Language Acquisition: Then and Now. Part 2

written December, 2022.

Another vein that emerged in the late 1800s and continued to the 20th century was the idea of Great books. Great books, an established canon of works for one to pursue an understanding of and to engage in fruitful discussion did notably escape the control of religious dogma, since in its canon, many works actually criticized religion; yet, even in institutions that had a religious identity it was still valued to be a teaching way. Many of the books in the Western canon of Great books, that is those which are commonly ascribed to it are works of different languages than English. Due to this, the more advance Great book programs like University of Chicago and Colombia promote individuals learning languages that are relevant to reading primary sources. This tradition had been very strong in the United States and it lead to derivative trends we would see in the late 20th century.

In the middle of the 20th century, education became a national issue. The Soviets had just sent up Sputnik in 1959, and thus science and engineering became pressing nature for the White House administration. Due to this, education was flooded with money and other resources in order to catch up to the Soviet Union.22 The pursuit of knowledge in this period was greatly helped with the rise of the English language as the lingua franca, that is the common language of commerce. Despite, the decline of the British Empire after World War 2; the United States became the predominant power in the world and everyone knew it. With this development, the influence of French and German declined in scholarly activity; although in some fields such as Engineering and Science, German continued to have a prominent role.2323 This is due in part to the Marshal plan and its funding to rebuild key industry in Europe. The Germans from their destruction emerged as manufactures of lots of cars and other high quality goods. The French on the other hand recovered and focused on chemical and nuclear energy development. Since the Eisenhower administration had deregulated part of the nuclear industry for its civilian production, this helped out the industries of other nations expand as well.24

Something notable happened to language learning in the 1960s and that was the rise of applied linguistics and genitive grammar. Applied Linguistics, being the preferred term for is essentially the umbrella term that took over for Philology in the English speaking world, while Genitive grammar, pioneered by scholar Noam Chomsky, attempted to scientifically analyses grammar and other elements of language in a robust mater.25 This genitive grammar arrived at a time in which philosophy had also turned more analytical with those in the English speaking world preferring Analytical philosophy, a way of looking at philosophy with mathematics and unique symbolism versus the continental tradition of the European continent, which put less emphasis on mathematical structure. This continental tradition emerged largely in France and thus the French language became more sought after by those in the English speaking world. 26What is interesting is that although the demand of science was being met by American students at the time, the language acquisition largely did not keep up to speed.

For different reasons, English speaking nations then and now continue to have difficulty in establishing good performance in language education. In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, students take years of language education in a foreign language and yet many do not get very far.27 Some place the blame on the dominance of English in parlance, some blame it on the failure of the overall system of education. Whatever the reason, this lack of success in the field has caused people in these nations to miss out on developments in other countries. This is especially profound for business people as many English speaking nations now have vast amounts of different people moving there and thus have to find a way to meet the new supply and demand element of this. Part of the problem is the lack of innovation shown in many programs. Secular education in these countries still insists on students memorizing words, puts little emphasis on natural reading and just doing grammar exercises.28 Not only does the memorizing of words not work efficiently in the pursuit of language learning, it also takes away from one of the key motivations of language learning, motivation.

Motivation has and will continue to be an important aspect of language learning. For prospective scholars of the past, languages allowed for interested parties to explore new areas of the world for the culture, archaeology, and even literature. For those in Europe who had tried to make a name for themselves in their own frontiers, this was a large motivation. The ideas of Europe diffused over into North America and became more pronounced in the time period after the US Civil War. This coincided with the rise of American ambition to join the European powers in economic and military expansion. The Navy in this way was the most pronounced in its influence for scholars because of their reach in different ports of the world. After the Spanish American war of 1898, the US had gained the territory of Puerto Rico, Guam and gave the Americans the ability to buy the Philippines from Spain for 20 million dollars. From this intervention, it grew the need for the US to have negotiators in Spanish in particular to reach the new populations that it had annexed.29

