Don't Stick Your Flag There!

As Arctic ice melts and open waters expand, most likely from the effect of Global Warming, territory grabbers are getting itchy fingers. The Russians planted their flag at the North Pole and a lot of other people pretty much said, "Back Off!" So the Brits have drawn up a map to help inform and perhaps ease the conversation.

It was also the British who drew the map of the Middle East after World War I. The borders they came up with were an absolute marvel of arbitrariness and of course went a long way to creating a lasting peace - not. The best recent read on that effort and all the machinations around it is David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace." Note in particular the straight lines that predominate in the area shared by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Those kind of straight lines don't make much sense when you've got some personally experienced sense of the borderlands. But they do make a nice path for some hairy disputes.