Old Gadfly: Gentlemen, have you read George
Friedman’s geopolitical assessment of the Paris shootings?
Dr. Friedman reinforced my own understanding
that religion and secularism (e.g., the progressive movement) are forms of
ideology. I hope we will be able to
discuss the implications of Dr. Friedman’s assessment in future
conversations. Meanwhile, with
permission from Stratfor, Dr. Friedman’s assessment is republished below:
A War Between Two Worlds
by
George Friedman
January 13, 2015
Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly
The
murders of
cartoonists who made fun of Islam and of Jews shopping for
their Sabbath meals by Islamists in Paris last week have galvanized the world.
A galvanized world is always dangerous. Galvanized people can do careless
things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and
coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to
do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in context and try to
understand what has happened and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for
action can be made. Rage has its place, but actions must be taken with
discipline and thought.
I have found that in thinking about
things geopolitically, I can cool my own rage and find, if not
meaning, at least explanation for events such as these. As it happens, my new
book will be published on Jan. 27. Titled Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis
in Europe, it is about the unfolding failure of the great European
experiment, the European Union, and the resurgence of
European nationalism. It discusses the re-emerging borderlands and
flashpoints of Europe and raises the possibility that Europe's attempt to
abolish conflict will fail. I mention this book because one chapter is on the
Mediterranean borderland and the very old conflict between Islam and Christianity.
Obviously this is a matter I have given some thought to, and I will draw on Flashpoints
to begin making sense of the murderers and murdered, when I think of things in
this way.
Let me begin by quoting from that chapter:
We've spoken of borderlands, and how they
are both linked and divided. Here is a border sea, differing in many ways but
sharing the basic characteristic of the borderland. Proximity separates as much
as it divides. It facilitates trade, but also war. For Europe this is another frontier
both familiar and profoundly alien.
Islam invaded Europe twice from the
Mediterranean — first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as
well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple
times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims
from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians
finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large
parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the
other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true
is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first
encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each
other.
Christians and Muslims have been bitter
enemies, battling for control of Iberia. Yet, lest we forget, they also have
been allies: In the 16th century, Ottoman Turkey and Venice allied to control
the Mediterranean. No single phrase can summarize the relationship between the
two save perhaps this: It is rare that two religions might be so obsessed with
each other and at the same time so ambivalent. This is an explosive mixture.
Migration,
Multiculturalism and Ghettoization
The current crisis has its origins in the
collapse of European hegemony over North Africa after World War II and the
Europeans' need for cheap labor. As a result of the way in which they ended
their imperial relations, they were bound to allow the migration of Muslims into
Europe, and the permeable borders of the European Union enabled them to settle
where they chose. The Muslims, for their part, did not come to join in a
cultural transformation. They came for work, and money, and for the simplest
reasons. The Europeans'
appetite for cheap labor and the Muslims' appetite for work
combined to generate a massive movement of populations.
The matter was complicated by the fact that
Europe was no longer simply Christian. Christianity had lost its hegemonic
control over European culture over the previous centuries and had been joined,
if not replaced, by a new doctrine of secularism. Secularism drew a radical
distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any
traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public
life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe
what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are
those whose beliefs are so different from others' beliefs that finding common
ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the
very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable.
The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is
charmed.
Europe solved the problem with the weakening
of Christianity that made the ancient battles between Christian factions
meaningless. But they had invited in people who not only did not share the core
doctrines of secularism, they rejected them. What Christianity had come to see
as progress away from sectarian conflict, Muslims (and some Christians) may see
as simply decadence, a weakening of faith and the loss of conviction.
There is here a question of what we mean when
we speak of things like Christianity, Islam and secularism. There are more than
a billion Christians and more than a billion Muslims and uncountable
secularists who mix all things. It is difficult to decide what you mean when
you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or
is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language
that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a
religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who
pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews
stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By
devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve
nations and religions from responsibility.
This is not necessarily wrong, but it creates
a tremendous practical problem. If no one but the gunmen and their immediate
supporters are responsible for the action, and all others who share their faith
are guiltless, you have made a defensible moral judgment. But as a practical
matter, you have paralyzed your ability to defend yourselves. It is impossible
to defend against random violence and impermissible to impose collective
responsibility. As Europe has been for so long, its moral complexity has posed
for it a problem it cannot easily solve. Not all Muslims — not even most
Muslims — are responsible for this. But all who committed these acts were
Muslims claiming to speak for Muslims. One might say this is a Muslim problem
and then hold the Muslims responsible for solving it. But what happens if they
don't? And so the moral debate spins endlessly.
This dilemma is compounded by Europe's hidden
secret: The Europeans do not see Muslims from North Africa or Turkey as
Europeans, nor do they intend to allow them to be Europeans. The European
solution to their isolation is the concept of
multiculturalism — on the surface a most liberal notion, and in
practice, a movement for both cultural fragmentation and ghettoization. But
behind this there is another problem, and it is also geopolitical. I say in Flashpoints
that:
Multiculturalism and the entire immigrant
enterprise faced another challenge. Europe was crowded. Unlike the United
States, it didn't have the room to incorporate millions of immigrants —
certainly not on a permanent basis. Even with population numbers slowly declining,
the increase in population, particularly in the more populous countries, was
difficult to manage. The doctrine of multiculturalism naturally encouraged a
degree of separatism. Culture implies a desire to live with your own people.