To train US soldiers and members of the Navy, the US employed special institutions to train for languages and corresponding military manuals. The role of language was notable for one of the premier institutions of the US Army, West Point. In 1803, West Point had the vast majority of its military guides and manuals in French, and thus many people who spoke French were recruited domestically and from abroad.3030 Before and After the US-Mexican War, officers had the pressing need for Spanish and thus that was added to the teaching curriculum in the 1850s on wards, and so; as the 20th century rolled around there was precedent for the teaching of languages. The First World War caused the US to increase its investment in its language capabilities, despite its late entrance into the War, it had seen the technical challenges that required advance knowledge of geography and technical vocabulary. Due to this, it was more common for US personnel in the 1920s – 1930s to send officers to learn languages at foreign embassies.3131 With the rise of Hitler and the Japanese imperialistic empire, it became clear that the US needed to increase its institutions for language learning. The Defense Language institute predecessors were established to meet the needs of the military. There rigorous training was given out to prepare soldiers in the field for the roles they needed to play in intelligence and reconnaissance. Not surprisingly, the institute was first centered in California, an area with many bilingual people. The Defense Language institute at this time was called “Military Intelligence Service Language School”, MISLS led the efforts in the training of field officers in languages important for the time.32 By 1941, Japanese and German had become security necessities for soldiers and thus the 4th Army was ordered to start a formal school for Japanese. There it was run by Lietuenant Colonel John Weckerling and Captain Kai Rasmussen, graduates of previous programs in Tokyo. They recruited many Japanese Americans to help and to learn for the United States.33

Unfortunately, the start of the World War in late 1941, caused many racial legislation to be passed. In accordance, Executive Order 9066 was passed by President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt that required Japanese Americans to be removed from the West coast of the United States3434 Due to this, the 4th Army was pressured significantly and lost many members of the classes from suspicion by military police and then in June 1942, MISLS was moved to Minnesota for the remainder of the war. In Minnesota, members of the graduate class with proficiency in Japanese were sent to the Pacific in short order.3535 Something significant happened just a year later in the midst of battle for the Pacific; in April 1943, a MIS linguist, Harold Fudenna intercepted a radio signal about the whereabouts of the infamous Admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto. This was the man who was responsible for the attack and planning of Pearl Harbor and from this information, the US Navy found Admiral Yamamoto’s plane and shot it down.3636 The death of such a respected military man from Japan was a major blow to the morale of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Successes such as this and further major operations established MISLS in a positive regard and thus when World War 2 had ended, MISLS returned to California and was renamed the Defense Language Institute. The Institute continued to expand and to this day runs two major centers, one in Monterrey, California and an English language school here in San Antonio, Texas.

In the aftermath of World War 2, the demand for language learning and better ways for professionals, soldiers, etc. to obtain it just increased because of the onset of the Cold War. The Cold War started slowly when talking about budgets and demand, but by the 1950s, massive expansion of the military and other services pushed many fields of diplomacy and education forward.38 For one thing, many interpreters and members of the military left the service with valuable skill sets. For Japanese studies, eminent scholars such as Donald Keene and Donald Richie came to establish themselves in Literature and film studies respectively. They had initial support from the US government during the occupation of Japan, but afterwards, it was individual effort in a new market that established them in their fields.39 In addition, the flow of information from the United States was not one sided, from Europe and Asia came many individuals to assist in economic and diplomacy. From Germany, the now declassified “Operation Paperclip” was an operation that confirmed and supported many German scientists from the ruined Third Reich, whether these individuals were virtuous or not was not important to the United States Government, but rather whether or not they had expertise to help bolster the Nuclear, rocket and other scientific developments aspects of the economy were they included to leave Germany.4040 To support this transition, many interpreters from the Defense Language Institute and other contractors with high secretary clearances were brought in to provide language support. All of these operations and developments were reasons why the next age of language acquisition moved from a very institution based system, to more of one of individual needs and aspirations.

