George Friedman
The murders of cartoonists who made fun of
Islam and of Jews shopping for their Sabbath meals by Islamists in Paris last
week have galvanized the world. A galvanized world is always dangerous.
Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and
emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am
tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to
dissect the event, place it in context and try to understand what has happened
and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for action can be made. Rage
has its place, but actions must be taken with discipline and thought.
I have found that in thinking about things geopolitically, I can
cool my own rage and find, if not meaning, at least explanation for events such
as these. As it happens, my new book will be published on Jan. 27. Titled Flashpoints:
The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it is about the unfolding failure of the
great European experiment, the European Union, and the resurgence of European nationalism. It
discusses the re-emerging borderlands and flashpoints of Europe and
raises the possibility that Europe's attempt to abolish conflict will fail. I
mention this book because one chapter is on the Mediterranean borderland and
the very old conflict between Islam and Christianity. Obviously this is a
matter I have given some thought to, and I will draw on Flashpoints to
begin making sense of the murderers and murdered, when I think of things in
this way.
Let me begin by quoting from that chapter:
We've spoken of borderlands, and how they are both linked and divided.
Here is a border sea, differing in many ways but sharing the basic
characteristic of the borderland. Proximity separates as much as it divides. It
facilitates trade, but also war. For Europe this is another frontier both
familiar and profoundly alien.
Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean — first in Iberia, the
second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and
elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the
Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the
Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the
Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa.
Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to
its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and
Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome
and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other.
Christians and Muslims have been bitter enemies, battling for control of
Iberia. Yet, lest we forget, they also have been allies: In the 16th century,
Ottoman Turkey and Venice allied to control the Mediterranean. No single phrase
can summarize the relationship between the two save perhaps this: It is rare
that two religions might be so obsessed with each other and at the same time so
ambivalent. This is an explosive mixture.
Migration, Multiculturalism
and Ghettoization
The current crisis has its origins in the collapse of European hegemony
over North Africa after World War II and the Europeans' need for cheap labor.
As a result of the way in which they ended their imperial relations, they were
bound to allow the migration of Muslims into Europe, and the permeable borders
of the European Union enabled them to settle where they chose. The Muslims, for
their part, did not come to join in a cultural transformation. They came for
work, and money, and for the simplest reasons. The Europeans' appetite for cheap labor and
the Muslims' appetite for work combined to generate a massive movement of
populations.
The matter was complicated by the fact that Europe was no longer simply
Christian. Christianity had lost its hegemonic control over European culture
over the previous centuries and had been joined, if not replaced, by a new
doctrine of secularism. Secularism drew a radical distinction between public
and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to
the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in
secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism
also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different
from others' beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is
impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between
private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex
contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed.
Europe solved the problem with the weakening of Christianity that made
the ancient battles between Christian factions meaningless. But they had
invited in people who not only did not share the core doctrines of secularism,
they rejected them. What Christianity had come to see as progress away from
sectarian conflict, Muslims (and some Christians) may see as simply decadence,
a weakening of faith and the loss of conviction.
There is here a question of what we mean when we speak of things like
Christianity, Islam and secularism. There are more than a billion Christians
and more than a billion Muslims and uncountable secularists who mix all things.
It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and
easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is
a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift
responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a
religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the
universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear
who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the
individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from
responsibility.
This is not necessarily wrong, but it creates a tremendous practical
problem. If no one but the gunmen and their immediate supporters are
responsible for the action, and all others who share their faith are guiltless,
you have made a defensible moral judgment. But as a practical matter, you have
paralyzed your ability to defend yourselves. It is impossible to defend against
random violence and impermissible to impose collective responsibility. As
Europe has been for so long, its moral complexity has posed for it a problem it
cannot easily solve. Not all Muslims — not even most Muslims — are responsible
for this. But all who committed these acts were Muslims claiming to speak for
Muslims. One might say this is a Muslim problem and then hold the Muslims
responsible for solving it. But what happens if they don't? And so the moral
debate spins endlessly.
This dilemma is compounded by Europe's hidden secret: The Europeans do
not see Muslims from North Africa or Turkey as Europeans, nor do they intend to
allow them to be Europeans. The European solution to their isolation is the concept of multiculturalism — on the
surface a most liberal notion, and in practice, a movement for both cultural
fragmentation and ghettoization. But behind this there is another problem, and
it is also geopolitical. I say in Flashpoints that:
Multiculturalism and the entire immigrant enterprise faced another
challenge. Europe was crowded. Unlike the United States, it didn't have the
room to incorporate millions of immigrants — certainly not on a permanent
basis. Even with population numbers slowly declining, the increase in
population, particularly in the more populous countries, was difficult to
manage. The doctrine of multiculturalism naturally encouraged a degree of
separatism. Culture implies a desire to live with your own people. Given the
economic status of immigrants the world over, the inevitable exclusion that is
perhaps unintentionally incorporated in multiculturalism and the desire of like
to live with like, the Muslims found themselves living in extraordinarily crowded
and squalid conditions. All around Paris there are high-rise apartment
buildings housing and separating Muslims from the French, who live elsewhere.
