Az alábbi cimen olvasható Dr. Ferguson minket is érintő analizise, melynek első bekezdéseit itt idézem.

Mivel az Atlantic a világ egyik legtekintélyesebb, évente 6-szor megjelenő magazinja, kérem az HL résztvevőit, hogy küldjenek, Trianonra vonatkozó kiegészitő leveleket a szerkesztőségnek alább megadott cimére. Lipták Béla

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A War to Start All Wars
(page 1 of 2)

The Middle East looks like Europe circa World War I.
by Niall Ferguson

he United States invaded Iraq in April 2003 for multiple reasons, but the most ambitious was a desire to remake a whole region. The Middle East, it was argued, was full of political and economic underachievers, driven to violence by a Muslim/Arab inferiority complex. Replacing Saddam Hussein with an exemplary democracy would begin a domino effect, spreading American values to Iraq’s mostly undemocratic neighbors.

Oh dear. Iraq is now in the midst of a civil war—already one of the world’s biggest since 1945, with the kind of escalating tit-for-tat killings and ethnic cleansing that can last for years, even decades. Debate currently centers on how quickly the United States can wind down its involvement in Iraq and on whether neighboring countries can be persuaded to help stabilize it.

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TO: Letter@theatlantic.com

A War to Start All Wars

I would like to add two footnotes to the valid analysis of the parallels drawn by Niall Ferguson between the Middle East and post-WW1 Europe.

One is that the borders of post-WW1 Europe could have resulted in homogenous nation states if self-determination through public referendums determined these borders and not outsiders. Because the second occurred, some 5 million Hungarians for example became foreigners, without leaving their 1000 years old towns and villages. Although the region is now part of the EU, the autonomy, church properties and universities of these national minorities have still not been returned. In other words, Dr. Ferguson is correct, that homogenous nation states contribute to stability, but they will only be homogenous if their borders are established by public referendums and not by outsiders, which was the case in Hungary (or in case of Israel after WW2).

Another historical factor worth noting is that the age of colonialism is over. The British colonial empire ended, when in 1956 they lost their last colonial war at the Suez, the same year the Soviet empire received its mortal wound on the streets of Budapest and later the French in Indochina. The lesson is that outsiders are not welcome anywhere on the planet and that it is a mistake to attempt to solve the shortage of natural resources by wars. Instead, our resources should be spent on developing new, clean and un-exhaustible energy supplies.

Béla Lipták

Stamford, CT

The writer is a former adjunct professor of Yale University

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