The rise of the notable polyglot, that is by definition someone who has fluency and advanced proficient in many languages began to increase in the middle to late 20th century. There had been people in the past who had achieved great success in a number of languages, individuals such as Emil Krebs, John Milton and Giuseppi Mezzofanti; but, beginning in the 20th century offered more technology like video, audio recordings on tape and easier transportation for people to exploit these technological advancements to meet many people in different countries.4242 On these new technological grounds, individuals within the different structures of diplomacy, education and business sent prospective persons to learn in other countries and yet, they did not rely on coursework. For example, Steve Kaufman, a Canadian polyglot spent time in Hong Kong learning Mandarin, despite, Hong Kong being in a near proximity of China, Mandarin wasn’t the people of Hong Kong’s primary language and so, Mr. Kaufman went out of his way to learn by tape, reading graded readers, and speaking to as many people as possible. From there, he was posted to Japan and had to restart the process. Afterwards, throughout the 1980s onward, he was able to use self study methods to pick up many other languages for personal interest and business.4343 Steve Kaufmann methods of reading lots of books and listening to audio is what scholars of language acquisition call “input based learning”. The idea being that the majority of the exposure one would get from this is going to be from a personal self lead experience by working through material. This idea of self driven work is supported by scholars such as Professor Stephen Krashen’s research into applied linguistics and bilingual studies, his input hypothesis has been that comprehensible input, that is stories and sentences that can mostly be understood by the reader while adding new vocabulary is a strong method and perhaps the best method to learning a foreign language.44 While Krashen’s ideas and methods are not without some scrutiny, many individuals still find value in his ways of learning language, even proponents of Output based learning.

Output based learning is that of speaking with different people and producing the language as being the main method of learning the language. Of course, some input is needed in this method, yet, most of the productive work is done by producing the language of choice according to its proponents. An example of the output method in action would be of the polyglot Moses McCormick. On the social media website, Youtube; he would create many videos of him walking around in many different venues like malls, grocery stores, retail stores and even public gatherings and ask people he met, using context clues to whether or not they were from another nation and then ask them a series of introductory information. Moses McCormick stated on his videos and posts that he adapted a standard set of sayings and expressions from self study books such as Colloquial series and the Teach Yourself series and used personal experience from his tutoring and the usage of connecting words to formulate a standard procedure of what to learn first and then expand from this common curriculum. Doing this, he was able to establish a baseline of understanding of different languages and would then go on to search for additional material. As mentioned before about the failure of many students to learn how to hold a basic conversation with people of other countries after years of study, this method was much more effective for those who have adopted it. It is not a surprise, since the output hypothesis has been researched by scholars into its utility. The success of these modern polyglots in scenarios and learning pedagogy that largely avoid the classroom has caused many to seek out new ways to find more efficient methods in the process of language learning.47 Both of these polyglots, Moses McCormick and Steve Kaufman show a dialectic that has emerged in modern second language acquisition, the argument of a pure input based education versus an output based method.

Language Acquisition: Then and Now. Part 1

written December, 2022.

The History of language education is one of parallel ideas and continuously changing movements. From the age of the Enlightenment to our present time period there has always been multiple ways of thoughts and methods on how to teach language. In the time leading up into the 1700s, Christianity and its various lineages had played a major role in shaping the way in which people had thought about education, including languages; however, by the end of the 1700s, the character of education had changed. This was because the Age of Enlightenment had fundamentally changed how scholars and the public had looked at religion and thus this directly impacted the way in which education was taught. Secular education took a more important role in the upbringing of many professionals and thus while Latin was the main language of science and with its supplements of Ancient Greek, by the end of the 1700s and as the 1800s progressed, vernacular languages of English, French and German had become dominant in the time of the Industrial revolutions.1 With this reality in mind, it becomes sensible to limit the examination of this history of language acquisition to the United States, in order to track the developments from the 1700s onward. This is appropriate since despite the colonial foundation that had settled the Americas, the United States was more free to pursue different lines of heritage for its education. In the Americas, individuals such as Benjamin Franklin and Horace Mann had called for reform of education.2 This included establishing “classless schools” and public libraries. Such luxuries were not available to the common person in other western nations; therefore, it gave Educators the ability to develop into separate and remarkable paths for all education and more specifically language learning.

