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
-
Countering the Swarm
Reports
After decades of air dominance and a near monopoly on precision strike, the United States now faces a dramatically different, more hostile world as the proliferation of cheap ...
By Stacie Pettyjohn & Molly Campbell
-
Commentary
Defense / Transatlantic Security
Europe’s Delusions Over What It Means to Deter RussiaToday’s European leaders are in a Singapore trap, crafting a training mission designed to signal resolve rather than achieve an actual military objective....
By Franz-Stefan Gady
-
Video
Indo-Pacific Security / Energy, Economics & Security
Trump Unfriends Modi's India: Trump Frothing, India CalmFrom tariffs to tantrums-Trump's latest anti-India tirade stirs global concern. As Washington watches in disbelief, Shiv Aroor discusses what this "break-up" means for India-U...
By Daniel Silverberg
-
Commentary
Indo-Pacific Security / Transatlantic Security / Middle East Security
A Project for a New World OrderIndeed, the gathering in Beijing suggests that the axis, rather than withering following the war in Iran in June, has momentum....
By Richard Fontaine & Andrea Kendall-Taylor
