World Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington is Misleading in Intention

 

People often cite the above map from Samuel P. Huntington books as an explanation of differences between different parts of the world. It's simple, easy to understand and fundamentally wrong. 

It's not that these divisions are completely wrong, but they are superficial at best and lump together places that are vastly different from each other. Indonesia is very different from Iran or Morocco even if they are both Muslims.

I criticised a few issues with this map in the past. For example, there is a religious division between Orthodox and Western civilizations, yet there is no such division between say Catholic or Protestants. Sure, east west, schism happened earlier, but ground for the split was much more serious in Catholic vs Protestant split. Sure, there are many visual differences between Orthodox and Western churches,, but Western churches also differ from each other. That is far to arbitrary to just select out Orthodox but lump the rest together.

That also overlooks the elephant in the room, the fact that Islam branched out from Christianity. Christians deny is as fervently as Muslims deny that Bahaullah is the new prophet or how Judaists deny that Jesus was the Messiah their religion have promised them. Inglehard-Welzel cultural values, place Muslims close to Indians, Latin Americans and Catholic Europeans.

On the other hand, there is a division between Latin and Anglophone Americas. This cultural values chart for example places the US a lot closer to their Latin American neighbors, than to certain Europeans. Catholic Europeans are very close in values to Latin America; they are former Spanish and Portuguese colonies after all.

If you take into account time or history, you will get a different picture. Turns out that these civilizations are not distinct entities with completely different origins but branches that ultimately came from a single past. It might be possible to connect Asians and Africans to this too, if we dig further into history, but that far documented records are scarce.

If they came from a common past, then why are they different now? Simple evolution, basic principle of live. The same reason why cells divide or we evolved from chimpanzees. Just as tree branches into different directions as it grows so are human societies occasionally split into different groups. When old ways stop working, a certain group decides it's time for a change and splits up.

It's not just these groups, but countries within these groups split from a common whole precisely because common leadership stopped working for them and they needed autonomy. East West Christian split was ostensively about theology, but in reality, it was about power. Pope of Rome grew powerful enough and no longer wished to share equal status with eastern patriarchs who lost their people to Islam and now were but a token authority backed by nothing more than past status.

Thus, Huntington map represents not the future or even current times, but the past, times where these entities were still connected as well as features that they still share in common.

Future will not revolve around these civilizations; it will revolve around entities like European Union who can invent solutions for the problems of the future and create opportunities for prosperity and growth. Democracies vs Autocracies, EU vs the US, Japan and maritime Asia vs China and the inland. There are the battlelines of the future.

EU Should Allow Alternative Ways of Manning the European Consul and Consul of Ministers

 

Recently EU faced a lot of accusations of being undemocratic and controlled but unelected bureaucrats. As much as it's not true only people who actually understand how EU works know them. For many other people EU system is far too confusing. They cannot understand in a commonsense way how EU officials are elected and accountable to public.

European Consul as well as Consul of Ministers consists of national level ministers who head related domestic departments. They are as elected as national governments are.

However, effectiveness of such arrangement varies from state to state. For someone like Germany, who has a similar domestic institution called Bundesrat, or Finland it works well. People who represent their nations there take their jobs with a sense of civic duty and desire to do their best for their country and EU as a whole.

On the other hand, for countries like UK, it consistently fails to deliver. British politicians are too lazy to meaningfully participate in these institutions. Being on EU consuls goes on top of their other responsibilities, but unlike their other roles, they will not be voted out if they fuck up their EU work. Thus, they just sit there upright, looking forward, cast donkey votes and then blame various domestic problems on some "unelected EU bureaucrats" even though they were likely there when vote on the issue was held and voted for it without paying much attention. As much as it was their fault and not that of the EU, voters who do not understand how EU works blame the EU reelect the politicians who sleep on the job.

A solution to this problem is to allow certain countries to hold direct election to European Consul and Consul of Ministers. 

This should be on opt in basis so that countries that think it's more sensible can opt into it and those who prefer current arrangement can keep it. These consuls work on one country, one vote principle so they can work even if different countries have different methods of choosing their delegate. European Consul already allows for some countries to be represented by presidents and others by Prime Ministers instead.

If country ops for election it should be direct presidential style election that is held alongside either European elections or national ones. The winner will be called something like Emissary of <country name here> to the European Union and will represent their country on European Consul and cast their country vote. 

They would also select their cabinet; to represent their country in Consul of European Union (consul of ministers) other countries are represented by a minister of relevant departments so an Emissary should select representatives with relevant experience for each EU department, similar to how the US president selects their cabinet secretaries. National parliament should confirm their selections just like Congress confirms US Secretaries.

This solution will bring more transparency to European Union and address concerns of certain countries over EU's shortage of democracy. At the same time, it will allow for a certain continuity and familiarity in how operates as countries can still retain the current system if they see fit and it will prevent too much unpredictability, that could make EU ungovernable, in such an important institution as European Consul or Consul of European Union. I hope EU can implement this solution as fast as possible.

How to Solve Iran

 

Recently Americans finally started their intervention in Iran to end Ayatollahs dictatorship there. After initial success in eliminated key figures of the regime, things started and devolved into long range strikes exchange. After initial shock, regime got its act together, elected a new hardline leader and begun fighting back. By now it's pretty clear that Venezuelan scenario will not work here. 

Unlike Venezuela Iran can receive weapons shipments from Russia and China through Central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and continue fighting for a long time. This fact will make regime unwilling to surrender.

That does not mean that there is nothing the US can do. Far from it there are a few good solutions that can still achieve a lot.

