Reconciling with Sykes-Picot
May 26, 2016.
NEW
YORK – This month marks the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the
secret British-French accord that launched a decade-long series of
adjustments to the borders of the post-Ottoman Middle East. Most
commentary on the anniversary has been negative, suggesting that the
agreement bears considerable blame for the frequency and durability of
the region’s conflicts.
That
interpretation, however, borders on caricature. Mark Sykes and François
Georges-Picot aimed to devise a plan that would enable Great Britain
and France to avoid a ruinous rivalry in the Middle East. They largely
succeeded: Their design kept the region from coming between the two
European powers, and it managed to survive for a century.
To
be sure, many of the Sykes-Picot borders reflected deals cut in Europe
rather than local demographic or historical realities. But that hardly
makes the Middle East unique: Most borders around the world owe their
legacy less to thoughtful design or popular choice than to some mixture
of violence, ambition, geography, and chance.
The
unpleasant reality is that today’s Middle East is what it is because
its people and leaders have done such a bad job in shaping it. Sykes and
Picot cannot be blamed for the region’s pervasive lack of tolerance and
political freedom, poor schools,
or the unfair ways in which girls and women are treated. Other parts of
the world (including those without enormous reserves of oil and gas)
have emerged from colonialism in much better shape.
The
factors accounting for the record of failure in the Middle East –
history, culture, religion, and personalities – are worthy of serious
examination. But the more pressing question that this anniversary raises
has less to do with historical analysis than it does with current
policy.
In
much of the Middle East, a violent struggle for mastery is the new
normal. In four – arguably five – countries in the region, the
government does not control significant portions of the state’s
territory. Lebanon has been in this condition for decades, Iraq for more
than a decade, and Syria, Libya, and Yemen for some five years now.
Militias, terrorist organizations, foreign fighters, and other armed
groups have asserted varying degrees of local authority.
There
are also the unfulfilled national aspirations of the Kurds (large
numbers of whom live in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran) and the
unresolved matter of how to reconcile the reality of Israel with the
Palestinians’ political goals. The border between Syria and Iraq is for
all intents and purposes gone. Millions of men, women, and children find
themselves living in a country that is not their own.
What,
then, should be done? One option would be to try to preserve – or, more
accurately, restore – the Sykes-Picot Middle East. But attempting to
reunify the countries that appear on the map – and to make the borders
between them matter – would be folly. These countries will not go back
to what they were; ties to region, religion, tribe, ethnicity, and/or
ideology have in many cases superseded national identities.
A
second option would be to try to negotiate the terms of a new Middle
East, a successor to Sykes-Picot. This, too, would prove to be an
expensive failure. Redrawing the map might be possible one day, but that
day is decades away, at best. There is simply no consensus on what the
map should look like, and no party or alliance that could impose or
uphold it. As a rule of thumb, diplomacy can be expected only to work
with facts on the ground, not to create them, and the facts on the
ground stand in the way of a regional settlement.
All
of this leads to a third option: Acceptance of the fact that for the
foreseeable future the Middle East will not resemble what appears on
maps and globes. This is not an argument for remaining aloof; as bad as
things are, they can always get worse. To see that they do not,
governments and organizations that meet certain standards can and should
be strengthened; those that do not can and should be weakened.
But
no level of effort will alter the region’s basic reality: borders that
count for little and governments that count for only a little more.
Syria, Iraq, and Libya are likely to be countries in name only;
important parts of each will essentially be autonomous and on their own,
for better or worse. The fact that Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel,
Russia, and the United States are working at cross-purposes more often
than not further suggests a messy future without legal foundation.
In
some ways, the pre-Sykes-Picot Middle East is coming back – but without
the order imposed by the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Middle East
stands to suffer far worse in the next century than it did in the last –
a reality that could well leave us nostalgic for the times of Sykes and
Picot.