In following the paths language education was to take, it is appropriate to consider the origins. Class played an important role in European and American systems. The Monastery and private institutions gave those with capital the ability to become knowledgeable in a strict education of the Bible and great works composed by those who had established themselves as remarkable in the discourses of philosophy. Latin, being the language of religion and many scientific works in its later Latin form was studied and grammatical cases and tables were studied vehemently.3

This sort of rote education is not unique to the Western education experience from that time period of the 1700s to 1800s, as education in other parts of the world, notably cultures in the Asian continent utilize a lot of the same education pedagogy for thousands of years4. As the 1800s progressed, the monastery lost a lot of power of authority with the diffusion of knowledge to the majority and thus, private religious schools and secular schools became the prime mover of education.5 Along with this, a robust tradition of literary excellence established in the old world and beginning in the new world gave more students the opportunity to expand their horizons for understanding text. This motivated many to learn German, Italian and French in their studies to understand the radical ideas of writers of the day.6 What the diffusion of knowledge also allowed was the substantiation of knowledge being taught to those of the working class. From the 1840s onward, class played less of a role onto what education one received. Horace Mann in his role as secretary of Education in the state of Massachusetts, he worked to create a standard system where teacher would learn about trends of teaching and pedagogy that had been accessed as meritorious.7 In addition, he believed in taxes from the locals to fund their school systems and more involvement from the community, a common core that embraces democracy and ideas of the US constitution, Education must not be religiously aligned to one sect versus another, and that teachers should be well prepared to teach.8 To support his idea, he traveled to Europe and reported changes that were to be made in benefit of the school system. For the aspect of language education, he focused on children learning whole words instead of the alphabet, this is similar to how phrases can be learned in the approaches to learning foreign languages. Although, Horace Mann’s idea was limited in scope, as time progressed, more people came to support the idea of learning phrases to learn language.9

One of the biggest challenges that had been persistent among Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s was the problem of illiteracy.10 The nature of the US economy of the time meant there was many factors that had played into limiting education for people. Many immigrant groups did not speak English when they arrived at the United States and due to crowded conditions in cities, some did not have the opportunity to good schooling. To add on, there was the existing minority population within these areas whom due to racism and other factors such as economics had to send their children into the work force early or did not have the institutions to give people a solid education.11

For the immigrant populations, the rise of nationalism; particularly around the World War 1 era directly impacted German immigrants that they were not taught their heritage language. Other groups, even if they weren’t considered enemies of the United States were told by societal powers and even amongst their own families to assimilate and leave their culture behind.1212 This mentality was very unfortunate since many children missed out on rich literature from their home languages and didn’t receive a strong education in English and thus limited their prospects for advancement in the economy. What is interesting about this is how despite not being a direct class system like in the United Kingdom, the wealthy and business classes were actually showing the opposite of this trend. Language learning had always been important to those in Europe in order to conduct business and diplomacy and the same was true in the United States. Education at Ivy league schools and other elite institutions prided themselves on their robust philology program13

Philology, coming from the Greek root of Philologia, or the “love of language” is the term for the study of language in written and oral sources. It had a rich heritage in Europe and that knowledge had permeated the United States education system along with its overall ideas of the Prussian education.1414 With such a strong connection to Germany and its academic community, some scholars rejected the ideas and manners of this study due to World War 1. Of course, this mindset had roots in blatant nationalism and not objective criticism in methodology of learning language, it did wane the term in the United States, but the ideas still existed just under different labels. In the North East United States, specialization and overall rates of literacy were increasing at a steady rate; however, in other parts of the country, particularly the Southern United States, efforts were not as widespread.15

Many in the Southern United States did not receive a strong education until long into the 20th century, as Jim crow laws and other barriers kept many from joining their northern peers in educational attainment.16 This mentality kept the South behind in development, but did not affect the north as much as although education had been more centralized by the end of the 1800s, by the middle of the 1900s; much of education had a common school system but with a very decentralized structure. States more than anything had instructed schools on how to run their curriculum.17

For some of the gaps in education that existed, there was the increasing role of libraries and private tutoring that emerged to fill gaps. Public library systems greatly expanded in the 20th century, particularly in the American South and West, where large populations were moving to in the 1930s and 1940s. Philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller had established foundations and trusts to give away vasts amount of money to establish universities and public library systems. For those systems that existed, buildings and material was added in vast amounts.18

One of the primary institutions to benefit from this philanthropy was the University of Chicago. University of Chicago along with University of Berkeley, UCLA and Colombia had established themselves as premier places to learn history, philosophy and in that pursuit, languages.19 Language learning in the 20th century became even more important as the archives of European libraries and Universities became more accessible. It was not enough to know the just the English speaking approach to a historical or philosophical topic, but rather all Western sources needed to be consulted to have robust scholarship. In this vein, scholars would learn the language of the area in which they were studying more in depth. This tradition had originated in the British Empire as they expanded their colonial borders. For example, many interpreters and scholars of Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian emerged in the ranks of the British East India company to reap the rewards of civil service in addition to basically having little real barriers to accessing ancient and contemporary works.20 From the transition from the company to the British Raj, their role only became more important. Imperialism was not the only factor in this, but the Industrial revolutions continued the need to exchange information on different technology.