Given the economic status of immigrants the world over, the inevitable
exclusion that is perhaps unintentionally incorporated in multiculturalism and
the desire of like to live with like, the Muslims found themselves living in
extraordinarily crowded and squalid conditions. All around Paris there are
high-rise apartment buildings housing and separating Muslims from the French,
who live elsewhere.
These killings have nothing to do with
poverty, of course. Newly arrived immigrants are always poor. That's why they
immigrate. And until they learn the language and customs of their new homes,
they are always ghettoized and alien. It is the next generation that flows into
the dominant culture. But the dirty secret of multiculturalism was that its
consequence was to perpetuate Muslim isolation. And it was not the intention of
Muslims to become Europeans, even if they could. They came to make money, not
become French. The shallowness of the European postwar values system thereby
becomes the horror show that occurred in Paris last week.
The
Role of Ideology
But while the Europeans have particular
issues with Islam, and have had them for more than 1,000 years, there is a more
generalizable problem. Christianity has been sapped of its evangelical zeal and
no longer uses the sword to kill and convert its enemies. At least parts of
Islam retain that zeal. And saying that not all Muslims share this vision does
not solve the problem. Enough Muslims share that fervency to endanger the lives
of those they despise, and this tendency toward violence cannot be tolerated by
either their Western targets or by Muslims who refuse to subscribe to a
jihadist ideology. And there is no way to distinguish those who might kill from
those who won't. The Muslim community might be able to make this distinction, but
a 25-year-old European or American policeman cannot. And the Muslims either
can't or won't police themselves. Therefore, we are left in a state of war.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called this a war on radical Islam. If
only they wore uniforms or bore distinctive birthmarks, then fighting only the
radical Islamists would not be a problem. But Valls' distinctions
notwithstanding, the world can either accept periodic attacks, or see the
entire Muslim community as a potential threat until proven otherwise. These are
terrible choices, but history is filled with them. Calling for a war on radical
Islamists is like calling for war on the followers of Jean-Paul Sartre. Exactly
what do they look like?
The European inability to come to terms with
the reality it has created for itself in this and other matters does not
preclude the realization that wars involving troops are occurring in many
Muslim countries. The situation is complex, and morality is merely another
weapon for proving the other guilty and oneself guiltless. The geopolitical
dimensions of Islam's relationship with Europe, or India, or Thailand, or the
United States, do not yield to moralizing.
Something must be done. I don't know what
needs to be done, but I suspect I know what is coming. First, if it is true
that Islam is merely responding to crimes against it, those crimes are not new
and certainly didn't originate in the creation of
Israel, the invasion of Iraq or
recent events. This has been going on far longer than that. For instance, the
Assassins were a secret Islamic order to make war on individuals they saw as
Muslim heretics. There is nothing new in what is going on, and it will not end
if peace comes to Iraq, Muslims occupy Kashmir or Israel is destroyed. Nor is
secularism about to sweep the Islamic world. The Arab Spring was
a Western fantasy that the collapse of communism in 1989 was repeating itself
in the Islamic world with the same results. There are certainly Muslim liberals
and secularists. However, they do not control events — no single group does —
and it is the events, not the theory, that shape our lives.
Europe's sense of nation is rooted in shared
history, language, ethnicity and yes, in Christianity or its heir, secularism.
Europe has no concept of the nation except for these things, and Muslims share
in none of them. It is difficult to imagine another outcome save for another
round of ghettoization and deportation. This is repulsive to the European
sensibility now, but certainly not alien to European history. Unable to distinguish
radical Muslims from other Muslims, Europe will increasingly and
unintentionally move in this direction.
Paradoxically, this will be exactly what the
radical Muslims want because it will strengthen their position in the Islamic
world in general, and North Africa and Turkey in particular. But the
alternative to not strengthening the radical Islamists is living with the
threat of death if they are offended. And that is not going to be endured in
Europe.
Perhaps a magic device will be found that
will enable us to read the minds of people to determine what their ideology
actually is. But given the offense many in the West have taken to governments
reading emails, I doubt that they would allow this, particularly a
few months from now when the murders and murderers are forgotten, and Europeans
will convince themselves that the security apparatus is simply trying to
oppress everyone. And of course, never minimize the oppressive potential of
security forces.
The United States is different in this sense.
It is an artificial regime, not a natural one. It was invented by our founders
on certain principles and is open to anyone who embraces those principles.
Europe's nationalism is romantic, naturalistic. It depends on bonds that
stretch back through time and cannot be easily broken. But the idea of shared
principles other than their own is offensive to the religious everywhere, and
at this moment in history, this aversion is most commonly present among
Muslims. This is a truth that must be faced.
The Mediterranean borderland was a place of
conflict well before Christianity and Islam existed. It will remain a place of
conflict even if both lose their vigorous love of their
own beliefs. It is an illusion to believe that conflicts rooted in
geography can be abolished. It is also a mistake to be so philosophical as to
disengage from the human fear of being killed at your desk for your ideas. We
are entering a place that has no solutions. Such a place does have decisions,
and all of the choices will be bad. What has to be done will be done, and those
who refused to make choices will see themselves as more moral than those who
did. There is a war, and like all wars, this one is very different from the
last in the way it is prosecuted. But it is war nonetheless, and denying that
is denying the obvious.
Note: “A War Between
Two Worlds” is republished with permission of Stratfor. The newest book by Stratfor chairman and founder George Friedman, Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, will be released Jan. 27. It is now available for pre-order.
