Every Arab apologist invokes sykes-picot as to why everything concerning the Middle East is the West fault.
Was there really a more satisfying and less arbitrary alternative?
>Was there really a more satisfying and less arbitrary alternative?
Not really as nuclear weapons had yet to be invented.
We should have made nation-states instead of retarded artificial countries.
Europe is at it's most peaceful ever because it's composed of nation-states.
The middle-east would be a lot more peaceful if people who hate eachother weren't forced into the same borders.
How about not breaking up the Ottoman empire in the first place
>>321009
so we should have just let them balkanize?
There was no way to prevent the butthurt.
>>321044
Yes
>Kurdistan
>Shia state in southern Iraq
>Alawite/Druze state in western Syria
>Sunni state stretching from central Iraq to central Syria
Maybe break off chunks of Lebanon and add them too, but that place is a demographic clusterfuck
Would it really have been so difficult to put the Kurds in one place, the Shia Arabs in another, and then the Sunni Arabs in another?
And maybe not shove a bunch of Jews in there for no reason?
>>321099
Oded Yinon go to bed
>>321009
If nation-states are so damn good why are we ( the western world ) embracing multiculturality so much ?
>>321114
because our birthrates are so low
>>321124
And a good natalitist policy wouldn't have done the trick ?
>>320974
G R E A T A R A B I A
R
E
A
T
A
R
A
B
I
A
>>321102
There would still be divisions between Arab and Kurdish tribes. And without Israel, Jews would be everywhere around the Middle East, from Baghdad to Fez. Considering how they were a prosperous minority in a world of increasingly socialistic policies, that would create even more conflict.
They should have held a plebiscite to find out what the locals wanted.
It would have been better for everyone.
>>321109
Israel was a mistake too, at least with the borders it ended up with
Like with Lebanon, there's no uniformity in Palestine: you have Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze
Maybe connect the two as neo-Phoenicia
>>321137
I doubt that you're going to get replacement level birthrates in the west until the cost of having a child goes way down, and wages increase to the point that one parent can stay home and raise the children.
It's a lot easier to just bring in a lot of immigrants.
>>320974
Yes, a united secular Arab republic.
>>321185
In the short term perhaps, and i'm not even sure about that, natalist policies in nazi germany seemed to work well enough, but in the long term it's just a catastrophy for the country, look at the recent events in France, look at the rise of racism and religious extremism in western europe... Those policies have fucked europe well imho
Sykes Picot is meme tier the real important deal was the 'Quincy Agreement' made between FDR and King Abdulaziz ibn Saud in 1945
>>321185
The problem is that wages are so high that not working is a major disadvantage. You need paid parental/maternity leave and subsidised childcare which can be hard even for a well developed country to implement.
>>321236
or you kick women out of the workplace and wages will rise by supply and demand.
Same goes with the curbing of immigration. Only bring in people who will create their own jobs, not just surpress the market.
That's exactly what Iran does.
>>320974
The problem wasn't in the partitioning (although it might have been able to be done better), it's in the backwards sectarian tribe mentality the locals have that makes them unable to get along with each other. Injecting another group (Israelis) into the region was a bad idea, and balkanising will only help if the states don't go to war aginst eachother which is fucking not guaranteed. Europeans were at war with each other for millennia but they know when to put differences aside and cooperate for greater prosperity.
>>321256
Or have a basic income, then every job will pay exactly what it is worth, and people can choose to stay at home like you want.
>>321170
How is Lebanon not the biggest shithole in the world with that many religions grouped up in such a relatively small area?
>>321276
>Europeans were at war with each other for millennia but they know when to put differences aside and cooperate for greater prosperity.
You mean like when that region was united in the Ottoman Empire?
>>321288
basic income after/during mass automation kicks in.
any other time you give poors money, you end up with more poors.
>>321256
>supply and demand
lol artificially restricting supply is rarely a good idea. Higher percentage of the population working = higher gdp per capita its pretty simple. You just need to give women a 5 year break to pump out a few rugrats without putting their family at a disadvantage compared to one that doesn't make any kids.
>That's exactly what Iran does.
That's what every developed country does. Have you actually tried to immigrate for work longer than a year before? It's fucking impossible.
