Friday, March 13, 2009

Positive Neutralism

Last night, before going to bed, I read an excellent paper on Positive Neutralism in Nasser's foreign policy by a graduate student in the UK. I then had a long dream about positive neutralism. People attribute the concept to Clovis Maksud, who coined the term and it got the attention of Nasser, who then asked Maksud to head the Arab League office in India. Arab politics in the 1950s and 1960s was full and rich in slogans, polemics and terms. And what do we have today? The Servitor of the Two Holy Sites (not counting the IKEA store in the Saudi Kingdom).