Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East.

Ninety-five years ago today, European diplomats gathered at a porcelain factory in the Paris suburb of Sèvres and signed a treaty to remake the Middle East from the ashes of the Ottoman empire. The plan collapsed so quickly we barely remember it anymore, but the short-lived Treaty of Sèvres, no less than the endlessly discussed Sykes-Picotagreement, had consequences that can still be seen today. We might do well to consider a few of them as the anniversary of this forgotten treaty quietly passes by.

Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret

“I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten,” says Títos Patríkios. “The Athens police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament in Syntagma Square. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic.”

 A day that changed history: the bodies of unarmed protestors shot by the police and the British army in Athens on 3 December 1944. Photograph: Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

And then came the defining moment: the recklessness of youth, the passion of belief in a justice burning bright: “I jumped up on the fountain in the middle of the square, the one that is still there, and I began to shout: “Comrades, don’t disperse! Victory will be ours! Don’t leave. The time has come. We will win!”

The Coup in Chile

What happened in Chile on September 11, 1973 did not suddenly reveal anything new about the ways in which men of power and privilege seek to protect their social order: the history of the last 150 years is spattered with such episodes.

A left-wing political prisoner is registered at the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, 1973. Koen Wessing

Even so, Chile has at least forced upon many people on the Left some uncomfortable reflections and questions about the “strategy” which is appropriate in Western-type regimes for what is loosely called the “transition to socialism.”

The 'sanitised narrative' of Hiroshima's atomic bombing

The US has always insisted that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War Two. But it is a narrative that has little emphasis on the terrible human cost.

I met a remarkable young man in Hiroshima the other day. His name is Jamal Maddox and he is a student at Princeton University in America. Jamal had just toured the peace museum and met with an elderly hibakusha, a survivor of the bombing.

Cyprus Remembers 1974 Coup Against President Archbishop Makarios

Cyprus commemorates the dead and condemns the 1974 coup

Photo © CyprusExpat.co.uk

Today, 15th July, marks 41 years since the events which unfolded on this East Mediterranean island led to its division and occupation by Turkey. The Greek military junta, then ruling Greece, toppled the democratically elected president of Cyprus, the late Archbishop Makarios III.

Thanks to the departure of an arrogant negotiator, serious negotiations can now begin

The negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles have so far been disrupted by the attitude of a British negotiator, a certain John Maynard Keynes. He has a flamboyant personality and dubious morals,[1] and has consistently employed an arrogant and professional tone to crush other negotiators with his contempt.

World War II and the Origins of American Unease

We are at the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. That victory did not usher in an era of universal peace. Rather, it introduced a new constellation of powers and a complex balance among them. Europe's great powers and empires declined, and the United States and the Soviet Union replaced them, performing an old dance to new musical instruments. Technology, geopolitics' companion, evolved dramatically as nuclear weapons, satellites and the microchip — among myriad wonders and horrors — changed not only the rules of war but also the circumstances under which war was possible. But one thing remained constant: Geopolitics, technology and war remained inseparable comrades.

The Legacy of WWII on Japan's Intelligence Apparatus

When the Allies defeated Japan at the end of World War II, they dismantled the Japanese security apparatus and deliberately left the country dependent on outside powers. This entailed not only taking apart the military but also the extensive imperial intelligence apparatus that had facilitated Japanese expansion in Asia. As it reconstituted itself, postwar Japan opted for a decentralized intelligence system as an alternative to its prewar model. The result was more a fragment of an intelligence apparatus than a full system, with Tokyo outsourcing the missing components to its allies. This system worked through the Cold War, when Japan was more essential to U.S. anti-Soviet strategy. Since then, however, Japan has found itself unable to count on its allies to provide vital intelligence in a timely manner. The Islamic State hostage crisis in January, during which Japan depended on Jordanian and Turkish intelligence, reinforced this lesson.

In response to the incident, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has started drafting a proposal to create a new agency specializing in foreign intelligence. To address Japanese dependence on outsiders, the new system will shift away from a decentralized model with limited collection capacity to a centralized system with in-house capabilities. The plan would support Japan's slow normalization of its overall military capabilities in order to face new threats.

A Look Back at the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Investigation

On the morning of Feb. 26, 1993, a massive truck bomb ripped a hole almost 100 feet across the B-2 level of the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center's North Tower. The blast wave was so powerful that it penetrated five stories of the reinforced concrete building. In addition to causing structural damage, the explosion destroyed or heavily damaged hundreds of vehicles parked in the garage. That such a powerful explosion killed only six people is nothing short of miracle, for the attackers had a goal much more grandiose.

