Failed States

The most salient characteristic of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the eighteenth century was its decentralization. In fact, the Ottoman state can only be considered an empire in the loose sense in which the term is used to refer to such medieval states as the Chinese under the late T'and dynasty. Its administrative establishment, economic system, and social organization all call to mind the structure of a premodern state. On paper, Ottoman territory at the turn of the nineteenth century stretched from Algeria to Yemen, Bosnia to the Caucuses, and Eritrea to Basra, encompassing a vast area inhavied by some 30 million people [MY note: this was a lot at the time]. In practice, the reach of the Ottoman government in Istanbul rarely extended beyond the central provinces of Anatolia and Rumelia, and then only weakly.

That's from M. Sükrü Hanioglu's A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire which would probably sell better if it adopted the pithy-title, long-ass subtitle format seen in, for example, my book, Heads in the Sand.

What's more, to prove that even a seemingly far-afield topic can be turned into a book plug, consider that this sort of herky-jerky governance across the breadth of the Muslim world would be deemed intolerable today. Contemporary Americans feel -- and not wrongly -- that in the wake of 9/11 we can't just be indifferent to what happens elsewhere. Anarchic conditions, or worse nuclear weapons programs, in far-off places could get people killed right here in the United States. The Bush administration's proposal to deal with this reality is to try to turn the United States into a kind of universal empire that will tell other countries what they may not and must do, and will mandate compliance through military might. Well, it doesn't work. The alternative I advocate in Heads in the Sand is liberal internationalism -- governance by agreement, non-proliferation and other goals achieved through legitimate multilateral processes that respect the interests of others and are capable of gaining the adherence of others.

In the wake of 9/11, that path was abandoned out of a combination of the sense that it was too laborious and the sense that it was politically untenable. But we've seen for the past seven years that the "shortcut" alternative of universal empire is no shortcut at all -- casting off international restraint hasn't empowered us to do new and exciting things, it's been counterproductive at great cost. Politically, the path of cowardice and timidity didn't achieve anything noteworthy for Democrats in 2002 and 2004, and with the Bush doctrine discredited the moment is ripe to try and offer people some serious ideas rather than merely "Serious" ones.

Photo by Flickr user Coltharp used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

The European great powers in the 19th century weren't particularly big fans of the Ottoman Empire either. That's why they kept on intervening, and such.

Posted by John | March 26, 2008 3:44 PM

Anarchic conditions, or worse nuclear weapons programs, in far-off places could get people killed right here in the United States.

Yes, that's true. On the other hand, I think people overlearned the "lesson" of 9/11. I'm referring to the common refrain that the war in Iraq was a mistake because it distracted us from the real threat of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

I'd say that at least 99% of the reason the war in Iraq was a mistake is that, in and of itself, it was a disaster. If Afghanistan was peaceful and and Al Qaeda was nonexistent, the war in Iraq would still have been a mistake. Hopefully, in an Obama administration, fear won't be used as a political tool, and there will be a more rational judgment of the magnitude of the dangers from all those scary foreigners.

Posted by Jim W | March 26, 2008 3:59 PM

is this an argument that has never been made before, or in such detail?

i keed because i care.

Posted by paperpusher | March 26, 2008 4:07 PM

As a graduate student dealing with Ottoman history, I have one thing to say: Hanioglu's assessment is correct, but I think it's a mistake to liken that decentralization to 'anarchy' or 'herky jerky' governance.

It was the exact opposite of anarchy: it was a kind of systematic, heavily bureaucratized devolution of power to a variety of local power-holders... military elites, religious leaders, and so on. The great strength of the Ottoman Empire, the reason it lasted six hundred years, was the way it enfranchised a very large class of notables by investing them with with 'state' functions, albeit within in a proscribed Ottoman order sensitive to conditions on the ground.

