The Turks put down four Kurdish rebellions between WW1 and WW2. Having your back against the wall isn't much good if you are outmatched by a veteran army supplied by a large economy and a united nation.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
The Turks put down four Kurdish rebellions between WW1 and WW2. Having your back against the wall isn't much good if you are outmatched by a veteran army supplied by a large economy and a united nation.
At the risk of repeating myself, I remind you 'your people' have a rather drastic way of settling their domestic problems. So drastic, multiple examples of them can't be spoken of on this forum.
Your solution to the problems in your homeland are speculative at best, and highly unlikely to find widespread acceptance elsewhere. Stop inserting your unhappiness into historical areas where it does not belong.
They did. Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt. There are next to no border disputes between these countries, nor are there many meaningful secessionist groups other than the Kurds. The disputes in the middle east are, as Abdul said, about ideology, communal identity and religion, about the way countries ought to be run rather than the positions of borders. Israel-Palestine is the exception.
Nation-states do not exist in nature. If nobody had invented them then there would be no problem with ignoring them. It's an 18th-19 century western European concept that has resulted in war and genocide almost literally everywhere it's been introduced.
Fortress states are a nightmare and there's no difference, morally-speaking, between that and the Apartheid regime. I would rather have the occasional border squabble continuing on through the centuries than a nationalist nightmare world in which people are locked behind barbed wire and concrete on account of them simply being born with the wrong nationality.
Latin America is not dysfunctional. A couple of countries have major issues, quite a few are managing to deal with their challenges. Some are outright excelling. None of those problems would really be resolved by border adjustments.
Poverty in Africa is way down, development is way up, and in terms of political stability things are far better now than they've ever been. "Africa is an irredeemable dump" is a right-wing wolf-whistle and nothing more.
The status quo might guarantee misery but turning the world into a series of steel border checkpoints guarantees even more misery.
WW1 started because of the nationalistic desires of the great powers to aggrandise and expand their nations on the world stage whilst 'protecting' those of a similar national identity. Without the nationalistic arrogance of Germany and Russia, the assassination of the Archduke would have had zero worldwide consequences. No pointless German race for colonies with the British, no Russian quest for the Turkish straits, no French desire to 'avenge' 1870.
WW2 started because of the hyper-nationalistic aggression of Germany, Italy and Japan, and would have happened even if the end of the first war had resulted in population transfers. Do you think Hitler would just give up on Danzig if Germans had been expelled? He'd be even more livid about it I imagine.
Western Europe resolved its problems by working to throw the nation-state in the dustbin of history and embracing international trade, peace and cooperation in the form of the EU, rejecting territorial aggrandisement and revanchism as necessary fuel to stoke national egotism. Unfortunately they haven't gone far enough with this and now nationalism is returning.
Yes, the idea was idiotic, and has done far more harm than good. Nations don't exist - they are invented. And it was a bad invention.
"Sorting them out". I know Paradox games make border-changing sound like a natural thing to do, but this is a little too cavalier.
Quite the opposite. I follow the news of my home continent quite closely.
The status quo was much better. And inevitable. Walls solve nothing except cause quarrels over where the wall sits. You have to learn to get along one way or another.
There's no way you're going to partition things without buckets of blood and misery. And for what? To force the map to fit some discredited ideology?
You could make that argument for WW1, but not for WW2. 1919 produced the nation states your ideology craved. Where was the resulting peace and stability?
If the deaths of 80 million was necessary to "sort it out" and make the nation-state fantasy "work", then again, thanks but no thanks. Much rather the status quo.
"Solved?" You mean, they murdered each other, and would likely have continued murdering each other, until outside great powers imposed themselves and forced them to stop.
Partition and border changing is not the solution to anything. It is the cause of problems.
Indeed. That's why homogeneous nation-states like Somalia are such oases of peace and unity.
Yes, I reject nationalism. It is all about Holy Scriptures now, baby. Or did you miss the memo?
Last edited:
Don't overlook the presence of a US army, a navy, and an airforce in Europe at our expense.
Hey! Untrue. The People of Best Korea are super happy, super motivated, well fed, perfectly healthy, well educated, never complain, and are only interested in the welfare of their god-king. Just listen to their broadcasts!
All kidding aside, I agree with you completely on this.
There is a marked difference between suppressing an uprising and fighting an existing state,if the Entente follow through with their partition of the Ottoman Empire the Turks wont have such a massive advantage.
Im simply inserting historic events.
