In recognition of the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a number of articles have begun appearing, mostly lambasting the agreement. As you presumably are aware the Sykes-Picot agreement was an Anglo-French pact on the political organization of the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Basically, England and France divvied up the Middle East into spheres of influence for themselves, tossing a few sops to other European countries. The agreement was arrived at without the consent or even the participation of the people whose lives would be affected by it.
In his post at RealClearWorld Robert Zaretsky in essence complains that the boundaries drawn by Sykes-Picot are just lines on a map:
The appalling churn of events in the Middle East has blasted to smithereens not just untold human lives, but also stories we had long told ourselves about the region. Chief among these fictions is the desirability — which we so often confuse with inevitability — of the nation-state. In other words, a political construct endowed with a recognized state, institutions, and borders. Like a desert mirage, Middle Eastern nation-states have been evaporating before our eyes, leaving us to confront a bloody and battered reality.
while Michael Collins Dunn, writing at Middle East Institute, tries to clear up some misconceptions about the pact, namely that it was never actually implemented as written:
Look at the map above. Does it look like today’s Middle East? In addition to the British and French (pink and blue) zones, Zones A and B are areas of their influence. France controls Mosul, Kirkuk, and northern Iraq. Britain gets the rest of Iraq, plus southern Palestine, while northern Palestine and Jerusalem are internationalized. Russia controls Constantinople and the Straits, and Armenia. Italy gets its own pound of flesh. But that is not the postwar map of the Middle East.
The reason is simple: “Sykes-Picot” has become a convenient shorthand for “the entire postwar settlement of the Ottoman territories,” not the original agreement.
I would argue that national boundaries are a lot more than lines on a page. Within them are rights, responsibility, and order. Outside them are only chaos and darkness. For the last seventy years we have increasingly obscured that reality with transnational organizations, largely based on the illusions of the Europeans. Much of the mayhem of the last several decades is a direct consequence of a failure to realize that.
Within them are rights, responsibility, and order. Outside them are only chaos and darkness.
I was wondering if you were going to comment on Kerry’s speech.
I sure wish George W Bush hadn’t signed on to that agreement……..
As a defender of Sykes-Picot, one point often overlooked is that it was an Anglo-French-Russian agreement, though somewhat awkwardly in that the British and French made the agreement in response to Russian demands for control of Constantinople and the straits after their mutual efforts failed to encourage the Ottomans to stay neutral in the Great War.
Since the Russians had made a claim that, as the war progressed, they might very well be in a position to exact, the British and French began discussions on how to manage the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which is presumably what Russia’s planned seizure of Constantinople would mean. Go look at the map in the second link, and look at the yellow territory, that is Russia’s claims.
The twist of history is that Russia fell apart, and became incapable of defending its own land, let alone seize the straits, and the Soviets disclosed the secret agreement to propagandize the capitalist powers and encourage extension of the revolution. The narrative the Soviets told stuck, and embraced by ISIS, who doesn’t seem to even know that it is essentially trying to recreate the Sykes-Picot Agreement. (Again look at the map, the “A” is an independent Arab state under French influence that pretty much covers the area ISIS contests)
Dunn reserves his complaint against the Europeans on two points “a) not asking the locals what they wanted and b) in the British case, promising the Promised Land to themselves, Jews, and Arabs at the same time.”
The first is not true according material he links to approvingly. Local leaders were interviewed, plebicides held, though some of the plebicies were information-gathering, others were manipulated by the Europeans to push a consensus. They Sykes-Picot map was modified in response Arab political organizations call for two Arab states, Syria based in Damascus, and Iraq based in Baghdad. One certainly can argue that British and French interests played too large a factor in the division, but generally these interests were not entirely self-serving, they would be responsible for securing the security of the newly formed states and wanted them to be stable and economically viable, and were suspicious of each other.
As to British promises, the British commitment to helping the Hashemites gain an Arab State only included Ottoman territory that was “purely Arab,” which was vaguely described as west of Damascus. The Arabs would later argue that this only meant the Lebanon, but in the context of what Dunn correctly understands as a vague, and ever-changing plan for the event of the Ottoman breakup, its peculiar to identify this one disputed understanding as carved in stone, where all other understandings were written in sand.
Meanwhile the Hashemites were negotiating with the Ottomons behind British backs to switch sides, but even in light of Sykes-Picot (which they knew before it was released by the Soviets), they knew they were getting a better deal to stand against the Ottomans. And if they had actually mustered an Arab army capable of independently seizing territory, they would have created facts on the ground that would have met their imperial ambitions, not merely for an Arab state, but an Islamic empire that extended well into modern day Turkey.
Kerry is a boob. He has the mental defect of all optimistic idealist internationalists. He imagines the world is different than it actually is.
I guess it’s easy to Monday-morning QB 100 years later, but I think the reality is that the post-WWI ME order is finished. It would be nice if we could cordon off the region and let the locals figure it out (one way or another), but that obviously won’t happen, especially with an American foreign policy establishment which believes in the centrality of American “leadership” in the affairs of other “nations.”
“I would argue that national boundaries are a lot more than lines on a page. Within them are rights, responsibility, and order.”
Except you need a system of collective governance able to practice, enforce and maintain those rights, responsibilities and bring order. That doesn’t exist in Iraq, Syria, Libya Afghanistan and it’s not likely to exist anytime soon. Borders often change during and after conflicts and I think the ME will not be an exception.
That’s because most of those are neither countries nor nations and by all indications their people don’t want them to be. They shouldn’t be accorded the rights of nations.
However, we are and we should bloody well start acting like it.
Brings into question the assumption WWI ended rather than continuing to be fought in different forms for a hundred years.
Isn’t the central question really this: What should be done with territories that lack the institutions, civil structures, and traditions of nation-states when an empire or dictatorship that has been controlling those territories dissolves?
To say that the borders were drawn incorrectly implies that some other borders would have worked.
I’ve posted on this subject before. The way I’ve usually characterized the situation is how are ungoverned territories to be handled?
The issue isn’t limited to areas that were once governed but now aren’t. Many of the areas have never really been governed. For example, there’s a vast swathe of territory running from the Bosphorus to the Hindu Kush, dotted with city-states, where the influence of the notional central governments has never extended far beyond the immediate environs of those city-states.
There are substantial forces including religion, tradition, and tribalism which push against any attempt at consolidation.