Fluent Essays

When providing the four examples mentioned above, indicate the specific map # you used and how they support your examples. Part One EARLY AMERICA ENCOUNTERS THE MIDDLE EAST Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present Michael B. Oren 1 A MORTAL AND MORTIFYING THREAT IN 1776, SUDDENLY, AMERICANS WERE ON THEIR OWN. Previously, merchants from the New World blithely sailed the oceans in their brigs, sloops, and schooners, confident of the protection of history’s most powerful navy. That security vanished overnight, however, with the outbreak of the Revolution. The massive British fleet that had once shielded American commerce from harm was now its lethal enemy. With no real navy of their own to defend them, American vessels were exposed to attack from the moment they left their moorings and almost helpless in the open sea. The absence of a naval capability not only endangered American sailors but also imperiled the country’s survival. Concentrated along the eastern seaboard, blessed with natural harbors and an abundance of superior shipbuilding wood, eighteenth-century America was in large part a seafaring nation, dependent on foreign trade. A blow to that commerce could pitch the fledgling United States, struggling to preserve its tenuous independence, into bankruptcy. As Continental troops battled against better-armed and trained British forces, the former colonies clung to their maritime lifeline. One of these led south to the West Indies, but another, no less critical route, extended across the Atlantic eastward to the blue-water ports of the Mediterranean. Stretching from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Levantine and Anatolian coasts, the Mediterranean basin represented one of the world’s last remaining spheres free of European domination, where enterprising Americans could still seek their fortunes unchecked. Though the trip from North America to the Mediterranean was rarely pleasant, requiring six weeks’ sailing time aboard cold, cramped, and unsanitary vessels, the profits often outweighed the hardships. Local merchants were delighted to exchange capers, raisins, figs, and other Oriental delicacies for New World commodities such as timber, tobacco, and sugar. A singularly brisk business involved the export of puncheons of rum— “Boston Particular”—brewed by the descendants of New England Puritans and traded for barrels of Turkish opium, which the colonists then conveyed to Canton, China, or brought home for medicinal purposes. By the 1770s, an estimated one-fifth of the colonies’ annual exports were destined for Mediterranean docks, borne in the holds of some one hundred American ships. “Go where you will,” one British businessman in the area grumbled, “there is hardly a petty harbor…but you will find a Yankee…driving a hard bargain with the natives.”1 Prior to the Revolution, the only major threat to America’s vital Mediterranean trade came from the Middle East. Styling themselves as mujahideen—warriors in an Islamic holy war—Arabic-speaking pirates preyed on Western vessels, impounding their cargoes and enslaving their crews. These corsairs, as early Americans called them, sailed from the independent empire of Morocco and the semi-autonomous Ottoman regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, an area of the Middle East known collectively in Arabic as al-Maghrib, “the West.” Westerners, though, had a different name for the region, one that evoked its Berber location but also its ferocious reputation. They called it Barbary. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Barbary was Europe’s nightmare. Most of the men the pirates captured—among them Miguel de Cervantes, who based his first play on the ordeal—were sold as slaves destined for deadly toil in mines and galleys. European women, prized for their fair complexions, fetched premium prices in the harems. Escape was virtually impossible. Mrs. Maria Martin, a British citizen purportedly seized by Algiers, told of being stripped, extensively inspected, and chained in a lightless cell for over two years, merely for refusing to serve as a concubine. In despair, some captives converted to Islam (“turned Turk”) and served their rulers as advisers and physicians or joined the pirate navy as renegades. Most, however, waited hopelessly to be ransomed by their families back home, for few could afford the exorbitant fee.2 Though directed principally against Europeans, North African piracy occasionally claimed victims from the New World. The earliest documented attack occurred in 1625, when Moroccan corsairs captured a merchant ship sailing from the North American colonies. Twenty years later, seamen from Cambridge, Massachusetts, repelled an assault by Algerians, but in 1678 Algiers seized another Massachusetts ship and thirteen vessels from Virginia. Of the 390 English captives ransomed from Algiers in 1680, eleven were residents of New England and New York. “We had already lost five or six of our vessels by…pirates,” the Massachusetts governor Simon Bradstreet reported. “Many more of our inhabitants continue in miserable