WI Sensible Border Lines

A theory of mine is that the vast majority of conflicts, problems, and etc. in the world can be linked back to European colonial powers drawing the borders of countries seemingly on a whim.

WI, and perhaps this is somewhat ASB, Europe and whoever else involved drew the borders with at least a smidgen of interest in the ethnicities of those involved. What would the world look like, specifically the Middle East and Africa, and how would this affect things? Anyone willing to contribute maps would be welcome.
 
Well I disagree with your premise, both because I think there'd be a lot of violence whether you draw sensible borders or not, and because it's not as easy to draw logical borders as you might think (look at India, they divided up the country based on majority religion, which is pretty much what most people wanted, and it still caused all sorts of problems)

Anyway, putting some more thought into creating sensible borders probably would be helpful overall, although it would create the problem of having various ethnic groups pouring over into 'their' state. Still Africa couldn't have done a lot worse since decolonization, so any reasonably logical change in policy will probably be helpful.
 
A theory of mine is that the vast majority of conflicts, problems, and etc. in the world can be linked back to European colonial powers drawing the borders of countries seemingly on a whim.

Which does squat about explaining warts among European powers. In Europe.

all wars have roots in economy, limited resources to be precise. rest is just PR
 
I think it depends. I tend to think that borders that develop by themselves over time tend to work better than borders drawn arbitrarily over maps, even with some "logical" reason.

Example, the Iranian borders work well, even though the border areas of Iran contain populations that would seem to go better with their neighbors - Arabs in the Southwest, Azeri Turks in the Northwest, Kurds in the Central West, etc. If you were to split off those areas and join them to the appropriate adjacent states, horrendous bloodshed would occur becasue you would have upset an equilibrium that developed over centures.

Most of the African borders were drawn with absolutely no consideration whatsoever for who actually lived there - so existing and relatively stable states like Bornu were split between the colonies of three different Powers (and now 3 countries). Or you had incompatible units pasted together that really had no cultural, economic, nor historical coherence.

Well I disagree with your premise, both because I think there'd be a lot of violence whether you draw sensible borders or not, and because it's not as easy to draw logical borders as you might think (look at India, they divided up the country based on majority religion, which is pretty much what most people wanted, and it still caused all sorts of problems)

Anyway, putting some more thought into creating sensible borders probably would be helpful overall, although it would create the problem of having various ethnic groups pouring over into 'their' state. Still Africa couldn't have done a lot worse since decolonization, so any reasonably logical change in policy will probably be helpful.
 
Certainly, things would be very differnet.

Imagine if there would have been an official Kurdistan state. An Iraq with only Shia's? Suppose If the British and French would have made what is now the Sunni part of Iraq together with Syria?
 
That's quite a old theory and it doesn't really work that way.
Tribes generally don't have nice neat borders like nations do; there's always islands of them surrounded by another tribe and whatnot.
 
Certainly, things would be very differnet.

Imagine if there would have been an official Kurdistan state.

Landlocked or with port which would be connected to kurdish heartland through non-kurdish areas. Not exactly recepie for stability. Of course Kurds could ethnically cleanse corridor from Mosul to Basra but that would produce same results.

An Iraq with only Shia's?

Closely tied to Iran?

Suppose If the British and French would have made what is now the Sunni part of Iraq together with Syria?

ruled by French or Brits?
 
It would be a blood bath, but the Kurds would get their own state in this TL.


Its is probable that Shia Iraq is allied with Iran, but still an independent state. I suppose a prestige thing.

Not Under British and French Rule.

I was writing about when they(Brits and French) carved Iraq out in OTL. This TTL they would do it different. The Sunni's get their own place.


I wonder what would happen to Saddam, maybe he becomes president of Syria in this TL? Maybe is killed off?
 
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Valdemar II

Banned
The best possible border would be to make the entire subsaharan Africa one state*, it would mean that no tribe/nation would be strong enough to dominate the state, while improving their a control over the economy without having to focus on monoproduction of resoirces. Like some states more less only produced Cacaobeans, here they would focus on more products at the same time, which would make them less sensible to economical changes.

*maybe with a few exception
 
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