So, in a sense it was weak, in that Istanbul couldn't directly force the hand of actors in Damascus. But in another, more important sense it was strong, in that Damascus' leaders were completely 'Ottoman' in the ways they justified their authority, looking towards the concept of the empire & Ottomanism as the legitimator of their rule. Politics was conducted in Ottoman terms, never trying to replace the state with anything else.

Exactly the opposite of the way the US has approached governance in Iraq -- by force, not moral/cultural authority.

Posted by CG | March 26, 2008 4:08 PM

I recently read A Peace to end All Peace by David Fromkin. What struck me was how strong the Ottomans were. They handed the British some nasty defeats at Kut and Gallipoli. And somehow in the process they found the energy to murder 1 million Armenians and remove 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia, creating a clear Turkish living space out of the poliglot empire.

I was also amazed at how foolish the British were in trying to control the destiny of the Arabs and how in the process they helped bring the Wahhabi sect to power in the Kingdom.

Posted by Northern Observer | March 26, 2008 4:20 PM

MY note: this was a lot at the time...

What are we, second graders, Matt?

Posted by Jasper | March 26, 2008 4:30 PM

Anarchic conditions, or worse nuclear weapons programs, in far-off places could get people killed right here in the United States.

Except that wasn't the really part of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't the weapons that were the problem. After all everyone knew that Uncle Kim was far closer to nuclear weapons but the neocons largely ignored him. What made Saddam and Iraq different was the "imminent threat" bit. That there was credible intelligence that they had weapons, which they were "more-than-likely" to pass on to the bad guys, who then were "more-than-likely" to use it against us (or our friends). All in all an unacceptable position to be in a post 9-11 world. That was of course, total bs that wasn't supported by even an alarmist reading of the available intelligence.

That distinction is important. People like to pretend that the Bush doctrine was this noble nouveau worldview that ultimately failed (or is seemingly failing). That gives it way too much credit. The whole Iraq adventure was based on a lie and personnel in the higher echelons of the administration were directly or indirectly complicit in the whole sordid affair. It wasn't some grand new strategy of using preventive force. Rather it was brinkmanship of the worst kind based on a perfidious lie. Iraq was attacked because the folks believed: (a) we could get away with it; and (b) it would be easy. It was realpolitik of the worst kind. And we are paying dearly for it.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | March 26, 2008 5:14 PM

I know it's primary season, but it should be 'Caucasus', not 'Caucuses'.

Unless the Ottomans were big Obama supporters.

Posted by Tom Hilton | March 26, 2008 5:57 PM

After all everyone knew that Uncle Kim was far closer to nuclear weapons but the neocons largely ignored him. What made Saddam and Iraq different was the "imminent threat" bit.

But from the Bushies' point of view, what made Saddam different was his conventional military assets were weak enough that they could be trounced in short order with minimal casualities to us or our allies. In addition to having an overall stronger military, if we were to make a move against N. Korea, Seoul gets pounded with artillery before we can finish the job. If it were feasable, they'd have had no problem invading, but N. Korea simply has us deterred.

More generally, it's worth noting that for some time we did go the liberal internationalist non-proliferation route with N. Korea. It didn't work. The saber rattling the neocons favor didn't work either, but countries that are interested in developing as regional military powers will just game the non-proliferation incentives for some freebies. Proliferation is the dominant strategy for them - the more advanced the nuclear program, the more goodies they can shake down in exchange for pausing it and the closer they are to having a big enough deterent that they'll no longer need to worry about an invasion. MY's setting up a false dicotomy - both benevolent hedgemon and liberal internationalist approaches have been demonstrated to fail to halt proliferation and actually create incentives for it.

Posted by MattXIV | March 26, 2008 6:00 PM

CG: one of the most interesting things was that even when there were rebellions, the rebels almost always demanded things like cushy jobs and positions. There was hardly ever any kind of attempt to change the nature of the state (the Celali revolts are the only one that springs to mind) only to force the state to give them a piece of the Ottoman pie.