condition among them.” One of those residents was Joshua Gee, a Boston merchant who suffered “sorrows & exarsises”—forced labor, plague and occasional beatings—throughout his seven years’ captivity and who wept “tears of Joy…praising god…for his manifold merses,” upon his release.3 Pirate attacks against New World ships nevertheless grew infrequent over the course of the eighteenth century, as American vessels came under the protection of Britain’s vastly expanding and technologically superior navy. In their single-masted polaccas, xebecs, or feluccas, each with no more than twenty cannons and a few dozen armed men, the corsairs thought twice before waylaying a merchantman protected by a Royal Navy ship of the line manned by as many as 850 sailors and bristling with a hundred guns. For the British, North Africa was merely a gadfly scarcely worth a broadside, much less a war. Instead of resisting them, London mollified the Barbary States with annual installments of “tribute,” a euphemism for protection money. Bribed not to attack British boats, the pirates turned their attention to those of the less muscular powers, such as Portugal, Denmark, and Spain. The safeguards for American shipping remained in place until the issuance of the Declaration of Independence, in 1776. Yankee merchants promptly became the targets not just of North African corsairs but, more disastrously, of the British fleet that had once protected them. The patchwork Continental Navy nevertheless managed to meet those challenges with the leadership of intrepid captains like John Paul Jones and the assistance of French men-of-war, but by the time the fighting ended in 1783, most of America’s warships had either been captured, sold off, or sunk. The country was scarcely capable of defending its own coastline, let alone its overseas trade. “At present we are not in a condition to be at War with any nation, especially one [Algiers] from whom we expect nothing but hard knocks,” Pierse Long, a New Hampshire delegate to the Continental Congress, justifiably lamented. Algiers’s flotilla—nine large battleships and fifty gunboats strong—vastly outgunned that of the United States. Britain’s Lord Sheffield, a notorious opponent of American independence, affirmed, “The Americans cannot protect themselves [from Barbary]; they cannot pretend to a Navy.” America Cannot Retaliate Sheffield had reason to gloat. A national navy could be created only by a strong central government, which the country still lacked. Loosely bound by the Articles of Confederation, the states could not even raise national taxes, much less a countrywide military force. Indeed, the articles specifically ruled out the construction of a standing peacetime navy. And while the confederation in theory permitted any state “infested by pirates” to outfit warships for self-defense, in practice no single state was capable of generating the armed power necessary to ward off Barbary. America, moreover, could make war against North Africa only with the consent of nine of the thirteen states, each of which possessed the right to exercise “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” The reluctance of the Americans to forfeit their state prerogatives in order to present a common front to the world was reinforced by their aversion to international affairs in general. “No nation can be trusted farther than it is bound by its own interests,” George Washington warned, and no nations were deemed less trustworthy than the Europeans. Fear of foreign entanglements led many Americans to oppose creating a navy that could become embroiled with European fleets, or, worse, turn its guns on the nation’s nascent democratic institutions. Having just narrowly survived a confrontation with one European navy (Britain’s), many Americans were wary of any ocean-going force, even their own. There was also a financial consideration: warships were fabulously expensive to build, and, groaning under a colossal war debt, the United States treasury seemed incapable of bearing the burden.4 THE LACK of gunboats and the authority to construct them compelled the United States to overcome its aversion to European politics and to appeal to its Revolutionary allies, the French. According to the Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce signed in 1778, France was “to use its best offices to…obtain…the immunity of the ships, citizens, and goods of the United States, against any attack, violence or depredation of…the States of Barbary.” But when America called on France to honor that commitment, the response was negative. French leaders were keen to promote their own Mediterranean trade and feared the impact of American competition on the southern ports of Toulon, Nice, and Marseille. Concluding that “there is no advantage to us in procuring for them [the Americans] a tranquil navigation in the Mediterranean,” Paris ignored the request. Abandoned by France, Americans became easy prey for the pirates. In September 1783, Algerian xebecs reportedly harassed an American convoy sailing home from peace talks with Britain. “If there were no Algiers, it would