Eastern Elegy 22'

Eastern Eulegy 22'

A day has passed that has rocked the archipelago,

An afterimage has emerged, perhaps of Anpo,

Foreign influence is resisted, but at what cost,

For the youth had their say back then too.

The grandson disappeared on this modern day,

Taken away without much of a say,

A crude attack, aimed at one’s back,

For that day, the 20th century had flashed,

Violence brought back in a time of troubles,

Watch out for the third column,

For the land of the rising sun,

Must not fall into darkness,

Helios Backstory Part 1

When the sunset on July 2nd, 80 FE, the bombings began. The next morning images of the destruction of Satsuma flashed across all residents of Japan's TV sets. A gathering of members of the high government had declared war on the nation of LanxingFang. In Yashiharou, residents were ordered to meet in the Yashiharou Square, an announcer began, “hello citizens; this is a declaration from the government; due to the number of current active soldiers in the imperial army; a draft will be called beginning at 1500 hours.” “During that time, those men between the ages of 16 to 26 will meet here at the central square, those whose surname begins with A to K; for those of you with special skills; a supplemental test shall be administered to determine proper placement; that will be all.” There was chatter among the audience; some were angry at the common enemy while others; primarily women and children worried over their male family members; among the crowd Helios Ata shook his head and looked over to his friend Joji. “Looks like our generation must fight the battles of the older generation, when will humanity learn from its past mistakes?” questioned Helios. “You can’t say that too loud, the wrong person may overhear you,” replied Joji, “I think you are right, come let's head to the mill.” The duo walked over to the mill; “you boys ready for your shift?” asked the foreman, Joji announced “we can only work until 2:30; we need to show up to the draft drawings.” The foreman approached Joji and stated “ah.yes you two are of age; well get to work and i'll speak with the boss”, and so Helios and Joji get started on their work; half way through the shift, Hiro Ushima approaches the duo, “you boys can take a break now, i’d like to have a word with you in my office, please follow me up there”, the boys complied and once they entered his office he shut the door behind them. Once all of them had sat down Hiro began, “I want you two to take the science aptitude tests for this here draft”, after some hesitation Helios spoke, “I don’t know sir, we may not be up to par to be specialists.'' Ushima replied “look here, I’ve spoken to some officials and due to our business dealing with manufacturing; I’m allowed one specialist to help us here to increase production and maintain military standards and I think you two have the best chance of taking that spot; those who are allowed to serve behind the front are more likely to survive this ordeal” told Ushima. “Mr. Ushima, are you suggesting that we should behave like cowards?” questioned Joji. “No!, listen I have been alive three times as long as you have and I’ve seen what war does to people, you can be just as useful to us here as overseas, I will show you the damage to my chest”, he proceeded to unbutton his shirt to show severe scars around his body; “these are bullet wounds and sword wounds; I’ve barely returned alive during my service and a lot of my friends didn’t make it back home; I’m an old man, I need the help and maybe; I can save one of your lives”, after a moment of silence, Hikari stood up from the chair, “alright, I’ll take the test, who knows maybe my habits and work ethic will lead to something”, Joji followed “might as well try it” and then the two thanked Mr Ushima and left his office. Mr. Ushima sat back down in his chair and thought with a smile on his face ‘perhaps the future can change’. At the Plaza, Joji and Hikari waited in line to take the examination. Both of them received an answer sheet and went to work on the examination. After the written portion was complete, there was an oral exam.

