UNA GUERRA FRA DUE MONDI

Questo articolo(1) di George Friedman è di proporzioni oceaniche. Riesce ad essere più lungo degli articoli di Eugenio Scalfari. E tuttavia è così interessante che tutti coloro che conoscono accettabilmente l’inglese dovrebbero leggerlo. Poiché però sono una minoranza anche più piccola di ciò che si potrebbe pensare, e d’altra parte il lavoro di traduzione sarebbe troppo lungo per farlo gratis, offro un riassunto.

G.P.

La presenza di tanti musulmani in Europa si spiega con motivi economici: gli europei hanno bisogno di lavoro a basso costo, e i musulmani, dal loro lato, non vengono certo per sposare la cultura locale ma per avere denaro e lavoro. E questo ha generato un massiccio spostamento di popolazioni.

Il Cristianesimo ha perduto la sua egemonia in Europa negli scorsi secoli, e la dottrina che l’ha pressoché sostituito è il laicismo. Ciò traccia una distinzione invalicabile fra la vita pubblica e la vita privata, e la religione è relegata nella sfera privata. Ma ci sono coloro le cui credenze sono così diverse da quelle degli altri, che per loro trovare un terreno comune, nello spazio pubblico, è impossibile. Infine ci sono coloro per i quali la stessa distinzione fra privato e pubblico è priva di senso o inaccettabile.

Con l’indebolirsi del Cristianesimo le antiche battaglie fra le fazioni cristiane sono divenute prive di senso, ma gli europei hanno invitato in casa dei popoli che non soltanto non condividono la dottrina del laicismo, addirittura la rigettano. Nell’allontanamento dai conflitti settari, la cristianità ha visto un progresso, i musulmani (e anche alcuni cristiani) possono vederlo semplicemente come una forma di decadenza, un indebolimento della fede e la perdita delle proprie convinzioni.

Bisogna precisare il significato di Cristianesimo, Islam e laicismo, e tenere presente che per quest’ultimo rimane poco chiaro chi è responsabile per ciò che avviene. Attribuendo la responsabilità di un misfatto al singolo, e non al gruppo, il laicismo tende ad assolvere le nazioni e le religioni dalle loro responsabilità. Se soltanto chi ha sparato e i suoi immediati sostenitori sono responsabili per l’azione, tutti gli altri che condividono la sua fede sono senza colpa. Questo atteggiamento è morale ma paralizza le capacità di difesa. Non tutti i musulmani – e neppure la maggioranza dei musulmani – sono responsabili ma tutti quelli che hanno commesso questi atti sono stati dei musulmani che proclamavano di agire in nome dei musulmani. Si potrebbe dire che questo è un problema musulmano e che sta ai musulmani stessi risolverlo. Ma se non lo fanno?

E c’è un segreto europeo. Gli europei non vedono i musulmani del Nord Africa o della Turchia come europei, ed essi non permettono loro di divenire europei. La soluzione, per il loro isolamento, è il concetto di un multiculturalismo che corrisponde alla ghettizzazione. La “cultura” implica il desiderio di vivere con persone della stessa “cultura”, dunque la dottrina del multiculturalismo naturalmente incoraggia un certo separatismo. E infatti in Francia i musulmani si sono trovati a vivere in condizioni di uno straordinario e squallido affollamento, in enormi casermoni. I francesi vivono altrove.

Gli attentati di musulmani non hanno niente a che vedere con la povertà. Gli immigrati nuovi arrivati sono sempre poveri, ed è del resto la ragione per la quale immigrano. È la seconda generazione che di solito confluisce nella cultura dominante. Ma lo sporco segreto del multiculturalismo è che la sua conseguenza è quella di perpetuare l’isolamento musulmano. E del resto i musulmani non hanno mai avuto l’intenzione di divenire europei, anche se l’avessero potuto. Sono venuti in Francia per guadagnare, non per divenire francesi.

