Robert Springborg: Power, Dignity & Culture in the MENA

WILLIAM WANKER: Hello and welcome. I'm William Wonker, and you are listening to Dignify Audio, a podcast brought to you by Human Dignity Projects and Dignify Magazine, both of which I co created and co-curate with Pamela Kelly. Today we are speaking with our highly regarded friend Robert Springborg. Robert is a research fellow at the Italian Institute of International Affairs and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. Robert has held various academic and consultancy positions focusing on the Middle East, including the MBI Algebra Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, otherwise more widely known as SOAS, and director of the American Research Center in Egypt. Robert was also a professor at National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and a professor of Middle East politics at National. at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. And Robert has also worked as a consultant on Middle East governance and politics for USAID, the US State Department, the UNDP, and various UK government departments. I should also note that Robert has authored and coauthored numerous articles and books, including most recently books entitled Egypt's New Authoritarian Republic in 2025. And political economy, power, and cultural heritage in the Arab world, also in twenty twenty five. As we have been friends for a long time, I can confidently say that in Robert, we have an expert at hand to discuss some topics of importance to us and to the world at large. And we are going to be taking advantage of his expertise by presenting this conversation in three episodes. The first focused more generally on the Middle East. The second focused on what Robert has called the Arab dignity deficit, and the third focused on Robert's work involving culture and cultural heritage. So let's jump right in. Thank you for joining us, Robert. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for hosting me, William. We just provided some insight into your background, but please, in your own words, give us a sense of who you are and what about your background brought you to this place today. For example, what prompted your initial interest in international affairs and what seems to have become your focus, which is not just Egypt, but the political economies of the Middle East? Well, you know, all the product ⁓ of our times and especially our early years and ⁓ my early years were ⁓ what I think was quite globally an exciting time. It was the period of decolonization in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere in the global south. And ⁓ so the leadership at that time was really quite exciting. We had great hopes that people like Gamal Abdul Maos were in Egypt and others in Africa and so on. would really transform their societies and bring about very much better situations than had existed under colonial rule. ⁓ and so I was very much a product of that time and I had in the mid nineteen sixties the opportunity to travel and work in the Middle East, most notably in Cairo, I became a front desk clerk at the Nile Hilton Hotel in Cairo when it was owned by the government of Egypt. whether it still is or not, I cannot say. But at that time it was, and it was the only five star hotel in Egypt, and it was the only official guest house of the presidency of Egypt. And so there I was at the front desk and in that particular year, summer of nineteen sixty five, Nasser had invited numerous ⁓ leaders of the global south to come to Cairo en route to Algeria where there was to be a Third World Summit, and on june nineteenth of that year, the then leader of Algeria ⁓ Ahmed Ben Bella was overthrown ⁓ by Huari Bumidian, who was a military officer and went on to become a long-serving president. So sitting in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Cairo, ⁓ were a handful of the world's most famous Third World figures, Chao Wan Lai, Li Docto, ⁓ Sakarno from Indonesia, and so on, and everyday Nother would pay a visit. And ⁓ he noticed there was this American guy. at the front desk, and this was in the wake of the termination of Public Law four eighty wheat shipments to Egypt some six months previously when President Johnson cut him off the pressure on Nasser. So clearly Nasser was keen to appear not to be anti American. So curiously he came to me when he first saw me there, where all these dignitaries were there waiting to to receive him and sort of introduced himself and I was sort of blown away. There I am a twenty year old kid at the front desk. And he came back repeatedly day after day and he would go through this ritual with the television cameras whirring. Well this of course ⁓ sort of bowled me over and it was not just the fame and glory, as it were, of of meeting all these people, which I did. But it was in working with Egyptians at the front desk who were very interested in telling their stories. It was a repressive regime. And to have someone from the outside world who they felt they could trust and speak to frankly about their circumstances was a real eye opener for me. And so I ⁓ fell in love with the country, its people, and then went on to do ⁓ ultimately a PhD focused on Egypt and spent much of my working life ⁓ focused on Egypt, living there. I'm married to someone born and raised in Egypt. ⁓ so that was ⁓ how I ended up where I am today. How terrific. What a great story. Well, with your expertise, I'm sure as you are familiar, the topic on everyone's mind is the Middle East. And given your experience and your understanding of economics and politics and your work advising leaders within the region, what's your take on things there? Well, Lorrack, ⁓ it always seems like the Middle East is at a critical time, but historically I think the analogy now is going back to what I just mentioned, the end of the colonial era and the beginning ⁓ of a new one, for which at the time there were great hopes and which were not realized. So we're sort of now in an analogous situation whereby it's really the end of the American Empire that was established in the region. post World War Two and then was rekindled with the collapse of the Soviet Union nineteen eighty nine nineteen ninety. But it's now no longer the American era, at least in that part of the world, the question being, what's