Let me show you what happens when a pundit is under deadline pressure. Daniel Hannan, writes for The Telegraph (U.K.) on the failure of the Arab Spring; he argues that the problem is the absence of true nation states.
Nation states are absent through much of the region, but certainly not in Egypt. Egypt is the oldest or second oldest nation state on the planet.
Nevertheless, Egypt's recent attempts at governmental improvement have been no more successful than those in Syria and Iraq, two synthetic states created a hundred years ago out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by the British and French.
It is probably correct that Iraqis don't feel a national bond, no more do Jordanians or Syrians. And to be sure, this lack of identification with a nation can be part of the problem.
But wake an Egyptian out of a sound sleep and ask him or her what country they're from, they'll know. They'd been Egyptians for thousands of years before the arrival of Rome, two thousand years ago.
All that national identification and yet Egyptians can't pull off representative government either. There are other major factors at work. Sorry, Mr. Hannan, absence of nation state identification is not the whole story.
