The United States has no strategic interest in the fact that there’s one Iraq, or three Iraqs.
— John Bolton
Quoted in the Associated Press, “French report: Former U.N. envoy Bolton says U.S. has ‘no strategic interest’ in united Iraq,” International Herald Tribune, 29 January 2007.
To keep them all at each other’s throats is American policy.
— John Pilger
Assume some Arab, European, or Russian official papers or thinkers would propose to redraw the map of Turtle Island or partition the United States because of the danger it represents to the rest of the world. Likeliest, such groups would be scorned as interfering outsiders and told to tend to boundaries in their “own” backyard.
It is axiomatic that the borders of Turtle Island are “artificial,” and their functionality depends on who is doing the appraising. The question is: do the borders need to be redrawn? Also, while anyone has the right to pontificate on whatever topics swirl around in his mind, what kind of reaction would an outsider expect for fiddling with “artificial” lines outside his home region?
Ralph Peters is an ex-intelligence officer of the US military who apparently possesses the ego to front for such a project. He has put his name to a scheme for redrawing of the borders of the Middle East and farther afield.
As an agent of militarist imperialism, Peters is a pro-war agitator who openly espouses his prejudices.
The June 2006 AFJ article by Peters provides insight into the evolving military doctrine of US imperialism.
While Peters asserts, “The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East,” he concedes that these borders were drawn by “self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers).” Peters omits his own backyard: Turtle Island. Even the invaders’ designation applied to the continent — North America — smacks of a similar gross injustice than undergirds Peters’ thought: that newcomers might ignore the Original Peoples and name the continent after a migrating kinsman.
This is intentional because Peters has a very precise agenda and that is the conquest of the Middle East through cumulative partitions and drawings of maps.
It is diversionary to criticize the conditions elsewhere. On Africa’s borders, Peters states: “they continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants.” Borders cannot be tried in a court of law. Therefore, those who drew up or enforce such borders bear responsibility for those millions of deaths? Who are the people who drew up the borders and who are the powers they represent?
Peters claims that the “unjust borders in the Middle East … generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.” This is a strange and nebulous language. Locally? Is he writing as a Westerner concerned about problems caused domestically by overseas borders, or is he stating that borders drawn by western imperialists are harming Middle Easterners? If the latter, then that would seem a matter for Middle Easterners to decide for themselves unless they ask for outside assistance.
Peters opines that the Middle East’s “comprehensive failure” includes “cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism.” Peters makes disparaging statements about the region without offering insight as to why such a failure came about and what keeps it in place. Historically, the decline of the region is linked with the beginning of western imperialist and Zionist infiltration. Being on the losing end of conquest is not conducive to success, cultural expansion, and moderation.
Peters’ arrogant solution is to redraw the map to “redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant ‘cheated’ population groups.” How does he identify the “most significant ‘cheated’ population groups”? By what authority does Peters decide on redressing wrongs? Peters’ entitlement to redress “wrongs” and draw up his new maps derives illegitimately from his connection to US imperialism. Would anyone in the Middle East suggest that someone from among the people who committed the initial “wrongs” in drawing up the “awful” and “dysfunctional borders” be self-appointed to redraw them? Would Americans accept self-appointed outsiders redrawing the borders of the United States? Self-interested outsiders do not have a legitimate right to finagle the borders of other countries. Legal convention holds that this must be determined by the peoples of the region, in accordance with the United Nations Charter-recognized right of self-determination.
A Hyperimperialist Rendering of a Further Divided Middle East and Beyond
Peters identifies many “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia and many other numerically lesser minorities but he failed to mention the “cheated” majority. While living in the Middle East, the present writer became distinctly aware of a feeling expressed among many Arabs that they are one people.
Peters finds that one “haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.” Armenia has its own state. More important is the ongoing genocide that Peters omitted: that being perpetrated against the stateless Palestinians. The return of their territory would go part way to redressing the “haunting wrong[s]” (in addition to dispossession, murder, impoverishment, and humiliation) that Zionists and their international (active or through silent complicity) accomplices have committed against the Palestinians.