A few hours later, the results were sent. Mr. Ushima sent for Joji and Helios, “I will see you one at a time.” Joji went in first, after 15 minutes he left without saying anything. Helios next went into the office. “Please, sit down” told Ushima “I have good news for you, you scored high on the examination and will be continuing to work with us… congratulations,” announced Ushima. Helios’s face changed from a tense uptight disposition to a look of ease. Without saying anything Helios bowed, shook Mr Ushima’s hand and walked out of the office. The Time was 2:50 pm, Joji made his way to the central square when Helios caught up with him. Helios placed his hand on Joji’s shoulder and began speaking. “Joji… listen, I didn’t want things to turn out this way, damn these times of ours” stated Helios. Joji looked over at Helios once he had finished and replied “it’s a man’s duty to serve one’s country, never forget that” and then he walked off into the nearby crowd. Helios would not hear from his friend for the next 2 years.

Goals in due time.

In our modern age, It has become fashionable to follow a rigid pathway of increased performance and productivity in a workplace or to work towards a goal to the sacrifice of everything else. One can speculate that this promoted trend has to do with the COVID-19 Pandemic and its consequences on the job market, that being the increased competitive nature of a job market and finding a job in an international economy while it is under major stress. With that being said, this idea of continual hustle and grind is not a new concept and we can take a look at old concepts as a source for these new age ideas that have manifested themselves in self help videos and articles online.

Some years ago, I read a book called “The Time Paradox” by Philip Zimbardo; essentially, this book could be boiled down to the following central tenants. 1. There are three main time perspectives. These perspectives that exist are the past focus, the present focus and the future focus. The differences between these three perspectives are that a person focuses on either their past, present or future and depending on which course of action they take, it will heavily impact their life and corresponding success. This is because, the past focuser is reminiscing or complaining about what has happened before, and thus this holds them back from continual self improvement. In contrast, the present focuser is attempting to deal with life with the primary issue being what is directly in front of them. According to Zimbardo, these individuals may have some limited success, but because they are so caught up in the here and now, they are limited in which ways they can expand and grow and so, in the long term they will have limited success. The future thinker is thus put on a pedestal and showered with praise for that they don’t worry about the past and instead just keep grinding towards their goals and keep moving in a forward direction. While, grinding forward towards specific goals is all well and good; today, I would like to address how the unconventional individual, that is someone who wants to take a different path than the perpetual grinder, may be on a wise path.

In history, there were individuals who were highly skilled in many topics and made great names for themselves. Such individuals were noted in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and include individuals such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Goethe. The term for these people is called “Polymath”. For those unaware of the words origin, it comes from Greek language roots meaning someone who has high expertise in multiple fields of study.

Many people, assume that if they set a linear pathway of goals and objectives that they must hit these in order to progress; however, I would argue that this is not the only way forward and that divergent pathways can be very positive and even complimentary for pursuing long term goals. A pertinent example is that of NASA Space Program. Many inventions such as space water filtration, improved solar cells and imaging systems now used in cellphones have come about from the spending into the Federal Space programs for the purpose of examining the conditions of space and of landing people on the moon in the 20th century. Such investment has led to many new ideas and progressions on problems in the world despite not seeming applicable in the here and now.

The Corollary of having an open mind while working on different goals is a central point of the many notable books like that of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader and the Art of Programming by Donald Knuth. They emphasis that different approaches to problems is vital. Why is an open mind necessary, you may ask? I think it is essential for people to understand that a day of thinking about an issue and one hour of actual execution may very well be much better than doing 8 hours of continual work down the wrong path. For where would Classical Physics be if it wasn’t for Isaac Newton sitting under a tree?

In Conclusion, individuals will have to decide for themselves the best use of their time; however, I suspect that if individuals take the time to explore different pathways out there for their goals, then they will be happier in the endgame.

Archaeology in Real Life

Archaeology Policy in Southwest Asia

Within the nations of Northern Africa and southwest Asia, there have been many challenges posed by civilians towards Government policies and its outcomes. This essay will not dive into the specifics of each country’s challenges, yet it will focus on one specific element of the aftermath of civil disobedience in events like the Arab Springs. From these events, they maintain the element of developing specific social identity and cohesion. Specifically, the focus of this essay will be on the differences between how Egypt and Turkey have conducted social policies and the outcome of these actions.

