Demographic Adjustment

I was going to go with something about Syria, how the UN and a number of countries have finally decided that slaughtering your civilians in a reign of terror to uphold your regime is a "bad thing", but what's the point?  Gaddaffi was thrown over for much less, the only reason I can see being European economic (oil) interests and a complete lack of understanding of the internal dynamics of Libya.  Since Syria has no oil worth mentioning and Assad is inexplicably given a pass in the international community as a "reformer", I guess his timing was good on this one to capitalize on the intervention fatigue which has come in wake of Libya.

Hmm, looks like I'm talking about this anyway. I'd like to say that this is what happens when I start writing without a plan, but sometimes it happens even with one.  To take this topic as far as I can now see a point in doing, perhaps people did in fact learn something about knocking over the strongman leaders of cobbled-together states.  This could explain the lack of definitive action vs. Assad, but that gives too much credit to institutions which have failed to learn from pretty-much anything else in recent and more remote history.  The disintegration of Libya for example has already spawned an Islamist/Tuareg takeover of half of neighbouring Mali, a direct result of that conflict.

Tito and Yugoslavia, anyone?  Not exactly ancient history and there are plenty more where that came from.  There are no neat endings/answers short of forcible partition (a la Kosovo, as bad an example as that is) so what else do we have?  As always there is lots going on under rocks of various sizes the world over but I am finding myself to be caring less and less about it.  Posing problems without solutions (or at least management) is not my style, and I honestly don't know what to expect in Syria. 

Given the resources I would chop it up I guess, but there's no winning in that part of the world short of some Old Testament ethnic cleansing.  One of my recent posts noted the willingness of a large part of Egyptian society to do this to Israel, but Arabs have been trying to re-do what the Romans did nearly 2000 years ago without success for 60+ years so it's almost boring (from this distance anyway) now.

One thing I have to say is that I'm becoming fond of the idea of a few hardcore Islamic states popping up in certain places.  My rationale is that this gives you something that you can attack as it concentrates terrorist idiots wonderfully.  Northern Mali? A good opportunity to kill a bunch of guys the world will not lament passing; it worked in Iraq and it's working to some extent in Somalia and Yemen right now so it's not without precedent.

And this takes us to Diversity as a policy.  It doesn't work.  People don't like "us" all that much, they REALLY don't like "them" in any quantity too near them.  This is as politically incorrect as all get-out, but it's a demonstrable fact.  The divide can be racial, though far more often it's religious/ideological/cultural, and the more of those differences you combine the worse the animosity is.  The answer to this would seem to be "split them up" would it not?  Yes, but...

People are even in our "enlightened" age essentially tribal and will almost always at least temporarily expand their "us" net to sweep in those with relatively minor differences when faced with a real "other".  Subdividing people too much would destroy these accommodations, so as much as I think maps need to be redrawn, more consideration and less zeal needs to be brought to bear on the process.  And yes, moving people around is the best way to accomplish this effectively (Greece and Turkey in the 1920s).

Back to Syria to close things out, here's a proposal: carve away a section for the Alawites, Christians and Druze along the Lebanese/Israeli border, leave the Sunnis the rest of it, maybe taking off the NE corner as a contribution to "Kurdistan".  Lots of hardship associated with this and a lot of other problems (Turkey's reaction to the Kurdistan idea not the least of them) but you know, omelets, eggs, etc.