Imperial Ambitions in the Middle East

Submitted by Michael S. (United States), Jul 3, 2014 at 15:30

Hello, Ludvikus

I just read the Glick link -- Good link. Caroline said some things I hadn't thought about. She is looking at Turkey's motives (and Iran's) in light of the imperial history of the Middle East, a history that is not divided along religious lines, language lines or ethnic lines, but simply along the lined of contending empires. In this context, the major imperial centers in the Middle East have been:

1. Egypt, which traditionally controlled Israel and Lebanon and was connected at times with Sudan, Cyrenaica and islands like Crete and Cyprus

2. Iraq-Syria. This was the center of the Assyrian & Babylonian Empires, as well as the Arab Caliphates

3. the Iranian Plateau. The Persian and Parthian Empires, along with Turkish and Mongol Khanates all ruled from here

4. Greece-Turkey. The most enduring empires in the Middle East were ruled from what is now Istanbul.

5. the West, centered on Rome. The current manifestation of this power is NATO.

[Biblically-minded folks will note that these correspond with the great powers prophesied in Daniel, and in the Christian book of Revelation. They also correspond with the geography of the region]

Nationalism, based on languages such as French and English, came to the fore only recently, during the French Revolution that preceeded Napoleon. It was the main template for the division of the world after WWI and WWII. As Ms. Glick notes, dividing the world in this way leads to chaos, seeing that there are hundreds of major and thousands of minor "nationalities" such as the Scots, the Catalans, Languedoc, Kosovo, Abkhazia, the Chechens and Ingushes, the Tibetans, etc. Historically, such independent nation-states ultimately became parts of the competing empires -- as Armenia was, perpetually traded between the Romans and Persians.

Caroline noted also, that chaos is difficult if not impossible to manage. True. We are witnessing this, and will continue to do so, probably, for the foreseeable future.

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