Fallujah and Ramadi fall to Al Qaeda

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He didnt say Iraqis are "barbaric".

The point is that Germany and Japan were both actual nations. Iraq is not even a real nation (niether is Syria, nor Lebanon, nor Jordan) but a geopolitical fiction carved by the European colonialist powers out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. The locals just now overthrew the Syrian strongman, and outsiders (us Americans) overthrew the Iraqi strongman. Not supprisingly both Syria and Iraq seemed to be going the way of Lebanon in the Seventies and are falling apart as states and fragmenting along ethnic, and sectarian lines now that both countries are no longer held together at bayonet point. The whole map of the Middle East may end up being redrawn with only the few real countries (Egypt, Turkey, and Iran) being the same.

Germany is not a nation-state and its attempts to become one were the cause of large amounts of strife over the last 150 years. Lebanese politics fractured due to a lack of participation by all parties, democratic government structures within Iraq must have a place for all factions as majoritarianism will be a recipe for disaster. The so called 'Anbar Awakening' was nothing more than the Sunni population being drawn into the state and its structures. Now a few years down the track that agreement obviously needs renegotiation. I don't believe that unfettered national forces being unleashed within the middle east and its border structures can occur without incurring massive loss of life, so that is an option that should be resisted.

As for the nation states that you have put forward as examples, Turkey is a nation state but only because they drove out or killed everyone who was not a Turk. Egypt is a nation state, ethnically but not really along religious lines. Iran is certainly not a nation state, there are large geographic areas (although not numerically large) of Baluchis and Persians make up just over 60% of the population.

While admittedly Germany was originally a confederation of the various German speaking states (minus Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries) under the aegis of Prussia, it certainly is a nation state today.

So the whole academic establishment of middle east experts is wrong in 'putting forth' that Iran is a 'real country'? Thats an extraordinary claim!


Wrong- Germany took long to unite but it is a self created nation state. It is not like Iraq or Syria. The Germans were an ethnic group centuries before they were united as a state. And you're admitting that that trouble occured because "they attempted to unite themselves". Thats my very point- the Germans united themselve into a self created nation state in the centurey before WWII. It was not created by the allied occupiers after war. Iraq, and syria, were drawn up on a map and were created by foriegn occupiers.

I didnt say Iran and Turkey didnt have fringe minorities. But both states are built upon a core ethnic group. Iran existed as a nation state for 2000 plus years (if not 3000). And even their boundries might change in the upheavel that may come (the Kurds of Iran might break away and join the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey).

The Germans were recognized as an ethnic group long before they were unified as a nation state, and they did the work of unifying themselves in the century before they were defeated and occupied by the allies in WWII.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya, were carved out of the fallen Ottoman Empire with no regard to how the people on the ground identified themselves. And each country became governing units of European Colonial Empires. The European powers (Italy, France, Britian) held each together by force. Each had a moment of independence after the WWII, and each then fell under the rule of lifelong ruling dictators who continued to hold the countries together by force.


And saying that "Turkey is only as homogeneious as it is because of the Armenian Genocide" just kinda proves my point. If Turkey couldnt function without ethnic cleansing - how do you expect Syria and Iraq to hold together?

I am part of the academic establishment when it comes to international security. Nations and states are not the same thing, they teach you that in the first week of your first year. A nation is a collective cultural identity, a state is a political entity. A nation state is both. Japan is a nation and a state, the United States is composed of many identities but it is a state. Iran is not a nation state, it is a state but there is more than one national identity at work within it's borders.



Germany was not a completed nation state in 1914. At no point (excluding the earty 1940's) have all ethnic Germans been part of the German state. Germany lost significant territory during the First World War and it was their attempts to unify all ethnic Germans into one state that caused the most deadly conflict in human history. Iraq and Syria were constructed states created by foreign occupiers, as are many countries, including contemporary Germany. This reality is not alone cause for conflagration, I would tend to point towards participation and space within the identity of a state as being more important factors.



As I said, Iran is not a nation state, Persians only make up just over 60% of the population, much of the rest of contemporary Iran has a different idea of their history and the Persian narrative should not be seen as necessarily dominant.



As I said, ethnic divergence is not an identifiable causal variable for genocide. It is the politicisation of those identities that causes major problems, especially when identities are excluded from the process. The majority of states that exist presently are not nation states with homogenous identities which immediately tells us that there is more at work than the simplistic narrative you are offering.

Certainly. I think the main point that we are discussing however is how states become nation-states or if they have to. Germany was not really constructed out of german speaking states, those states spoke German as a result of concerted efforts (many by the smaller states themselves and then by Austria) to produce German speaking people.

Huh? Maybe you can make a case for Slavic minorities in eastern Germany, but the German language in one form or another was spoken in the region making up modern Germany. So people from Prussia, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony, etc. had all spoken German prior to Bismark's unification of Germany.

German history goes back much further than that nor was it the first attempt at unification. The common German language developed over a very long period of time. I don't think we are saying incompatible things, rather I am trying to show how the process of making Germany occurred over a long period of time. It was not an immediate thing, nor a simple correction of borders. It is not a particularly good analogy for the Middle East, unless the intent is to produce a large amount of bloodshed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... cheSprachräume962_Box.jpg

Okay, I get what you're talking about. But even in the long ago when Germanic tribes had invaded Celtic lands, then later Roman territory, the German speakers had hardly practiced any sort of caste system. Rather, they freely intermarried with the Celts and Celto-Romans, who they added to their tribes. This mixed population saw themselves not as conquered Roman provincials, but as Franks, Bavarians, Alemanni, and other Germanic tribes. The same thing happened in the Middle Ages, when Germans had expanded into, and colonized, the lands to their immediate east, mixing freely with their new Slavic subjects. Again, you had a mixed population who saw themselves as Prussians, Silesians, Upper Saxons, etc. The Germans had certainly added new populations to their own gene pool, and it was hardly a case of Non-Germans having the German language forced on them by German overlords who otherwise remained unmixed.

That is a rather simplistic narrative. Germanisation has been the official policy of many governments. It has occurred both naturally and as a matter of policy, particularly among the Haspsburgs. The only part of your statement I would take specific issue with is the mention of a lack of caste system. The German people certainly intermarried but they still ruled and that has an impact on how languages develop. During the development of the HRE, the German language was favoured and, over time, became a method of slowing consolidating the identity. A very similar process occurred in both France and Britain.

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What I meant by "caste system" was the notion that the status of the ruling population and the conquered lower population remaining permanent. While the Germans were definitely represented the dominant linguistic and cultural group, they had no problem with Germanizing and absorbing the subjugated populations. The children and grandchildren of these mixed marriages saw themselves only as Germans. And it was hardly a case of this intermingling only occurring in the lower classes, as the German nobles and kings intermarried with their non-German counterparts even before the commoners did. It is absolutely true, though, that the Prussian government had in later times tried to enforce Germanization on their Polish subjects in West Prussia. In this case, though, these Poles largely had resisted acculturation, and became part of the renewed Polish state after WWI.

Agreed, thanks for the clarification.

^^^
Absolutely.