be worth England’s while to build one,” quipped Benjamin Franklin, echoing the popular belief that the British were secretly paying the pirates. In fact, North Africa needed no encouragement from Britain or any other European power to attack ships of a United States that was now defenseless, friendless, and too impecunious to pay tribute.5 The North Africans’ impunity in raiding American ships was illustrated in October 1784 by the attack on the Betsey. The 300-ton brig was sailing from Boston to Tenerife Island, one hundred miles from North Africa’s coast, when it encountered an unidentified vessel. With the aid of a double bank of oars, the supple craft swiftly closed in and aligned its gunwales with those of the cumbrous Betsey. Then, with “sabers grasped between their teeth and their loaded pistols in their belts,” as one American sailor remembered them, bare-chested pirates in turbans and pantaloons swarmed onto the merchantman’s deck. “They made signs for us to all go forward,” another eyewitness recounted, “assuring us in several languages that if we did not obey their demands, they would massacre us all.” Surrendering crew members were stripped of all valuables and most of their clothing before being locked in the hold as human cargo, headed for the slave markets of Morocco.6 Three months after the Betsey’s capture, two more American ships, the Dauphin and the Maria, were abducted, this time by Algiers. Twenty-one American crewmen were fettered and paraded past jeering crowds to the court of the dynastic sovereign or dey, Hassan, who allegedly spat at them, “Now I have got you, you Christian dogs, you shall eat stones.” A seventeen-year-old seaman named James Leander Cathcart recalled being cast into a dungeon, “perfectly dark…where the slaves sleep four tier deep…many nearly naked, and few with anything more than an old tattered blanket to cover them in the depth of winter.” The daily ration, according to Cathcart, was a mere fifteen ounces of bread. The slightest resistance was punishable by bastinado (beatings on the feet), beheading, or impalement on iron spikes. “Curse and doubly curse the Algerines for these pirates I fear have certainly made war on our commerce,” raged the Virginia patriot Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay warned that the “alarming evil” of Barbary not only endangered American trade but also signaled America’s weakness to the “jealous” powers of Europe. Unfounded newspaper reports of corsair attacks against American ships in the Atlantic also compounded the panic. “The Algerians are cruising in different squads of six and eight sail, and extend themselves out as far as the western islands,” fretted the usually unflappable John Paul Jones. Yet, in spite of this aggression—real and imagined—the states never once contemplated retaliating against the pirates. Apart from banishing three Virginian Jews on spurious charges of spying for North Africa, America remained passive. The United States had just achieved independence and already encountered its first acute foreign threat—from the Middle East. The capture of the Betsey, the Dauphin, and the Maria was merely the first of many instances of hijacking and hostage taking that America later faced in the region. Yet, uniquely, the Barbary crisis raised fundamental questions about the nature, identity, and viability of the United States. Would the states survive if they tried to address the danger individually, or could they join in an effective defense? Would Americans imitate Europe and bribe the pirates, or would they create a revolutionary precedent and fight them? Though the answers to those questions may seem obvious today, in the late eighteenth century they were far from unequivocal. “It will not be an easy matter to bring the American States to act as a nation,” Lord Sheffield taunted. “America cannot retaliate.”7 Innocence or Independence? Before they could prove Sheffield wrong, Americans first had to engage in protracted and often agonizing debates over the essence of their nation’s constitution and character. Among the most outspoken participants in that dispute was the former governor of Virginia and principal framer of the Declaration of Independence. A provincial landowner who had never been east of Paris and had never fought in a war, Thomas Jefferson nevertheless insisted that he understood the Middle East and the need to confront it with power. Much like his country—adverse to European politics but hungry for overseas trade, eager for national unity but protective of state prerogatives, committed to the Rights of Man while denying those rights to blacks and Native Americans—Jefferson was a ganglion of contradictions. Alternatively foppish and unkempt, garrulous and tight-lipped, he claimed to be a man of the people while cloistered in his splendorous Monticello estate. The conflicts between his effete and egalitarian sides, his republicanism and his Epicureanism, his pacifism and his ardor for France’s blood-soaked revolution were just some of the many paradoxes that would baffle his biographers. Jefferson “combined great depth