Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
banon, Syria, and Iraq were but geographical expressions. Jordan wasn't thought of. When
we remove the official lines on the map, we find a crude finger painting of Sunni and Shiite
population clusters that contradict national borders. Inside these borders, the central gov-
erning authorities of Lebanon and Iraq barely operate. The one in Syria is tyrannical but
under intense siege from its own masses (and may not last to the time this topic is pub-
lished); the one in Jordan is an absolute monarchy but probably only has a future as a con-
stitutional one. (Jordan's main reason for existing always goes unstated: it acts as a buffer
state for other Arab regimes who fear having a land border with Israel.) When U.S. presid-
ent George W. Bush toppled the Iraqi dictatorship, it was thought at the time that he had set
history in motion in the Arab world, roiling it to a greater degree than any Western figure
since Napoleon. But then came the democratic rebellions of the Arab Spring, which had
their own internal causes unrelated to what Bush had done. In any case, the post-Ottoman
state system that came about in the aftermath of World War I is under greater stress than
ever before. Western-style democracy may not exactly follow, but some form of liberaliz-
ation eventually must, helped by the revolution in Egypt, and by the transition away from
Cold War-era Arab police states, which will make the transition in Central Europe and the
Balkans away from communism seem effortless by comparison. Indeed, the Levant is cur-
rently characterized by collapsing authoritarian regimes and democracies here and there
that are unable to get anything done. The aggressive energy that characterizes the leader-
ships of Turkey and Iran, partly a product of their geographies, has for decades been almost
nowhere apparent in the Arab world—another reason why the Arab world has now entered
a period of epochal political transition.
Truly, the 2011 Arab uprisings that swept away several regimes were about the power
of communications technology and the defeat of geography. But as time passes, the geo-
graphies of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and other countries will reassert them-
selves. Tunisia and Egypt are age-old clusters of civilizations, whose statehoods originate
in antiquity, whereas Libya and Yemen, for example, are but vague geographies, whose
statehoods were not established until the twentieth century. Western Libya around Tripoli
(Tripolitania) was always oriented toward the rich and urbane civilizations of Carthage in
Tunisia, whereas eastern Libya around Benghazi (Cyrenaica) was always oriented toward
those of Alexandria in Egypt. Yemen was rich and populous from antiquity forward, but
its many mountain kingdoms were always separate from one another. It is therefore no sur-
prise that building modern, nontyrannical states in Libya and Yemen is proving more diffi-
cult than in Tunisia and Egypt.
But it is in the Levant and Fertile Crescent where the next phase of conflict may unfold.