These killings have nothing to do with poverty, of course. Newly arrived
immigrants are always poor. That's why they immigrate. And until they learn the
language and customs of their new homes, they are always ghettoized and alien.
It is the next generation that flows into the dominant culture. But the dirty
secret of multiculturalism was that its consequence was to perpetuate Muslim
isolation. And it was not the intention of Muslims to become Europeans, even if
they could. They came to make money, not become French. The shallowness of the
European postwar values system thereby becomes the horror show that occurred in
Paris last week.
The Role of Ideology
But while the Europeans have particular issues with Islam, and have had
them for more than 1,000 years, there is a more generalizable problem.
Christianity has been sapped of its evangelical zeal and no longer uses the
sword to kill and convert its enemies. At least parts of Islam retain that
zeal. And saying that not all Muslims share this vision does not solve the
problem. Enough Muslims share that fervency to endanger the lives of those they
despise, and this tendency toward violence cannot be tolerated by either their
Western targets or by Muslims who refuse to subscribe to a jihadist ideology.
And there is no way to distinguish those who might kill from those who won't.
The Muslim community might be able to make this distinction, but a 25-year-old
European or American policeman cannot. And the Muslims either can't or won't
police themselves. Therefore, we are left in a state of war. French Prime
Minister Manuel Valls has called this a war on radical Islam. If only they wore
uniforms or bore distinctive birthmarks, then fighting only the radical
Islamists would not be a problem. But Valls' distinctions notwithstanding, the
world can either accept periodic attacks, or see the entire Muslim community as
a potential threat until proven otherwise. These are terrible choices, but
history is filled with them. Calling for a war on radical Islamists is like
calling for war on the followers of Jean-Paul Sartre. Exactly what do they look
like?
The European inability to come to terms with the reality it has created
for itself in this and other matters does not preclude the realization that
wars involving troops are occurring in many Muslim countries. The situation is
complex, and morality is merely another weapon for proving the other guilty and
oneself guiltless. The geopolitical dimensions of Islam's relationship with
Europe, or India, or Thailand, or the United States, do not yield to
moralizing.
Something must be done. I don't know what needs to be done, but I
suspect I know what is coming. First, if it is true that Islam is merely
responding to crimes against it, those crimes are not new and certainly didn't
originate in the creation of Israel, the invasion of Iraq or recent events. This
has been going on far longer than that. For instance, the Assassins were a
secret Islamic order to make war on individuals they saw as Muslim heretics.
There is nothing new in what is going on, and it will not end if peace comes to
Iraq, Muslims occupy Kashmir or Israel is destroyed. Nor is secularism about to
sweep the Islamic world. The Arab Spring was a Western fantasy that
the collapse of communism in 1989 was repeating itself in the Islamic world
with the same results. There are certainly Muslim liberals and secularists.
However, they do not control events — no single group does — and it is the
events, not the theory, that shape our lives.
Europe's sense of nation is rooted in shared history, language,
ethnicity and yes, in Christianity or its heir, secularism. Europe has no
concept of the nation except for these things, and Muslims share in none of
them. It is difficult to imagine another outcome save for another round of
ghettoization and deportation. This is repulsive to the European sensibility
now, but certainly not alien to European history. Unable to distinguish radical
Muslims from other Muslims, Europe will increasingly and unintentionally move
in this direction.
Paradoxically, this will be exactly what the radical Muslims want
because it will strengthen their position in the Islamic world in general, and
North Africa and Turkey in particular. But the alternative to not strengthening
the radical Islamists is living with the threat of death if they are offended.
And that is not going to be endured in Europe.
Perhaps a magic device will be found that will enable us to read the
minds of people to determine what their ideology actually is. But given the
offense many in the West have taken to governments reading emails, I doubt that they
would allow this, particularly a few months from now when the murders and
murderers are forgotten, and Europeans will convince themselves that the
security apparatus is simply trying to oppress everyone. And of course, never
minimize the oppressive potential of security forces.
The United States is different in this sense. It is an artificial
regime, not a natural one. It was invented by our founders on certain
principles and is open to anyone who embraces those principles. Europe's nationalism
is romantic, naturalistic. It depends on bonds that stretch back through time
and cannot be easily broken. But the idea of shared principles other than their
own is offensive to the religious everywhere, and at this moment in history,
this aversion is most commonly present among Muslims. This is a truth that must
be faced.
The Mediterranean borderland was a place of conflict well before
Christianity and Islam existed. It will remain a place of conflict even if both
lose their vigorous love of their own beliefs. It is an illusion
to believe that conflicts rooted in geography can be abolished. It is also a
mistake to be so philosophical as to disengage from the human fear of being
killed at your desk for your ideas. We are entering a place that has no
solutions. Such a place does have decisions, and all of the choices will be
bad. What has to be done will be done, and those who refused to make choices
will see themselves as more moral than those who did. There is a war, and like
all wars, this one is very different from the last in the way it is prosecuted.
But it is war nonetheless, and denying that is denying the obvious.
George Friedman, Stratfor, Jan. 13, 2015
Editor's Note: The
newest book by Stratfor chairman and founder George Friedman, Flashpoints:
The Emerging Crisis in Europe, will be released Jan. 27. It is now available for pre-order. "A War
Between Two Worlds is republished with permission of Stratfor."
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