The whole mess started due to the Ottomans rampaging across the place ruining everyone's day.
Syria imploded.
Iraq imploded.
Lebanon has some "interesting" internal politics going on.
Jordan is fairly stable precisely because its internally coherent,over 90% of its population is Sunni Arabs,which basically proves my point.
Egypt is also mostly internally coherent,which is why it is getting by better than most.
So in essence there is the point i was making,now if the Great Powers had done similar attention to detail with Syria and Iraq we could have a workable Middle East.
So what do you call the nations of the same names,same religions and same languages existing a thousand years before your 19th century timetable?
Depends on how they are managed.
Switzerland in WW2 was a fortress state,was it a hellhole?
Its just normal for Brazil to send its army into suburbs to curb violence,as its normal for drugs to fuel civil wars.
I can understand warfare over ideology or secessionism but having so much killing going on over what is basically criminal drug enterprises is just silly.
While border adjustments alone wouldnt resolve much,there is much that could be done in terms of nation building,maybe then people would care about violence going on.
I gues Libya,Mali,Nigeria,Somalia,Sudan,Zimbabwe etc are doing great...
More border checkpoints would at least help contain some more extravagant types of misery.
If you look at it from the perspective of the Great Powers.
If you look at it from the perspective of the little guys then it started because a certain senile Habsburg Empire decided to play colonial power in the Balkans,and it backfired horribly.
Well if the Germans had been removed from Poland and Czechoslovakia like they were in 1945 it would have been significantly harder,if not impossible for Hitler to start anything.
Clearly the victors in 1945 agreed.
Because the French were such peaceful hippies in the 1930s...
The reason they stopped fighting because they ran out of territorial demands.
Britain,France,Belgium,Netherlands,Denmark,Sweden,Norway etc all ran out of territorial demands and oppressed minorities to the point where there was nothing left to fight over.
If we go by that logic human rights are invented to,but i dont assume that you wish to throw those into the dust bin of history.
Morocco disagrees,it built a big long sand wall full of land mines and overwatched with machine guns,surprisingly Morocco couldnt care less what is happening before that wall and seems content.
The point is to avoid future suffering by solving issues,instead of ignoring them and perpetuating misery.
Minus the loads of Germans in wrong countries aiding Adolf's propaganda.
Or the Hungarians,or the Italians...
The Great Powers put more emphasis on their own geopolitical influence and power games than on making sensible boundaries,hence why it failed.
Ending the cause of a problem is a cause of a problem?
Thats like saying that putting up a fence in your yard doesnt solve the neighbours dog coming over to do his business in it.
I already stated why Africa is so dysfunctional,mostly due to Neo-Imperialism ensuring it stays dysfunctional.
Nice to see someone recognizes how hollow this utopian fantasy if peace in the developed world is.
Why does every always forget poor Switzerland.
There is no reason a nation cant be isolationist and well managed.
Besides,the moment North Korea started applying more sensible agricultural methods it stopped having famines.
They became horrible due to terrible mismanagement,not due to it being impossible for isolationist states to exist.
But i gues some here just despise the idea of sovereign states.
I do feel this reply is a bit long but i dont know how else to format it.
Only if the Entente are willing to put in the effort to maintain territorial control of Turkish Kurdistan for long enough to form a united Kurdish state (difficult considering how tribal they were) and to train and equip a Kurdish army out of nothing. Once the Entente withdraw the Kurds face enemies in all directions while relying on these enemies for trade with the outside world. A doomed state.
Not really all sides.
I doubt the Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs could cooperate enough to actually threaten the Kurds.
Not to mention the Sunni Arabs may well find Turkish expansion into Kurdistan a threat to them,given the Arabs still had many grievances over Turkish rule.
Either way it couldnt be much worse than the current situation.
Humans, and their rights, were created by God.
"Nations" were invented by misanthropic poets - most of them bad poets, disappointed their mediocre talents weren't getting enough recognition and patronage by the ruling elites. It was a gimmick to sell bad poetry.
"Wrong" countries? Countries aren't "wrong". They are "wrong" only in nationalist ideology.
You're begging the question.
If nationalists see everything short of 100% ethnic purity as "wrong", then maybe it is nationalists that are "wrong".
Putting up a fence merely starts a conflict over where the fence is placed.
And starts the grievous abuse of innocent people who happen not to be where the fence-builders imagine they ought to be.
Ah, I see. So nationalist ideology starts with the assumption that (a) your neighbor is a dog, (b) that he is harming you somehow.
