The Stagnant Mediterranean. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, June 6, 2013.
Hanson:
From
the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles away to the south
— and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean, which stretches
2,400 miles to Asia. Mare Nostrum,
“our sea,” the Romans called the deep blue waters that allowed Rome to unite
Asia, Africa, and Europe for half a millennium under a single, prosperous,
globalized civilization.
Yet the
Mediterranean has not always proved to be history’s incubator of great
civilizations — Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Florentine, and Venetian.
Sometimes the ancient “Pillars of Hercules” at the narrow mouth of the
Mediterranean here at Gibraltar marked not so much a gateway to progress and
prosperity as a cultural and commercial cul-de-sac.
With
the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the old city-state powerhouses of Italy and
Greece faded from history, as the Mediterranean became more a museum than a
catalyst of global change. In contrast, the Reformation and the Enlightenment
energized Northern European culture, safely distant from the front line of the
exhausting wars with Islam.
By the
early 17th century, Northern Europeans more easily and safely reached the rich
eastern markets of China and India by maritime routes around Africa. The
discovery of the New World further shifted wealth and cultural dynamism out of
the Mediterranean.
For a
while the Mediterranean seemed to roar back after World War II. Huge deposits
of petroleum and natural gas were found in North Africa. The Suez Canal was a
shortcut to the newly opulent and strategically vital Persian Gulf. With the
unification of Europe and the ongoing decolonization of Africa and the Middle
East, there was the promise of a new, resource-rich, democratic, and
commercially interconnected Mediterranean.
Not
now. The Arab Spring has brought chaos to almost all of North Africa. The
bloodbath in Syria threatens to escalate into something like the Spanish Civil
War — sucking in Lebanese militias, Iranian mercenaries, Turkey, the Sunni
sheikdoms, Israel, and the Palestinians, along with surrogate arms suppliers
like China, Europe, Russia, and the United States.
The
economies of the Islamic rim of the Mediterranean are in shambles. But then so
is the southern flank of the European Union, as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and
Spain haggle for subsidies and loans from an increasingly fed-up Northern
Europe. New gas and oil finds in North America, China, and Africa may soon make
both Mediterranean supplies and Suez passage to the Persian Gulf irrelevant for
a billion energy consumers.
A
shrinking and aging Europe keeps drawing in young Muslim immigrants from the
Middle East and North Africa. They want out of their impoverished Islamic
homelands but are being consumed by, rather than enriching, the wealthier
European societies that they are drawn to like moths to a flame. The recent
rioting in Sweden, the gruesome near-beheading of a soldier in London, and
periodic unrest in the French suburbs all remind us that the Mediterranean is
not a shared postmodern vacation spot. Instead it is increasingly a stagnant
premodern pond of religious, political, and economic tensions.
Unrest
in the West Bank, Gaza, Cyprus, Syria, Libya, and Egypt could at any moment
spark violence that cuts across religious, racial, and political fault lines.
Yet otherwise, these tired hotspots are immaterial to a world that from
Shanghai, Mumbai, and Seoul to Palo Alto, Houston, London, and Frankfurt is
creating vast new wealth, technologies, and consumer goods — without much of a
nod to Mediterranean science or innovation.
The old
strategic fortresses at Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Malta, and Gibraltar are
becoming inconsequential, as the United States pivots to Asia. The Cold War is
long over. Europe has all but disarmed. Meanwhile, the societies on the
southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean are coming apart at the seams.
It is
hard to find a robust free-market economy anywhere in the Mediterranean world
these days. Instead, European socialism, Arab statism, and Islamic terrorism in
various ways are retarding commerce and growth. Tourism — with visitors gazing
at ancient rather than modern wonders — is more profitable than manufacturing.
Will
the Mediterranean world rebound again? History is cyclical, not linear, and the
region’s favorable climate and opportune geography suggest that it could.
But,
before we see another Mediterranean renaissance, constitutional government
would have to sweep the Muslim world. The fossilized bureaucracy of the
European Union would have to radically reform or disappear. A new generation of
Michelangelos and Leonardos would have to believe that they could think, say,
and write whatever they wished — in a climate of economic confidence,
prosperity, and security.
Unfortunately,
the culture of the Mediterranean is reverting to its stagnant 18th-century past
rather than leading the 21st century.
