American Decline and Geopolitical Realism
8th February 2024
From the end of the Second World War until early 2022, the geopolitics of our world followed a very similar pattern. The pattern was that borders were sacred, they could not change, and this narrative was enforced by the United Nations and America’s military might. This meant rival ethnicities and religious sects were often forced together into nations they despised—as in the example of Iraq—where different groups have fought continuously since independence in 1932. Any attempt by the Sunnis, Shias, or Kurds to break off has been met by Western condemnation, yet military intervention by the latter exacerbated the chaos.
The problem is that the West’s foreign policy is informed by liberalism, the central pillar being that people should get along. This is why Washington disapproved of Serbia annexing areas of Kosovo populated by Serbs, and why it despised the idea of reshaping the Middle East’s boundaries so that Kurds, Shias and Sunnis could have their own states. Even though such moves make sense from an ethnic and religious perspective—and would certainly make peace more likely—the option is always repudiated. This is because redrawing the maps would entail admitting an obvious truth: that some cultures are incompatible with each other.
Iraq is three nations crammed into one country; Libya is three; Afghanistan is closer to five.