Many foreign observers of Egypt may not realize that for Egypt’s visitor economy, it was under great strain due to the challenges of the new millennium and previous governmental policy. For example, there was a serious attack in 1997 near Luxor, Egypt that killed 62 people. This, along with the events of a post 9/11 world; caused a lot of worry about safety while traveling and created negative thinking about traveling to the Northern African, and the Southwest Asian region in general. This caused great strain to the profits of the tourism economy of Egypt and thus the budgets of the Egyptian government for further excavation and analysis of ancient sites was diminished. Accordingly, Ministries under the controversial Hosni Mubarak government took action to try to appease tourists and to promote the findings of Archaeologists of the existing sites and the new sites found in more modern times. This effort was mostly successful and despite the backlash from other issues that led to Mubarek being ousted from power in 2011, the policies of the government have largely been supportive of the tourism economy. With exceptional finds such as those of the recent Saqarra tomb and auxiliary structures, the presentation and preservation of antiquities from Egypt seem to be secure financially and in a civil manner in a post global pandemic world.

In the case of Turkey, the Turkish government has been continually consolidated under Recip Tayyip Erdogan; first under the position of prime minister and now while he holds the presidency. Due to this, his cabinet and government have exceptional authority on day to day policy from the top down; in order to make policy. The Turkish government survived largely unscathed from the events of the different Arab Spring movements and despite Erdogan facing challenges from dissidents for different policies such as increasing the role of religion in state, Erdogan’s top down approach has maintained a steady course in contrast to other governments in the region. This consistent course appears to be not beneficial for the average person and a lot of money is being spent on paying debt and policies with marginal returns; because of this, the Turkish Lira has been descending through hyperinflation and the government has had to choose what to invest their limited funds in. From its decision makers, the Turkish government does not find conducting Archaeology to be a significant item to do and thus many major sites of multiple cultures have not been thoroughly investigated into.

Some cultural sites that exist in Turkey include: Roman, Greek, Byzantine and of course Turkish sites. The Government has decided to not investigate further and in some cases even manipulated sites for their own gain. One notable site is the Hagia Sofia, a Christian Church has been converted into a Mosque in modern times and Gobekli Tepe, one of the significant sites of pre-Turkic culture has been largely ignored and has only been excavated to a minor extent. The reason this matters is because the morale in Turkey’s population appears to be low given what accurate information one can attain and having cultural victories gives legitimacy to a government. The Turkish government which plays a balancing act between multiple world powers with the Bosporus could greatly improve its standing in the international community and at home by investigating into its own backyard. One can compare the idea of this to how when one visits France, UK, or Germany; it is common to see the great architecture and artwork when one is there. Very few questions come forward of the long term stability of these western nations. The funding involved to increase a nation’s appearance is minor and the dividends are vast to present yourself as strong in the international community.

With the contrast of the Turkish and Egyptian Archaeology policies, one can extrapolate that it is crucial to search for social victories when managing a nation. When a country has supported its national identity by positive, constructive developments; it is much more likely to stay in power than one that does not listen to the people when they call for change.

Sources:

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Zahi Hawass | History| Smithsonian Magazine Göbekli Tepe, Turkey – Global Heritage Fund

On NATO

NATO, a tested hypothesis once more.

The concept of NATO,The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was intended as a post World War 2 strategic alliance led by the United States to counter the rising Iron curtain of the USSR in Eastern Europe. The essential details were that the members of NATO are to support one another in a traditional sense. To provide aid to one another in times of war and to spend a certain amount to maintain their military.

In reality, members of NATO have not maintained the original charter for what was expected of them and this has created a situation that is very similar to how the Byzantine Empire ran its foreign alliances. The Eastern Roman Empire, known to modernity from its 19th century term of Byzantium, ran a large governmental structure centered in the great middle ages city of Constantinople, it had maintained a large amount of trade and wealth generation from its provinces. With this money, it attempted to counter the troubles of the day; which included conducting war and to defend its land territories. This basic plan worked for a time when the Eastern Empire had dealt with smaller federations of migrations of people including Varangians, Tatars, and other Germanic tribes.This strategy failed however once the Byzantine Empire encountered a unified front from elsewhere. In the Byzantine case, this was the rise of Islam and the first Islamic Caliphates. Under strong pressure and the failure of quid pro quo diplomacy, the Byzantines lost their eastern provinces in the middle east and north Africa and thus lost a lot of influence in the 600s. The reason for this is that the Byzantine Empire had traditionally bribed tribes to fight amongst each other; yet, once it encountered a strong unified foe, it failed to make a strong defense.