Peters proclaims the only way to a “more peaceful Middle East” is through changing the geographical makeup of the area; the area stretches beyond the Middle East to Pakistan. It is, in fact, a redrawing of much of the Muslim World — the world between Christian Europe and Hindu India. As a purely intellectual exercise this may be fine, but this is more than mental gymnastics for Peters. It is a blueprint of the hyper-imperialist plan for the Muslim World.
Peters asks readers to accept that “international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders.” This assertion is deceptive. There are dispute resolution institutions that have been “effective” in mediating border disputes: among them third-party diplomacy, the Law of the Sea Convention, and the International Court. While “effective” is a subjective adjective, one example is the 1992 settlement of the maritime boundary dispute between Canada and France around the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the International Court of Arbitration. Peters points to the “mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s ‘organic’ frontiers” as revealing the enormity of the task “we face and will continue to face.” [italics added] Who is this “we” that Peters is referring to? Why should anyone be concerned about difficulties that outsiders face in their mission to tamper with the borders of overseas states?
Peters decides to let readers in on a “dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.” That it works is largely irrelevant. It is a rather pathetic “secret,” but perhaps it is better to call “ethnic cleansing” what it is: genocide.
Peters steers toward “the border issue most sensitive to American readers.” According to Peters, this is the borders of Israel. Why is the Israeli border “most sensitive” to American readers? Are non-readers — i.e., non-military — to be distinguished from AFJ readers — i.e., military? What about the US’ own borders? If Americans are not sensitive to the US border, then why is the US building a Wall along its Mexican flank (that will obstruct access to territory that Mexico — also a creation of European colonialists — was violently forced to cede: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming)? Also, why do border disputes exist with its friendly white neighbor to the North; e.g., Seegaay (Dixon Entrance) and the Northwest Passage?
Peters asserts that if Israel desires “reasonable peace with its neighbors,” it will have to settle for its pre-1967 borders but “with essential local adjustments for legitimate security concerns.” Why does Peters choose pre-1967? Why not choose pre-1948 or even much before that? Why should European Zionists have any “reasonable” claim to any land in historic Palestine? Peters does not discuss the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. Yes, he has acknowledged that ethnic cleansing works. Unquestionably, the seizure of another people’s homeland can be achieved and enforced for a period of time. Does that make such seizure legitimate? Does international recognition of a fact-on-the-ground then make it legitimate? If an entity is illegitimate, can it then have legitimate security concerns? All the states in the neighborhood of Israel know their only legitimate neighbor is historical Palestine.
What about the border-defined legitimacy of Palestine’s neighbors. Since the Middle East carve up was a colonialist enterprise based on deceit, it stands to reason that such lines drawn by outsiders deserve and receive little respect from the local inhabitants.
Peters writes the “most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state.” Either Peters is using strange artistic license for an otherwise serious topic or … just what is not clear. Land is neither “just” or “unjust.” The Kurds do not have their own internationally recognized geopolitical state, but they do have a homeland. The Kurds are not a homogeneous people, although they share many traits. In the entire history of the Middle East (except when Stalin carved the Kurdish state of Mahabad out of Iran, which lasted about eight months) Kurds never formed any political state in their existence. Then, if the Kurds never formed a state, how could it be possible to form a state taken out of many other states without war? Since the Kurds alone could not defeat the armies of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, then foreign powers would be needed to do this. But why would any power aid the Kurds without a quid pro quo? In addition, most of the Kurds in those countries are integral parts of their respective societies, including the state most repressive of Kurdish rights: Turkey. How then would one define the boundaries of scattered communities?
How to rectify this “glaring injustice”? Peters calls for the partitioning of Iraq, which Peters describes as a “Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts.” Writing colleague B.J. Sabri utterly and compellingly refuted this ahistoric nonsense of Peters that serves as a pretext for the US impose a division on Iraq.
