Point well taken, Carlos!

In general, I disagree with Florians position on the refugee crisis. It was quite all right for Europe to take some responsibility for the mess it had created in the Middle East (historically, not just in the last few years). The refugee crisis was born almost a century ago, when the French and the British colonial powers dissected the Middle East into artificial political entities in order to be able to divide and rule. What is going on in Iran and Syria is just a prelude to the flood that is yet to come.

Georgia and Ukraine are a totally different matter compared to the Middle East and should be treated separately. Willingly or not, consciously or not, Europe has created very high expectations in both countries, expectations of almost complete economic integration and free movement across borders. If Europe fails to deliver, it will face the consequences in the form of a political backlash (and illegal migration). While Georgia may survive as a western-style democracy, I am much more skeptical about Ukraine.

Eric, if you go back that far in history and derive claims from that (i.e. the moral justification of Arabs to come to Europe, based on European wrongdoing 100 years ago), then why not going further back? Since 700, the Muslim World is constantly attacking Europe, and more than once Europe was on the verge of defeat (most notably 732 at Poitiers and 1529 and 1683 at Vienna). 1453 the Muslims took the Eastern center of Christianity. Most of the time the struggle between Europe and the Muslim world went in one direction, namely the Muslim World expanding and colonizing (with a short interruption during the crusades). With exactly the same persuasiveness, one may claim that European expansion in the 19th century was just a reaction to Muslim colonialism that happened earlier. I do not see any reason for the West to say sorry vis-a-vis the Muslim world, because the West was most of the time the victim, and Arabs have definitely no claim to resettle in Europe as historical compensation.

In this context, the refugee crisis and Ukraine/Georgia are de facto connected, whether you like it or not, because a society has just a limited capacity to deal with problems. The problems resulting from the refugee crisis, the Greece crisis, and some other less important crises that I did not mention, just exhaust the capacity of Europe.

Florian, I agree with you that historical memories (and how they are being interpreted) play an important role in explaining the present. The memory of Christian crusades is a powerful motivator of all Jihadists in the Muslim world. The Arab and Ottoman attacks on Europe have some role in explaining the intensity of anti-migration moods in Europe.

These remote events, however, have no relevance for understanding the breakdown of the Arab states and the resulting migration waves. Colonial borders and the shameless divide-and-rule politics, on the other hand, are their most direct cause! The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 had set a time bomb that has just gone off (not in the least because of EU and US efforts to undermine unfriendly political regimes).

Few in Europe know anything about the Sykes-Picot agreement (I do know some because it was obligatory reading in my Israeli high school), yet, we now live with its direct consequences. This agreement artificially divided the Middle East into British and French-dependent and kingdoms (not democracies :-)). Lacking in popular legitimacy, these corrupt regimes fueled wave after wave of revolts and revolutions. Having been founded by colonial powers, they motivated every single movement demanding Arab unity – in the name of religion (ISIS) or secular nationalism and socialism (a la Nasser).

The crisis in Iraq, Syria and Libya are all direct results of this cynical colonial meddling. It is rather ironic that they were set off by yet another outburst of colonial interventionism (in the name of democracy building). Moreover, all the Arab oil regimes (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) as well as Jordan will most certainly follow suit since their ruling families will completely lose their legitimacy as soon as they run out of oil and become irrelevant for the West.

So much for history.

For Merkel, the decision to accept responsibility had nothing to do with history. For her this was about two things: human rights and European unity. From the former perspective, one cannot argue for human rights around the world and ignore human suffering on your borders. From the perspective of European unity, one cannot let the burden of mass migration lie on just a few EU members - everybody have to share the weight of the crisis or, else, the EU will fall apart.

Regardless of her motivation, the current crisis is not just about moral responsibility, it is about inevitability. The whining against mass migration will not help. London and Paris have inevitably become multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-racial agglomerations. Because of French and British colonial crusades back in the 19th century, but even more importantly because of the huge global wealth and population imbalances. Such imbalances cannot be sustained by any walls or membranes, let alone by wishful thinking on the part of migration haters around the world. This is something I learned early on in my chemistry classes.

Thousands of Georgians and Ukrainians are already in Europe, legally and illegally, and will continue arriving as long as material wealth and populations remain unequally distributed. Having raised expectations for economic integration and free movement across borders, Europe simply accelerated the process. So be it.

Finally, the internal contradictions in your article (which Carlos was quick to point out) are the result of your desire to flatter your Georgian readers. Yet, as argued by Carlos, in the eyes of European migration haters, Christian Georgians and Muslim Arabs are all the same. For them anybody with a slightly darker skin and different dressing code is suspect of invading their white habitat.

