The creation of a mega-zone of conflict.
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Politico.com - January 08, 2014
As the events of the past week demonstrate, the Middle East has still not
found a solution to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Melting away
before our eyes is the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, in which the British
and French carved out spheres of influence in the Levant, leading to the
creation of Syria and Iraq. A terrorist Sunnistan has now emerged
between the Lebanese city of Tripoli and the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and
Fallujah, while a messy child’s finger-painting of different tribalized
sovereignties defines Sunni and Shia areas of control between the
eastern edge of the Mediterranean and the Iranian plateau. This happens
even as a sprawling and fractious Kurdistan sinks tenuous roots atop the
corpses of Baathist regimes. But Middle Eastern chaos is but prologue
to the drama sweeping much of the temperate zone of Afro-Asia all the
way to China. Indeed, so much else is going on beyond the Levant that
the media overlooks: not necessarily violent, but increasingly and
intensely interrelated. Understanding it all requires not a knowledge of
Washington policy alternatives, but of classical geography.
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