>>320974
It's just an argument college liberals invoke because they think all colonialism went down like in Africa.
Most problems in the middle east don't come from borders, but interventions, rebel funding, perfidious British tactics, Israel and things of that nature. Many urban areas are multicultural so there's not much borders would solve. Arab nationalism could've worked out if they were allowed to pursue it properly.
Anyway, because I'm a border kind of guy, what I would do is reinstate Sèvres, grant Kurds their territory, divide Iraq, create Druze and Alawite states, unite the Sunni Arabs of Mesopotamia and Syria.
>>321327
women wage slave to pay other people to raise their children. this is assbackward. The family was an ingenious tax-free division of labor that is being undermined for the benefit of the system.
We had the greatest growth when that institution wasn't being undermined (50s) so i'm not sure why it would be wise to continue what is presently prescribed, I mean unless you benefit from the cheap labor that forces both parents to work or from the taxes collected.
>>321306
I'd say basic income is for the transition to the automated economy.
It won't be long until normal levels of unemployment are at >50%, not because half of all people never work, but because most people will be out of work half the time. With no basic income, this means they burn through their savings, go into debt, or end up on welfare. With a basic income, it means they go get another job, and continue to accumulate capital.
When you give people money for being poor, or unemployed, you have perverse incentives all over the place. When you give people money because they, as citizens, own one share of their country, and let them vote for government programs or more basic income, you make them all fiscally conservative instantly.
>>321327
>Have you actually tried to immigrate for work longer than a year before? It's fucking impossible.
Not impossible but these retards thinking we have a bunch of foreign cashiers and toilet scrubbers invading our country are just that, retards. Completely out of touch with reality.
There's illegal immigration too obviously but you can hardly curb that with passing some quota, border protection is a different issue.
>>321357
Forcing women to work for free is not the answer though. If you want them to do meaningful work you have to compensate them in the form of paid maternity leave.
>>321185
Natalist policies do work. Both past examples and current examples show it.
>>321401
No, take your rent-seeking elsewhere.
This is about re-establishing the single income household, not your abreit macht frei fantasy.
It doesn't even matter since the Dawla al Islamiyya has taken down these kuffar borders and established a caliphate upon the prophetic methodology in the lands of Sham and 3raq. Every border established by the crusaders will soon be taken down, insh'Allah.
>>321044
"Balkanization" (division based on ethnicity and/or religion) is not bad if done right. It didn't go too well in the Balkans because the borders weren't actually drawn based on ethnicity, so there are a bunch of people who are pissed off their region didn't go to the right nation-state.
>>321114
Because multiculturalism is in the interests of the people running things.
It's not in the interest of the American people, though.
>>321421
It's no fantasy m8 it's reality. People will make decision that most benefit them, including at the expense of their as-yet unborn children.
Unless you want to force people to do a certain thing through totalitarianism, the only way to encourage them in a certain way is to make that option more attractive.
Not that birth-rates are that much of a problem unless they're way below the replacement rate and your country is too poor to support it's commitments to old people.
Germany should have won WW1. The Turk are the only ones who can properly govern the Arabs.
>>321419
Can you post some good examples? Are there any that have worked in a similar society to ours?
>>321419
Such as?
>>321343
>Most problems in the middle east don't come from borders, but interventions, rebel funding, perfidious British tactics, Israel and things of that nature.
I thought most problems in the middle east came from muslim arabs.
>>320974
>the reason all these tribes hate each other is that you artificially grouped tribes that hate one another together
It's worth talking about but do you think these places would be happy under Ottoman rule? There would be no revolts? It would be okay if the Ottomans crushed them?
Do you think they should have arbitrarily divided them in some other way, so that people were fighting over different arbitrary lines?
Do you blame France and the UK for losing power and being unable to manage colonies, leaving them to rot?
Do you blame the US and USSR for not being able to step in their places without confrontation?
Putting much blame on Sykes-Picot is reddit-tier populist garbage. It's just an uncritical acceptance of the ISIS/al-Qaeda/wahhabi/salafist claims that the West causes all problems. They might be happier without western influence, but it'd probably be them happily sacrificing their lives fighting against greater Persia or whatever.