Maybe if you start with different assumptions, say, that (a) your neighbor is a hot babe; (b) her coming over gives you a boner, you wouldn't be as eager for a fence?
Unsurprising that nationalism has to begin with the dog-ification of "the other", otherwise it doesn't make sense.
Ah, Neo-Imperialism you say now. So not borders, then?
I dont think my people could even read when they arrived in the Balkans on invitation of Byzantium.
Its a historic fact that the presence of Germans in the Sudetenland and Prussia allowed Hitler to do what he did,hence why the victors in 1945 made sure the Germans were moved out of there.
Had this factor been accounted for in 1919 Hitler couldnt have gained so much traction in the first place.
Better just have nothing so everyone can just molest each other in a more easy fashion?
A stalemate is preferable to either side oppressing the other.
Its more along the lines of your neighbor not taking proper care of his own stuff thus letting that stuff start bothering you.
If my neighbor wants to come over he can do so through the front door,not the bathroom window.
Im for just letting Africans resolve it themselves free of foreign meddling.
Did you read what I said? None of those implosions have anything to do with minorities wanting to secede or states squabbling over territorial claims. Iraqi Sunnis didn't want their own country, they wanted to dominate Iraq (or at least not be oppressed). Syrian Sunnis don't want to have their own country, they want Assad gone. Lebanese ethnic groups have all sorts of communal issues with one another, but they don't want to break up Lebanon into little bitty pieces. Yes, many middle eastern countries don't work particularly well, but that wouldn't be solved by partitioning them. Even many Kurds don't want partition, the Syrian Kurds are running their own little multi-ethnic socialist federation, the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds mind their own business and the Turkish Kurds would be satisfied with human rights.
There are groups of people who share languages and customs, of course. Nothing wrong with that, I'm not advancing some sort of Stalinist dystopia whereby everyone must be forced into one identity. There are people who call themselves Englishmen, Frenchmen, Slovakians etc.
The problem comes where people make the connection between identity and government. There's no reason why shared customs should give a group of people a special right to political sovereignty, and there's no reason why this sovereign state should have a special right to rule over specific portions of the earth for all eternity. All identities and ethnic groups are in fact granular and fluid, made up of lots of different competing elements, and the idea that there are concrete and eternal nations which possess their own sacred bits of soil is fiction.
If every form of identity were to receive its own national homeland then every garden fence would have its own border security force.
Living in a tiny militarised commune surrounded by people who want to smash you off the face of the earth sounds like a hellhole to me. Well actually it sounds more like post-apocalyptic dystopian fun, but really I don't want the actual world we live in to be like Fallout.
Why would nationalism stop crime? Do you think that criminals would just think to themselves "hey, I should be an excellent citizen of Brazil, I must show pride and not commit any crimes today"?
Plus, as Abdul repeatedly pointed out, Somalia is a homogeneous nation-state with almost perfect borders and it's a rather lawless place today (not as lawless as it was once though, see the next point).
Nigeria is doing great and Somalia is getting a lot better than before. Uganda is prospering, Kenya is excellent, and all across the board things are generally improving as far as human development statistics go.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who...-Media/Annual-Letters-List/Annual-Letter-2014
Walls are misery.
Let noone build walls to divide us, walls of hatred nor walls of stone.
That's what started the war in the Balkans but it didn't turn it into a world war. Turning a Balkan squabble over who gets to rule what piece of soil into a global conflagration took German and Russian arrogance and ambition (with more than a little help from Britain and France as well).
Hitler wanted to kill almost every Slav in eastern Europe regardless of whether those territories were populated by Germans or not. If the Sudetenland Germans had been expelled at the end of the first war Czechoslovakia would have been dismembered on some other pretext, perhaps a damaged railway sleeper like in Manchuria. And I imagine Hitler would be even more outraged than he was if the Sudeten Germans had been kicked out of their homes...
I'm not talking about 1930s France, I'm talking about the EU. Which basically solved Europe's nationalism problem. Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and many other nationalities realised that there's no shame in living together and prospering in peace, and that they didn't need to go around looking for trouble with one another over minorities and claims.
There are plenty of territorial claims left. Just listing those countries, but Britain could easily claim southern Ireland (and much of the rest of the world), France could claim half of Belgium, the Netherlands could claim northwest Germany, Denmark could claim Iceland (as could Norway) and Sweden could claim parts of Finland. Spain already claims Gibraltar. Scots and Catalans are aiming for independence. Another Hitler could easily bring back Germany's eastern claims or try to annex Switzerland or Austria. A good nationalist can always dig up historical instances where they once had one part of another country and now they do not.