C’è anche il dato storico. Il Cristianesimo ha perduto il suo zelo evangelico e non usa più la spada per uccidere o convertire i suoi nemici. L’Islam invece, seppure in parte, ancora lo fa. E sostenere che non tutti i musulmani condividono questa visione non risolve il problema. Un numero sufficiente di musulmani condivide questa concezione fervente della fede, tanto da mettere in pericolo le vite di coloro che essi disprezzano. Naturalmente questa tendenza alla violenza non può essere tollerata né dagli obiettivi occidentali né dai musulmani che rifiutano di sottoscrivere l’ideologia jihadista. Ma non c’è modo di distinguere quelli che potrebbero uccidere da quelli che non intendono farlo. Ciò ci lascia in uno stato di guerra, come ha detto il Primo Ministro francese Manuel Valls, ma una guerra sarebbe possibile se i nemici indossassero delle uniformi e fossero riconoscibili. In realtà, il mondo ha soltanto la possibilità di accettare la minaccia di periodici attacchi, o di vedere l’intera comunità musulmana come una potenziale minaccia, salvo prova contraria. Proclamare la guerra agli islamici radicali è come dichiararla agli estimatori di Jean-Paul Sarte. Come si riconoscono?

Qualcosa deve essere fatto. Non so che cosa è necessario fare, ma temo di sapere che cosa avverrà. In primo luogo, se è vero che l’Islam sta semplicemente rispondendo a crimini commessi contro di esso, questi crimini non sono nuovi e certamente non sono stati originati né dalla creazione di Israele, né dall’invasione dell’Iraq o da eventi recenti. È qualcosa che va avanti da molto più tempo. Per esempio, gli Assassini erano un ordine islamico segreto che muoveva guerra agli individui che esso vedeva come eretici. Non c’è niente di nuovo, in quanto accade, e non cesserà se si arriverà alla pace in Iraq, se i musulmani occuperanno il Kashmir o se Israele sarà distrutta. E neppure è da prevedere che il laicismo possa estendersi al mondo musulmano.  La Primavera Araba è stata soltanto una fantasia occidentale.

Il senso dell’unità nazionale dell’Europa è radicato nella storia, nella lingua, nell’ethnos e, sì, nel Cristianesimo o nel suo erede, il laicismo. L’Europa non ha un concetto di nazione se non per queste cose, e i musulmani non ne condividono neppure una. Ecco perché il loro destino è sempre la ghettizzazione o l’espulsione. Ciò è sentito come repellente per la sensibilità europea attuale, ma non è certo alieno dalla storia europea. Incapace di distinguere i musulmani radicali dagli altri musulmani, l’Europa sempre più si muoverà, se pure non intenzionalmente, in questa direzione.

Paradossalmente, ciò sarà esattamente ciò che i musulmani radicali desiderano, perché rafforzerà la loro posizione all’interno del mondo musulmano. In particolare nel Nord Africa e in Turchia.

Il nazionalismo europeo è romantico, naturalistico, mentre al contrario l’idea di principi condivisi che non siano i propri è dovunque offensiva per i religiosi. In questo momento storico, questa avversione è estremamente comune fra i musulmani. Questa è una verità che deve essere affrontata.

È un’illusione credere che i conflitti radicati nella geografia possano essere aboliti. È anche un errore essere tanto “filosofici” da sganciarsi dall’umana paura di essere uccisi alla propria scrivania per le proprie idee. Stiamo entrando in un campo in cui non ci sono soluzioni. Ma in tale campo le decisioni sono inevitabili, anche se tutte le scelte sono cattive. Ciò che sarà necessario fare sarà fatto.

C’è una guerra e, come tutte le guerre, questa è molto diversa dall’ultima, per il modo come è condotta. Ma è nondimeno una guerra, e negarlo è negare un’ovvietà.

(1)”A War Between Two Worlds is republished with permission of Stratfor.” Geopolitical Weekly

JANUARY 13, 2015

A War Between Two Worlds

The murders of cartoonists who made fun of Islam and of Jews shopping for their Sabbath meals by Islamists in Paris last week have galvanized the world. A galvanized world is always dangerous. Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in context and try to understand what has happened and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for action can be made. Rage has its place, but actions must be taken with discipline and thought.

I have found that in thinking about things geopolitically, I can cool my own rage and find, if not meaning, at least explanation for events such as these. As it happens, my new book will be published on Jan. 27. Titled Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it is about the unfolding failure of the great European experiment, the European Union, and the resurgence of European nationalism. It discusses the re-emerging borderlands and flashpoints of Europe and raises the possibility that Europe’s attempt to abolish conflict will fail. I mention this book because one chapter is on the Mediterranean borderland and the very old conflict between Islam and Christianity. Obviously this is a matter I have given some thought to, and I will draw on Flashpoints to begin making sense of the murderers and murdered, when I think of things in this way.