Presumably, that is why the case of the stateless Palestinians is not the “most glaring injustice” for Peters. If a state and its borders can be imposed through violent force on a region, then it is a “just land”? If so, this appears to be a sure-fire recipe for a never-ending cycle of realizing states and demarcating their borders through violence.
Of course, to the extent that self-determination is a legitimate and just right, then the Kurds should have this right as other peoples do.
Peters does not stop with a Free Kurdistan (in what way does he mean “free”; does he also mean free from American and Zionist tampering?). He envisions a “just alignment” where three Sunni-majority provinces in Iraq form a truncated state. Simply writing “just” does not make it so.
Peters’ notion of a “just alignment” includes a landlocked Syria. What is “just” about that? Lebanon would expand northward and Jordan would expand southward into Saudi Arabia, which Peters calls an “unnatural state.” Peters calls for Saudi Arabia to “suffer” dismantling.
Lebanon is a geographic entity that France, sympathetic to entreaties from the Maronite community of the Ottoman sanjak of Mount Lebanon, carved from Greater Syria. Mount Lebanon was a predominantly Christian enclave with a substantial Druze component. The Maronites, however, pressed for a Greater Lebanon, even though they would no longer be a majority. The French appeased the Maronites’ demands in 1920. This is why Syria has never acknowledged or exchanged ambassadors with Lebanon. Today, Lebanon is predominantly Muslim and Maronites are scrapping for waning power. Peters’ mind-boggling solution to this is to completely deprive Syria of its coastline and expand Lebanon farther north! The Maronite minority would be even further diluted. This would appear to serve no one’s interest in the region. So who does it serve then? It serves western imperialist interests (and to a lesser extent the interests of Sunni rulers). It is part of the grand scheme risibly referred to as the War on Terrorism. A war cannot be fought against an abstraction, but Peters’ redrawing of borders is a more honest representation of what the War on Terrorism is really about: divide et impera (divide-and-conquer).
Lebanon is not an easy target, though. Hizbollah has turned back Zionist-imperialist aggressions on Lebanese soil. Imperialists, however, seek to garner political influence with corrupt Lebanese officials and isolate Hizbollah. Hence, the current Israeli and western support for the weeping prime minister Fouad Siniora and machinations to secure a military airbase in northern Lebanon
Like Lebanon, Jordan is a colonialist creation. The Hashemites of Jordan, especially under the dictatorship of King Abdullah, are downright neighborly with Zionists and firmly obedient to western imperialists.
The Sauds pose a greater challenge to hyper-imperialists. Sitting on top of so much oil, the Sauds have the wealth to hinder western imperialistic ambitions. Consequently, hyper-imperialists coincide with Zionist interests that the wealth will have to be divvied up into smaller allotments.
Why should Saudi Arabia “suffer”? According to Peters: “A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world is the Saudi royal’s [sic] treatment of Mecca and Medina as their fiefdom.” Saudi Arabia is a “police-state” controlled by “one of the world’s most bigoted and oppressive regimes” that exports its “disciplinarian, intolerant faith” of Wahhabism far away. Might this, perhaps, be remedied by exporting non-disciplinarian and tolerant US Christian fundamentalism to the region? Peters’ worldview mirror reflects what he wants it to reflect. Peters is adamant. He asserts, “The rise of the Saudis [sic] to wealth and, consequently, influence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol) conquest.” Is this a prejudice against Saudis or did Peters intend to confine his remark to the Sauds? And how did the Sauds rise to wealth and secure that wealth? To make the story very short, in 1945, following the Yalta conference, US president Franklin Roosevelt held a secret meeting with King Ibn Saud who agreed to provide the US access to oil in exchange for protecting the monarchy. That agreement deepened the entrenchment of the Saud family in power.
