The Washington Post: Baron Ponsonby, the British ambassador to Istanbul for much of the 1830s, decided the job of thwarting Russian expansionism was a Holy Cause. An article in the British and Foreign Review pamphlet, circulated in Britain in 1836, saw the Ottomans as the only bulwark of Europe against Muscovy, of civilization against barbarism. Russia represented, in some accounts, a backward, superstitious society where peasants still labored in semi-slavery and monarchs ruled as tyrants, unchallenged by parliaments and liberal sentiment. The Ottomans, who were embarking on their own process of reform, looked favorable in comparison. ...Flash forward to 2014, and the conversation has curiously flipped: Pundits bluster about the centuries-old war between Sunnis and Shiites. Christians are a persecuted, beleaguered people in the Middle East. Without ruthless strongmen aligned with the West, were told, the Muslim world would descend into a chaotic bloodbath where terrorist organizations would gain sway.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:34:36 +0000
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