Let me begin by quoting from that chapter:

We’ve spoken of borderlands, and how they are both linked and divided. Here is a border sea, differing in many ways but sharing the basic characteristic of the borderland. Proximity separates as much as it divides. It facilitates trade, but also war. For Europe this is another frontier both familiar and profoundly alien.

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean — first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other.

Christians and Muslims have been bitter enemies, battling for control of Iberia. Yet, lest we forget, they also have been allies: In the 16th century, Ottoman Turkey and Venice allied to control the Mediterranean. No single phrase can summarize the relationship between the two save perhaps this: It is rare that two religions might be so obsessed with each other and at the same time so ambivalent. This is an explosive mixture.

Migration, Multiculturalism and Ghettoization

The current crisis has its origins in the collapse of European hegemony over North Africa after World War II and the Europeans’ need for cheap labor. As a result of the way in which they ended their imperial relations, they were bound to allow the migration of Muslims into Europe, and the permeable borders of the European Union enabled them to settle where they chose. The Muslims, for their part, did not come to join in a cultural transformation. They came for work, and money, and for the simplest reasons. The Europeans’ appetite for cheap labor and the Muslims’ appetite for work combined to generate a massive movement of populations.

The matter was complicated by the fact that Europe was no longer simply Christian. Christianity had lost its hegemonic control over European culture over the previous centuries and had been joined, if not replaced, by a new doctrine of secularism. Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different from others’ beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed.

Europe solved the problem with the weakening of Christianity that made the ancient battles between Christian factions meaningless. But they had invited in people who not only did not share the core doctrines of secularism, they rejected them. What Christianity had come to see as progress away from sectarian conflict, Muslims (and some Christians) may see as simply decadence, a weakening of faith and the loss of conviction.

There is here a question of what we mean when we speak of things like Christianity, Islam and secularism. There are more than a billion Christians and more than a billion Muslims and uncountable secularists who mix all things. It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else’s meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility.

This is not necessarily wrong, but it creates a tremendous practical problem. If no one but the gunmen and their immediate supporters are responsible for the action, and all others who share their faith are guiltless, you have made a defensible moral judgment. But as a practical matter, you have paralyzed your ability to defend yourselves. It is impossible to defend against random violence and impermissible to impose collective responsibility. As Europe has been for so long, its moral complexity has posed for it a problem it cannot easily solve. Not all Muslims — not even most Muslims — are responsible for this. But all who committed these acts were Muslims claiming to speak for Muslims. One might say this is a Muslim problem and then hold the Muslims responsible for solving it. But what happens if they don’t? And so the moral debate spins endlessly.

This dilemma is compounded by Europe’s hidden secret: The Europeans do not see Muslims from North Africa or Turkey as Europeans, nor do they intend to allow them to be Europeans. The European solution to their isolation is the concept of multiculturalism — on the surface a most liberal notion, and in practice, a movement for both cultural fragmentation and ghettoization. But behind this there is another problem, and it is also geopolitical. I say in Flashpoints that:

Multiculturalism and the entire immigrant enterprise faced another challenge. Europe was crowded. Unlike the United States, it didn’t have the room to incorporate millions of immigrants — certainly not on a permanent basis. Even with population numbers slowly declining, the increase in population, particularly in the more populous countries, was difficult to manage. The doctrine of multiculturalism naturally encouraged a degree of separatism. Culture implies a desire to live with your own people. Given the economic status of immigrants the world over, the inevitable exclusion that is perhaps unintentionally incorporated in multiculturalism and the desire of like to live with like, the Muslims found themselves living in extraordinarily crowded and squalid conditions. All around Paris there are high-rise apartment buildings housing and separating Muslims from the French, who live elsewhere.

These killings have nothing to do with poverty, of course. Newly arrived immigrants are always poor. That’s why they immigrate. And until they learn the language and customs of their new homes, they are always ghettoized and alien. It is the next generation that flows into the dominant culture. But the dirty secret of multiculturalism was that its consequence was to perpetuate Muslim isolation. And it was not the intention of Muslims to become Europeans, even if they could. They came to make money, not become French. The shallowness of the European postwar values system thereby becomes the horror show that occurred in Paris last week.

