Arab/General Nationalism

[Devari]

Moving to here, since it probably would do better with its own topic.

Nationalism is rather silly in some places though... its understandable in Europe and the Americas... we're all obviously different from one another. But those middle eastern "nationalists" trip me out. They all have the same traits, and look alike. What in the hell is their nationalism based on?

How are we all obviously different from one another? To, say, an Arab, Canada and the US may seem to be the exact same thing. And, yet, both countries have very different cultures - and, in Canada, we pride ourselves on being different from the US. Sure, our random Arab friend might think US=enemy and Canada=neutral or something similar, but the culture would seem exactly the same to them. Heck, one can go deeper even. To an outsider, Canada might seem like one cultural mass. But, if you live in Canada, you know that that is simply untrue. Quebec, especially, has a very different culture from the rest of Canada. Politically, Quebec tends to be quite left-wing, whereas Alberta is, compared to the rest of Canada, ultra-right wing. The point I'm making is, without an actual understanding of the other culture, one can't really judge on the similarity of them.

However, that isn't all that relevant to Arab Nationalism. Arab Nationalism is, in fact, mostly focused around the "greater good" of the Arabs as a people. Arab nations actually tend to have a liking for a union - it was tried once before, but it failed for a number of reasons. Look up the United Arab Republic - that, in fact, did not fail for any particular nationalist reasons, but for political/power reasons. When Arabs fight Arabs, it tends to not be for nationalist reasons, but as a power game. The Iran-Iraq war was a powergrab by Saddam, not fought for any nationalist reasons like the historical conflicts between France and Germany.

If Arabs all look alike, Europeans/North Americans certainly do then!

So... Did I miss something?

[The Beatles]

Not really... you missed the obvious explanation though. Divide-and-conquer by the British.

T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, proposed a more reasonable division of the Arab nations based on his knowledge of local populations, although it was never implemented. In general, political boundaries rarely, if ever, correspond to ethnic boundaries, or boundaries that would be chosen if people could self-govern. I should know, 2/3 of Hungary's landmass was taken away after the First World War (Versailles), and there is a Hungarian ethnic minority in huge chunks of regions surrounding Hungary, and a significant minority in many others.

In general, the entire nation system is designed to alienate, although it too has its advantages (variety of legal systems). It is difficult to see how any other system could have evolved, however. A more reasonable solution would be city-states in coalitions of standards (such as the EU but more fine-grained); but perhaps that would never work either. In all likelihood the problem will be solved if/when humanity ever colonizes other planets, as that would lead to less of an ad-hoc mess.

[Devari]

True. A lot of the modern-day divisions are because of the British/European colonial system. Very good explanation.

[The Beatles]

Not necessarily "because" but "patterned upon". It's not like the Indians were one big happy state, were they? No, they used to scalp each other quite happily. The colonists just set up arbitrary boundaries that are more or less still with us today. In doing so, they may have actually been doing more good than harm, as civil wars pale in number compared to normal wars. Which is one argument in favor of globalization.

[Gen. Volkov]

Well the large chunks taken out of Hungary were more large chunks taken out of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and most of the land mass split off to form Austria and Hungary as two separate entities. As well as a few chunks for Yugoslavia, Chechslovakia, and a little bit for Poland. To be fair though, Germany, Russia, and the Turkish/Ottoman empire got carved up too.

Wasn't like the Hungarians had much say in the ruling of "their" country at that time anyway, most decisions were made by the Austrian elite.

As to the Middle East, as Beatles said, the majority of the problem there is the random lines the British drew. Take Iraq, it's more like three separate countries smushed together into one, the only that kept it "stable" for this long was very strong leaders, like Saddam. Lawrence's ideas would have alleviated these problems I'm sure, but created whole new ones when the new nation's of homogenous ethnicity got all nationalistic as that idea spread from Europe.

Oh and I'm fairly certain Canada is not viewed as "neutral". If you look at the track record, Canada is only slightly less supportive of our actions than Britain. And alot of American built installations are in Canada, in addition to several joint Canadian-American ventures and bases all over the continent. Such as NORAD under Cheyenne mountain in Colorado. Or the fact that the Canadian military uses primarily American equipment. Though sometimes I do wish you guys had built the Avro Arrow. But your PM was right to shut that down, as the Soviets had their paws all over it, and it was the reason they could build their MiG-25. I have discovered that the Soviets did not build a single orginal plane of their own in the entire course of the Cold War.

[Devari]

Yeah, I know Canada isn't neutral. I'm just putting that out as an oversimplified example.

[Gen. Volkov]

*laughs*. Ok. I can't really think of anyone who's culture is similar enough to ours that doesn't consider us a close ally anyway.

[The Beatles]

Well, at least Canada isn't known as "America's European missile silo" as the UK is...

But Volkov, when you evaluate Hungarian history you are utterly wrong. True, there was an Austro-Hungarian empire, BUT it could very clearly be divided into an Austrian section and a Hungarian section. High-level matters were co-ordinated more by the Austrians (despite the fact that we whipped 'em many-many times in our history, as they us) but basically they were NOT one country, but two.

This map sums the situation up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:%C3%96sterreich-Ungarns_Ende.png

It shows it quite clearly -- two countries, Austria and Hungary (Red and Beige). Two-thirds of Hungary's landmass was taken away. In contrast, here is an ethnic map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Austria_hungary_1911.jpg

Thank you, as a Hungarian at least I know my own history.

[The Beatles]

Sorry, the 2/3s seems to be a population estimate. By geographical area, Hungary lost 72% of its land area. I recommend you this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon

Here's a short quote:

Economically, 61.4% of the arable land, 88% of the timber, 62.2% of the railroads, 64.5% of the hard surface roads, 83.1% of the pig iron output, 55.7% of the industrial plants and 67% of the credit and banking institutions of the former Kingdom of Hungary became part of other countries.

[Gen. Volkov]

I bow to your superior knowledge on this one Beatles, cause you do, you know, live there. *laughs*.

And most people in America think of Canada as America-North. *laughs*. So they are actually worse off in that respect than the UK.