A Peace to End All Peace

David Fromkin's 1989 book, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, is the latest of several studies of the struggles in the Middle East during and after World War I that I've read recently. Like many in my generation, my fascination with this subject began when I was a teenager and watched David Lean's epic film "Lawrence of Arabia." When I discovered that it was at least partly based on T.E. Lawrence's own controversial book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, I read that, and more recently returned to it last year when our book club read Georgina Howell's biography Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations. A few years before that I had read James Barr's Setting the Desert on Fire: T.E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918 (2008). Each book takes a different view of some of the same events and characters, none of whom looms larger than T.E. Lawrence, one of the most conflicted individuals I've ever encountered. He also figures as a friend of Robert Graves in Graves' memoir, Good-Bye to All That (1929), which I read a few years back during my British authors between the wars phase.

The more I've read about Lawrence himself, the less I feel I know about him. Fromkin points out that Lawrence was prone to prevaricate and embellish the truth, generally to his own advantage. But I've found that Lawrence's insights regarding both the Arabs and the British policies are often cited even by those who feel he is unreliable. He clearly had a tremendous influence, even on Gertrude Bell, who sometimes seemed to share Lawrence's agenda, and sometimes seemed to have her own. Both Bell and Lawrence tended to romanticize the Arabs, but both also had a much more informed and nuanced view of their culture than any of the British officials who were responsible for policy in that part of the world.

And that's where Fromkin's book excels. He explains in great detail the various competing points of view among British, French, Russian, Turk, and Zionist officials, as well as various representatives of Arab tribes and religious factions. He is convincing on the subject of the significance of the Ottoman Empire and the lingering effects of its dissolution after World War I. There were times when I was frustrated by the details in his seemingly endless explanations of the various positions, secret agreements, treaties, and negotiations. He seemed to go over the same issues from the perspectives of all the different players, often repeating some of the details more than once. Of course, I realize that the story he's telling is a very complicated one, involving local politics in each of the interested nations, fundamental religious rivalries among the Arabs, Turks, Jews, and Persians, and competing personal and political agendas among all of those playing a role in the discussions of policy for the region. Just the complications involving Palestine would make a significant topic for a separate book, but Fromkin manages to fold those issues into the larger questions regarding the future of the Middle East.

There is a great deal to learn from this book. Unfortunately, it seems all too apparent that none of those who are currently concerned with the mess in the Middle East have taken the time to study it. And it's not really surprising. The sorts of personalities Fromkin describes in the book are not the sorts of people one would expect to take the time to study and learn. They are doers, not thinkers. They already know all they need to know, at least from their own point of view. That is how they managed to go about creating the mess they made of that part of the world, not realizing, for example, that Arabs and other Muslims would never accept rule by European Christians, no matter how long they negotiated. And what little hope there may have been for creating a homeland for Jews in Palestine was squandered almost immediately by failing to appreciate the potential for Arab resistance and resentment toward both the British and the French, who in any case were more interested in using the Zionists to achieve their own political ends. The same misguided notions about the Turks led to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, which left a power vacuum that Fromkin compares to the fall of Rome.

I thought the best part of the book was Fromkin's 2009 Afterword, in which he catches up on events that have transpired since the book's publication in 1989, just prior to what we now refer to as our first Gulf War. He observes that the current chaos in the Middle East is really not so remarkable, given the political situation, and the fact that the cultures in that part of the world have never had any working concepts of nations or national governments. And he goes on to point out that it took Europe just about 1500 years to settle down into its current configuration after the fall of the Roman Empire. It's been a little less than 100 years since the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, and while some of our more artificial boundaries, such as Iraq and Israel/Palestine, are naturally being contested, some of the other parts of the region have formed into something resembling our own conceptions of nation states, although most of them are closer to theocracies than to democracies.

Finally, what I found most discouraging was the role played by America. More and more, recently, I've come to realize that our form of government is seriously flawed. The way we have conceptualized our separation of powers tends to make us very unreliable partners on the world stage. Woodrow Wilson, for example, although perhaps unintentionally, played the part of spoiler in the negotiations following the end of World War I. That was partly owing to his own physical collapse, but also to resistance in Congress, which had changed parties after mid-term elections. We have recently seen what happens when the President and Congress have different views on policies, whether domestic or foreign. But anyone who takes the time to study American history must come to see that this is not only nothing new, it is in fact, the way our system is designed to work. Wilson had some interesting views on international affairs, but while he may have won some converts abroad, he was undermined by his political opponents in Congress. His League of Nations, which he hoped would be a way to prevent international conflict, was rejected at home even before it failed abroad.

And I would not be surprised to see the same thing happen again soon with regard to the United Nations. While we imagine ourselves a force for peace in the world, America is much more prone to be a cause for conflict. For some that is probably a choice, for others is it more likely to be through a failure of knowledge and intellect. We have all the case studies we should need, but we never study those cases. Instead, we generally stumble ahead believing we know what is best, as we did recently in Iraq, repeating and reproducing all of the same kinds of policy blunders that were made previously by the British and the French. Our system is designed to work that way. We have an uninformed electorate and an often cynical or foolish (or both) political class that promises solutions that make little sense and offer few rewards beyond success in the next election cycle. But there is reason for hope when we realized that it really has always been this way. This is the how the American system of checks and balances and divided government works. We blunder from crisis to crisis and sometimes we are fortunate and sometimes we are not. Change comes only with great difficulty, but eventually it comes, sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but it does come. We should be content with that, since it's doubtful we're going to see anything different, and also doubtful we'll find anything better.