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The story of pan-Arabism’s retreat goes deeper than Sadat’s policy. Pan-Arabism’s retreat began in 1967 after the Six Day War, which marked the Waterloo of pan-Arabism. The leaders in the Christian community who had known the Arab system and made their peace with it lost to those for whom Arabism and Islam were synonymous, and who believed in their own cultural supremacy and the backwardness of the Arabs. The threat of a partitioned Lebanon is yet another serious challenge to pan-Arabism in a decade of setbacks. The universalisai of pan-Arabism derived to a considerable extent from the universalisai of the Ottoman Empire of which the Arab states had been a part for four centuries. Finally, from 1956 until Nasser’s death in 1970, the power of pan-Arabism derived from the power of charismatic leadership. The passing of pan-Arabism means just that: the end of one set of troubles.

THEY QUARRELED with Rafiq Hariri's way of rebuilding Beirut, dismissing his renewal project as an assault on the capital's ar chaeological heritage and the graceful old city of fabled memory. They wrote off his ambitious economic policy, pointing to the vast public debt that accumulated under his stewardship. Many Lebanese saw Hariri as Saudi Arabia's man, never quite taking to the swashbuckling way he climbed to the heights of power. But on February 14, when the former prime minister was struck down by a huge bomb that shattered his motorcade as it passed near Beirut's swank hotels and sea front-in the very district his construction company had remade from rubble-Lebanon had its first "martyr" in many years. Hariri had not been a vocal opponent of Syria, but the opposition now claimed him as its own. He had risen through the subtle work ings of politics and power, but "the street" now belonged to him. A Sunni Muslim, he had never bonded entirely with the Christians of East Beirut and Mount Lebanon, but he now became public property, a symbol of national unity. If Hariri's assassins sought to make an example of him for his growing defiance of Syrian power, the aftermath of the crime mocked them. A country forgotten and consigned to the captivity of its eastern neighbor shook off its fear and reticence. For the span of a generation, Lebanon was merely an appendage of Syrian power: for all practical purposes, the small republic left the

THERE SHOULD BE no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no "hearts and minds" to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the over whelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power. America ought to be able to live with this distrust and discount a good deal of this anti-Americanism as the "road rage" of a thwarted Arab world-the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds. There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power's simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions and defects. Above and beyond toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein and dismantling its deadly weapons, the driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world. The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest-for the Arabs themselves, and for an America implicated in their affairs. It is cruel

A generation after that day of October 6,1981, when Anwar al Sadat was struck down, a strange bond has been forged between Sadat and his assassin, Khalid Istanbuli. A place has been made in the coun try's narrative for both men. The history of Egypt, her very identity, is fluid enough to claim the wily ruler who swallowed his pride to deal with Israel and the United States, and also the assassin appalled by the cultural price paid in the bargain. In a sense, Sadat and Istanbuli are twins, their lives and deeds one great tale of the country's endur ing dilemmas and her resilience amid great troubles, about the kind of political men Egypt's history brought forth when her revolution ary experiment of the 1950s and 1960s ran aground. It is not hard for Egyptians to recognize much of themselves and their recent history in Istanbuli, the young lieutenant who proclaimed with pride that he had shot the pharaoh. He was in every way a son of the Free Officer Revolution of Gamal Abdel Nasser, of July 23,1952, when Egypt cast aside her kings and set out on a new, nonaligned path. Istanbuli was born in 1957, a year a^ter t^ie Suez Crisis, during what seemed to be a moment of promise in the life of Egypt. He was named after Nasser's oldest son. His father was a lawyer in a public sector company that was a product of the new, expanding govern ment. He was ten years old when calamity struck Egypt in the Six Day War, and the Nasser revolution was shown to be full of sound and

Human rights have lately become the focus of a global debate, but the concept raises profound ideological, cultural and normative issues that the current debate does not sufficiently address itself to. This paper brings to bear on the issues of human rights a world-order perspective that is sensitive, not only to the question of state power, but also to economic rights and social justice, as well as the problem of militarization. The paper argues against the tendancy to abstract the question of human rights in a manner that makes it irrelevant to the broader, world-order agenda. It is particularly concerned with the linkage between human rights, on the one hand, and basic economic needs, on the other.

EQUALITY, men have been endlessly told by rulers, scholars, and religious teachings, knows no limits; once the passion for it is unleashed, it can wreak havoc on fragile social orders that must either allow for inequality, slip into mediocrity, or succumb to anarchy and chaos. "Some of you," the Quran instructs the faithful, "we have placed over others in rank." Other traditions and the weight of history have rendered similar advice: equality is not of this world, and there is very little use trying to bring it about, for even if established orders are overthrown, the same sorts of relationships are bound to begin all over again. The slave would try to be a master-and would thereby confirm that inequality is the natural order of things. The "revolution betrayed" is an established historical theme that denies to revolutionary and egalitarian claims the sense of moral assurance they might once have possessed. When the dust settles, new orthodoxies emerge to stultify life, new inquisitors crack the whip, and the nouveaux riches act in even more repugnant ways than the old aristocracies. Conservatives have always dwelled on what they think is the historical record. They have sought to deflate the appeal of egalitarian claims, to add a somber note to the frenzy and enthusiasm associated with the politics of rebellion and challenge. "At the very center of conservative thought," notes Michael Walzer, "lies this idea: that the present division of wealth and power corresponds to some deeper reality of human life . . . and that all efforts to change it, temporarily successful in relation to their bloodiness, must be futile in the end."' Indeed, in conservative writings on society, one sees a bewilderment, an inability to comprehend why a futile quest for equality has engaged the energies and imagination of so many. Robert Nisbet, a prominent conservative thinker, expresses that kind of exasperation. He contends that the egalitarian quest falls outside logic and rationality; it is the nature of such

The essay explores the potential contribution of Third World nations to a more equitable and just world. It asks a basic question: if such a world does not seem to emerge out of the designs of the rich and powerful, can it emerge out of the policies of the less-privileged members of the world system? Several world-order crises are identified as the yardstick with which we can judge the feasibility of a populist Third World platform that offers alternatives to the designs of the rich and the powerful. The conclusion the author draws is that populism is a useful and promising concept and strategy, but that it cannot be based on the designs and preferences of governmental units and entities.