with great shallowness,” conceded the historian Joseph Ellis, “massive learning with extraordinary naïveté, piercing insights into others with daunting powers of self-deception.” On few issues was Jefferson more inconsistent than in his attitudes toward the Barbary pirates. The owner of African American slaves, one of whom, Sally Hemmings, he almost certainly exploited sexually, he could not abide the thought of Africans possessing white people and violating American women in harems. The same Jefferson who warned against constructing warships liable “to sink us under them” could, in another breath, say, “We ought to begin a naval power, if we mean to carry our own commerce.” On one crucial point, though, Jefferson remained unswerving. Proud and parsimonious Americans, he believed, would rather “raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason than money to bribe them.” This peculiar “temper” translated naturally into the “erect and independent attitude” that Jefferson hoped would characterize American foreign policy, a posture that was inherently incompatible with payoffs. By deterring, rather than appeasing, Barbary, the United States would preserve its economy and send an unambiguous message to potentially hostile powers. “It will procure us respect in Europe,” Jefferson held. “And respect is a safeguard to interest.”8 In the fall of 1784, Jefferson was slated to serve as America’s “minister” to France (the title “ambassador” sounded monarchical to Revolutionary American ears) and its representative to various European courts. He first recommended that the United States act in concert against Barbary, joining with Spain, Portugal, Naples, Denmark, Sweden, and France. The combined navies would maintain a permanent presence along the North African coast, compelling its residents to desist from piracy and to take up a peaceful profession—farming, Jefferson suggested. Unsure, however, of Europe’s reaction to the initiative of an upstart United States, Jefferson sought the help of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who had aided America’s Revolution. Lafayette duly circulated the plan, but the responses were overwhelmingly negative. While several kingdoms expressed an interest in the concept, they refused to contribute ships to any alliance and continued paying tribute to Barbary. The French rejected the very idea of coalition.9 For Jefferson, the response of the United States to his proposal was even more disappointing. Congress staunchly refused to allocate the $2 million needed, according to Jefferson’s math, to build a fleet of 150 guns. Instead, representatives allotted $70,000 for purchasing what Secretary Jay called “the Influence of…Courts where Favoritism as well as Corruption prevails.” Jefferson was crestfallen. The “Honour as well as…[the] Avarice,” which he believed would preclude Americans from submitting to Barbary, European-style, had proved insufficient. Further predations were apparently needed to persuade his countrymen to act as a nation and defend themselves. “The states must see the rod,” he ruminated. “Perhaps it must be felt by some of them.” In the interim, Jefferson could only watch disgustedly as the bribe was proffered to Algiers.10 To conduct this delicate transaction, Congress chose John Lamb, a Connecticut businessman with no diplomatic experience, but who had once worked in the Mediterranean, trading mules. “His manners and appearance are not promising,” Jefferson worried, but then consoled himself with the hope that Lamb, after all, was a “sensible man” with “some talents which may be proper in a matter of bargain.” Lamb’s incompetence was swiftly revealed, however, the moment he arrived in Algiers, in February 1786. Misled by the French consul Jean-Baptiste de Kercy, who supported the United States while secretly denouncing it to Hassan Dey, Lamb failed to secure the release of a single American hostage. Instead, he received a list of additional ransom demands, which included a portrait of General Washington, whom the dey professed to admire. The Dauphin’s imprisoned captain, Richard O’Brien, a witness to this debacle, wished, “I hope never to see Captain Lamb in Barbary again except to buy horses and mules.”11 America’s first diplomatic initiative in the Middle East had ended in failure, but the fiasco in Algiers did not impede the United States from pursuing treaties with the other Barbary States. In fact, while Lamb was debasing himself before the dey, another American was attempting to negotiate with Tripoli, the principal city of modern-day Libya. The opportunity arose when the personal representative of the pasha of Tripoli, a nobleman named ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar, offered to host John Adams, America’s minister to Great Britain, in his London chambers. Adams hesitated to accept the invitation, fearful that the discussion would revolve solely around tribute. The news of the mounting threats to America’s Mediterranean trade, however, convinced him of the need to make peace with at least one North African state. To Adams’s censorious eye, ‘Abd al-Rahman