The Wheels of History Grind Slow, and Not So Well
In a fascinating series of posts about a spur-of-the-moment road trip - "Hey dude... we're in Turkey... let's drive to Iraq" - Michael Totten says what needs to be said about all the trouble in the world today. Arguing that Islamism only seems like the biggest problem in the Middle East, when it's really only that Islamism is its biggest export (which I guess is kind of like summing up the Japanese by pointing to a Camry), he says with great insight that the real problem is that:
The crackup of the Ottoman Empire has still not settled down into anything stable.
Maybe it's just because I am currently reading an excellent book about the crackup of another ancient civilization - Europe - in Tony Judt's magesterial Postwar but that strikes me as being right on the nose. That area of the world is currently going through its own Twentieth Century, made worse by the fact that it's also living with the cast-off aftermath of Europe's own Twentieth. The near-simultaneous collapse of Austro-Hungary, Russia, Prussia/Germany, not to mention the last of the Mongol monarchs (in Azerbaijan and, I believe, Armenia) and a bunch of other upheavals (Italy, Spain...) gave us two horrific wars, Fascism, Communism in all its multifarious splendors, numerous genocides, and a resulting body count in the high tens of millions, if not higher. Not to mention the disastrous aftermath of messy colonial withdrawals around the world as Europe bled itself white. All because of some some silly little empires.
Anyway. No point to that. Why should there be? This is a weblog! Read Michael Totten's road trip series - here's part one, which links at the end to part two.
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I think he's got a point
I think he's got a point there. It's not just wahabbist fundamentalism, but the instability. They're mutually reinforcing.
I think when it comes down to it, the worst legacy of colonialism is not oppression, or profiteering or racism or all of that, but just bad borders. Those lines worked when they were borders between colonial possessions, more or less. But for successor states, not so much. The Kurds, Sunnis and Shias in Iraq were all equal in subordination (mostly) under the Ottomans, and the British. But once the possibility of independence is open, what ties them to each other? The fact that they were all once part of the smallest effing province in the Ottoman effing empire? Don't think so, and this problem is repeated over and again throughout Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.
True that. Borders are an
True that. Borders are an artifact of stable civilizations. Frontiers, with their areas of ill-defined control and cultural overlap, are the more Lockean state. I mean, hell, look at the Kurds. Or the Gypsies. Or ethnic Germans expelled from Hungary after the war. Or the denizens of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. Or Serbs, Croats, Montenegrans, etc. etc. etc. Now that there's "borders" to places called "Serbia" and "Germany," where Serbians and Germans are ostensibly from, it makes it even easier to beat on a family of Bosnians who live in "Serbia." Because of course, the "Serbians" grew from that ground there between those borders like hyacinths in some English garden when whatever God they pray to created the world. And God forbid some Bosnians, excuse me, hydrangeas get in among the hyacinths. It won't do.
I think one of the deep historical reasons that everyone keeps beating on the Jews is that they are a people without a country. That fact, and the fact that they seem to do okay wherever they end up, rather than milling from region to region as ragged masses of refugees (I need to put it this way for brevity's sake, not for some murky anti-Semitic claim) reminds people in rural Russia, in Poland, in the Czech Republic, that they too are really one enemy tank division away from being displaced and having to figure out how to live the same way.
Jealousy and a intimation of
Jealousy and a intimation of one's own mortality do not make for good behavior.
I couldn't find that exact
I couldn't find that exact quote in Mr. Totten's commentary but it sure hits the nail on the head. Don't forget, we also have Messrs Sykes and Picot to thank for the border mess in that region based on their inability to manage said breakup, and their own national self-interests.
I'm not a political scientist by any means, but based on inspection of the world's geopolitical maps it sure seems like nearly every time you have an absolutely straight line you consequently have strife based on that artificial division. Of course, you can still have conflicts based on natural boundaries or other factor.
Comparisons to the current mess in the SW USA left as an exercise to the reader...
Johno,
Johno,
As usual, any excuse to use the phrase "denizens of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia" and you're right at it. What is it with you?
At least this time it was mostly relevant, quite unlike the time we were finishing that bowel resection- the one when we had to chopper out to the QE2 for emergency surgery on the Chief Purser, and used a field transfusion from the Wine Leftenant-and we were just wrapping up, and I turn my back for a minute...a minute...and I turn back, and you had "denizens of Sub-" already sewn into the man's abdomen with #4 silk. Had you not been so conscientious about getting the hyphen perfectly lined up with the sternum, I believe you would've finished the whole phrase.
And thanks to you, the Chief
And thanks to you, the Chief Purser has gibberish strewn across his chest in pale herringbone, rather than the baddest-ass scar in the history of field surgery.
If you had your way, my "Mother" tattoo would read "Mot."
Spoilsport.