Why are Arab countries politically fragmented?

[DrZoidberg]

Here's a good one. An explanation as to why Arabs always lose wars with Israel. Its pretty balanced imho.



The short version: if your army is designed and trained to protect the regime against its own people, it will lose when up against an army designed to fight enemies.







The video doesn't go into why the Arab countries are so politically fragmented. Which would be interesting. It falls back on the old lazy blaming colonialism. European countries were similarly religiously and ethnically diverse in the 18'th century. Through secular nation building programmes of the 19'th century we built away those ethnic conflicts. European borders are also arbitrary and when drawn took no consideration to ethnic makeup (or the opinion of the people).



So I think we can come up with a better explanation than just blaming white people?

What do you think?

 

[Gospel]

Hold up. You want to understand why Arab nations are politically fragmented, but you want to dismiss colonialism because you don't like the idea of white Europeans being held responsible for anything? Bruh, history doesn't work that way.

You say Europeans managed to build away their ethnic and religious conflicts through secular nation-building in the 19th century. Really? Is that what we're calling it now? Because from where I'm sitting, Europe spent the next century fighting two world wars, committing genocide, ethnically cleansing populations, and tearing entire countries apart. If that's your definition of successfully resolving ethnic conflict, I'd hate to see what failure looks like.

And here's what I find particularly interesting about your argument. You acknowledge that European borders were drawn without regard for the people living within them, yet somehow fail to recognize the significance of Europeans doing that very same thing to people OUTSIDE of Europe.

Britain and France didn't just show up in the Middle East to admire the architecture, homie. They established mandates, divided territories, installed political arrangements, and pursued their own interests. These aren't accusations. These are historical facts.

Now, am I saying Arab nations bear no responsibility for their present circumstances? Absolutely not. Their governments, political movements, and leaders have made plenty of decisions that deserve criticism. But those decisions didn't occur in a vacuum.

What I find amusing is how quickly colonialism becomes a "lazy excuse" the moment European responsibility enters the conversation. Yet you have no problem reaching back into European history to find the "lazy excuse" to European political development. As if the wealth and resources extracted from territories outside Europe didn't play a major role in Europe's own development and prosperity.

Come on, man. You can't have it both ways.

If we're going to examine history, then let's examine ALL of it. Not just the chapters that make certain people comfortable.

Lastly, nobody has to blame white people collectively to acknowledge what European colonial governments actually did. If you can't distinguish between those two things, perhaps you should start with that conversation first.

 

[Bomb#20]

The video doesn't go into why the Arab countries are so politically fragmented.
...
What do you think?

Why wouldn't they be politically fragmented? Everything about the modern state of the Arab world is the way it is because it was conquered by the Turks, ruled by an alien overlord for centuries, and then the alien overlord imprudently joined the losing side in the War to End All Wars. So what's the scenario where the Arabs are unified? If the Ottomans had stayed out of WWI or joined the Allies then they'd still be around, they'd still be the sick man of Europe, and pieces of the Arab world would have peeled off one at a time and gotten their independence piecemeal in parallel with the rest of Europe losing its colonies. So it would be fragmented anyway. The only scenario I can see where the Arabs are all their own single country is if the Mamluks had beaten the Turks in the 1500s.

 

[Patooka]

Man, if only the Arabs were as monolithic as the Irish.