Sykes-Picot: Others are Making the Same Point

I'll be returning to my series on Sykes-Picot and how it was only one piece in the complex mix that was the postwar settlement, but I thought I should note that while the anniversary was marked, as I'd predicted, by far too many articles about how Sykes and Picot drew the borders of the modern Middle East, there were also a number of voices who took the more realistic view. few of them:

• Steven A. Cook and Amr T. Leheta, Don't Blame Sykes-Picot for the Middle East's Mess.

• Nick Danforth, New York Times, "Could Different Borders Have Saved the Middle East?"

• The Economist, "The War Within."

•  And at Afternoon Map, Nick Danforth (again) has a "Sykes-Picot Roundup" of past articles by himself and others. One is on the King-Crane Commission, which I'll blog about soon. But another, called "Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East." It seems this just replaces one oversimplification with another. Sèvres did produce something closer than Sykes-Picot to the final lines, but why not San Remo or far better, Lausanne?

More on this subject soon.