It is a moment of great uncertainty in the Middle East. Many people fear the expansion of Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah into a larger war involving Iran and the United States, one which has no certain outcome. For others, however, visions of sugar plums dance in their head.[1] A Saudi Arabian journalist[2] wrote that Israel’s deadly attacks had done so much damage to Hezbollah that “even if the group were to live on, it would most likely be a caricature of its former self.”[3] Lebanon may be able to free itself from the thirty-year death-grip of Hezbollah. A British journalist judged that, in spite of the Biden administration dragging on Israel’s coat, “Israel is likely to see the current moment as too good an opportunity to miss.”
Opportunity to do what? One answer is to strike at the nuclear weapons program that threatens the survival of Israel. Another answer is both more ambitious and ill-defined. An American journalist reported that “Many in Israel see a ‘once-in-a-generation chance’ to remake the Middle East to Israel’s advantage.” Naftali Bennett, a former Prime Minister of Israel, sees “the biggest opportunity in the past 50 years” to reshape the region.[4]
Reshape how? Destroy Hamas entirely? Destroy Hezbollah entirely or, at least as a significant force in regional conflicts? Gravely damage Iran’s nuclear program and force it to accept long-term international supervision? Topple the Islamist regime in Iran entirely in hopes of something better emerging? Forge an alliance with Saudi Arabia over the Iran conflict and relegate the Palestinian question to Israel alone? Redraw the map of the Middle East to unite all Kurds not under Turkish rule into a sovereign state? Redraw the map of the Middle East to assign the Sunni part of Iraq to Jordan? “Transfer”[5] the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank to the Shi’ite portion of a partitioned Iraq?
What does History tell us about once-in-a-generation opportunities?
In the early 19th Century, “Nationalism” meant that all people speaking the same language and sharing the same culture should live in a single independent country. Germany were split into 30-plus states; Italy was split into half a dozen states; the Austrian Empire smooshed together people from many different latent-countries. Many people saw Nationalism as the wave of the future. Austria saw it as a death sentence. One of these Believers was the French Emperor Napoleon III, the nephew of the great Napoleon I. France should lead this remaking of the map of Europe.
Napoleon III started with Italy, concluding a secret deal with Count Camillo di Cavour, the prime minister of the Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardina.[6] If Cavour would provide a war with Austria, Napoleon II would furnish the French army to win it. Then, the Austrians would be expelled from Italy, and Italy would be “united” in a loose federation. Piedmont would expand to dominate northern Italy; central Italy’s small states would join together under a ruler to be supplied by France; the backward southern Italian kingdom of the Two Sicilies would join the confederation; and the Pope’s lands would be much reduced, but the Pope would become head of this loose confederation.
Cavour did what he said that he would: he provoked Austria into declaring war. Napoleon III did what he said that he would: his army thrashed the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino. Then the wheels came off, badly and at high speed. First, the French were appalled by the casualties suffered in battle and tried to crawfish on Piedmont by striking a deal with the Austrians. Second, Italian popular nationalism surged up on the enthusiasm of victories won by others. Popular revolts led to demands for the unification of all Italy north of the kingdom of Naples, regardless of promises made to Napoleon III. Third, then the Italian nationalist and republican adventurer Giusseppe Garibaldi led a small expedition (with or without the knowledge of Cavour?) against the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The kingdom collapsed like a house of cards. Garibaldi led his army north toward Rome. Faced with the danger of a republican revolution overwhelming a monarchical revolution, the king of Piedmont met Garibaldi face to face. The great man surrendered to the little king, at the price of southern Italy being included in the new nation.
France hadn’t wanted a united Italian peninsula unified under a centralized government. The northern Italians hadn’t really wanted the inclusion of the backward Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in their new nation. Garibaldi hadn’t wanted a monarchy, but a unified and centralized republic. No one got exactly what they wanted.
Nor did they clearly foresee the long-term effects. The unification of Italy made the unification of Germany (against and without the Austrian empire) the next pressing question in European affairs. Nationalist victories in central Europe then accelerated the spread of nationalism into the great multi-national empires of eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires all succumbed during the First World War.
Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman and leader of German unification, was a temperamentally conservative and cautious person. He spent a lot of time thinking about all the possible scenarios, but he didn’t go looking for “once-in-a-generation” chances.
Of course, other people are more time-bound and fixated on one outcome as the only possible outcome. That is, they feel a burning need to accomplish some great mission in their lifetime. Both Lenin and Hitler were that way.
[1] Marc Champion wrote in Bloomberg that the blows suffered by Iran offer a tempting chance for Israel to inflict serious harm on its avowed main enemy. Champion acknowledged that an Israeli attack would force Iran to choose between humiliation for the regime and a war with a surprising adversary and the possibility of American involvement.
[2] A place where speech is never free, but often inspired.
[3] Faisal Abbas, quoted in “Lebanon: Can Hezbollah survive the death of its leader?” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 15.
[4] All quoted in “Israel vows retaliation after Iranian attack,” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 4.
[5] At the end of and after the Second World War, many ethnic Germans fled the advancing Red Army or were driven out of places like Poland and the Czech Sudetenland. These and other population movements were sometimes referred to as population “transfers.”
[6] Derek Beales and Eugenio Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy (2003). It’s an update of an earlier work. But, if you have the time, there are a series of classic older books by Denis Mack Smith.
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