Categories
Tag: Middle East
Some Thoughts on Military Details of the War
Apparently some Russian news site recently published casualty figures of 10,000 dead and 16,000 wounded on the Russian side. The numbers were quickly taken down and denounced by Russia as the result of hackers. I have to say that the numbers do seem higher than I would have expected, and the ratio of dead to …
Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East
The title for this post is taken from a book of the same name, which is sort of a manifesto for a larger project aimed at achieving something like what it is called: a Westphalia for the Middle East. This is not the first time I have seen efforts to link Westphalia and the Middle …
Not A Westphalian Moment
History repeats itself, and historians repeat each other. We are witnessing a case of one or the other in the current situation in Syria, where religious conflict has called to mind the religious conflicts of 16th and 17th century Europe. If Europe ended its religious wars with the Peace of Westphalia, the thinking goes, a …
Syria and Westphalia: The New Orthodoxy?
Here is yet another article linking the Syrian civil war with the Peace of Westphalia (and the Thirty Years’ War). I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve already said here and here. The comparison is picking up steam (this is the fourth article that I can recall) in spite of my best efforts …
Comparative Religious Wars
Last Friday was Peace of Westphalia Day — the 366th anniversary of the signing of the treaties. I was, appropriately enough, delivering a paper on the Peace of Westphalia. I was at a conference at Columbia University that brought together specialists to compare early modern Europe’s religious wars with the current religious conflicts in the …
Syria and Westphalia
[Note: This post originally appeared on my blog on February 9, 2014.] The idea of linking Syria and Westphalia had never occurred to me until I stumbled across it on an unrelated search last week. I found that it was not a new or isolated connection, but one that has been going since the beginning …