>>321276
Europeans only "put aside their differences" after two World Wars and annihilating the old cultural customs that caused the wars in the first place. And don't think that just sheer devastation was enough to do it - the 30 Years War was comparable in devastation, but it didn't lead to a paradigm shift as massive as we saw in the aftermath of the World Wars.
>>321636
Not entirely. They've got a lot of the same problems that Africa has, albeit framed far differently. You've got the standard postcolonial issues of having borders drawn by foreign countries that don't necessarily reflect cultural divisions and then foreign powers coming in and supporting governments to further their geopolitical motives.
You see that a lot with the various wars with Israel, where the Soviets supported the Arabs and the Americans supported Israel. Later, it happened with Iraq, where pretty much the entire world supported Iraq against Iran. Problem is, the support never seems to have any long-term thinking with it. We propped up the Shah in Iran despite his poor popularity, ultimately leading to the Iran we have today. Saddam went poorly as well - he stopped being a useful dictator and instead threatened the region's stability (and global economy).
Another huge issue is the local powers vying for superiority. The Saudis are big at this, funding rebels sympathetic to their cause (as we see in Syria and Yemen today). The regional rivalry somewhat seems to follow religious lines, with the Saudis on one side and Iran on the other. Of course Israel doesn't help. Their existence alone is the cause of a ton of unrest, but they're pretty heavy-handed with attempts to preserve their regional superiority (see the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor) and that tends to fuck up the situation even more.
>>321712
Well Sykes-Picot and how it was implemented is what destabilized the region and allowed cunts like the Saudis to take over, though arguably the even bigger crime was the US allying with Saudi Arabia out of realpolitik, and even supporting them to this day even though they are the #1 destabilising force in the region.
>>321291
They have quotas in their upper house to ensure that one religious group can't gain a majority and suppress the other religious groups.
Why is it that India, which is the most ethnically and religiously diverse country in the world, is relatively peaceful when compared to states like Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, if nation-states are essential to preserving peace?
>>322861
> Sykes-Picot and how it was implemented is what destabilized the region
meme
>>323480
India is more like USA in administration. They have states run by communists. And majority of muslims and hindus did jump borders when Pakistan and India were formed. Under one nation it would have all gone to hell.
>>320974
But everything concerning the middle east is the western fault. Turkey today is not like Syria and Iraq because Turks had a strong national identity, partition of Ottoman Empire literally ruined middle east.
>>323506
its the same thing you saw with the arbitrary borders in some places of Africa, in that it causes huge problems by putting ethnic groups that hate each other under one roof
you don't put lions and bears in the same cage
>>323559
>its the same thing you saw with the arbitrary borders in some places of Africa
>the reason all these tribes hate each other is that you artificially grouped tribes that hate one another together
>>321835
>Europeans only "put aside their differences" after two World Wars and annihilating the old cultural customs that caused the wars in the first place. And don't think that just sheer devastation was enough to do it - the 30 Years War was comparable in devastation, but it didn't lead to a paradigm shift as massive as we saw in the aftermath of the World Wars.
But the world wars were a clash between modern ideologies. Be it nationalism or socialism.
When postcolonialists or leftist say that these countries fail because different groups were forced to live together, is this an contradiction in terms?
>>323717
disregard the "in terms" part, just a contradiction.
>promised the land to the arabs
>broke promise
>created a full on European colonial state out of some of it
>formed the basis of anti-european sentiment in the middle east
>democracy was seen as a system for collaborators
Yeah I'd say it's a failure
>>321137
>natalist policy
What does that even mean?
>>323708
The first World War was very much a battle between imperialist powers, and the Pyrrhic nature of the war led to the collapse of the idea of war being glorious and empire-building being something to strive towards, hence the idea of aiming for peaceful resolution to problems and such.
>>323756
Natalism is the idea of promoting human reproduction.
Hence Natalist policies are ones that encourage that, like tax breaks for parents and all that.
The issue with them is that it's very hard to get the amount of natalism right. We don't want to have the below-replacement rates in Europe, Japan, etc like we do now, but we also don't want to encourage people to pop out 5 kids each and turn the country into an overpopulated shithole.