Posted by MNPundit | March 26, 2008 6:33 PM

MY (On military intervention) - Well, it doesn't work. The alternative I advocate in Heads in the Sand is liberal internationalism -- governance by agreement, non-proliferation and other goals achieved through legitimate multilateral processes that respect the interests of others and are capable of gaining the adherence of others.

Except that Matt's beloved "liberal internationalism and non-proliferation and human rights NGOs" have proved absolutely useless in stopping proliferation and genocide in the last 3 decades.
Where genocide was stopped, like in Bosnia and East Timor, where proliferation was stopped - like Libya, S Africa, Iraq after the Gulf War - it was not by the "moral authority of the UN or legal bodies or NGOs dominated by Euroweenies or liberal Jews - it was by coalitions of powerful countries using warfare or acts of warfare (embargos). Which, as opposed to Matt's ideal of some NGO or UN lawyer ending a problem with a "Statement of Deep Deploration", actually does work.
In a sense, he is like a liberal in the 90s confronting the failure of welfare and saying that obviously it failed because it wasn't extensive or generous enough.

After all everyone knew that Uncle Kim was far closer to nuclear weapons but the neocons largely ignored him. What made Saddam and Iraq different was the "imminent threat" bit.

'Lil Kim was a problem, but not the acute problem of a reckless dictator with a pattern of aggressive war, not NORK insularility, threatening an unstable, weak , volatile region with 70% of the world's oil and gas energy supplies.
By the 90s, N Korea existed only at the economic suffrerance of China, and was already bracketed by 5 enormously powerful countries with advanced militaries backed by thermonuclear weapons of 3 of them that would all act to limit the "trouble" the NORKs could make, because NONE of them wanted a major regional Asian War to break out.

Two entirely different strategic situations.

Posted by chris ford | March 26, 2008 7:01 PM

The danger of the NORKs remains to be proliferation of nukes and missiles to more potentially dangerous foreign actors, and the political distraction they are to better S Korean-China, Japan-China, US-China relations.

Posted by chris ford | March 26, 2008 7:07 PM

"I know it's primary season, but it should be 'Caucasus', not 'Caucuses'."

Matt also needs to fix the name of the Chinese T'ang dynasty.

Posted by A New Fox News Fan | March 26, 2008 7:10 PM

Notice that Chris Ford fails to mention that the biggest genocide since WWII, in Cambodia, was ended by the Vietnamese Communists, the same people Mr. Ford thinks we should have spent more years fighting. Of course, white supremacists and neoimperialists like Mr. Ford are not known for their consistency any more than for their morality.

Posted by Hector | March 26, 2008 11:42 PM

"Matt also needs to fix the name of the Chinese T'ang dynasty.

Posted by A New Fox News Fan | March 26, 2008 7:10 PM"

Hell, these days it's now the "Tang Dynasty" in pinyin without the Wade-Gilles apostrophe.

Non-proliferation was working in North Korea until we stopped our promised food shipments, etc and Bush started saber-rattling. If you make an agreement and then break it and then start suggesting you might invade, expect for something to go boom.

Posted by Reality Man | March 27, 2008 1:08 AM

MY is okay as a polemicist, as far as it goes. Doing history is clearly beyond his capacity, even history he's lived through personally.

Liberal Internationalism requires not only a general agreement about opposition to things like wars of aggression, the proliferation and use of wmd's, genocide, etc. It requires a credible enforcement mechanism. See "League of Nations".

Many supporters of Liberal Internationalism, including a lot of Democrats like me, supported the invasion of Iraq for precisely this reason. In spite of the current left/media script, it's easy to demonstrate that the Bush Administration spent more high-level time and attention on the UN before invading than any administration since Truman's. They also won the support of every important democracy in the world minus a few with major conflicts of interest in Iraq.

Even a cursory look at real history shows that we went to war with Iraq in 1991 with full legal bells and whistles. The ceasefire, along with over a dozen other Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions, was comprehensively violated by the Iraqi regime. "The path of cowardice and timidity" is the one advocated by people like Matt.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 27, 2008 2:42 AM