going to replace it? And unlike with the end of the British Empire, which was signaled really with the withdrawal from east of Suez in the early nineteen seventies, the Americans were in a position to inherit that empire, which they have had for fifty years basically. Now there's no one in the position to inherit the empire, the at least no one who's allied with the outgoing power, as the United States was with the United Kingdom. And so there's a scramble for power going on, and that scramble includes not only global challengers such as the Chinese, to a lesser extent the Russians, the Europeans who are closest geographically to the region, are also trying to figure out how they are going to react to the end of the American Empire. But within the region, ⁓ the stronger states are realizing that suddenly they are going to be in, if not the driver's seat, very close to it. ⁓ and so Turkey, Iran, Israel being the most important of them. And within the Arab world, it's now the Gulf states and most importantly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that are all contesting for power. And so no one knows what the outcome is going to be, either with regard to the immediate manifestation of that contest Which is the war in Iran and now is spilled over into not only Yemen, but of course also into Lebanon, Syria, and to some extent Iraq. But war this is all leading. What structures are going to replace what has been an American-dominated region now for two generations? So we're at a critical turning time, the direction of the turn be not clear to basically anyone. And so in these circumstances of unpredictability. You have a lot of risk taking by various actors who are trying to establish their sphere of influence, either whether they're within the region or a global actor such as China. So we live, as the Chinese proverb says, in interesting times, and it's for someone such as myself, almost going back to this period of the nineteen sixties. when the end of colonialism opened up all sorts of possibilities and indeed at the time very hopeful possibilities, which were not realized. And I fear that it will be much the same this second time around. So sort of following up on that quickly, you play a lot in both economics and politics, the political economies of the region. Is it power? Is it economics? Both? Is there one s particular lens through which they're looking at things? Well power power and money are always closely connected. And much more closely connected in the Middle East than they are, let's say, in Western countries, because the power is basically consolidated in the state. And so if you get control of the state, you then not only have political power, you then inevitably are going to have economic benefits flowing to you from that. And so capturing the state is essentially the contest, even in democracies, but in democracies you capture the state presumably for a limited period of time. But in the Middle East and North Africa, capturing the state makes it your property in perpetuity until someone else st steals it from you. And so you always, in my mind, have to look at both the political power angle and the economic resources captured by and feeding into those who have power who control the state. And so political economy is precisely that, going back to Adam Smith in the late eighteenth century, when in fact in England or Scotland where he was, the idea that power and money went together was was essential to his idea of economics. After all, he was the father of the very study of the economies and it we went away from Adam Smith and economics became separated from political science and economics became highly empirical and so too did political science. And yet at the core of it are the relationships between power and money. And you can count them, but more importantly you need to study them at a humanity level. These are human interactions. These are not just statistical ⁓ recordings of those interactions. And so I began some as someone who was interested in political anthropology, which is for much more focused on human interactions rather than financial and numerical ones. And that fell into disfavor and I sort of gradually moved from political anthropology to political economy, but I still like to think of myself as someone who is really focused on the human interactions that underlie power and the acquisition of wealth and or the opposite, the imposition of poverty and suffering on other people. So that's a William how I sort of got to where I am now. It's been a long journey, but it hasn't really been different from the very beginning. It's always been the focus on political power, but more the humane dimensions of that than just the sheer empirical ones. Well, that's probably why you bring an interesting lens to it. And if you were advising the American powers that be, who are probably looking at it in in strategic geopolitical and again economic ties, what would you have them do? What I did. The core of the matter is how do people perceive the exercise of economic and political power? Do they perceive that that power is acting in their own interests? Are they are their lives being made better by it or not? And the vast majority of the some almost five hundred million, half a billion Middle East North Africans now perceive that they're not being looked after, they're not being listened to. that their economic rewards are, if anything, diminishing rather than increasing. And they are being aggregated by those who have political power. So they are excluded both from the political and the economic realms. And so to ignore that fundamental reality of the region is to invite endless problems. And that's precisely what we've seen. The United States, which winding the clock back About a generation was interested in development, was interested in establishing political systems that were more responsive and accountable to their citizens, and which would provide a broad growth not only of a middle class, but even of working and lower classes. That's been forgotten altogether. And it's now the sheer exercise of power. It's statecraft at the highest levels, and transactional diplomacy is practiced. not only by Washington, but by virtually all of the major actors in the world now, is simply ignores the plight of a very significant percentage, indeed