Peters asks readers to “imagine how much healthier the Muslim world might become were Mecca and Medina ruled by a rotating council representative of the world’s major Muslim schools and movements in an Islamic Sacred State — a sort of Muslim super-Vatican — where the future of a great faith might be debated rather than merely decreed.” An astoundingly radical suggestion: catholicizing Islam. But even the Vatican represents only the Roman Catholics of Christianity — not all Christians nor all Catholics. Besides, given that Peters maintains that Sunnis and Shi’a are involved in internecine bloodletting, how does he propose to carry out this merger of Muslim schools and movements? After all the dividing of Muslim lands, the illusion of solidarity is to be provided by “a sort of Muslim super-Vatican.” But why must a sovereign Muslim state cede control of its territory to other Muslims?
Peters calls for “[t]rue justice” which he does not define other than to suggest that we might not like it. It is an astounding admission that Westerners are antagonistic to “true justice.” The implication is that Westerners pursue a justice that is not true and hence not justice. But, for Peters, “true justice” involves giving away what is not his to give. Peters would like to gift “Saudi Arabia’s coastal oil fields to the Shi’a Arabs.” His intention is to confine the House of Saud to “a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory around Riyadh” to deter the Sauds from “mischief toward Islam and the world.” Peters, as is the case throughout his article, does not give any examples of this “mischief.” The ultimate goal of Israel via the US is to create a Shi’a imperialist dependency and push for war between the two branches of Islam.
While not absolving the Sauds from any “mischief” they may perpetrate, there is a generally acknowledged rule of discourse that is colloquially stated as “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.” That Peters could accuse the Sauds of “mischief” in the Islamic world and elsewhere while never mentioning the “mischief” that US, western, and zionist imperialists wreak around the world speaks pointedly to a bias in Peters’ thesis. It is an unmitigated contradiction that undermines the entire basis of Peters’ thesis. Peters is proposing US “mischief” guised as “true justice” in lands far afield from US shores.
Peters’ “true justice” conveniently carves up all the lands that would make it easier for US imperialists to increase their influence and control over the Middle East to Pakistan. It is “mischief” that is belligerent divide-and-conquer. Peters avers otherwise, asserting that the maps are drawn according to the desires of local populations and not “as we would like them.” [italics added] There are many problems with his assertion. First, maps have been drawn according to the interests of great powers. Second, local populations did not draw the Peters’ map. Third, Peters does not reveal how he knows the preferences of local populations. Fourth, he does not define the parameters of a local population.
He refers to “artificial” and “natural” states and borders without defining them. Does a “natural” state exist? Arguably, yes. But do natural borders exist in perpetuity? Some states are bounded by rivers, which change course over time. Even island states (as Atlanteans found out) are prone to the whims of tectonic, meteorological, oceanic, or, for those so inclined, divine or extraterrestrial forces. Consequently, to refer to “natural” borders is to refer to a temporary condition absent the workings of nature.
Peters naturalizes the “unnatural” state of Pakistan. He sees a “mixed fate” for the city-states of the United Arab Emirates with some being incorporated into the “puritanical cultures” of the Arab Shi’a State which he predicts to be a counterbalance to Persian Iran.
To serve the “hypocritical,” Dubai, “of necessity, would be allowed to retain its playground status for rich debauchees.” Peters displays his sensitivity to the needs of minorities, in this case, the “rich debauchees.” Dubai, in the Peters scenario would play the role Nevada plays for the “rich debauchees” in the “puritanical cultures” of the US.
A military man-turned writer, Peters stakes claim to expertise in the “ethnic affinities and religious communalism” of the Middle East (and well he might have expertise, but what his qualifications are and how he came to acquire such expertise are unstated, other than an undefined claim to “firsthand experience”). Peters proffers a new map to right the “great wrongs [of] borders drawn by Frenchmen and Englishmen in the 20th century.” What better way for a region to emerge from “humiliations and defeats” than to have an American militarist draw new borders for it and then categorize the states into winners and losers? Peters even decrees Israel to be a loser by having its ethnic cleansing project halted at the pre-1967 “borders” (strange enough because neither Zionists nor Palestinians wholeheartedly agree to such borders).
