The Gathering Storm, Ctd.

A reader writes:

Three thoughts on your recent blog posting ("The Gathering Storm').

First, you mention that the technology of destruction has improved dramatically since the seventeenth century.  This is clearly true. But you cannot necessarily extrapolate from this that a Moslem equivalent of Europe's religious wars will be that much more lethal. I say this for two reasons.  The first is that wars simply don't get much more lethal.  The Thirty Years War killed off a third of the population in much of Europe, and by some estimates fully half the population in Germany.  The capability to organize the conduct of war simply cannot survive casualty rates much worse than this. 

The second reason is that the improvement in technologies of destruction has been matched by improvements in technologies that save lives. Modern logistics can feed huge populations whose indigenous food sources have been destroyed.  Modern medical and public health knowledge can prevent the much of the disease associated with war that traditionally (before antibiotics) killed far more people (soldiers and civilians alike) than enemy soldiers did.  A Muslim war of religion would certainly not be a pretty sight, and by contemporary standards the human costs would be horrendous and appalling.  But these costs would probably not be on the same scale as the Thirty Years War.

Second, you speak of Saudis and Egyptians and Iranians, but make no mention of Turkey.  I seems to me that the biggest danger facing out Middle East policy, and our Muslim policy, right now is taking Turkey for granted.  We are so accustomed to thinking of Turkey as being with the West (although not necessarily of the West) that we tend not even to consider the possibility of losing Turkey to the West.  But we are (arguably) closer to this possibility than at any time since the consolidation of Ataturk's republic.  A quick look at a map establishes Turkey's strategic importance.  Add to this an economy twice the size of Egypt's, and a formidable army.  What are the odds of a regional conflagration that does not draw in Turkey?  This is a question that we need to be paying more attention to in discussing the Iraqi quagmire (and certainly in discussing any "Kurdish Option").

Third, in the picture of Bob Gates atop the posts, he strikes me as looking remarkably like an older version of Kevin Cline playing an imposter playing the President of the United States in the movie "Dave."  This is oddly disconcerting.