THERE once was a pie.
There have always been pies, and we cannot stop fighting over them.
Land has caused more wars than any other resource. The Assyrians conquered the Middle East. The Romans conquered Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Genghis Khan conquered Asia. The Americans pushed the indigenous tribes out of their way, as did the Australians with the Aborigines. The British and Boers shared the South African pie until they couldn’t. Hitler wanted lebensraum for the expanding German population. Hutus and Tutsis found themselves stuck together in the Rwandan pie.
Natural resources are next in line. The California gold rush, the Alaska gold rush, the Australia gold rush, the Klondike gold rush. The cod wars in the Grand Banks. The crab wars in the Bering Sea. Iran and Iraq fought a ten-year war to control the oil in the Middle East, then Iraq invaded Kuwait to increase its share of the oil, resulting in the first Gulf War. Russia invaded Ukraine to reclaim a portion of the pie it had, but lost in 1991.
The conflict over hunting whales was not so much about taking a larger share of the pie, but more a case of some wanting pie and others who thought no one should have any at all. The difference between conservationists and preservationists is that one group wants to eat the pie wisely and the other does not want anyone to touch the pie. They will never agree.
Jerusalem is one big pie that everyone wants exclusively for themselves. Jews want it, as do Muslims and Christians. Crusades were fought over it. Civil wars and terrorist attacks have been conducted in and around it for millennia. It has changed hands so many times, the history of the city reminds us of a library book checkout card.
Often, people decide that if they cannot have the pie, then no one will have it. Jerusalem has been plundered and razed many times over the years. So has Rome. Russia waged a scorched-earth policy during the Second World War, putting thousands of their own villages and millions of grain fields to the torch to deny the German invaders. The same thing would have happened to Paris in 1944 if Hitler’s order had been carried out. A similar order was carried out by the Japanese in Manila that same year. Iraqis set fire to the oil wells as they retreated from Kuwait in 1991.
Many social justice movements of the modern era are really just conflicts over power cleverly disguised. When you hear a group complaining about being persecuted, have you ever stopped to wonder, who is the persecutor? When I heard someone express a desire to stop the persecution of little people, I thought to myself, I have never seen or heard anyone saying anything bad about them at all. I could not come up with one instance of this behavior. What persecution? Then I found out this was all about getting a little person elected to Congress. A piece of the pie. Reparations for slavery? A larger piece of the pie. More diversity in the workplace and in positions of power? Larger share of the pie.
When it comes down to it, the human family is still that group of men in the alley, fighting over how to cut up the pie. We will fight over it, as we have always done, until it gets knocked to the ground and ruined. We always have. It is all we know.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for 20 years. He currently resides on the mainland U.S.
BC Cook