at first appeared alien and ogreish, an “ominous” figure suggestive of “pestilence and war.” That initial aversion passed, however, as the envoy welcomed his guest with a pipe and a demitasse of strongly brewed coffee. In a hodgepodge of Italian, Spanish, and French, he questioned Adams about this new country, America, and the minister happily replied with detailed descriptions of his nation’s government and people, climate and soil. ‘Abd al-Rahman pronounced this “very great,” but then, without pause and to Adams’s astonishment, he characterized the United States as Tripoli’s enemy. The Barbary States were “sovereigns in the Mediterranean,” the Tripolitan explained, and “no nation could navigate that sea without a treaty of peace with them.” That peace, moreover, came at a price: 30,000 guineas, plus a 3,000-guinea gratuity for himself. A similar sum would be necessary for conciliating Tunis, ‘Abd al-Rahman estimated, and twice that sum for Morocco and Algiers. The total came to nearly one million dollars, about a tenth of America’s annual budget.12 “It would scarcely be reconcilable to the Dignity of Congress to read…of the Ceremonies which attended the Conference,” a dumbfounded Adams reported. “It would be more proper to write them for the…New York Theatre.” Notorious for his vanity, the minister was outraged by the impertinence that ‘Abd al-Rahman, the agent of a powerful but primitive kingdom, displayed toward the enlightened United States. He bemoaned the fact that “Christendom has made cowards of all their sailors before the standard of Mahomet” and grieved over the prospect of paying off “unfeeling tyrants” who cared no more for their subjects’ lives “than…so many caterpillars upon an apple tree.” Adams shared Jefferson’s belief that America’s honor would be best served by resisting the pirates, but he continued to doubt the economic practicality of war. Factoring in the loss to U.S. shipping, rising insurance rates, and the vastness of America’s debt, Adams concluded that it was safer to offer “one Gift of two hundred Thousand Pounds” than to risk “a Million [in trade] annually.” Adams was defiant in vowing, “We ought not to fight them [the Barbary States] at all unless we determine to fight them forever,” but battling the pirates, he still feared, was “too rugged for our people to bear.”13 Jefferson, the populist, professed to have a greater feel for the American “temper” than the rather aloof Adams and remained certain that the American people would fight against North Africa if given the means and the option. Nevertheless, as a statesman, Jefferson did not dismiss the possibility of a diplomatic solution to America’s piracy problems, should the opportunity arise. Thus, in March 1786, Jefferson joined Adams in London for one last attempt to prevent “a universal and horrible War” and reach an accord with Tripoli. Before ‘Abd al-Rahman, the Americans reaffirmed the affection with which the United States viewed all the nations of the world, including Tripoli. The American people were eager to avert bloodshed, they said, and to this end, and under reasonable terms, were willing to offer a treaty of lasting friendship with Tripoli. ‘Abd al-Rahman appeared to listen intently to these representations, but when it came his turn to speak, he merely reiterated his original million-dollar demand. He then voiced a credo that would someday sound familiar to Americans, but left these founding fathers aghast: It was…written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. Adams had heard enough. The North Africans were guided solely by greed, he determined, and negotiating with them only “irritate[d] the Appetite of those Barbarians” and brought shame on the United States. Dubious of America’s willingness to fight, though, Adams still believed bribery to be the country’s only option. Jefferson similarly concluded that “an angel sent on this business…could have done nothing” to pacify the Tripolitans and he opposed further efforts to induce them monetarily. But Jefferson also persisted in asserting that Americans would take up arms to preserve their honor and well-being, and that peace with Barbary was attainable only “through the medium of war.”14 Congress, still reeling from the aftereffects of the Revolution, wanted to avoid war and, in June 1786, instructed Jefferson, together with Adams and Franklin, to negotiate a peace agreement with Morocco. The ruler of that empire, Sidi Muhammad bin ‘Abdallah, claimed to have been the first monarch to have recognized American independence and the first Muslim leader to seek a formal treaty with the young Republic. Congress dallied, however, and managed to offend the emperor. In retaliation, the Moroccans began seizing American ships, starting with the Betsey in October 1784. This indeed gained the Americans’ attention, and now, “Armed only with Innocence and the Olive Branch,” Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin set off to appease the emperor’s wrath. In exchange for a “gift” of $20,000, the negotiators secured the Betsey’s release as well as