Eric, of course there was harmful meddling of European powers in the Middle East. There was also meddling of all other European powers in Germany in the Thirty Years War 1618-1648. Would the Thirty Years War hypothetically justify or explain the emergence of something like the IS in Germany? History is not so inevitable in its consequences as you seem to believe. The situation in the Middle East is most and foremost a function of the people of the Middle East. For all the hatred, intolerance and violence, they must not blame anybody but themselves.

What you say about the inevitability of mass immigration is totally incomprehensible to me. If there was a political decision to stop mass immigration, it could be done. You may see Australia as an example or Israel at its southern border. Actually, it is much easier to stop immigration than it ever was before, given the technology we have available today. The Great Wall in China kept the invaders out for 400 years, and it was based on medieval technology.

I do not want to flatter anybody. Of course I am sympathetic with the Georgians, but most of all I am outraged that the European elites open up the borders for people who spread a culture of intolerance and will eventually bring down the West, while the Georgians are treated like pariahs.

Specially for you, Florian, and other people who believe in walls: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/membranes-and-transport/diffusion-and-osmosis/v/diffusion-and-osmosis

Eric, do you claim that it is factually impossible to prevent immigration, or do you want to say that one should not prevent immigration? Or both?

Of course, I claim is that it is factually impossible to prevent the free movement of people in the 21st century. People always found ways to escape slavery, and Gulags. They did so in the darkest of ages and in the harshest climate conditions. People will always break through every wall or barbed wire on their way to freedom.

One can of course slow down migration and make it very difficult and dangerous for people to move. Yet, the 21 first century presents anti-migration policies with very serious challenges.

The first challenge is about LEGITIMACY. In Alabama of early 1960s, fellow black citizens were not allow on white people’s communities, condos, buses and schools for pretty much the same reasons you are appealing to in your article (crime, etc.). In the 21st century, when the US is ruled by a black president, the same moral question is taken to the next level. If it is no longer legitimate to prevent fellow black or Muslim citizens on white people’s buses, why is it still legitimate to prevent blacks from Nigeria or Kenia on the US buses, figuratively speaking? Morality does know national borders, no more than it knows neighborhoods or buses. It is like physics or economics (at least that’s how some think of economics).

The second challenge stems from the HUMAN RIGHTS RELIGION which White Europe and the US had cultivated in recent decades. To this day, this modern religious creed is being used and abused to gain market share (through economic sanctions) and provide legitimacy for forceful regime changes throughout the developing world. Now, however, this very religion is standing in the way of using walls against migrants and essentially forces Europe into some sort of humanitarian action on its own soil (something Europe is not very much used to).

The third challenge is related to GLOBALIZATION processes. Migration controls are essentially about preventing the movement of people across “national” borders. But the term nation - given its racial and genetic connotation - is becoming less and less convincing in the 21st century. It is less convincing given our collective realization of the arbitrary nature of national borders which have effectively locked fairly random groups of individuals into nations (Belgium is an extreme example, but any European nation of today has its genetic roots in dozens of tribes that had once roamed across Eurasia).

The notion of nation states served a good purpose back in the 19th century – helping break the old royal and imperial order and providing a political alternative for maintaining law and order in smaller political units. This purpose is no longer there. In fact, smaller groups and minorities increasingly find themselves oppressed by majorities within existing nation-states (one does not have to go very far for examples). In this sense, nation states have become TOO BIG. At the same time, nation states have become TOO SMALL to handle any of the global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century - from climate change, to decease control, to innovation, to effective taxation, to business development and global migration. All signs thus point to the fact that the nation state, as we know it today, is living its last days. (it is rather ironic to observe the futile attempts by certain societies to creates new nation states and come up with convincing national mythologies to justify their existence as such). The new political order emerging on the ruins of nation states will draw its legitimacy from its ability to solve problems, not common ancestry or genetics. It may be opposed to mass migration on technocratic grounds (too much, too fast, etc.), but it won’t be able to argue against it on the basis of religion, culture or ethnicity, as is still the case today.

Given this inevitable historical dynamic, migration haters of today are no more rational or moral than Luddites of the 19th century or White Supremacists of the 20th. They all belong in the same garbage can of history.

You resent Muslim migration into Germany because the newcomers do not readily assimilate and many of them, so you claim, are terrorists – actual or potential. But how about Chinese migration into Germany? What would be your economic or moral justification for banning Chinese or Japanese migrants from settling in the EU? And how about Chinese migration into the vast empty spaces of Siberia where they could bring into cultivation new lands without disturbing sparse local population (which settled there, at the expense of endogenous people and wild animals only a couple centuries ago).