Maybe deliberate is too strong a word, but certainly the map ignored all tribal, geographical and cultural boundaries. Nothing other than instability should have been expected.
It's possible the maps were drawn largely into shapes that made sense to people in London based on how they'd choose to govern them if they were permanent fixtures in the empire. Those people may have never even set foot in the region.
Even that article notes that the current borders within Europe itself have changed through war and negotiation over decades and centuries. That another region could have the same difficulties is probably to be expected.
> Nothing other than instability should have been expected.
Genuine, general question: we in the west are very keen on multiculturalism and many of the most ardent multiculturalists blame European powers (as you do) for carving up the Middle East into culturally heterogeneous regions which "inevitably lean toward instability". To me, these things feel in conflict; am I wrong for feeling that way? If you're a multiculturalist, how do you reconcile these things?
To be clear, I'm not sure whether or not I'm a multiculturalist. On the one hand I like being around culturally diverse people; on the other, it seems hard to work out a society in which we may not be able to agree on the basic ground rules.
Multiculturalism is kind of the holy grail, but it requires that all participating culture value multiculturalism above all.
It is similar to democracy, you must accept and yield to the fact that everyone should have an equal say, and deserve basic rights, irregardless of your own beliefs and judgements.
You have to value live and let live above all else. You have to value having someone else do as they please as long as it doesn't prevent you from doing as you please above all else, even above your belief of heaven and hell, of how God wants men and women to act, of what you think is decent or not, good or bad, fun or boring, smart or dumb, etc.
I think this is often abridged as valuing Freedom and Liberty above all else. Where freedom is the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and liberty is the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved. That means your top most value is maximizing Freedom while respecting the Liberty of others.
And traditionally, a Liberal is someone who has this as their top most value.
And this is the paradox, because values are often a big part of one's culture, but for multiculturalism to work, all must share this one value, and so you could say that makes it they must share culture to some extent, as they must all share this one value and have it as the most valuable value of all, that means multiculturalism only works if everyone is a Liberal.
I just described the underpinning of multiculturalism. It only works if everyone shares this one value, which means it doesn't work to just put a bunch of people together that don't share this value. That makes multiculturalism its own culture.
In practice, it will make for a very diverse place, but in terms of value, everyone will value this diversity above all else.
Edit: Most of the time it also helps to value fraternity, which is that you value mutual support within society. So you'd want to maximize freedom while respecting other's liberty, and provide support to others when in need. I think this has to be the commonality between all members for multiculturalism to work well.
This seems like a sensible, agreeable answer. What do you think about the folks who advocate for restricting freedoms (e.g., speech) in the name of multiculturalism? Are they false multiculturalists? Or does multiculturalism require that we censure people who don't share our (often very narrowly-defined) multiculturalist views? And if so, is it a worthy enterprise?
Freedom is restricted in the name of Liberty and Fraternity. That's why I didn't just say your top most value is Freedom. Your top most value must be to maximize Freedom while respecting others' liberties and supporting others in need.
So if the speech doesn't respect other's liberties, then it is a problem to a multicultural society yes, because it wouldn't be in-line with the key top value that is critical to the success of a society that embraces diversity to get along with each other and prosper.
Think about it, I'm saying that the requirement to a successful democratic multi-cultural society is that everyone shares this as their top value. Therefore any attack to this core value or attempt to subvert this core value is an attack on that society's core.
So if your speech attacks this, it is natural to see a defense against it.
Of course, practically speaking, balancing how to maximize freedoms while respecting each other's liberties and supporting those in needs is a tricky act. There's no unambiguous infallible bullet point that always tells you exactly how best to do so. Like any optimization problems, finding the global optimum is a very hard problem (I believe it is NP hard, if not harder). And in the case of human dwelling, N is massive, and the number of variables in the equation are as well.
So what we have to do is our best, and as long as we have the right intentions, which is we come to the table with that same Liberal core value, then I think we can work it out.
Tensions will be created when anyone at the table will start to no longer believe the others value liberalism. So I think that be a good start is for everyone to be clear that they still value this core value, and then discuss where within that they feel like either there is a way to bring even more freedom while being respectful of liberties and supporting those in needs, or that they themselves feel a conflict between their liberty and the one of others which they want addressed.
I think this makes sense, but "tricky act" and "paradox" indeed.
Free speech absolutists often argue that free speech is the only viable way to be multiculturalist (they'll cite the counter-productivity of censorship, free speech is necessary to even debate what is/isn't multiculturalism, speech codes that prohibit anti-multiculturalist speech are easily abused, etc) while many others (predominately left-wing folks, I think) argue that multiculturalism demands that advocating for any kind of multiculturalism besides their own narrow strain is anti-multiculturalist (e.g., this was the basic charge against James Damore, David Shor, Lee Fang, etc). [^1]
If we say that anti-multiculturalist speech is intolerable, then "multiculturalism" becomes a hollow word that we can use to bludgeon each other. It can even work against its own purported goals in that you can have a powerful, narrow ideological segment that censures the rest of society arbitrarily by invoking "multiculturalism" however tenuously (consider again the folks who advocate for racially segregating society in the name of multiculturalism).
Maybe this is a problem with any core value, but we just see abuses of multiculturalism more frequently because of some particularity of the present moment?
[^1]: I'm not arguing that right-wing folks are more likely to be speech absolutists than left-wing folks (although at present this may well be true due to momentary political power dynamics); rather, that right-wing folks are unlikely to argue that free-speech is the best way to achieve a multiculturalist society because (as I understand it) multiculturalism isn't a right-wing value.
Maybe deliberate is too strong a word, but certainly the map ignored all tribal, geographical and cultural boundaries. Nothing other than instability should have been expected.