a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Ship-Signals. Thus began the longest-standing contract in American diplomatic history and the first one to bear an Arabic inscription and the Islamic date (“The Ramadan Year of the Hejira 1200”). The American consulate in Tangier, established under the treaty, would become America’s oldest legation building and its only national landmark abroad.15 Though he was one of its negotiators, Jefferson feared that the treaty with Morocco would remain meaningless as long as America lacked the “public treasury and public force” necessary to ensure compliance. He consequently recommended suspending all further negotiations with North Africa until the United States undertook “measures…which may correct the idea…of impotency in the federal government.” In the interim, the other Barbary States were quick to emulate Morocco’s method for extracting American concessions. No sooner was the Betsey released than it was once again impounded, this time by Tunis, and its name officially changed to the Mashuda. These ignominies weighed not only on Jefferson but also on George Washington, the most revered American of the time. Having struggled to surmount his country’s powerlessness in 1776, Washington now felt “the highest disgrace” in seeing Westerners “become tributary to such banditti who might for half the sum that is paid them be exterminated from the Earth.” Like Jefferson, he believed that the American people preferred confrontation with Barbary to blackmail, but they still lacked the warships to fight. “Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence,” he confided to his former comrade-in-arms Lafayette. Yet the reality remained that the United States had no navy, nor even a constitutional instrument for constructing one. “Without a national system of government, we shall soon become prey to the nations of the earth,” the Massachusetts Sentinel editor Benjamin Russell wrote to John Adams. “Our sufferings are beyond…your conception,” wrote Captain O’Brien, marking the two years that he and twenty-one crew members of the Dauphin and the Maria had languished in Algerian jails. A sense of national exasperation, of humiliation, spread. David Humphreys, a wartime aide to General Washington as well as a seasoned … George Friedman and Robert D. Kaplan on the Rise of Sectarianism in the Middle East Hello, Im Robert Kaplan. Im the Chief Geopolitical Analyst for strapped for. With me as George Friedman, who is the Chairman of strapped for. And were here to discuss today the various exclusivist beliefs and ideologies that plague the greater Middle East today. The exclusivism in the sense that the feeling of love and compassion extends not to the state, but to a tribe, a clan, a sectarian or ethnic group. In the Middle East, what you see George, is, you see states imploding. You see states unraveling a suffocating authoritarian system have dissolved. No new institutional structures have emerged sufficient to maintain order. And in the chaotic breathing room have come various clan, tribal and sectarian beliefs that are fighting for control. And the reason these have come up is not because people have become more sectarian or tribal or clan ish. Its that with the breakdown of institutional order, people need protection, and they find protection their group. In, in Asia we have a totally opposite scenario. We have strong states from Japan all the way south to the Philippines and elsewhere, China. And these states have become more nationalistic in recent years to such an extent that theyre projecting power in the Maritimes. Fear, and their alleged borders are overlapping and clashing. So, you see real, a real kind of traditional nationalist power struggle in Asia. Whereas in the Middle East you see sectarian and tribe and clan and struggles due to the breakdown of states. Well, its going to be interesting to watch Asia over the next generation to see how strong this nation states are going to be. China in particular is an area that swings between strong states, weak states. And well see, but it is there you call the Middle East, which well call North Africa. And the area to the east of that. Thats the most interesting because the nation state that was created, there was a European concept. Europe out of the enlightenment, developed the notion of the nation state as opposed to the great dynastic empires. And they really didnt create nation states in places like Africa, north Africa. However, when they left, thats what they left behind. Some had long historical identities, such as Egypt or Tunisia, for example, Tunisia, others had much shorter identities. Others like Libya was more confederation of tribes. Monsieur, graphical expression and a vague one at that. But there is one thing and all of these that we see, which is whether its a nation or anything else, community. Human beings dont live outside of communities. You might have a theory and liberalism of the pure individual, but thats really not how human beings. Live they cat. And so, what you have here in all of these places, our communities, but the states dont match them. So, you have