Ralph Peters: Thinking the Unthinkable?

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By Martin W. Lewis
Ralph Peterss Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East
Would Look is more than a troubling and provocative
work. The article and the controversies surrounding it
illustrate the central paradox of contemporary geopolitical
discourse: as malformed as existing borders may be,
mere talk about changing them can be harmful. Peters
prods us to think the unthinkable, but to write the
unthinkable is to provoke fast fury abroad.
For all of Peterss miscues, many of his core ideas are
sound. His initial assertion that misplaced boundaries
often generate injustice and strife is spot on. And he is
right to point out that the foreign policy establishment
refuses to acknowledge the violence engendered by
geopolitical misalignment for fear of opening a Pandoras
Box of separatist demands. Because of that fear, any suggestions for alternative arrangements tend to be
dismissed out of hand. Such a stance, Peters argues, is intellectually dishonest. New countries sometimes do
appear on the map without ruing the international order. Think of Montenegro, 2006. Such neophyte states
must, however, come into being through the channels of global diplomacy if they want international recognition.
Should they emerge on their own, their existence will be denied by the powers that be. In this way the system of
international diplomacy that Peters mocks can indeed become a masquerade. Grant diplomatic recognition to
Somaliland, the only eectively administered territory in the bedlam called Somalia? Impossibly destabilizing:
surely anarchy would be loosed across the Horn of Africa!
The existing geopolitical frameworkthe division of the world into recognized sovereign countriesis indeed, in
many areas, an unwholesome mess. Misplaced boundaries, stateless nations, and nationless states spawn
perennial violence or repression. Iraq does not mend, regardless of the lives lost and the monies squandered.
But if Iraq is, as Peters argues, a Frankensteins monster of a state sewn together from ill-tting parts, does his
conclusion necessarily follow: that Iraq should therefore be divided in three? That is a dierent question
altogether. But even if the answer is a rm no, surely one would allow that the case for partition can at least be
made. Should we not question poorly functioning structures, asking how they might be improved? Might curiosity
not lead us to entertain alternative schemes of geo-division? Arent scholars, if not diplomats, almost duty-bound
to think the unthinkable when confronting a quandary like Iraq?
Yet almost any suggestion for changing a particular geopolitical structure will generate troubles of its own.
However problematic they may be for the larger society around them, all existing state boundaries serve one or
more interest groups, which are bound to ght change. Moreover, modifying geopolitical structures to resolve
one ethno-national dispute often spawns another. Hitherto stateless nations gaining sovereignty frequently nd
their own minority groups pining for independence or union with another state, as happened with the Serbs in
Kosovo. There are good reasons, in other words, for deeming certain ideas unthinkable.
Going beyond merely imagining geopolitical restructuring to actually advocating it raises the stakes, especially
when such recommendations come from a former U.S. military intelligence ocer. For Ralph Peters to remap the
polities of the Middle East was a perilous undertaking. The publication of Blood Borders intensied antiAmerican sentiments across the greater Middle East, especially in Turkey. Telling the Turks that justice demands
ceding a quarter of their country to Kurdistan was bound to rouse fury. According to one poll, Turkeya NATO
ally traditionally known for its Western orientationis now one of the most anti-American countries in the world.
Only 12 percent of Turks reportedly maintain favorable views of the United Statesa gure below even than that

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of Pakistan, another ostensible U.S. ally that Peters would seek to dismember.
Yet as Ralph Peters reminds us, borders do change and new countries do appear, regardless of what diplomats
want and are willing to acknowledge. The world political map seemed stable enough in 1990, but how many new
countries have emerged since then? The number is 26, higher than most people realize. In addition to the fteen
republics that gained independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union, seven new countries appeared in the
space of the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia gave rise to two, Eritrea split from Ethiopia, and East Timor
hived o from Indonesia. Countries also disappear occasionally; South Yemen, for instance, was annexed by
Yemen in 1990 (although many South Yemenis seek its rebirth). In all probability, the ocial map will continue to
change; next year may see the birth of Southern Sudan. But any changes that will occur will likely be piecemeal
and gradual, worked out not by audacious scholars ready to redraw the map at one stroke but by cautious
government ocials, persistent separatist leaders, and wary international diplomats, negotiating on a case-bycase basis. Wholesale restructuring of the kind envisaged by Peters is a pipedream. As the response to his
thought-experiment has shown, imagining alternative geographies may be a useful exercise, but trumpeting any
single alternative as a blueprint for change is something else altogether.
Next week we will examine Somaliland, the real but unmapped country that exists within the unreal but mapped
country of Somalia. But rst we must take one more look at the Iranian-Azeri issue that initiated this discussion of
Ralph Peters. Why do Iranian Azeris identify so much more closely with Persians than with their fellow Azeris of
Azerbaijan?

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