A Peace to End All Peace

A Peace to End All Peace
by David Frokman


This book could have easily been titled “What If” or even better yet “Only If” as it describes at world leader level in detail not only intentions that were miss understood, but also entangled with poor timing of superseding events. If you had ever heard disparaging comments on Churchill as the prime instigator, this book helps you visualize that he was indeed a prime mover, surrounded by a cacophony of leaders on the rise and fall, as we were all twisted by a press leading their peoples into war and a peace that has yet to be achieved. Other prime mover instigators are The Mark Sykes the co author of the infamous Sykes - Picot Agreement between England and France to partition the Ottoman Empire. Infamous do to through his naivete, as it turns out. Also to the cast of British arrogance was Lord Kitchener’s march towards folly in the Middle Eastern debacle. And finally the granddaddy of them all was the British PM Lloyd George, who pulled the strings of many.

This book is clearly from a British perspective as it describes the art of getting the bureaucratic politics right, the chief endeavor of the book. It was clearly akin to the work of Picasso. The chief story plot in the framework of history is the Great Game which was to shield Britain's road to India from the motives of Russia and then France. It was a game where Russia plays a Central Role in the beginning through deception, the middle through folly, and the end through deception. If written by a Russian author it would be only slightly twisted through logical story telling that the British made all their strategic decision from a standpoint of paranoia.

As a late comer to World War One an American can say that Wilson, lost in his own theories of sovereign destiny, was duped by all sides in the conflict and the peace process. I mention this to help the American reader appreciate history's cause and effect and learn you must make a paradigm shift to the perspective of WWI to learn a critical lesson pertinent to our involvement in the Middle East. The book provides a worthy plot in a panoramic view worth the time to read you find nascent Modern Middle East politics entwined with the politics of the Great Powers in a time where the paradigm of a Palestinian State was lost, and still is. In the brokering of Palestinian land Syria was granted to the House of Hussein, and not the Palestinians. This huge gap in fate is only the collective total of what is still an enigma today which is peace. Leaders of that time left today’s world leaders, still blind to that oversight and now buried in time, trying to divide a small piece of unproductive land in Israel when in fact the fruitful land of Arab Syria is rightfully Palestinian. Even the author of this book, a historian uncovers the folly, but does not recognize what is right before his eyes. A paradigm shift in history is still at large.

The first British domino after the Duke Ferdinand was assassinated in Serbia drawing Russia and Germany at odds in a land where Great Britain was beholden as essential to the Great Game. It was only an excuse to go to a pending war to settle brewing international intrigue. Keep in mind this is only 55 years after the Crimean War over the very similar world order. To ward off such a folly; if only the world knew of Churchill’s intentions regarding Turkey, much like his arm waving in the 1930's. If only England knew anything at all about the inner movements of the Ottoman Empire's rising new leaders, and a missed opportunity to bring the Turks in on the side of the Western Allies. If only British admirals at sea actually knew that in their first attack on the Dardanelles, the Turks were out of bullets and evacuating the city, and a simple sail in to the harbor was all that was required to take The Ottoman Empire out of the war. If only.… WWI would have been reduced to a mere conflict. But rather the folly of deception and intrigue between Russia, and England, as the Great Game for the passage to India found new wrinkles of deceptive quagmire that would spin mankind into further world disorder. The deal, missed deal, and counter dealing between the West and the Middle Eastern factions would never have allowed to bloom into the man eating orchid that it had.

Delving into the first layer the reader learns that the partners that went in to WWI as allies came out some as adversaries and some as reluctant partners. Of course the agendas of the alliances were of equally folly as the reasons for their break ups. In every case the rationale could not be substantiated by any argument of self interest. Russia effectively changed sides in the peace process and found alignment with Germany. France and Britain lost their way over Syria. In the process of each country’s effort to out maneuver their partner in a political dance with their new dance partner in their face amidst dance partners among the Muslim survivors who had not learned how to dance to a sovereign tune. All that was missing was a “Square Dance Caller’. This found France with a mandate over a reluctant people and Britain over a vast disparate people that it could not afford to rule.

Where Britain had an opportunity to reach her goal of an empire that ran up the East coast of Africa, across the Middle East and in to India, her deceit in politics domestically and internationally led to the squandering of a peace founded in the footings of democratic rule. This book draws an ironic parallel to that of the American Colonists of the folly in colonial management of far away lands. The difference is is found in the American rue where their subjects who aware of the democratic process and were once amicable with the British Parliament and Crown. In the case of the Middle East mandates that went to Britain, they had no clue of parliamentary procedure and could only judge Britain on the early promises that they could not keep, because they were financial and politically, both domestically and internationally, exhausted.

This book provides detailed account of my summary. The reader gets to agonize over the near misses of peace. The chance for world order seemed always around the corner with ill timed or misplaced communications that would set world leaders off in to a direction totally against their lost goals and objectives. In the end you are as exhausted from frustration as you learn the belligerents of the war and the antagonists of the peace, there were no winners to be found. The following are synopsis’ of a few near misses and of intrigue.

1. The British government was unaware of Turkish diplomatic activity of CUP ( young Turks) and did not realize that the Porte was urgently seeking a Great Power Alliance rather than with Germany.

