guardians did not abandon their guardianship, which was supposed to be a charitable and missionary mission. Over time, the righteous guardians turned into occupying thieves who used all kinds of oppression to strike at the national liberation movements in the countries they appointed themselves guardians of through international systems, because the goal was not guardianship and protection, but rather those titles were merely a means to exploit peoples and plunder their wealth.

The mandate, protectorate and guardianship systems - as theoretical concepts - are based primarily on false ideas, because they start from a racist premise, which is that one race is more mature than another, even though the differences between nations and peoples are not due to genetic characteristics, but rather to political and economic circumstances, cultural determinants, the inevitability of geography, the burdens of history, and other circumstances and conditions.

Here, the West cannot be separated from its religious heritage in Christianity and Judaism, and its philosophical heritage with Greek roots. These two heritages, despite the presence of seeds of humanist tendencies within them, still retain many racist ideas and justifications that rely on religious and rational logic at the same time. This heritage has clearly seeped into contemporary Orientalist intellectual and philosophical systems, which in turn have fed Western political and ideological frameworks in their view of the other, influenced by a heritage that sees the other as merely a savage “barbarian,” a characteristic that has been used to describe many peoples in Asia and Africa, from a Western perspective that sees its values as universal values, and its standards as the standards on which morals and behaviors should be evaluated. This is an unmistakable, condescending view.

This supremacist guardianship - with the same purpose - still controls broad philosophical and political levels. Indeed, political guardianship is a reflection of philosophical guardianship based on the two pillars of racial purity and cultural superiority.

We can see this in the statements of Western politicians who visit Eastern countries, and in the lessons they give about the necessity of respecting rights and freedoms, which are legitimate demands that are often intended to be false, as the West has employed these titles selectively and utilitarianly for its own benefit, not to serve just causes, which was alluded to by the Algerian philosopher Malek Bennabi, when he said: “The West does not carry its values with it, outside its borders,” because the West does not adhere to its values when they conflict with its interests.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi