October 9, 2023 - 7:00am
Like the melting of permafrost, the waning of empires awakens long-dormant ethnic conflicts, already defining the international politics of the 2020s. Russia’s war to deny Ukraine nationhood was launched on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians from Ukrainian domination. In the past few weeks alone we have witnessed Azerbaijan’s invasion and ethnic cleansing of Karabakh, Serbia’s sabre-rattling over Kosovo following the appearance of suspiciously well-armed ethnic Serb militants, and now Hamas’s bold and unprecedented incursion into southern Israel.
Not all ethnic conflicts, based on the rival aspirations of different peoples for control of the same territory, end in war. But once blood is spilled, it is hard to return the damaged polity to the banal concerns of everyday governance as long as final mastery of the land remains unresolved. Even where attempts at democratic politics are imposed on the warring parties — as in Lebanon, and Northern Ireland — ethnic rivalry swallows the democratic process whole, freezing armed conflict but causing stagnation and deadlock as each side coalesces around its perceived protectors, anxiously tracking threatening changes in the demographic balance.
Yet for observers in liberal democracies, such unsatisfying conclusions are difficult to place into our operating moral framework because they are almost psychologically incompatible. Ethnic conflicts rarely display clear heroes or villains, merely intricate claims and counterclaims to the same contested territory: in their absence, we are often forced to create them to justify our interest.
The Syldavians will appeal to the better natures of international onlookers, casting their ethnic self-interest as the embodiment of the highest moral aspirations, and the rival Bordurians will reach back into the unfalsifiable mists of history to stake their prior claim to the land. Yet for all the swirling appeals to justice and morality, the reality is that when these conflicts are finally settled, it is generally by the facts of hard power alone, with the only enduring results resulting from one side accepting its defeat, or an external arbiter separating the two according to its own interests.
Torn between noble ideals and realpolitik, in practice the American empire at its height quelled ethnic conflicts through favouritism, justifying its Solomon-like judgements in moralising terms. During the Pax Americana, the ethnic conflicts of Bosnia and Kosovo were frozen by Nato airpower, and the formation of imperial protectorates masked by dysfunctional democratic systems.
The ethnic conflict in Israel-Palestine, accidentally created by Britain through a combination of liberal idealism and World War One expediency, was partly frozen by America’s firm favouring of Israel over Palestinian aspirations, and by financial and military inducements to her Arab neighbours not to disturb the status quo: the illusory peace process latterly provided moral cover. A temporary, fragile order was imposed by American military power, with clear winners — Israel, like the Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians — and bitter losers — the Palestinians like the Serbs. Yet neither accepted their defeat, and as America’s unchallenged dominance wanes, its fragile order is again being contested by the losing parties and their sponsors, America’s geopolitical rivals.
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SubscribeThis article raises the same conundrum as Mary Harrington’s Oct 6th “Can pluralism be low-crime?” Cant we be liberal but still be tough against evil? I don’t see why not.
I think what we are going through is the ascendance of a subconscious instinct with a certain segment of the population which is embarrassed with the exceptionalism of the West, it’s history and traditions. Everyone knows who the good guys and bad guys are in the world, but it’s just so blase and mean to be always in the right.
Rooting for the underdog just feels so much better, even if the underdog is a barbarian. Everyone knows Israel is an island of civilization in a sea of savagery, but that just means they must be entitled, privileged and not worthy of enlightened sentiments. Everyone knows that peaceful and law-abiding citizens should be safe from petty criminals, but how boring those staid citizens are and how exciting and reckless the crooks are!
So you think that you know who the ‘good’ guys are, and the ‘bad’ guys?
Life just isn’t so black and white, it’s a multitude of greys.
Everyone says they see shades of grey but they act in black and white.
Ah! but such relativism is a primary cause of these endless hatreds. Surely there are things that are intrinsically bad and the opposite. The many shades of grey in between do not negate the existence of full black and full white.
Setting out deliberately to kill, maim, rape, humiliate and kidnap human shielding is surely straightforwardly morally bad; setting out to prevent that is surely good in principle. Whatever the attempted justification of terror tactics the actions remain intrinsically bad; the only grey issue is how one goes about protecting people from the terror.
Not in this conflict. Too many Arabs are barbarians.
The Arabs I’ve met are far from barbarians. Jim you are either nasty or misinformed.
“Everyone knows Israel is an island of civilization in a sea of savagery” Is this a joke? What’s shocking about Israel is how closely it resembles Lebanon and Syria, only with Eastern European food. A thoroughly non-European society.
You’ve clearly never been to Tel Aviv
Not only are the delights of Ben Gurion airport familiar, but also the squalid Levantine city which it serves. The open sex slavery of women trafficked from Ukraine is just another way their society resembles the rest of the region.
The problem is in ethnic conflicts, usually everyone in them is evil, at least intermittently. Unless liberalism is going to reembrace colonialism and impose rule from afar (and that with an iron fist used unsparingly against both, or all, sides) on places riven with such conflicts, there’s no way to be “tough against evil” in such circumstances.
You point out ethnic flashpoints, but these are not simplistic conundrums of ” good versus evil” in many cases.
The historical origins need to be looked into of all conflicts , and sometimes they can throw up disturbing trends which are not always easy to comprehend.
Reverse ethnic cleansing was also the reality in Kosovo- where I have lived and worked, and seen the impact of radical Islam on Albanians leading to brutal killings and destruction of Serbian churches and monasteries. The present troubles in North Kosovo are also rooted in the troubled history of the region going back to Ottoman Turkish massacres of Serbs, and the alignment of significant sections of Croats and Albanians with the Nazis during World WarTwo.
Similarly many Western liberals tend to forget the links Palestine Arabs had with Hitler. And the brutal jihadist elements who carried out the attacks on Israeli Jews on Saturday certainly cannot fit into the mould which metropolitan Leftist media has been awash with since the latest round of violence started.
Western mainstream commentaries need to understand that nuance also involves a granular delineation of each conflict zone. It is not just colonial ” Empire” but older rivalries which play out here.
That’s all too complicated, particularly for policy experts. In every dispute all they need to do is ask themselves ‘Who are the Black people?’ If the situation is muddied by all of the disputants being brown and mysterious, then they need to do the real work of discovering which set of brown people are the White Supremacists.
Precisely why these race binaries donot work well. And I should think policy experts would have the intellectual honesty to face the complex issues involved.
“I should think policy experts would have the intellectual honesty to face the complex issues involved.”
When people make ridiculous, untrue, but politically-astute statements it’s easy, even reassuring, to believe they’re being cynical.
Fundamentally the problem lies between our desire to be kind, compassionate and nice, to be understanding and empathetic, and the basic realities of human nature.
But I also think that there is a parallel with physics. The rules that apply at the the level we perceive, at the macro level, do not apply at the quantum level. The rules, behaviors, means of interacting, morals even, that we apply successfully in our daily lives and personal interactions do not necessarily work at the national or international levels or even between “nations” (as opposed to “nation states”). We might like to think they do. We might wish they did. But they do not. Humans behave differently in groups, its why we fear mobs where we might not fear the individuals making up the mob. We fear large groups that disagree with us or are different from us.
As much as we like to believe that we have somehow risen above the instinctive and biological drivers of our psyches, we are still, at our core, driven by our primal natures. Even the most educated, sophisticated, enlightened individuals are subject to the fundamentals of our nature. Among those fundamentals is a desire for power and control which in turn is derived from our fundamental needs for resources to provide shelter and food and physical security which in turn is related to our need to carry on our particular genes which requires providing a safe environment for women to bare and raise children. Nations are a like group formed for mutual support to achieve those ends. Gangs are different only in their means. It is one reason why in places like the US you have traditionally had tight ethnic neighborhoods. Hence the reason the homogeneous countries tend to have less crime and conflict than diverse ones.
None of that is to say that we cannot rise above these primal drivers, just that they exist and they influence our behavior, and that it takes a conscious effort to do so and that that effort becomes harder the bigger the group of humans involved.
Fair Comment
Having just read A Short History of Nearly Everything by B. Bryson I actually understand that comment re the laws of physics and the quantum world!
Bleak but sadly true.
The author is exactly right.
I have huge sympathy for the Palestinians but all those urging Israel to make concessions to achieve piece are either deluded or dishonest.
Israel rightly suspects that what ever concessions it makes the Palestinians and their Arab allies (including those that have signed peace agreements with Israel) will simply bid their time until they feel strong enough to attack Israel and wipe it off the map
And they are right to suspect that. Islamic jurisprudence (which really is the core of Islam) does not allow permanent peace agreements with non-Muslims, only hudna, cease-fires, which Muslims may violate, indeed are almost morally bound to violate, if doing so is to the advantage of Muslims.
The Palestinians need to build a strong, rich economy, if they wish to defeat Israel.
What Arab country has done that which was not awash in oil?
The ‘left’ characterises Israel as a ‘colonial project’, which it may well be looking at it from Washington, London and Paris, but for the Israelis themselves it is not. They are not the country-club British lording it over Kenya, nor the imperious French in Algeria nor yet the wheeling dealing Yanks in Saigon. These latter ‘projects’ were shallow, rootless, faux veneers placed upon a burdened people by a foreign greedy class. By making life impossible for the occupiers through disobedience and terror these chancers were made to see the hopelessness of their future and they went home not prepared to pay the price of remaining. None of this is true of the Israelis. Their roots are deep, their authenticity is undoubted and, after two thousand years of wandering, unwanted and persecuted around the world, they know they have nowhere else to go. If Palestine is to be free ‘from the river to the sea’ it can only be so over the slaughtered bodies of millions of Jews. Yes Israel is wounded, but as the cliche goes, it is the wounded tiger one must fear the most. And yes, the author is surely correct, such conflicts where one side is as embedded as the other, are not amenable to progressive liberal discourse, perhaps the thinest veneer of all upon the surface of the human race: history may indeed ‘progress’ but, as Dugin might say, only in repeating cycles.
Hamas is now threatening to execute the hostages it has taken unless Israel stops bombing Gaza.
They are also promising to film the executions, likely by beheading as they beheaded the IDF soldiers, and they are promising to post the video, with sound, online.
This was predictable. Hamas has bitten off more than the rest of Gaza can chew. They have brought hell down on the residents of Gaza and they are afraid of the consequences. They probably think this will stop the Israelis, but it won’t. Not this time. It will just infuriate them more and push them to level the entirety of Gaza.
These people are just another version of ISIS. Psychopaths.
I do not think that the residents of Gaza or the Iranians want to see the reaction from Israel if Hamas beheads a child or an elderly woman and posts that. It will likely not be what they think. It will lead to a new level of bombing like they cannot imagine. If they could, they never would have entered Israel in the first place.
The Balfour Declaration did not create the Israel-Palestine conflict. Yes, it may have encouraged some Jews to immigrate to Palestine, but the Zionist movement predated Balfour. The real conflict was created by the Holocaust. Large numbers of Jewish survivors became refugees and both Britain and the United States essentially refused them entry. Palestine, with its biblical pull, seemed the best option. The 1947 U.N. partition plan was futile, as the Arabs rejected it out of hand. Little has changed since then.
You can make a reasonable argument that liberal values only work in the ‘good times’ when there is enough money or resources to go around, however haltingly.
So when the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse – Dissent – is riding out the other horsemen (Death, Famine, War, and Conquest) will not be far behind.
Places like South Africa, French Algeria, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and yes, Israel-Palestine are where liberalism goes to die.
The author sounds very much like one of those 1970s journos (of the Vladimir Posner type) who proclaims the moral equivalence of the two arch-rival worldviews. But there is no equivalence between the civilization of Israel and its Islamic neighbors. Does anyone seriously doubt this today? Or are we all just afraid to say it?
What utter, total drivel.
This statement is correct:
This is what all empires throughout time have done; it’s called divide et impera. Their objective is not peace, but to maintain a simmering conflict where the hegemon is needed to prevent flareups. If there were peace, the hegemon would no longer be needed, the hegemon would lose its power.
The EU had a formula for peace: sever the nation from the state, and create an environment where all nationes can flourish regardless of what state or states they are in. By allowing the Baltic states to import their anti-Russian ethnic hang-ups, the EU has abandoned this proven formula for peace.
Peace is not the easy option, it’s the hard option. It takes hard-headed political and emotional work. Farsighted politicians in France and Germany did it after WW II, with success. South Africa did it with its truth and reconciliation process. It can be done.
Zelensky was elected on a peace platform, but his Banderites told him he’d swing if he tried to implement it. It would have taken massive support from the US to overcome the Banderites, but the US preferred to instrumentalise Ukraine instead. None of the “friends” of Israel ever gave Israel the Dutch uncle talk on making peace.
I di not think South Arica is a good example or even France and Germany.
South Africa is on genocide watch and Germany had to be completely and utterly defeated
I don’t know about the current situation in South Africa, but as for France/Germany: Precisely. Israel has totally vanquished the Palestinians militarily; their land is occupied, Israel is (as found by Israeli courts) practicing apartheid, Palestinians cannot move freely, they can be detained at will without charge or process, they are routinely dispossessed. If anything, Palestinians’ situation is by orders of magnitudes worse than Germans’ situation after WW II. Yet France and French politicians, despite the horrendous atrocities it had suffered, had the greatness to pursue a policy of reconciliation.
I am sorry but you are wrong again. After WW2 France wanted to ensure that Germany was completely degraded. The Americans put a stop to any such notions because the needed Germany as a bulwark against the USSR so France had to adopt a different tack and Germany, as I said above, had to take any offer going
Sorry to say, South Africa is a basket case now and I suggest you visit it to see the truth before holding it up as some sort of icon for peace. Attacks and murders of white farmers have started again. MSM fobs them off with “there’s not as many as there were say 5 years ago”. Of course not; that’s because white farmer numbers are dwindling as they leave the land to live in towns. What that’s going to do when the black population is starving is anybody’s guess. The ANC Government & its EFF (kill the *Boer, ie *white farmers) partners does not appear too bothered as long as those on the giant public service bandwagon are paid from a dwindling public purse while public services begin to disappear altogether. If you want to know what goes on in South Africa, please read “The Daily Maverick”.
Indeed – one wonders if Israel’s true ‘crime’ in many eyes is to have been successful.
I am in no position to dispute what you’re saying. It’s a tragedy, a betrayal of the courage and principles of the politicians who first came into office in majority rule, of the possibilities they created.
As always, they were just possibilities, not certainties.
True, but with morality excised. The reality is that the Realpolitick of the Pax Americana wasn’t just a matter of power; it was difficult movement toward a morally more ethical system than what existed. America picked “favorites” imperfectly, but based on which of competing sides best reflected liberal ideals or showed the best signs of moving in that direction. It was and is a work in progress.
Obama and Biden killed the Pax Americana but have only been able to do it because of Bush’s wars.
We are heading into a multipolar age that is going to be dangerous for all.
The last 20 yrs have seen the destruction of the US’s ability to impose any kind of order. That ability was always based on having a national consensus and on having the economic power to support the use of soft power and to maintain an overwhelming hard power.
The globalists destroyed all three of those things. They destroyed the consensus with control of the media, our universities and through political corruption. They destroyed the economic power through offshoring and importing huge amounts of cheap labor. That in turn destroyed our ability to leverage soft power and support a military that is actually of a size and composition to impose its will on an enemy.
Engaging in stupid, unnecessary wars that did nothing but grow our debt and enrich lobbyists and defense contractors while making more enemies abroad was just the icing on the cake.
Don’t you mean the neocons who controlled US foreign policy and steered the US towards war with Iraq. Can we identify the individuals who made up this club?
1. Bill Kristol, once a socially conservative Republican, now a socially ‘progressive’ Democrat… but still loves a war,this time in Ukraine…
your turn for the next one…
Controlled? As in past tense?
Jesus, they are still in charge.
The only time since Reagan that a neocon has NOT been in charge was under Trump. One reason that they hated him so much.
Fun fact, the ONLY US president since Nixon to not start a new conflict or become engaged in a new conflict was Trump. I would give Carter a vote but he did have involvement via the CIA with revolutionaries in central America and he did try that rescue of US hostages. Other than that, every single president. Ford gets a pass because he did not serve a full term and never had a chance.
Hell, if we are willing to go back further, Johnson and Kennedy had Vietnam. Truman had Korea. So, I guess Ike would get a pass to. That would be TWO presidents since WWII that have not gotten us involved in something new overseas.
In what sense Korea was Trumans fault?
yes
You are correct, the globalists thought they were creating a world more under their control but what they have done is brought down the world order that has existed in most places for the past 80 years. The world is becoming multipolar, more chaotic and we don’t yet know who will be the losers and those whose situation will be more benign ( we can’t call them winners).
Those who r not sure what’s what I dare u:
Go now to the Israeli Gaza border and c: how will the Hamas freedom warriors greet u?
If Israeli soldiers will try to save u at their own peril, should u live to regret it like Shamima Bagum?
What help the British government will offer u?
Then speak from experience.
Excellent analysis of the violation of liberalism by relative moralism. Liberalism was never meant to be amoral.
What non-Americans (like me) tend not to consider is the fact that the US may simply not want to be the global hegemon any longer. They have the biggest military, fanciest weapons, largest budget by far of any nation in the world (apparently their navy is 7 times larger than all other navies in the world combined) so could if they wish continue to act in that way. Perhaps they’ve had enough of helping the world for free (think NATO funding) and are just pulling back again. They’ve done that before after all. Doing this leaves a vacuum for others to act for good or ill. Maybe we should have said ‘thank you’ more often. For sure, I don’t comprehend the reasons for Hamas to act like they have. Surely they would know that by sowing the wind, they would reap a whirlwind. Far more to this than meets the eye. If the Israeli secret services missed it, I don’t think many so-called ‘observers’ or ‘experts’ can add much at this early stage. Worrying times.
Absolutely right. Power is real, the rest is screaming, to make the losers feel less awful and the winners less guilty.
It may not matter much in practice, but surely this is primarily and at heart a religious conflict, not an ethnic one?
Tribal identity – not much to do with religious beliefs – or only in so far as said beliefs place you in one tribe or another.
Your comment makes no sense to me. Religion (even no religion!) is at the very heart of identity and the epicentre of values. These are the very things that make us human.
It seems to me that to deny this is to deny history – in favour of some wishy washy Pollyanna world view.
So the Israel/Palestine, or Northern Ireland, or Ukraine/Russia or Iran/Iraq conflicts are over religious differences? – i.e. the fighting is over arguments over deep differences as to the nature of God, rituals, etc; rather than a tribal fight over land, food, employment, governance etc? I think not. Throughout the history of conflict, warring parties more often than not had similar or compatible belief systems – though they would not have said so at the time (like the French vs The English, the Protestants vs Catholics, one Abrahamic religion against another or Russians vs Ukranians). One day, let’s hope, Palestinians and Israelis of whatever religion, will get along just fine, without needing to have changed their relgious identity/ What they will have got control of is tribalist instincts – the urge to compete over resources in group defined by ‘tribe’ (which could be defined by geography, religion, skin colour, political allegance, family, gender, age, sexual idenity, or merely by name – the Macleods vs the Macdonalds). Psychology came first, then culture. Idenitity came first then religion.
