NIMBY Syndrome in History: Deja vù All Over Again

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a podcast called “12 Byzantine Rulers: A History of the Byzantine Empire” by Lars Brownworth who also wrote the book “Lost to the West.”  I was impressed with the podcast and followed it up with the book.  A big take-away for the story of the extinction of the Byzantine Empire was the lack of assistance from the Christian world of the west, meaning Western Europe. They had no interest in helping the Byzantines repel the marauding Ottoman Turks as they ate away at their territory piece by piece until only the city of Constantinople was left in the early part of the 15^th century. 

 

The Turks, under Sultan Mehmed II amassed a huge army, estimated to be around 80,000 troops and besieged Constantinople in May of 1453 and destroyed it.  The Byzantines had only 5,000 troops to defend the city.  The last emperor of the Byzantines, Constantine XI, and his officials, made a last-ditch effort to beg their fellow Christians in Europe for help but were turned down.  Giovanni Giustiniani, a Genoese nobleman and military commander was one of the few to respond.  The Venetians sent a few ships, but they were of little help.  A handful of other Europeans volunteered but too small a number to be effective.  Giustiniani gathered 700 mercenaries and made it to Constantinople, but they were totally overwhelmed by the superior Ottoman forces, both in number and in weapons.  The Ottomans had just acquired a cannon capable of breaking the famous impregnable city walls of Constantinople. Giustiniani died the month after the fall of Constantinople, at the age of 35, probably due to wounds he received during the battle. 

 

Upon breaching the city walls, the Turks went on a killing spree.  Marauding Ottoman soldiers swept the city killing all they encountered.  Those not killed were enslaved. Why did their fellow Europeans fail to help them?  The Ottoman Turks had been on a conquest for hundreds of years.  I asked Lars Brownworth, in an e-mail, the same question.  There is no easy answer.  

 

The Catholic-Orthodox schism of 1054 AD did a lot of damage, not only in religious matters but in the tense relations between the Greek Orthodox east and the Roman west.  As in a feuding family, they despised each other.  This, perhaps, was a major reason for the Byzantines getting no help from their brother Christians.  A second reason could be attributed to the notion of “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) syndrome; meaning if the danger is not in my back yard, I don’t care.  This is a common malady today.  Many liberals and conservatives in the United States do not want to help Ukraine against the invading Russians for the same reason.  The Europeans were very wrong about NIMBY for they, themselves, became the next target of the Ottomans.  Within a 70-year span after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans were at the gates of Europe.  In 1529 the first Siege of Vienna happened but was repelled.  By 1571 the battle of Lepanto took place between the Ottomans and a coalition of Europeans, Spanish, Italians, Austrians and others.  The Ottomans lost the huge naval battle at Lepanto, most of their navy and about 25,000 killed.  This marked the largest naval battle since the Greeks and Persians at Salamis in 480 BC.

 

The Ottomans were not yet finished.  They again tried to conquer Europe with the second siege of Vienna in 1683; they were repelled with the help of a European coalition and the fierce counterattack by an army which arrived just in time, led by the king of Poland, King Sobieski, a brilliant military commander.  Finally, the Europeans realized that cooperating was the way to go. With a NIMBY attitude Europe would have been Muslim today.

 

In a fine history book by Victor Davis Hanson called “The Father of us All, War and History,” regarding the Christian League that fought at Lepanto, Hanson says that France and England refused to cooperate in fighting the Ottomans: “both had long ago cut their own deals with the Ottomans.  Indeed, during the winter of 1542 the French had even allowed the Ottoman corsair Barbarossa the use of their harbor at Toulon to refit as he conducted raids along the Italian coast.” (Chapter 7).   Call it what you want but this was treachery at its worst by brother Christians and fellow Europeans.

 

History is a great teacher, but few ever learn.  Same mistakes are committed over and over, whether its World War I or the appeasement of Hitler in World War II.  Hitler did not learn from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812; the United States learned nothing from the French debacle in Vietnam or the problems encountered in Korea in the early 1950s.  This same mistake is repeated today.  When will they ever learn? to take a que from the 1950s song by the Kingston Trio, “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?”

 

In today’s Europe, we have leaders like Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, who refused to help Ukraine against the evil Russian regime of the dictator Vladimir Putin.  Now, the first question I would ask Mr. Orban would be:  Sir, your country was viciously oppressed by the Soviet Union for over 70 years.  Remember what the Russians did to Hungary in 1956 when they brought tanks to Budapest to crush you?  Perhaps you never heard of it.  Here is a link for you to look up.  Are you suffering from the Stockholm syndrome?  Similarly, we have some right-wing politicians such as Matteo Salvini in Italy who openly admires Vladimir Putin.  Am I missing something?  NIMBY roars its ugly head again.