Historical Combat, War, Geopolitics History and Analysis

[Gary]

What nationalism brought?
Between 1911 to 1923 Turks fought half of the world at the end they won. What did you win?

You do realize that Indonesia wouldn't be here if we didn't won the war of independence ?

In short there are many wars of independence in the 20th century, but in the grand scheme of thing those are nothing and brought nothing

I believe tho Ottomans helped Aceh a long ago , I am more then sure that few of my boys were there .

The Ottomans are such a champion of Islam, that they send the Sultanate of Aceh guns and ships in the far away Nusantara archipelago.

If the Ottomans were a nationalistic state with nationalism as its ideology, they would never bother to help fellow Muslims in Aceh. Fortunately, for most of their existence Islam is their rallying cry and state ideology.

 

[Afif]

I would say, yes correlation is not causation.

But you have a far higher chance of success with a well founded democratic republic (I stress the republic too) than say a hobbesian form of a republic.

You simply allow greater participation of society in the process....that creates the necessary pressures on the republic's institutions compared to a single concentrated power source.

This is why autocratic models rely on copying and pasting parts of what worked outside them (if going for introduction of borrowed virtue/pragmatism from outside.... instead of some extreme continued march to utopia and/or whatever claimed reasons for the extreme status quo control in some snapshot)..... i.e from systems more in tune with their societies.....as autocracies themselves do not have the resolution and feedback from their own society (that they distrust and oppress as result).

Parts of it may work for some length of time, but ultimately reality requires resolution and hedging in the state with the far larger, older and greater entity (society) that preceded it and even created the state to begin with. There is also the moral argument here, a state should never be ingrateful and hypocritical to its society.....autocracies start with that ingratitude and hypocrisy as the default, and thus always live on borrowed time in end with all the damage done in the interim.

That is true in principle. Even more so in modern period. I am not disputing that. (For now)

However, I have my reservations about whether where Europe stand today compared to rest of the world, can solely be attributed to democracy.

 

[Rooxbar]

Well, I am a student of sociology and I have a great enthusiasm in these topics.

Again, one of the important thing is to be able to distinguish between correlation and causation.

I will try to respond to it later. (Today is holiday) If @Nilgiri and @Rooxbar are interested and can make some times, I would love to listen to their valuable perspectives on this.

Hi Afif,

Republics and democracies have various mechanisms of including large swathes of the population in the political process and hence working as relief valves to prevent pent-up pressure from leading to crisis and chaos by making groups think they have or could potentially have a stake in the system through systemic means. Any system that doesn't have these mechanisms has to rely on other sorts of brain-washing and police state to achieve the same thing but it should be evident how republics and democracies can achieve this much more reliably (brainwashing is needed in republics and democracies as well to achieve a culture of sanctity of process and a civic cult to enshrine conceptions of civic duty to work alongside local and meaningful individual participation to guarantee vested interest in the system.)

Another thing republics and democracies do much better is to prevent exclusive and privileged access to lines of credit, i.e. corruption. Obviously nothing is perfect but money congregates around nodes of power, and expertise congregates around nodes of money. In a system where power is centralized and doesn't change hands, you have one big node of power, hence money, hence expertise. It should be clear how one big node can only support and sustain a very limited part of the population in positions of expertise, while a spread-out network of nodes provides credit to enough nodes for it to attract many more of the proverbial honeybees. The former situation inevitably leads to the Lorenz curve touching the x-axis all the way through, i.e. huge inequality, waste of human capital, and erosion of trust and hope. Curiously Tocqueville calls this a "democracy" as everyone has been reduced to the same ground level in the face of absolute power of the center.

As with all things, devil's in the detail concerning specific formation of republics and democracies. Some republics are more like democracies, some democracies are more like republics, and some democracies and republics are neither democracies nor republics, and some authoritarian systems have republican features in certain limited domains.

Republics and democracies have features that cancel each other's weaknesses. The U.S. system was set up to be a Republic in the image of Rome and Venice, but it slowly gained democratic features until it reached a point in 80s where it has gained the worst features of democracies in catering to faction, short-sightedness due to excessive lobbying, excessive individualism and a disregard for process, which in turn leads to being open to manipulation by demagogues. The end course of all of this is instability, lack of competence and decline. Several historical examples leads me to the conclusion that it's safer to err on the side of republican features as modernity has made "panem et circenses" much easier than before so the need for democratic relief valves might be overstated. But even this latter model is not sustainable either since it enables a sort of individuation that itself leads to erosion of sense of civic duty, so it must be counteracted by a mandatory and very involved local administration.

 

[Nilgiri]

That is true in principle. Even more so in modern period. I am not disputing that. (For now)

However, I have my reservations about whether where Europe stand today compared to rest of the world, can solely be attributed to democracy.

Of course it cannot be solely attributed to democracy. Democracy is just operating system of the republic that has found overall most balance (with arranging hierarchy to optimize trust in authority i.e final proof in pudding stuff).....i.e involving society as far as possible in state's politics while holding certain basic rights in the individual as natural and sacrosanct....to ensure safeguards against mob rule, mob tyranny and other such excesses of the mob at that basic level and then with checks and balances (in the republic's setup) at higher levels too.