Historically religion (or no religion) was an integral part of culture and identity. To say it came later is just pure nonsense.
Not according to Hamas who are explicit about their religious motivations.
Missing the point – religion is a subset of tribe, not vice versa. Wars are rarely if ever truly waged over beliefs per se – rather beliefs serve merely as an indicator of tribal identity. The basic driver of conflict is tribal psychology – we’re going to attack that lot because they threatened us.
I’m genuinely puzzled by this claim. How would you explain, for instance, the religiously motivated violence of converts to Islam? They are clearly committing acts against their tribe. Or, regardless of their chosen religion, how do you describe family members who turn on each other following religious conversion? Is that religious or tribal? I would consider those examples of religion overriding tribal identity. Historically not only wars have been fought over conflicting religious beliefs (with overlapping/concurrent agendas, of course), but many wars have been directly driven by religious claims of supremacy and/or a religious mandate. The entire history of Islamic conquest being the obvious example.
Religion is a subset of tribalism. Those cases you mentioned – in changing their religion, they merely swapped tribal identity, they did not escape tribalism psychology or mindset. Tribal ideniity is thoroughly mutable, it does not have to be a ‘born into’ category – it is a mistake to think, ‘it can’t be tribalism because they are attacking their own tribe’ when in fact they merely changed tribe. Moreover, it is often the case that said converts were very unhappy with their apparent, born-into tribe, and find it very satisfying to join a powerful group with similar hatred (a great example of tribalist psychology).
If you want to see a pure religious debate you could do worse than to watch the Bishop of Oxford debating Richard Dawkins – respectful points clearly linked to the intellectual standpoints. So to my mind, the kind of violence we see in N Ireland; Gaza/Israel, Iran/Iraq; Russia/Ukraine, and even the current rancour between Dems and Reps… is much more tribal in nature than intellectual. People – all of us – don’t like to admit of this, as it reminds us that we are governed rather a lot by our animal survival instincts – the paleolithic mind – whilst the notion of fighting for moral, intellectual, religious beliefs provides a useful moral fig-leaf.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall” E. O Wilson
So the mid-East SNAFU is down to Paleolithic emotions (tribalistic aggression), medieval institutions (just one part of which is religion, others cultural, political), and god like like tech (weapons, satellites etc).
I take your point but I think you’re missing mine to some extent: in this case the motive claimed by Hamas for the attack was the desecration by Jews of the Al Asqa mosque. It was not, as claimed by worldwide supporters, the general national aspirations of the Palestinian people as a whole. A religiously tribal matter rather than a national tribal matter in your terms…
Sounds right to me – we’re using somewhat different definitions of ‘tribe’ – mine leans socio-psychological (tribe: who/what do you identify with), yours biological (tribe: who/what are you identified with).
Tribal identity has more than you might think do do with religion since religions come into existence and evolve in significant part in response to the genetically driven demands of the tribe
But beliefs are often not tribal. Christianity for a start. Islam. Judaism. I don’t mean to suggest the battle is about theist interpretations, but there certainly is a very long history of conflict between Judaism and Islam, not between “tribes”
But those that flock to a banner do so for a reason and it is a tribe by tribe choice
So true. Truth rarely heard, and rarely heeded.
I have decided that this particular conflict is impossible for me to add to the list of issues in which I think I know who are the “lighter grey” and who the “darker grey” players. It is like an iceberg with such a huge amount of history, geopolitics, alliances, grievances, tragedies and claims hidden under the water I am scared to even go near it.
Israel has followed a policy of ethnic cleansing. Considerable evidence. I come from a country, a British colony, which imprisons refugees and has massacred the indigenous people.Australia. UK robbed India and has a major arms industry.
Israel has killed over a 1000 children and you come up with this sanctimonious shit.