At Gulf News Francis Matthew argues against a modern Peace of Westphalia for the Middle East:
There is an assumption that the similarity between the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and the current chaos in the Middle East requires the Arab world to find something like the 1648 Peace of Westphalia for itself. The idea is that the rambling chaos of the Protestant and Catholic fighting in the German states mirrors the multiplicity of wars in the Arab world with their increasingly sectarian divisions.
The danger with this parallel is that any comparison across almost 400 years and different continents is bound to be a bit stretched. But it also misses the point that the treaties of Westphalia were largely about how independent states behaved with each other, while the issue in many Arab countries today is how a varied population can find an inclusive relationship with a central national government.
What “central national government” is that? In many of the countries of the Middle East there are no central national governments to speak of and some that were have collapsed and show signs of splintering farther.
I think that he misses the point completely. What we’re seeing in the Middle East is people squabbling over the ruins of a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional empire. There are no traditions of the preservation of minority rights other than those secured by a now-nonexistent imperial sovereign.
I don’t dare to prescribe how the peoples and countries of the Middle East should order their affairs. I only know that for us to order our affairs with them their countries need to have responsible authorities. Absent that our only recourse will be to defend ourselves against the ongoing chaos.