Europe has peace because we have collectively decided to throw that sort of egotistical poetic madness in the bin and embrace prosperity rather than pride.
Nationalist ideology is the exclusive domain of the literate.
The illiterate don't do ideology. Their loyalty is to their lord. And they do whatever he or the local priest tells them.
What "allowed" Hitler to do what he did was other politicians giving credence to his ridiculous claims. Nationalism often begets stupidity.
There were no "Germans" in the Sudetenland. There were former subjects of the Austro-Hungarian empire who happened to speak a dialect of German. Sudetenland had never been part of Germany. Germany had no more claim upon the "Germans" in the Sudetenland than it had on "Germans" in Austria or Switzerland.
Not that any of it mattered. Hitler wanted the eastern territories. Nationalist ideology merely made others gullible.
Better to learn to get along, than inventing "the other".
Without a fence, there is at least no quarrel over the location of the fence, or oppression of people on the "wrong" side of it.
Once again, your entire argument rests on fabricating "the other", and construing him to be "oppressing" you somehow.
Setting that up is easy. Other religion, other skin color, other dialect, other hair color, other musical tastes, other football club, etc. Take your pick. You can make an "insurmountable" conflict on the basis of any minor differences between people.
Thank you for being so gracious.
Last edited:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Personally, I prefer Blake to Frost, but you get the point.
Aye, it is the cornerstone of his argument. It goes back to his national identity, I think. His nation is a pawn of "the others", and they are ruthless in dealing with "them".
You missed the Kurds who flat out want to break off.
And the only reason some of them dont declare independence is because the response would be bloody,as it is with multinational empires.
And there is a small flaw with your view of the Syrian-Iraq Sunni's aims.
Their aims arent simply in Iraq and Syria,their aims are to overrun the entire region and create a caliphate stretching from horizon to horizon.
They got so desperate that they skipped the whole nation-state phase and are just trying to carve out an empire and destroy everyone who isnt them.
This is a typical over-reaction that has been seen before in the Third Reich and the USSR when peoples grievances arent solved too long.
And then what is the purpose of states if not to care for their people?
A nation state by default cares for the people who live in it,its citizens,the nation they are based on.
If a state wont care for its citizens and will gladly let them be replaced by others then such a state has no reason to exist.
People didnt organize in early states because they thought it was fun having more coherent leadership,they did it for protection and to better manage their resources.
As such a nation state becomes more than simple a government with some boundaries on the map,it becomes the property of its population,and im sure you wouldnt agree to disowning people of their property.
You completely skipped what i posted.
Nationalism does tend to breed a sense of loyalty detached from simple monetary gain.
It could be said that Mussolini was doing a very effective job eradicating the Italian Mafia for example.
Minus the odd group of exploding fanatics who go around stealing hundreds of schoolgirls and making themselves look silly.
Has your country ever been invaded by a bunch of crazy people?
If it had then you might have a better opinion of stone walls.
And it comes back to the point of empires being a danger to humanity while nation-states themselves couldnt cause such a huge mess alone if they tried.
Had Austria-Hungary had any respect for Balkan people it might have survived a while longer,but their hubris destroyed them.
Except the little part where it couldnt be dismembered short of open war if there are no Germans in it.
And Czechoslovakia had a damn fine line of fortifications along its border with a well equipped and sizable army.
Germany couldnt really do anything without those local Germans being there,all their diplomatic craftyness would simply not exist.
As for Adolf being outraged,what he thinks of it 20 years after the fact would be irrelevant,since he would be staring down a couple of nations worth of guns telling him to chill.
You miss attribute the cause.
The EU didnt solve anything for a variety of reasons.
1.Its original members of the European Economic Community had already solved their mutual grievances in the world wars,and were at peace even without integration.
2.US hegemony doesnt like any of their client states getting overly uppity.
Having claims and having the will/power to enforce them are two different matters.
Britain can try to enforce its claims,and destroy itself.
France can annex half of Belgium and would probably be better for it,Belgium isnt even a real country,it takes years to agree on what imaginary government to have.
If anything the Netherlands should be annexed by some sort of North German state.
Scandinavians cant really claim anything since they are to weak to enforce anything and their own population is very apathetic to dying for such useless aims.