2. Admiral De Robeck's withdrawal from a Sea – land battle that the Turks had already retreated from combined with the army who failed to attack an enemy who had run out of ammunition. For Winston Churchill, who was only hours away from victory, was to become the torment of his life. It was more than a personal triumph that had slipped through his fingers. It was also his last chance to save the world in which he had grown up: to win a war while the familiar, traditional Europe of traditional established monarchies and empires still survived.

3. al-Faruqi a rogue Arab emissary under no authority form Hussein found himself negotiating the Damascus Protocol drawing up boarders of a partitioned Ottoman Empire with Britain. Language combined with British exuberance, hindered accuracy of the lines...But the geographical references made by McMahon for Britain were hazy. Was reference made for example to the city of Damascus, the environs of Damascus, or the province of Damascus? Did "districts" mean wilayahs (environs) or vilayets (provences)? Was it al-Faryuqi who spoke of districts, or was it McMahon or Clayton? By districts did the British mean towns? The significance of the Aleppo-Homs-Hama-Damascus demand had been bitterly debated ever since. For decades afterward s partisans of an Arab Palestine argued that if those four geographical terms were properly understood, boarders would be different. British Cairo had promised that Palestine would be Arab; while partisans of a Jewish Palestine argued the reverse. In a sense the debate was pointless; McMahon deliberately used phrases so devious as to commit himself to nothing at all. In fact the cities in question were merely four stops on a French railway, connecting Constantinople power to the Hejaz.

4. Whether or not they constituted a majority in the city- and the then current Encyclopedia Britannica indicated that they did not- the Jews were economically preponderant, Baghdad, along with Jerusalem, was one of the two Jewish cities of Asia, and a thousand years before had become the seat of if Diaspora- the head of Jewish religion in the Eastern Diaspora- and this the Capitol of Oriental Judaism. Jews in large numbers lived in the Mesopotamian provinces of Basra and Baghdad since the time of captivity by Babylonians about 600 BC and this settled in the country a thousand years before the coming of Arabs in 634 AD. Recognition of this could have found a Jewish State in Baghdad.

5. Weizman (Jewish leader to Palestine, was introduced the Feisal. He wrote, He is a leader! He is quite intelligent and very honest man, handsome as a picture! He is not interested in Palestine, but on the other hand he wants the while of Northern Syria and Damascus.. Grist contemptuous of the Palestinian Arab whole he doesn't even regard as Arab.

6. The Syrian National party of 1920 did insist on full immediate independence for Syria and was also prepared to recognize a Jewish National home in Palestine. At the same time an Arab delegation from Palestine confronted the British military governor with a resolution opposing Zionism and petitioning part of an independent Syria.

7. When the Palestinian – Jewish question came up the map of the time held that Palestine included what is now Jordan and part of Syria. By 1923 what was once Palestinian, became “token booby prize gifts” to Saudi kings who were not awarded Saudi Arabia and the Jews were left with a barren land to win 35 years and another World War later by comparison called Israel. Today we find ourselves further subdividing the small strip of land called Israel into two separate states on of which already has internal strife leading to further fractionating of Palestinian people.

8. Brought out in parallel events were the Bolshevik excursions of intrigue into Afghanistan and India including what is now Pakistan. This in conjunction with their return to the remains of the Ottoman Empire confounded British strategy to maintain their newly established supremacy of the Great Game. There was a keen fear of Bolshevism among all western powers long before the Totalitarian Communism fear took root. It was in the context of Jewish borne conspiracy that the second Russian Revolution was seen by British officials as the latest manifestations of a bigger conspiracy. Jews were prominent among the Bolshevik leaders; so the Bolshevik seizure of power was viewed by many within British government as not merely as German inspired but as Jewish directed. In the West Bolshevism was a threat to the order of rule by Captains & Kings” more-so that a threat to the liberties of the individual man. One can clearly see that the Jews had to win Israel, despite England’s attempts to "help them along".

In conclusion this strictly British view of the events the of 1915 to 1923 laid the frame work for continued hostilities from the Mediterranean Ocean to the Pacific Ocean open to further settlement by the last of political means…wars. It is clear that at the time the attempted colonial state, while it may have momentarily taken advantage of the local people deserving of self determination, there existed a temporary sense of law and order. The British pull back for what ever reason left one sixth of our world population to figure out how to organize a civilized form of government in a world that at the time was fully vested in nation building through self determination and democratic process. These people only knew government through edicts of corrupt Caliphs through the process of suzerainty. India, a non Muslim country figured it out as they actually maintained the quality aspects of the ruler they later threw out. A lesson learned.

So this leaves a question on Iraq and Afghanistan . Will the United States along with its half hearted world partners repeat the mistake made by the British 86 years ago? Will our efforts to plant the seeds of self determination, beginning at the will of the people take root without the nurturing akin to what France gave to the United States in 1776, or what United States provided to Japan and Germany in the aftermath of WWII? Or will the vacuum left in a premature pullback be a perpetuation of a region in continual conflict? Taking the unfortunate reality of rogue leaders out of the equation to maintain the scope of this book: If history can be of value, the lessons learned are for our world leaders of today to get past the agendas of attack and fear, and on to the recognition of the values found in world peace?

The number one obstacle to learning the truth about ourselves is fear founded in belief in scarcity that perpetuates greed and power. To over come that fear we must first have trust in ourselves and then in our neighbors. In a world of trust comes a world of knowing, a world of intelligence. It was the that lack of intelligence that led to the folly of wars producing more human destruction than any other period in history. This book exposes the need to re-prioritize that lesson learned. A must read.