They wanted to topple the North Tower onto the South Tower to destroy them both and kill thousands. Had a device of the same magnitude been detonated at street level during rush hour, it would have likely killed scores if not hundreds of people and wounded perhaps thousands more.

Pearl Harbor: The Attack That Cost Japan Its Empire

Seventy-three years ago, in the early morning of Dec. 7, 1941, hundreds of Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft were dispatched from six fleet carriers, their flight path south toward the U.S. naval installations, airfields and warships at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Japanese B5N aircraft equipped with specially modified Type 91 torpedoes hit Battleship Row, targeting high value capital ships, while D3A dive-bombers honed in on ground targets. Throughout the attack, A6M fighter aircraft provided air cover and strafed targets of opportunity. The same day, the Japanese military moved against U.S. forces in the Philippines, invaded Thailand and landed in the British colony of Malaya. The Pacific War had begun.

Thanksgiving and Puritan Geopolitics in the Americas

The first winter took many of the English at Plymouth. By fall 1621, only 53 remained of the 132 who had arrived on the Mayflower. But those who had survived brought in a harvest. And so, in keeping with tradition, the governor called the living 53 together for a three-day harvest feast, joined by more than 90 locals from the Wampanoag tribe. The meal was a moment to recognize the English plantation's small step toward stability and, hopefully, profit. This was no small thing. A first, deadly year was common. Getting through it was an accomplishment. England's successful colony of Virginia had had a massive death toll — of the 8,000 arrivals between 1607 and 1625, only 15 percent lived.

But still the English came to North America and still government and business leaders supported them. This was not without reason. In the 17th century, Europe was in upheaval and England's place in it unsure. Moreover, England was going through a period of internal instability that would culminate in the unthinkable — civil war in 1642 and regicide in 1649. England's colonies were born from this situation, and the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and the little-known colony of Providence Island in the Caribbean were part of a broader Puritan geopolitical strategy to solve England's problems.

What the Fall of the Wall Did Not Change

Twenty-five years ago, a crowd filled with an uneasy mixture of joy and rage tore down the Berlin Wall. There was joy for the end of Germany's partition and the end of tyranny. There was rage against generations of fear. One fear was of communist oppression. The other fear was of the threat of a war, which had loomed over Europe and Germany since 1945. One fear was moral and ideological, while the other was prudential and geopolitical. As in all defining political moments, fear and rage, ideology and geopolitics, blended together in an intoxicating mix.

US-China-Japan: Beware the ‘Megarian Trap’

“That decision may be judged irrational or merely a miscalculation of likely consequences, but it is like many similar ones throughout history in which passion inspired by old hatreds and wounded honor are the cause of dangerous actions.”

Donald Kagan

Pericles' Funeral Oration

Image Credit: Philipp Foltz

As the United States and China continue to play geopolitical chess in Asia, forming or renewing economic political and military alliances, it is pleasing to note that leading scholars in international relations from both East andWest have once more turned their attention to Thucydides, the 5th century Athenian historian. More than two millennia old, Thucydides’ work has nonetheless become a center of vigorous debate among American and Chinese strategists alike, with the Chinese political science association dedicating a panel to it at its annual 2014 conference in Beijing. Whereas scholars and generals once looked to the Peloponnesian War to understand the conflict between U.S. naval power vs. Soviet land power, today they study it in hopes of neutralizing the rising security competition between a status quo power, the United States, and a rising/recovering power, the Peoples Republic of China.

Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape

I will be leaving this week to visit a string of countries that are now on the front line between Russia and the European Peninsula: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan. A tour like that allows you to look at the details of history. But it is impossible to understand those details out of context. The more I think about recent events, the more I realize that what has happened in Ukraine can only be understood by considering European geopolitics since 1914 -- a hundred years ago and the beginning of World War I.

In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman wrote a superb and accurate story about how World War I began. For her it was a confluence of perception, misperception, personality and decisions. It was about the leaders, and implicit in her story was the idea that World War I was the result of miscalculation and misunderstanding. I suppose that if you focus on the details, then the war might seem unfortunate and avoidable. I take a different view: It was inevitable from the moment Germany united in 1871. When it happened and exactly how it happened was perhaps up to decision-makers. That it would happen was a geopolitical necessity. And understanding that geopolitical necessity gives us a framework for understanding what is happening in Ukraine, and what is likely to happen next.