To begin with the US has to threaten the regime that if they do not comply with US demands, it will set up a rival government for Iran. It will be their last chance to retain current governmental structures. Once the new government is in place, current officials will have to defect to this new government if they wish to have role in new Iran. The new country can be called Kingdom of Iran with Shah Pahlavi as constitutional monarch, or it can be State of Iran with someone else as provisional President.

At first such rival government can be in exile, but it will be much better if the US swiftly secure a foothold on Iranian territory itself, a coastal town like Bandar Abbas can serve as a temporary capital. The US can secure it quickly and protect from the current regime while new Iranian government builds its institutions and military. 

From there new government can grow by accepting defectors from current Iranian military and government. The very fact that new government does exist and has presence on Iranian soil will give potential defectors more confidence that change is real and it's not a trap by the current regime to weed out closet dissidents.

After finishing fleshing out new government, new Iran can go on the offensive and gradually take over the rest of the country, culminating in taking Tehran.

If taking Tehran will prove to be too difficult it will not be a problem either. After taking important areas like the coast and oil fields, majority of which are in the south and close to shore, the US and new Iran can just call it a day and agree to a permanent split of the county into north and south Iran. If new Iran will not manage to take Tehran, it can have its capital in Shiraz, somewhere closer to Gulf will make it more defensible from the old regime or its Russian and Chinese allies.

Even if old regime survives and retains Tehran, without oil or access to sea they will be effectively neutered. They will be too poor to support their proxies and without access to sea will have no means of delivering any equipment to them.

Initial survival of the regime will not mean, old regime will live on forever and ever. After some colling off discontent can swell again in the north and this time could topple the regime or dismantle it piece by piece. New Iran should declare that it will accept every province and town that wishes to defect from the northern government, providing it has land access to the new Iran, so that new Iran can send its troops there. Even if Ayatollahs regime will manage to hold to protesting provinces, Iranians can just defect in individual capacity, draining the north of most of its people.

This strategy for the new Iran will allow the US and Iranian opposition to create new Iran and gradually take the country. It provides solutions for every potential outcome and solves most of the problems with Iran.

Middle Continent, Why We Need to Divide Asia into Two Continents of West Asia and East Asia

 

A while ago I watched a CGPGrey video on how many continents there are. It pointed out that some borders between continents are rather arbitrary, for example border between Europe and Asia runs in rather arbitrary place and separates what is essentially one same landmass into two arbitrary halves.

In the end CGPGrey suggested that we agree that Eurasia is one and same continent. However, that only makes sense if you look on geographically undifferentiated outline of the landmass. If you look at culture, life and links between people who inhabit it, it will not make any sense. Asia already big as it is and uniting it with Europe will make it even bigger, too big to make any geographic sense out of the whole thing. 

Culturally it makes no sense either. China is not like India, and neither of them has much in common with Scandinavia. If anything, India has more in common with Spain than with China, but we call Spain Europe and India and China Asia. China is very different from India and has very little interaction with it despite sharing a very large border. That to the extend warrant calling them different continents.

After thinking about it I came up with a rather meaningful criterion, that can help divide the world into more meaningful continents: use mountains and occasionally rivers as a divider. Just like seas and oceans, mountains make for a natural divider between both land and people that inhabit it. Mountains are too hard to pass, making meaningful interaction between people on different side of the mountain chains all but impossible. It works for the previous example between India and China, while sharing a long border nearly all of it goes along the very high Himalayas mountain chain, which explains such a great differences between Indians and Chinese. Mountains divide people a lot more than seas and even oceans.

If you look at geological map above, you can rather easily trace this mountain chain geological boundary all the way to the Arctic Ocean. If so, would it make for nice natural border between East and West Asia? It pretty much would. So, this is the new continental boundary I propose. We can call new continents West and East Asia, in the same manner of North and South America, or we can call West Asia middle continent instead.

You can see exact borders on the map above. I used red line to divide West Asia from East Asia. I mostly followed Himalayas along the tallest peaks. In the south I used Sittang River in Myanmar as a final line of separation. In the north I originally used Yenisei River as final divider but later reconsidered and instead carved a line between Yenisei and Lena basins as a boundary. The latter is more accurate topologically, but the former is easier to draw. 

Not only new borders will make sense culturally as West Asias are rather different from East Asians. They will make sense geographically and will allow us to make better sense out of wasteness of Asia. After all, if something is too big to understand, one should subdivide it into smaller more manageable parts. With this new division Asia is no longer large unmanageable landmass, but a much more structured entity. Central Asia west of mountains is more connected to Iran than to China, just looking at architecture in Uzbekistan clearly shows you that. Finally, West Siberian lowlands are very different from a plateau further east. In Russia these areas are internally divided into West and East Siberia.

Furthermore, we should also set boundary between East Asia and Australia/Oceania as Wallace Line. Flora, fauna and people east of the line is vastly different from those, west of it, having more in common with Pacific Islanders than with Asians. That will make Indonesia two continental country, just as previous change will make Russia tri continental country.

Caucasus gorge should be border between Europe and Asia. 

White there is a certain division between Indian subcontinent and the rest of West Asia, fundamentally Kyber Pass does connect it with the rest of West Asia and that pass was often used historically to move even large armies.

Instead of merging Europe and Asia into Orwellian Eurasia, that is too large to make meaningful sense, we should divide Asia into West Asia and East Asia along the redline I drew on the map above. That way we will get much more meaningful continents that will represent actual reality on the ground a lot better than current situation. Hopefully this new division will take hold in minds of the world.