As an apparent justification for the redrawing of the borders, Peters reasons that based on the cyclicality of history, new borders are bound to happen sooner or later anyway. Despite this, Peters admits, “Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible.” However:
The current human divisions and forced unions between Ankara and Karachi, taken together with the region’s self-inflicted woes, form as perfect a breeding ground for religious extremism, a culture of blame and the recruitment of terrorists as anyone could design. [italics added]
Further revealing his anti-Muslim enmity, Peters opines: “In a region where only the worst aspects of nationalism ever took hold and where the most debased aspects of religion threaten to dominate a disappointed faith, the U.S., its allies and, above all, our armed forces can look for crises without end.”
Peters’ odious thinking is exemplified by his pointing to Iraq as a “counterexample of hope.” This conveniently ignores the occupation-driven genocidal blood bath there.
Peters’ pronouncements on Iraq are a further rejection of his own border redrawing program, which essentially is an anti-sovereignty and anti-self-determination project. In a USA Today op-ed he railed against Iraq’s collaborationist prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s interference with US military objectives within his country — a clear infringement of Iraqi sovereignty.
“I believed that Arabs deserved a chance to build a rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East.” Generous and gracious as his initial belief was, Peters writes using the past tense, implying that he no longer believes Arabs deserve such a chance.
He then states, “Based upon firsthand experience, I was convinced that the Middle East was so politically, socially, morally and intellectually stagnant that we had to risk intervention — or face generations of terrorism and tumult.” [italics added] Peters’ racist opinionating continues: Middle Easterners, according to him, are politically, socially, morally, and intellectually inferior. And what was Peters’ “firsthand experience”? Did he live or spend much time in the Middle East? Or what ideological prism did he use to give a verdict shaped by standard Zionist ratiocinations and manifest cultural ignorance?
That he believes Arabs are intellectually inferior is supported by his assertion that they “do not yet comprehend the dimensions” of what he comprehends: “Iraq’s impending failure” and “disaster.” He accuses Arabs of gleefulness at America’s impending “humiliation.” But for the uncomprehending Arabs, Peters adds “it’s their tragedy, not ours.”
Peters exculpates the invading-occupying US from any blame. Writes Peters, “It’s al-Qaeda’s Vietnam. They’re the ones who can’t leave and who can’t win.” This is imperialist rhetoric. So the borders are impermeable! Then, contrary to declamations from US administration officials, there are no foreigners crossing into Iraq?
Peters follows up with a flourish of patriotic self-glorification:
Islamist terrorists have chosen Iraq as their battleground and, even after our departure, it will continue to consume them. We’ll still be the greatest power on earth, indispensable to other regional states — such as the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia — that are terrified of Iran’s growing might. If the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries.
Ralph Peters, “Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look,” Armed Forces Journal, June 2006.
Peters relies on ad hominem to make his case. Staying with the definition that “terrorism” is the use of violence or threat of violence to attain ends, it is undeniable that the US is using state terrorism in Iraq, just as Israel is using state terrorism in Palestine. Some so-called terrorism experts try to distinguish terrorism according to the agent, but this is semantic subterfuge. Nevertheless, while perchance the same in mechanism, all terrorism is not necessarily the same. One must be careful not to fall into the fallacy of drawing an equivalency between unprovoked or aggressive terrorism which elicits a similar terrorism in self-defense. Logically and morally, one cannot limit self-defense and resistance without capitulating to the evil of the precipitating terrorism. The US aggressed Iraq on a mendacious casus belli. It is the US which is stoking the flames of violence with Iran. It is simply dishonest and intellectually bankrupt argument to declare otherwise. Resistance is a legitimate right that must not be hampered relative to the violence of the aggressor or occupier.