>>320974
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was the worst possible resolution to the Arab states. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was the worst possible resolution to the Arab states. They should give them autonomy, independence, as they had promised. It was a dirty act of treason in the interests of emerging oil companies, and the growing Zionist initiative.
The best alternative was obviously never shred the Ottoman Empire. Since this hideous mistake was made, the Middle East never had a tiny moment of peace.
The next best alternative was to recognize an independent Arab state, as was the interest of the Arab rebels.
The worst of all was shred the Ottoman domains in zones of influence, deny sovereignty to the Arabs, recognize the existence of Saudi Arabia (until then, hordes of the interior desert waiting for an opportunity), and create Israel in the Levant.
It was an act of idiocy and monumental narrowness.
In fact, I can not conceive of a more harmful solution.
>>321114
Because the people who run the show will benefit from it. We won't, though.
>>324151
>Fezzan
>>320974
>>321170
Wasn't Lebanon like 80% Christian not that long ago, but Muslims breeding like cockroaches and Palestinian invasion reduced it to a ridiculously smaller number ?
>>323480
>relatively peaceful
key word being relatively
They still have full fledged seperatist militas that perform terrorist attacks and all that jazz.
They certainly don't recieve as much limelight as the ones in ME do, not to mention that foreign support for them is almost non-existant.
Anyone wanna try to post some improved Middle East boundaries, or should we just get real and acknowledge that any division of the Ottoman Empire would have had winners and losers?
>>320974
The best alternative for all involved would have been the creation of a greater Israel with all of the land going to the Jewish people.
>>325082
untrue, the ISI (pakishit's CIA) trolls the shit out of them.
>>321185
>I doubt that you're going to get replacement level birthrates in the west until the cost of having a child goes way down, and wages increase to the point that one parent can stay home and raise the children.
Ireland and France have bucked the trend because having kids is a national duty. We're not going to be bred out of our own country. France just happens to take in a lot of foreigners, but Ireland will be fine.
>>321009
>Europe is at its most powerful ever
>no colonies in sight
>>325082
>separatist militias do full fledged rebellion
>realize it is not going anywhere
>end up joining mainstream politics
>utilize their funds and help their communities.
case in point the punjab.
>>325235
That's just cause the ISI trolls the shit out of literally everyone. Even themselves.
>>320974
>>321099
>>321099
>>321102
>>321170
>>322861
>>323533
>>323734
The British and French actually wanted to break it into smaller pieces originally but the Hashemites assured them they could rule all of the Arabs. You can't solely blame that on the Europeans.
Part of this was to avoid the "perfidious Albion" label that people hang on them for this and for the Balfour declaration. In reality, the Hashemites were aware of that, too. You're letting antisemitic /pol/-tier conspiracies seep into what you think is scholarly if you believe otherwise.
I can provide a citation for this tomorrow if you need it.
>>321343
>Dismisses an argument as just something college liberals bring up
>blames everything on Israel
There were always Jews throughout Arabia from the time of Muhammad until they were expelled in 1948.
>>323480
There was plenty of ethno-religious terror in India around the time of partition and has been since, like when Hindus slaughtered Sikhs in revenge killings for the assassination of Indira Ghandi. Anyway, basically because there was some self-sorting around partition
>>323734
>Broke the promise
How'd they do that, Anon? They promised it to the Hashemite Sherif, not to "the Arabs."
>>324072
>>>/pol/
>>324151
Name one point in time when all of this was under unified de facto (not de jure) control. Ever.
>>324698
Notice the names under each province are Hashemite kings.
>>324748
"No"
>>324072
You realize that prior to 1948 literally every piece of land that the Zionists had had been sold to them by Arab or Ottoman landlords, right? I mean, you can literally inspect the transfer records if you want.
Until Hajj Al Amin Husseini got into the "Palestinian" leadership, there really wasn't much resistance to it at all and he convinced the British that some how he spoke for everyone even when when there were actual Muslim rulers they didn't care.
Israel/Palestine is a marginal conflict in the grand scheme of the middle east. Just like /pol/, it is used as a scapegoat for every single fucking problem in the world. Meanwhile, sectarian, tribal, and international violence is only increasing in the Middle East.