tribes, but they have only partial authority. And what were seeing is the tension between the nation that was created by the Europeans, the state that was bequeath them, and the genuine communities that exist there. And much of what I think happens in the Middle East in particular. And they well yet happened in Asia. As a reorganization going on, the Ottoman Empire is gone. The British agon, the French are gone. They left behind something and that something doesnt work very well. I would put it in the Middle East, we have two different kinds of entities. We have age-old clusters of civilization, like Greater Carthage, which is Tunisia, and the Nile Valley civilization, which is Egypt. To a much lesser extent we have Yemen, which is another angel cluster of civilization, but different kingdoms within it. So, its never really cohered as a state very well. And then you have these vague geographical expressions like Libya, Syria, Iraq. And its those places that required suffocating authoritarian rule to hold them together. And that now that that rule has come on done, theyve, they basically crumbled and been pulverized into their constituent parts. Morocco is, Morocco is like tuna sits. Its another Tunisia, its another historically bound state, so to speak. Algeria. We will see the current leader Abdullahs, these boutique LCA is apparently near death. And well see if you know how, how well Algeria does. But what I see is between the Eastern edge of the Mediterranean and the Central Asian plateau. The only two real states that cohere our Israel and Iran with Jordan very much in the balance. Syria is an interesting case. Syria is the descendant of a province of the Ottoman Empire that contained what is today Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and the state of Syria. And the Sykes-Picot treaty drew line which arbitrarily made a southern part British, northern part, French, and a group of a tribe out of Saudi Arabia arrived on the East Bank, the Jordan River. Theyre having lost the power struggle silently with the L. So, for having a jaw thrust by the British, depend on how you want to look at it. And they had no name for this place. They called a trans Jordan, the other side of Jordan. You dont have nation states. And when we consider the origin of Jordan, I mean, its very hard to think of that as a nation state. It may temporarily have a powerful state, but it wound up there by accident. But even more, whats happening in Syria is whats really fascinating. Syria and Lebanon were one country. There was no Lebanon until the French took over Mount Lebanon, which was a part of Syria. Thats not Raiders. Thats how they gave it the name. And what youre seeing here is that Lebanon state collapsed back in the seventies. Yes. And what really took over where these communities, these tribes, these and even within the Christian community, you had the front, G is the Gmail. You had constant fragmentation. They all survived, they fought and so on. We now have that lemmatization ups area of Syria where Assad is no longer governing Syria, but hes a very powerful warlords that no one is going to reduce. And the opposition is fragmented among various factions and tribes. And its trying to define itself. That model really is what Im talking about in North Africa. The Sykes-Picot treaty, which revised the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empires province of Syria. These have become irrelevant. The area is redefining itself entirely Union. The only European style state its actually viable. Israel is in the middle of this sort of wondering precisely whats going to go. In a sense, we have never really come up with a solution to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, I think. And because f, because when the Ottoman Empire existed, the Sultan controlled everything except places that by force he was forced to give autonomy to like the KDFs in it, in Egypt or, or some of the bays on the Algerian or Tunisian coast. So, because the Sultan owned everything, there was no disputes over territory or very little for what? The Sultans domain was taken over by the European colonial powers at the end of World War One. They drew lines in the sand. And the, the, the Saddam Husseins, the Hafez al-Assad, who replaced the European leaders, basically ruled in a post-colonial fashion. The same borders, very authoritarian rule and with their demise for one reason or another. Of course, it was American invasion that toppled Saddam. These are the borders that were, that were drawn by the Europeans have basically been dissolving and were back to an Ottoman Empire but without a Sultan and control. Well, we are back to is the constituent elements. So, what I think I really want to emphasize is, yes, we can talk about the dissolution of Lydia, or we can talk about the re-emergence of the real components of Libya were not very comfortable with that sort of thing. Were comfortable with the idea of thinking of Libya as a nation state. And if we dont reconstitute it, or Syria or Iraq as a state, then we have failed. That, that is the way its seen in, in, in, in