more than half, ⁓ of the citizens of that region. And so the message is you have to take account of the needs of people and ⁓ be prepared to sacrifice on the short term at least what your national interest might be to ensure that you have some sort of base of support in the countries with which you're dealing. And that is no longer the case. The United States has become extremely unpopular in the region, and it's partly because it's been so closely associated with authoritarian regimes that have stripped their citizens of any sort of political power and as well as their economic well being. So my advice would be ⁓ think about the people and respond to them and their needs the best way you can, and that may be cause you to go up against ⁓ the interests of those who are currently in power, and we have shied away from that. Basically since two thousand and eleven, when the President Obama had the opportunity, ⁓ as a result of the Arab uprisings of that year, to indicate support for the then middle class uprisings and re very responsible people involved in them and turned his back on them and instead then ultimately ended up supporting a military takeover. So that was a historic mistake, and we have continued to pay the price since that time. What tactical moves can they make? Aside from just showing support, there's gotta be some strategic initiatives that they can undertake to s support those people. W what would you recommend? Well, tough love, ⁓ I think is the the short answer. And what do I mean by that? This the the one factor that is most closely associated with the rise of authoritarian government and and its continuity in the Middle East, North Africa is foreign assistance. The money that's been poured into the regimes of the Middle East, directly by foreign actors, and to a lesser extent in the very oil-rich countries, is responsible prop for propping up the dictatorships that rule in virtually every country of the region. Because those dictatorships need not be responsive to their own people. They are being supported by external actors, the key aspect of which is money, is foreign assistance in its various forms. And so I think that's the key to it. ⁓ we are responsible in significant measure for propping up regimes that have denied their people their their due political and economic rights. And so we have our hand on the till, if you will, and have chosen to use that hand to support powers that we want, in a way, to do our own bidding rather than the bidding of their own people. And so I would say the first and foremost is to use foreign assistance in a very different sort of a way. And that is to genuinely benefit the people. And if that cannot be done, if governments will not allow that to happen, then you cut off that foreign assistance. It's a real test of whether or not they're interested in their own people or interested in in their personal welfare. And so putting regimes to that test, I think, is a very vital part of it. And that's not the end of it, but I certainly think that's where we should begin, and we have not begun that. And it leads to a pretty dire prospect, right? And it sort of can be anticipated, but still I'm going to ask what happens if we continue along the present path and no one takes your words of wisdom seriously. What are the prospects for the people, not just the regimes, but the people living in the region? Well, if if to go to data, which I've been cautious about depending too much upon, ⁓ Middle East, North Africa is the region of the world that has far and away the highest absolute numbers as well as proportions. Of internally displaced peoples, of refugees, of battle deaths, of terrorist incidents and money spent on coercive forces, whether militias or militaries or police forces. All these negative measures of the welfare of people make the Middle East and North Africa the most dangerous, inhospitable ⁓ region of the world. And that's where we are now. And the real struggle for the region, as I mentioned at the outset here, which is Commencing as we speak, with the United States power clearly having been eclipsed and a lot of forces moving into that vacuum, it can only get worse. And so is this what we want to leave behind? And the answer is no. What can we do about it? Well there are some things, but ⁓ they would do it. My colleagues and I wrote a book about it called Making Aid Work. And the idea was how do we use foreign assistance to avert some of these terrible outcomes I've just been describing? And the book is almost four hundred pages long, so we don't have time with him to go into that. But you can be much more effective through use of monies because they are heavily dependent upon foreign assistance. It per capita the region of the world receives more foreign assistance than any other. And so that's our real key, as I mentioned before, and I'd say that's what we want to try to use judiciously. To try to at least make the disaster that seems to be on the horizon rather less destructive than it might otherwise be. Well, we'll make that book and where people can find it available when we publish the podcast. ⁓ but it's also brings us towards sort of the conversation that I wanted to focus on in episode two, which again focuses on the people. So I think we'll close episode one. Now it was, as I anticipated, a most fascinating conversation that could go on and on and on. And I have no doubt that episode two will be equally as fascinating. ⁓ as we will be discussing what Roberts called the Arab dignity deficit. And with that, let me say thanks to our audience for listening. We look forward to connecting again across the airwaves as we continue to explore human dignity and living a dignified human existence through the ideas and innovations of yet other designers, artists, craftspeople, heads of companies and nonprofits, and political commentators via Dignify Audio. Find a list of past and future podcasts, please go to Humandignity Projects.org, all podcasts of which are distributed through Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. And make sure you also catch the latest edition of Dignify magazine or catch up on past issues by visiting the same, humandignityprojects.org. Thank you, Robert, for your time, and thank you again for listening. I'm William Wonker, and this Is dignify audio.