The Role of Ideology

But while the Europeans have particular issues with Islam, and have had them for more than 1,000 years, there is a more generalizable problem. Christianity has been sapped of its evangelical zeal and no longer uses the sword to kill and convert its enemies. At least parts of Islam retain that zeal. And saying that not all Muslims share this vision does not solve the problem. Enough Muslims share that fervency to endanger the lives of those they despise, and this tendency toward violence cannot be tolerated by either their Western targets or by Muslims who refuse to subscribe to a jihadist ideology. And there is no way to distinguish those who might kill from those who won’t. The Muslim community might be able to make this distinction, but a 25-year-old European or American policeman cannot. And the Muslims either can’t or won’t police themselves. Therefore, we are left in a state of war. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called this a war on radical Islam. If only they wore uniforms or bore distinctive birthmarks, then fighting only the radical Islamists would not be a problem. But Valls’ distinctions notwithstanding, the world can either accept periodic attacks, or see the entire Muslim community as a potential threat until proven otherwise. These are terrible choices, but history is filled with them. Calling for a war on radical Islamists is like calling for war on the followers of Jean-Paul Sartre. Exactly what do they look like?

The European inability to come to terms with the reality it has created for itself in this and other matters does not preclude the realization that wars involving troops are occurring in many Muslim countries. The situation is complex, and morality is merely another weapon for proving the other guilty and oneself guiltless. The geopolitical dimensions of Islam’s relationship with Europe, or India, or Thailand, or the United States, do not yield to moralizing.

Something must be done. I don’t know what needs to be done, but I suspect I know what is coming. First, if it is true that Islam is merely responding to crimes against it, those crimes are not new and certainly didn’t originate in the creation of Israel, the invasion of Iraq or recent events. This has been going on far longer than that. For instance, the Assassins were a secret Islamic order to make war on individuals they saw as Muslim heretics. There is nothing new in what is going on, and it will not end if peace comes to Iraq, Muslims occupy Kashmir or Israel is destroyed. Nor is secularism about to sweep the Islamic world. The Arab Spring was a Western fantasy that the collapse of communism in 1989 was repeating itself in the Islamic world with the same results. There are certainly Muslim liberals and secularists. However, they do not control events — no single group does — and it is the events, not the theory, that shape our lives.

Europe’s sense of nation is rooted in shared history, language, ethnicity and yes, in Christianity or its heir, secularism. Europe has no concept of the nation except for these things, and Muslims share in none of them. It is difficult to imagine another outcome save for another round of ghettoization and deportation. This is repulsive to the European sensibility now, but certainly not alien to European history. Unable to distinguish radical Muslims from other Muslims, Europe will increasingly and unintentionally move in this direction.

Paradoxically, this will be exactly what the radical Muslims want because it will strengthen their position in the Islamic world in general, and North Africa and Turkey in particular. But the alternative to not strengthening the radical Islamists is living with the threat of death if they are offended. And that is not going to be endured in Europe.

Perhaps a magic device will be found that will enable us to read the minds of people to determine what their ideology actually is. But given the offense many in the West have taken to governments reading emails, I doubt that they would allow this, particularly a few months from now when the murders and murderers are forgotten, and Europeans will convince themselves that the security apparatus is simply trying to oppress everyone. And of course, never minimize the oppressive potential of security forces.

The United States is different in this sense. It is an artificial regime, not a natural one. It was invented by our founders on certain principles and is open to anyone who embraces those principles. Europe’s nationalism is romantic, naturalistic. It depends on bonds that stretch back through time and cannot be easily broken. But the idea of shared principles other than their own is offensive to the religious everywhere, and at this moment in history, this aversion is most commonly present among Muslims. This is a truth that must be faced.

The Mediterranean borderland was a place of conflict well before Christianity and Islam existed. It will remain a place of conflict even if both lose their vigorous love of their own beliefs. It is an illusion to believe that conflicts rooted in geography can be abolished. It is also a mistake to be so philosophical as to disengage from the human fear of being killed at your desk for your ideas. We are entering a place that has no solutions. Such a place does have decisions, and all of the choices will be bad. What has to be done will be done, and those who refused to make choices will see themselves as more moral than those who did. There is a war, and like all wars, this one is very different from the last in the way it is prosecuted. But it is war nonetheless, and denying that is denying the obvious.

Editor’s Note: The newest book by Stratfor chairman and founder George Friedman, Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, will be released Jan. 27. It is now available for pre-order.

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