You are a fucking fool if you think that if tomorrow Israel and Palestine made the most favorable imaginable deal to the Palestinians that somehow any of the problems anywhere else would cease. And in reality, very few of the problems in Palestine would cease, either. They would still be ruled by half by Islamic terrorists in Gaza and half by a confiscatory, ineffective, literally dumb clique in Ramallah.
And it wouldn't help the Israelis either because everything would still be blamed on them. The boycotters won't go away.
Anyway, the obvious answer to a lot of the problems in the Middle East is population transfer to get people who can't stop killing each other away from each other, but Westerners think this is tantamount to genocide so they won't facilitate it, meanwhile we're getting up to millions of dead between Iraq and Syria since the US invaded Iraq in 2003 as a result of sectarian conflict.
Blaming Israel is a cowards way of blaming the US. We opened the door for ISIS to take over upper mesopotamia and Iran to take over the other half. Israel had nothing to do with that fuck up.
>>321232
>Quincy Agreement'
what was that?
>>328768
As of the beginning of 1915, British policymakers were still open to leaving a decentralized Ottoman Empire intact.
[Citation: ‘Report of the Committee on Asiatic Turkey’, 30 June 1915, CAB 27/1.
‘Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, His Majesty’s High Commissioner at Cairo, and the Sherif of Mecca July 1915–March 1916, presented by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Parliament by Command of His Majesty’, Cmd. 5957, London, 1939, p. 3 (hereafter ‘Hussein–McMahon Correspondence’).]
After that point, he British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, had been sufficiently impressed by Hussein’s (false) pretence to represent ‘the whole of the Arab Nation without any exception’14 to tentatively accept his vision of an Arab successor empire (presumably headed by himself).
[Citation: ‘Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, His Majesty’s High Commissioner at Cairo, and the Sherif of Mecca July 1915–March 1916, presented by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Parliament by Command of His Majesty’, Cmd. 5957, London, 1939, p. 3 (hereafter ‘Hussein–McMahon Correspondence’).
Eliezer Tauber, (London: Cass, 1993), chapter 28.]
In fact, the Hashemites weren't trying to liberate Arabs as much as replace the Ottomans. "to see that the Arab kingdom is such as will make it a substitute for the Ottoman Empire"
[Citation: Lawrence, 30 July 1917, FO 686/8; Mark Sykes, ‘Notes on Conversations with the Emirs Abdullah and Faisal’, 1 May 1917, FO 882/16, p. 233.
(London: Cassell, 1963), p. 101.]
>>331897
T.E. Lawrence himself thought this was insane.
> ‘a madman’s notion – for this century or next, probably … I am sure I never dreamed of uniting even the Hijaz and Syria. My conception was of a number of small states’
[Citation: T.E. Lawrence to his Biographers Robert Graves and Liddell Hart (London: Cassell, 1963), p. 101.
Martin Gilbert, (London: Heinemann, 1975), p. 596.]
So, in conclusion, blaming the "arbitrary lines on the map" on the French and British is dishonest and omits the responsibility for the Hashemite bamboozlement that prevailed in the event.
>>324748
yes
they're probably down to <20% Christian now with all the refugees
>>329520
It's the agreement that set up the ongoing allegiance between Saudi and the U.S. Basically, the King would continue to allow US business interests (in the form of the 'Arabian American Oil Company,' ARAMCO) to have a stake in the recently-developed oil industry in the country. In return, the US would provide manufacturing and industrial technologies which, paired with massive oil profits, would turn Saudia Arabia from a loose alliance of desert tribes into a modernized society. The only condition, made by King Abdulaziz, was the the US cannot by any means interfere with their religion. The Saudi royal family practices Wahabbi islam. The Saudi family coming to power, combined with oil profit, gave Wahabbi a place of intractable influence in worldwide Islam. And we all know how that turned out.
>>328768
>Dismisses an argument as just something college liberals bring up
>blames everything on Israel
>There were always Jews throughout Arabia from the time of Muhammad until they were expelled in 1948.
Sorry for being a day late, but good job singling out the least relevant claims
