June 1, 2015--Remapping

Over breakfast at Balthazar late last week with a well-travelled friend, despite our attempt to be optimistic about things, he couldn't resist asking what I thought was happening in the Middle East.

"You need to bring that up while I'm still enjoying my scone?" I said as playfully as I could.

"Well, in fact there may be things to feel good about."

"Really?" I was skeptical.

"Put in perspective."

"In perspective?" I was still skeptical.

"Very long term perspective."

"Again, really? How does that work?"

"Maybe what's happening has to happen. If we think about the long sweep of history, I mean."

Beginning to get was he was suggesting, I said, "I guess you could push me to make a very-guardedly optimistic case for the region if you gave me maybe a 100-year time frame to project things onto."

"Look," he said, "I'm British and am old enough to have seen massive changes in our position in the world. I had family members who worked for the Colonial Service in South Asia. When India was in effect a British colony. Some of of the change was bloody others more peaceful."

"More than 'in effect,'" I said. "Look, you're as old as I am--and that's pretty old--and though I don't remember from personal history about the changes in your empire as the result of the American Revolution, they were profound."

"Very amusing," he said, "The  very old business."

"The results of the Revolution changed the map for a large part of the Western Hemisphere. And led to even more change when France made its Louisiana Territory available for purchase."

"And later you follows grabbed from Mexico a large part of what is now the American West. California very much included."

"Yes as a result of the Mexican War during the 1840s and don't forget ten years or so after that the Gadsden Purchase which allowed us to flesh out our southwestern border. And then later still there was the bargain-basement purchase from Russia of Alaska."

"So project onto that what is going on right now in the Middle East."

"For some years I've been thinking about that and writing about it on my blog--how if one looks at the map of the current Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia for that matter, we see the remnants of big-power colonial domination and the national borders that were imposed on Arab people, as well as Persians, Jews, Turks, and others after, for example, the First World War. Newly constituted or created countries that still exist. On paper at least. Countries without borders that take history or culture or religion into consideration. So, once the colonial powers backed off--and that includes us in the U.S.--things began to unravel."

"That's an understatement," my friend said.

"So perhaps what we're seeing is a remapping. Is that your optimistic scenario?"

"For me as well very-guardedly optimistic. Yes. That's what I'm thinking."

"I've been thinking and saying that too. How what we are seeing is an assertion on the ground of various Islamic factions seeking violently to settle scores and slough off the boundaries that they have been forced to live with by the Western powers. Borders that ignored culture. And, through the support and cynical use of dictators such as Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, and the Saudi royal family, among others, attempted to tamp down and contain nationalistic strivings and the natural forces of history."

"So in your remapping scenario," my British friend said, sipping his morning tea, "you agree that this is something that has to happen? That's inevitable?"

"Yes. In history, there has been a lot of remapping. That which is the result of warfare where the victors impose new boundaries. The American, French, and Russian Revolutions are examples as is the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I."

"Other examples are the result of the invasions of exploding empires--the Roman Empire and Islamic Caliphate that dominated most of north Africa and western Europe. And of course our British Empire. The one where the sun never set."

"We could go on. The point being that what gets left behind or imposed as the result of these powerfully aggressive movements result in unnatural affiliations where people of very different backgrounds are forced to think about themselves as Iraqis or Syrians or Libyans. Big picture--there is no such thing as an Iraqi. Nationalities of this kind have been constructed by conquerers. This goes against the history of these peoples where they think about themselves as Sunnis or Shia or Kurds, not Iraqis. And as a result, what we have wrought are powder kegs throughout the region waiting for some spark to ignite them. And we're seeing those sparks all over the world. Very much including the emergence of ISIS."

"Thus my optimistic thought," my friend said. "As I said, perhaps there has to be this movement toward the reestablishment of cultural borders. Maybe even a few that are fluid since some of the people who live in the region are nomadic. Also, in some cases this may not even involve the concept of 'country' or 'nation.' And this of course doesn't mean that peace will break out. There will still be disputes and incursions but hopefully not at the level of all-out warfare."

"Sounds good to me, though, if you're right, I won't be around to see it."

"There you go again about being old. In the meantime, can I treat you to another cup of coffee and maybe some toast?"

June 20, 2014--Persia

I am having second thoughts about our working in tandem with Iran to push back against the jihadist ISIS forces that are threatening to fully overrun Iraq and implement a holocaust against Shiite Iraqis and impose sharia law. They are already massacring thousands in parts of Iraq they have seized

These really are bad people. Even Al-Qaeda has renounced them as too violent. When you have Al-Qaeda pronouncing you to be too violent that qualifies as violent.

Already openly engaged in talks with Iran about its nuclear program, something that would have been difficult to imagine just a year ago when the drumbeat in Israel and among militarists in our own country were pressing the Obama administration to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran; as ISIS fighters stormed across northern and central Iraq, the US and Iran, again openly, began to talk about the possibility of coming to the assistance of the Iraqi government, as ineffective and exclusionary as it is, because the prospect of ISIS controlling most of the country, and the region that includes Syria, was too apocalyptic to contemplate.

There are at least three possible scenarios for the tormented Middle East--

Perhaps most likely is decades of interminable warfare ranging from small scale internecine civil wars between ethnic, tribal, and religious rivals to region-wide strife. Libya is an example of the former while what we are now seeing across Syria and Iraq is characteristic of the latter, with ISIS already proclaiming that what they are up to is not just the imposition of sharia law but the reestablishment of the Caliphate of the 7th through 15th centuries.

Second is the reemergence of a class of local tyrants who can, through force and terror, suppress the aspirations of the region's fractious peoples. Saddam Hussein in Iran, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the Shah and ayatollahs in Iran, the royal family in Saudi Arabia, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and currently Bashar al-Assad in Syria are all examples of leaders who were or have been for decades successful at keeping the lid on discontent and political rivals.

Third, though ultimately unlikely, is the scenario I have been reconsidering--the emergence with subtle U.S. support--of three or four regional powers that reassert their historic leadership roles across the region.

Egypt would need to see its revolution concluded to again play its dominant role among Arabs. Turkey would have to see it influence spread among moderate Muslims. Saudi Arabia would have to open its society further and come to play a greater regional role. And Iran would have to again become Persia.

Some have argued, for example, that Iran's nuclear aspirations have less to do with developing atomic weapons to use against Israel than an expression of national pride. For a people with an ancient and proud history to see itself overshadowed by the Saudis and Israelis is deeply humiliating. To again be able to play an influential role in the region might satisfy those national ambitions.

Of course the likelihood of any progressive scenario advancing is remote. The Sunnis and Shia have been murderous rivals since the death of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran eye each other venomously.

But perhaps our trying to find a way to bring Iran into the family of moderate nations is worth a try. Everything else seems too depressing to think about 24 hours before the summer solstice.