Spain certainly has more claim to Gibraltar than Britain does.
Scots and Catalans most certainly should be independent.
There will be no Fourth Reich,because the moment such a thing becomes possible im fairly sure Germany would be glowing in the dark.
A good nationalist does what is best for his people,feeding them into the grinder of pointless wars isnt a good thing.
You seem to have substitutes nationalism for xenophobia,why does a nationalism have to care in the slightest for foreign countries?
He can simply focus on his own and live happy.
And yet quite formidable groups of people rose and settled without even being literate.
The Croats came to the Balkans as a coherent people.
The Serbs too came as a coherent people.
The Magyars who became Hungarians were also a coherent people.
You dont need literacy to be a part of a group of people.
And you most certainly dont need it to think "i can understand these people,i lived with them all my life and we help each other,this blonde guy from across the forest speaks funny and is weird,i dont think he is part of my group".
Sudetenland was part of the Holy Roman Empire which was considered the First Reich,which Hitler used for propaganda purposes even before he moved to take Bohemia.
Your disregard for nationalism has blinded you to historic reality.
And we can go back to view this from simple strategic terms,no Germans in Sudetenland or Prussia means no viable way for Adolf to actually fight and defeat Czechoslovakia or Poland.
Many people in this world are averse to get along and would rather just get rid of you entirely and take your stuff.
I want to give you a friendly border for your protection,which option is more rational?
My people were fighting for their very existence for centuries against the Ottoman Empire,we didnt invest anyone oppressing us,we had a good idea of it happening when they started practicing their pole impalement techniques on our rears.
Your only solution to dealing with differences between people is to ignore them,most of the time this is not only counter productive but downright suicidal.
Not everyone in this world wants to get along with you,many will just take what ever chance they have to ruin you for their own gain.
Blind optimism and naivety isnt a foundation for a healthy existence.
Sure thing.
Africa and the Balkans are similar in several ways.
Not to mention Yugoslavia did spearhead the whole defunct Non-Aligned-Movement.
Just another sad example of failed utopian dreams.
When most of your national history is one bloodbath after another and when you dont have a single generation in living memory who someone didnt try to eradicate you start becoming very disillusioned with the idea of putting your own safety and the safety of your people in the hands of blind hopes and dreams.
Unlike certain nations we didnt cross oceans to oppress other people,we didnt grow rich off of the back of other nations,we simply endured,as such we owe nothing to anyone,and we would hope that others would respect our right to what we built ourselves.
A wise man might listen to what other people, who live in countries that do not bathe in blood on a generational basis, have to say; rather than blindly swinging at an imaginary pinata that every single individual in this thread is telling you does not exist.
That would be the equivalent of trusting someone who never had a car to give you advice on repairing it.
Your statement sounds like there was any choice involved in the bloodshed.
Sometimes people come from far away for vague reasons and ruin your day,and then you end up having to rebuild the ruins.
Well those places have something to do with that there was no (or failed) nation building. But for that you have to dig a bit deeper to founding of the nation state... it was a liberal instrument to "uplift" the commoners the politics.
That was of course missing totally with those states since they are military or hereditary dicatorship. The general population could neither influence them and there was no reason to identify themselves as Iraqi, Syrian or Sudanese.
That was of course missing totally with those states since they are military or hereditary dicatorship. The general population could neither influence them and there was no reason to identify themselves as Iraqi, Syrian or Sudanese.
There was choice in the bloodshed. Your countrymen chose to shed blood.
I can say no more. Verbotten.
Excuse us for not submitting ourselves to the enlightened rule of these peaceful gentlemen:
After that train wreck lasting several centuries the Balkans were firmly broken,while the nation-states did regain their independence there was serious damage that hasnt been repaired even today.
We took a horrible situation and tried to make the most of it.
You think this would have been that much better?I was pondering this the other day, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen this discussed, but with little pushback on it. The general consensus is that the Sykes-Picot agreement created terrible middle-eastern borders that are the center of today's conflicts.
For convenience, they are posted here:
Here are the political and physical maps of the middle east, for reference:
The previous state in the area left awful institutions in place after a rule of hundreds of years - weak central authority, nobility of tax farmers and general neglect. Sure the British and the French were certainly no help but the situation on the ground was already terrible. It sure is cool to hate on the colonising imperialist Westerners, but for the Middle East I think we should recognise that the borders are not that different to what the Ottomans had set up, and that the latter left next to nothing of a foundation on which to build a functioning state.