I welcome Ziyi (Emily) Wang, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, to take me by the hand and guide me to 1936.
The setting was all against all in Africa. Hitler had the Rhineland. France, despite having overwhelming military power, had stood back from the dictator. So had Britain. And all of Europe was again under the pall of a possible war, which no one ever wanted again. The generation had been destroyed; everybody wanted peace all the time.
And into that mix comes a dispute over the Dardanelles that can only be resolved by the powers talking to each other in a fashion, even though they didn’t trust each other. I’m led here by an article by Emily at Englesberg Ideas, because it turns out where we are today—with the choke points of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb—was presented in 1936 and can guide us to some lessons.
There is a way forward, and it’s to the past. First, 1936. What was at issue over the Montreux Convention? What was it? What were the debates, and who had the upper hand in these conversations?
Watch the full conversation above, or listen to an audio version below:
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