Peters has waffled on civil war in Iraq, first denying it and then acquiescing to it. Now he describes Arabs as “revel[ing] in fratricidal slaughter.”
Inseparably entangled with the infighting is the presence of the occupiers and the US occupiers have signaled their intention to stay.
Let us dispel another myth: there is no civil war in Iraq! A “civil war” is a war between competing factions or regions within a country. Even if one accepts that there is inter-confessional fighting in Iraq (and this must be regarded with utmost skepticism as there is plenty of evidence to suggest that much of the terrorism attributed to infighting is, in fact, the purposeful work of occupation forces to incite such infighting
The US and collaborating foreign forces are inciting violence by their very presence in Iraq. Prior to the invasion there was minimal or no internecine bloodletting in Iraq. Therefore, it is imperialist-serving propaganda to refer to a civil war in Iraq. The term “civil war” applied to Iraq exculpates the US and so-called coalition partners for the invasion and occupation which have killed over 655,000 Iraqi civilians. To be accurate and honest, it must be referred to as “occupation-incited” infighting — not civil war and not sectarianism.
Peters assumes that he has the expertise to redraw the Middle East. He assumes that the US has a right to carry out the redrawing. No interference will be tolerated in this US project: “We must … make it clear to Iran that meddling will not be tolerated.”
With total disregard for the admixture of races, ethnicities, and cultures on Turtle Island, Peters ominously warns: “If the borders of the greater Middle East cannot be amended to reflect the natural ties of blood and faith, we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own.” If there is an iota of truth to Peters’ warning, then Turtle Islanders should be perennially spilling blood.
In fact, despite numerous societal inequalities and problems, Turtle Island stands as a stark refutation to Peters’ thesis that borders which enclose many cultures and ethnicities within a landmass lead to continuous blood spilling.
Peters takes it as an article of faith (not fact) that the US has a legitimate stake to involve itself in the affairs of the Middle East. In doing so, he sings the oft-repeated mantra of the Zionist-neoconservative cabal: “[O]ur men and women in uniform will continue to fight for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself.”
Peters’ major error is not the redrawing of borders but in the drawing of borders. Borders separate people. They set up disparities. Peters admits that borders are “never completely just”; that they inflict a “degree of injustice”; that some borders “provoke the deaths of millions”; that our own diplomats worship “awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries.” He also admits: “Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible.” Why then does Peters insist that despite “inevitable attendant bloodshed … new and natural borders will emerge.” Peters is ostensibly of the impression that border formation is inherent to the human condition. It is not.
Blood Continent: Turtle Island
Peters looks overseas to draw his new borders. Why did he not look at the blood borders on Turtle Island? The “unnatural” states of Canada and the United States (as are the states elsewhere in the western hemisphere) were formed by bloody usurpation of the land of the Original Peoples. In Canada and the US, surviving Original Peoples have been deprived of their traditional lifestyles and culture by putting them on reserves.
Peters focused his imperialistic gaze on the oil-rich Middle East, but he would have gained credibility if he had dealt with the iniquities in his backyard and with other legitimate stakeholders come up with a fair redrawing of the blood borders formed by the great holocaust that European colonizers inflicted on the Original Peoples in the western hemisphere.
Statehood arises from blood spillage. Empire is the predictable direction of redrawing borders. Yet, Peters pushes a doctrine of imperialistic benevolence conforming to Zionist objectives that is rejected by, what he describes as, extremist elements in foreign societies. The lie of a civil war in Iraq serves encompassing imperialistic objectives.
Peters disclosed, in the summer of 1997, his support for a bloody Zionist-imperialist blueprint.
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.
Ralph Peters, “Constant Conflict,” Parameters, Summer 1997, 4-14.
This violent zionist-imperialist mindset must be rejected and defeated. The militaristic dogma promulgated by publications the AFJ serves those dedicated to violent means to unjust ends. If borders must exist, they must be determined by the indigenous and legitimately established resident populations. Peters and his ilk can tend to problems in their own backyards.