From the conclusion to my post regarding a look back at some of the early history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine:
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
This “unexpected” hasn’t gone on for over one hundred years because political leaders are stupid, “incapable…of learning from experience.” When something like this is sustained – when the same “mistakes” occur repeatedly – one might consider other reasons.
I will revisit my view for the reasons behind this ongoing history in the coming days.
Today is “the coming days.”
Considering the comments I received to the post, I think I threw a bit of a curveball with this conclusion. While the subject post was regarding conflict in the Middle East, my views of the ongoing history see this as a mere portion of the story.
Halford Mackinder
I remain swayed by the geo-political view first presented to the Royal Geographical Society by Halford Mackinder in 1904: “The Geographical Pivot of History,” also known as The Heartland Theory.
He begins by describing the preceding 400 years as “the Columbian epoch,” the time when Europe explored and controlled the seas and much of the coastline of the several continents.
He looks back to the long history of invasions from the east – forming in the steppes of Central Asia and moving into Europe or China. He describes the geography of the region, the rivers (and lack of navigable rivers), the climate.
He contrasts control over the oceans – as Europe has demonstrated effectively over the preceding 400 years – with control, or lack of control, over this Eurasian heartland. The oceans give access to coastline over a vast…