William S. Smith has embraced the Samuel Huntington
“insight” regarding the behavior of societies around the globe in the post-Cold
War era. And that insight, according to Smith, is to the effect that the world
is arranging itself along ethnic, religious and civilizational lines. He says
so in the article he wrote under the title: “Ukraine and the Clash of
Civilizations,” published on May 12, 2020 in The National Interest.
But are Huntington or Smith correct? To be brutal
about it, this is as correct as the answer given by a teenager when he was
asked where does food come from? and he responded, it comes from the
supermarket. Well yes, food comes from the supermarket, but more fundamentally,
it comes from the farm. Likewise, there is a more fundamental reason why the
world seems to arrange itself along ethnic, religious and civilizational lines,
which is not always correct, and almost never the full story.
Take Turkey, for example. William Smith says that
based on Huntington's insight, “We should have been able to predict that Turkey
would gravitate into the Islamic world.” A moment later, he explained that, “As
Huntington wrote, 'In the post-Cold War world, he most important distinctions among
peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural'”.
That is at best only partially true, and a study of
Turkey's recent history shows why. It is that for economic reasons, Turkey's
preference was to join the European Union. This was the desire till some
Europeans made the Turks feel inferior, causing them to seek joining a group in
which they would feel equal to the other members or superior to them. To that
end, the Turks have been trying in vain to join the former “provinces” of the
Ottoman Empire, the one that was headed by none other than Turkey.
An even more poignant example is the story of Egypt
and Syria. In 1958, these two countries joined together in a confederation,
aiming to become powerful enough to stand up to the colonial powers that
continued to make them feel inferior. Three years later, and by popular demand,
Syria broke away from the alliance. It did not take long to figure out why.
Believe it or not, it was the location of an ancient statue.
In the same way that in America, a big fuss is made
nowadays about the Confederate flag and the statues of despised historical
figures, some Syrian politicians raised hell about the statue of Egypt's
ancient King Ramses the Second for, he was the one that conquered Syria and apparently
maltreated its people. What the Syrian politicians –– who were opposed to the
union –– did, was to make the Syrian people feel like the Egyptians were
treating them as second-class citizens rather than equal. And as long as the
tall statue of Ramses stood in the magnificent square near the Cairo train
terminal, it remained a reminder of Syrian inferiority, thus the need for the
Syrians to bolt out of the union.
And there is the story of Quebec, a French province of
Canada that does not like being called a province, and would rather break away
unless it is considered a French nation joined in a federation with an English
nation made of the other provinces. I was there during the debate that
culminated in a referendum about separation.
What happened was that the Quebec politicians had
asked that Quebec be considered a distinct society, and all hell broke loose in
English Canada. The problem was that something got lost in translation whereby
the word “distinct” came to mean “distinguished” to English Canadians. Amid the
crisis, I wrote to then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who had written to me
asking that I get involved in the debate. I explained the role that the
linguistic confusion was playing in the debate. When the explanation to the effect
that distinct and distinguish were different words––was circulated among the
debaters, the crisis was instantly defused.
The moral of this story is that the French wanted to
break away for no reason, except that they felt inferior in the union. When they
tried to rectify the situation, they made the English feel inferior, who almost
rioted. It was a perfect setup for the creation of a storm that should not have
been.
The conclusion we must draw from these stories and
others like them around the globe, is that societies will gladly join together
for economic and other reasons. The one thing that will pull them apart, is the
real or perceived inferior ranking to which a member will feel it was
relegated. And while this is true, the opposite feeling can also play a similar
role, but in reverse. Such was the case in the eyes of Boris Yeltsin who took
Russia out of the Soviet Union, thus dissolved the Soviet Empire because he
thought that Russia deserved better than being together with lesser partners.
As in Quebec, you have breakaway sentiments simmering
in places like the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain. That's how they were in
South Sudan and East Timor before these provinces broke away.
As can be seen by the fact that civil war broke out in
these places immediately after the separation, it cannot be said that ethnic,
religious or civilizational considerations were the sole motivations behind the
breakups.