conventional policy circle. Well, in conventional policy circles who see the world as an engineering problem and American or European power as a problem engineering, we, this isnt working, so were going to come in with the plumbers. It is simply a misunderstanding of what community means in these places. And its an attempt to impose a definition of community which coheres her ID of the nation state. And it doesnt work because when we took apart the state that repressed the impulses of Iraq. What emerged was not an alternative arc, but the constituent parts yet engage in ongoing civil war there. And that will reveal just how artificial the British creation was. Because the British put together a Kurdish north with the, with the sunny center and a tribal eyes Shiite South. With the Kurdish north being very mountainous and closer and many ways to Anatolia, together with a Mesopotamian Flatland composed of Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the South. And it was mainly done to protect the British route to India was part of a Brit Britains India strategy. And because of its very artificiality, it required extreme forms of repression to hold together. After the British left because the monarchy fell apart and night or was toppled and 950. Lets remember that the British also faced uprisings in Iraq. And they bought in a Hashemite related to the Jordanian King, king to try to rule. But I think the cynicism of the British in how they constructed the area was based simply on the fact that they had to get to India. That they had various routes overland and through the Suez Canal. And today we are going to instruct political entities that were not designed to work, designed to facilitate whether ended, that’s how the Gulf shape themes came into being and theyve work because of the accident of where hydrocarbons happened to have been found. The fortune of having oil, which raises the question, much has been said about him. Im not sure thats true. But if the United States becomes self-sufficient, if alternative sources of hydrocarbons emerge in China, and the price plunges. What happened? City shakes, hymns. Theres a shake and theres people. And have they been a people together long enough to form the community? Are there other communities? Bahrain is a very uncomfortable example of what it means. But certainly, I think a place like Oman, its in a separate category because that is a real state in a way that some of the others like rain or not. But we will see because even a self-sufficient energy America will still just like you diversify your financial portfolio, will diversify its energy portfolio, and will continue to import some number of hydrocarbons from the golf or whether the price of oil stays where it is now is another question, but what were really looking at is way the entire Islamic world leaving Indonesia side for the moment. But from Pakistan, yeah, all the way to Morocco in the process, after the imperialism to the Turks, after the imperialism of the British and French, after the American intrusions of trying to define who they are. And I think theyre going to define themselves as they always were much smaller entities than were comfortable with dealing with. There are many tribes, there are many ethnic groups, there are many sects. And they feel affinity for each other. And that affinity is going to define its far more than patriotism and close what I would say is that this greater Middle East is going to be in turmoil for many years to come and a fit. And if it connotes any other era in the past, it may be late antiquity, St. Augustines world, which is a world where the Roman Empire was not fully collapsed, was weakening. But yet new entities had yet to come to the fore and B form this such. So, you had a kind of very messy, messy world of sex and heresies and fights for territory. Well, thank you very much for joining us. 2 Discussion Instruction 1. View all 40 maps via the Resources section below, reading the short information provided. Pay attention to the diversity of the Middle East region—historically, politically, culturally, linguistically, religiously, and geographically. 2. Provide examples of diversity for each of the following categories—cultural, ethnic, religious, and political. That means four total, one for each category. 3. For example, refer to any map that emphasizes ethnic differences (for example, Arabs, Persians (Iranians), Jews, or small splinter ethnic groups within states). Or another that emphasizes cultural differences like language usage, including dialects within languages. Yet another that distinguishes religious differences, and finally, another that distinguishes political differences (i.e. sectarianism, or political boundaries that seem to persist over time, or maps indicating strategic location for purposes of military importance, trade, or oil reserves?). Notice that some of these differences overlap and can serve as examples across the four categories indicated. 4. When providing the four examples mentioned above, indicate the specific map # you used and how they support your examples.