The situation of a wealthy nation trying to encourage discourse for strategic gain has been seen in the post WW2 United States. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States funded the rebel groups to take to guerrilla warfare in order to fight the USSR. This was successful in large part because the USSR had tried to control the area by using tactics that had worked in traditional warfare. The belief of the Soviets was that they could kill enough resistance that eventually the country would bow down to them. This worked fine in the cities of Afghanistan, but as those who are aware of the situation in Afghanistan. There is a large influence of the countryside tribes in the country. When the majority of these tribes went against the Soviets and formed their Mujaheddin factions. The USSR had little opportunity to try to divide and conquer. Despite this not being a European conflict, we can use this as evidence to show that deep consideration must be made of alliances and situations on the ground.

For NATO, its actions after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been very aggressive in its expansion approach. Evidence for this is that there seems to be a strong correlation between the growth of the European Union into Eastern Europe and the expansion of NATO. Nations such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland are participating states in the expansion of Western ideas and economic practices. All of these countries have sent delegations and maintained memberships in the European Union for many years now. For the Russians, these developments have been cause for alarm in Moscow. For some perspective of how the Western nations have out competed the USSR and the Russian state take for example the Kremlin provide a statistic of in the year 1980, the USSR had a third of the economic size of the United States. Now, the Russian economy is about 1/15th the size of the United States. Hence, economic stagnation is a major pull factor of Russia to enter into Ukraine to protect its national albeit Imperialistic ambitions.

From what can be seen is that the NATO nations have had success to divide Russian Influence from its post Soviet sphere of influence, yet it has not paid adequate attention to its eastern counterparts. . Russia is part of BRICS, an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have come to represent a sort of counterbalance to that of the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has many countries under the Western banking sphere and has a large influence on economic policy. BRICS is trying to remove the US Dollar from its World Reserve Currency status by economic promotion, so when the nations of NATO are pushing sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, its still not addressing the financing and economic power of BRICS and even the Western nations support it by the purchasing of Chinese goods. This profit made in China can easily be fed back into Russia, if needed. What logically should be done is that there should be an ultimatum to China, where if they do not cut off trade with Russia then they will also be under an embargo. This would cause harsh penalties to Russia and may push the Chinese to convince Russia to call back the attack.

The problem fundamentally with NATO was that it was going to hit a roadblock onto how much division it could cause in Russia’s sphere of influence and its reliance on the United States to lead the alliance. The United States has waned somewhat in power projection in the early 21st century. This has allowed members of NATO to not take seriously its called for obligations within the alliance with notable members such as Germany, not holding up their budgetary responsibilities to provide for a strong military. When Ukraine was invaded on 24 February 2022, Germany was not prepared and even relied on Russian Natural gas to fuel its factories. Without this natural gas, Germany, which needs 1/3rd of its supply of total natural gas to fuel its robust factories could not operate at a strong capacity. The Germans were unprepared and so were the French. French president Macron had taken up the delegation to negotiate with Russia for a peace deal; he and his advisors failed to materialize this. France based on its contributions to NATO should not be given authority to negotiate on behalf of the alliance. It is the failure of strong leadership in the United States that is ultimately just after Vladimir Putin to blame for the developments in Europe in February 2022. Now, NATO has responded and appears weak to the rest of the world due to its failure to deal with a united Russian front. One of its biggest mistakes was to announce that a nuclear option was not possible. Even if one doesn’t want to do that, it should not tell the enemy so, this is because an enemy who has this information will do everything it can to exploit it. It is probable that Russia would have been less aggressive if they thought Moscow might be obliterated for its actions.To be frank, NATO sounds good on paper, but with the reality of this event and others priors, it shows that NATO as currently structured does not work and should be abolished and replaced with something else.

Ultimately, NATO and the United States’ role in the alliance shows just as past Empires have come to understand is that you cannot only rely on divide and conquer to deal with your enemies and you can’t buy your way out. It is necessary to be adaptable to the times and to keep all options on the table.
Sources: 1. https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV 2. https://www.worldeconomics.com/GrossDomesticProduct/Russia.gdp