Really there is no other way to churn out this balance in a republic for each society it serves.

But lot of development (prior or even during democratic operation...and even prior to a republic) happens in unbalanced or even raw/obvious ways that would have happened without a democracy. I mean majority of human history/civilisation was undemocratic....yet here we are not foraging for food in wilderness 24/7.

But when societies have developed to certain stage, democracies within a republic become very important to prevent mob excesses and to also transmit your political work/understanding as far as possible to others. You can still go wrong on it, there's no guarantee (i.e creation/operation of Diet in Imperial era Japan and Reichstag/Bundesrat for German empire)....but one can study the specific problems to then introduce better systems within this framework.

Actually in post war Japan in the 1940s and early 1950s, many elements of Japanese intelligentsia expected US+MacArthur imposed constitution to quickly be replaced with more conventional Japanese one (once Americans lost enough interest, their security guarantees enforced etc), with say the 2/3rds or 3/4s vote needed for that.....but actually the principles that had already taken effect at ground level (involving more free markets, labour and land reforms etc) permanently baked in the worthiness of the new constitution as the principles simply aligned well to Japan's context....there was no relapse that some of Japanese intelligentsia expected/wanted.

 

[Gary]

Your hypocrisy and self righteousnesd is without presedan. Total hypocrisy.
Where was Enver Pasha? Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal were the commanders in the field to Umar Mukhtar 1911 in Libya, no?
The Members of CUP trained, armed and established the framework for Umar Mukhtar Jihad. That's something very clear, if course your utter dishonesty , pride and fanaticism don't want to admit it .

Fanaticism and dishonesty are your hallmarks throughout your entire post.

The Ottomans left Libya in 1912, then for most of the time, the Senussi order did the heavy lifting, this was especially true after the fall of the Caliphate. You basically try to rob Omar Mokhtar and the glory of his struggle to attribute it to some nationalistic group (the CUP).

Omar Mokhtar personally has nothing to do with the pathetic Western ideology called nationalism that the CUP is particularly known for, free is Omar Mokhtar from the Western-style ideology, government, and institution that the CUP tried to bring. If the CUP is there, it is because :

• The Tashkilat is an Ottoman security body, what they're doing is part of their job to defend the land of Islam.
• Enver and Kemal Pasha were by then an officer of the Ottoman army, they were there simply it's because it was their job to do so. If you think that's because the Senussi need them out of personal consideration, you're clearly wrong.

Then there's the fact that the Senussi order was simply the earlier one to emerge (1837) instead of the CUP (1897).

is it just me, or are nationalists everywhere trying to rob the glory that Islamists fought? LOL

While Umar Mukhtar was fighting, Enver Pasha was fighting in 2 Balkan Wars , ww1 and later in the Central Asia.

And lost. Funnily enough one of the reasons of the bad performance of the Ottoman army is that the army is still reeling from the Young Turk revolution not long before.

His decision to enter WW1 for some questionable reason meant that the Ottomans lost, and it led to the abolishment of the Caliphate. He did not offer any victorious service, on the contrary many of his policies are destructive and against the interest of Muslims.

Neither any of your nation nor any Islamists , unless under cup command did anything, nowhere to be seen

Correct, my nation has nothing to do with the fall of the Caliphate, we are free from this

As if 4 million Bosnians , well our military record in regards of the Europeans is evidently superior to all of South East Asia and Indian Subcontinent combined.
That tells you that we are superior to you.

The service your forefathers did under the Ottomans was superb, and they are a great people who once were the champions of Islam, but the glory stays with them and not the grandchildren.

You say you are superior to us? what superiority you're talking about? Last time I check the Serbs are hunting you, raping your women, and many more humiliation that compels Islamist from all over the world and the UN to come to your aid and even after independence, hardly anything big comes out of Bosnia.

You are trying to cover your today's mediocrity by recalling your past ancestor's greatness, which hardly works and you impress no one.

President of USA says that Obama established Isis , your opinion or his?

Who is his name again ?

Ali Jinnah established the nation , you couldn't establish even a toilet. That's the obvious fact. Of course, I am not expecting that you respect anything and as Pakistan has nothing to do with you then why bother whith any foreign Muslim.

There are approximately 20+ new countries that were born in the 20th century, which means the world witnessed roughly the same amount of 'founding fathers' that each of those countries idolizes like god.

But then again to be special you need to be different, and when there are approximately 20+ lookalikes/copycats like you are, you cease to be special.

You aren't bothered about Al Hawarijj? Yet they were damned by Sehaba????

How do you know they are Khawarij ? care to share ?

Is there any rule in islam that you respect or your religion consists of the hatred for the West?

I have yet to do blasphemy

Turkey and Iran freed their territories, which others couldn't.

Really ?

Like they need your approval and your evaluation?
Who are you and what have you done?

"Who are you and what have you done" was prolly what the chief of Mecca said to Muhammad when they call them to Islam.

Pragmatic about Russia, no. What exactly Russian victory brings you
Did Ukraine systematically destroyed Muslims in Syria and Caucasus? Doesn't Russia support The Nusayris?

Here's Ukrainian soldiers in Iraq