June 26, 2014
Eurasia's Ongoing Crackup
Eurasia -- from Iberia to the Korean Peninsula -- faces the prospect of epochal change. These disruptions are not always in the headlines, and they obscure vast areas of stability where change is gradual rather than sudden. But at a time of rapid shifts in technology and urban demography, it is to be expected that political identities of the kind that lead to territorial adjustments will undergo transformation. And while in some cases a yearning for liberal democracy will be a driving force of upheaval, in too many cases the driving force will be exclusivist ethnic and sectarian passions anchored in specific geographies. The world's leading opinion pages are consumed by the battle of ideas, but in the early 21st century blood and territory could be more accurate indicators of postmodern geopolitics.
The combination of a transnational European Union and that union's economic decline has helped further ignite calls for Catalan and Scottish separatism from within Spain and the United Kingdom, respectively. Merely the upsurge in talk of such self-determination is serving to enfeeble the reputations of Spain and Great Britain on the world stage. While these divorces -- if they ever occur -- will likely be velvet ones, not so the territorial rearrangements taking place in the Middle East.
Whatever current maps may suggest, Libya no longer exists as a state, and neither do Syria and Iraq. Yemen is barely a state at all, and Kurdistan is long into the process of becoming one. Such dramatic cartographic changes that -- barring a world war -- usually play out over decades and centuries have occurred within the space of just a few years. Though American-led military interventions provided the catalyst for state failures in Libya and Iraq, something more essential was the cause of this epic disruption. That something was suffocating absolutisms, at once fiercely modernizing and fiercely secular, in both Syria and Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Libya. Beneath the carapaces of such centralizing tyrannies lay an utter void of civil society. Thus, as soon as these tyrannies began to buckle the most atavistic ethnic, sectarian and tribal energies came to the fore.
More from CNAS
-
The Pentagon’s AUKUS Review is an Opportunity — If Done Right
The reality is that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan has starkly highlighted for policymakers the real limits of the U.S. industrial base to meet demand across a...
By Jennifer Hendrixson White
-
Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast [Jun 26, 25] Season 3 E25: Focus Forward
Just when people were saying the future of air power was small, distributed systems like UAVs, the US struck Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure with an old-fashioned manned...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Indo-Pacific Security / Energy, Economics & Security
75 Years Post-Korean War: Can Trust Be Rebuilt Under the New Administration?As President Lee Jae Myung begins his term, he's taking visible steps to reset the tone with North Korea: halting propaganda broadcasts and reemphasizing past military agreeme...
By Dr. Go Myong-Hyun
-
Indo-Pacific Security / Technology & National Security
Cyber Crossroads in the Indo-PacificThe Indo-Pacific faces a cyber crossroads. Down one path lies deeper military, intelligence, and economic ties between Washington and its key allies and partners in this strat...
By Vivek Chilukuri, Lisa Curtis, Janet Egan, Morgan Peirce, Elizabeth Whatcott & Nathaniel Schochet