The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom & Democracy in the Middle East

Описание: The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom & Democracy in the Middle East

Professor Fawaz Gerges
Talk recorded Tue 13 January 2026, Queen Square, Bath

The Middle East is in upheaval: a widening chasm between state and society, the failure of governing elites to address citizens’ genuine grievances, massive economic mismanagement—all made worse by repeated interventions by Western powers. Why has political change been so difficult to achieve?

In The Great Betrayal, Fawaz Gerges argues that the convergence of political authoritarianism, meddling by the West, and the effects of prolonged regional conflicts, including the Israel/Palestine conflict, have produced geopolitical and geoeconomic paralysis and stagnation. The agency of everyday people has been thwarted by an authoritarian status quo that is maintained by a powerful partnership of external and internal forces.

He shows how the people of the Middle East have been systematically denied self-determination, political representation, and effective government. Gerges finds that the region, with its diversity, variability, and volatility, defies abstract grand theories; previous accounts that have attributed the Middle East’s problems to any one cause such as modernism, ignore the complexity and specificity of the issues. What can we learn from the Middle East’s vexed history?

Professor Fawaz A. Gerges is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East, What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East and Making the Arab World (Princeton).