The West Has Been Trying to Run the Middle East

[MineralMan]

since the time of the Roman Empire.

It has never worked. It's not going to work now, either.

It probably will never work.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Well, it's kind of hard to avoid the region, since every time they need arms and such, guess who they come running to?

The West (and we have unfortunately or fortunately tons of people to sell these arms to them). The cycle repeats after a violent confrontation, and then the rearming starts all over again. How many cycles have we seen so far in the Middle East? I suspect too many and that we're yet to see more cycles of this bloodshed to come still.

[MineralMan]

2. That's recent history.

The Romans didn't have arms to sell them. It wanted what was being produced there. So, it tried to dominate. That didn't work, either. Now, we want oil.

My point is that we meddle where we should not, whoever we are.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. You might also say the Middle East tried to run the West since the Battle of Marathon

and the Persian Empire's attempt to conquer mainland Greece.

[MineralMan]

4. Yah, It has gone both ways at various times.

It always ends badly, either way.

[Celerity]

18. Alexander the Great conquered and destroyed the Achaemenid Persian Empire

Battle of Alexander versus Darius by Pietro da Cortona - ca 1650

The Battle of Gaugamela took place in 331 BC between the forces of the Army of Macedon under Alexander the Great and the Persian Army under King Darius III. It was the second and final battle between the two kings, and is considered to be the final blow to the Achaemenid Empire, resulting in its complete conquest by Alexander.

[MineralMan]

19. OK. The Greeks, too.

[malaise]

5. Ding ding

It will never work

[MineralMan]

6. I agree 100%.

[WSHazel]

7. Actually, the Byzantine, Persian, Islamic and Ottoman empires were stronger

than anything in the west until maybe 1700. The Ottoman Empire played a big role in the survival of the early constitutional monarchies and Republics in northern Europe by keeping the Hapsburg Empire pinned down in the Mediterranean.

It was not until the 19th and really the 20th century that the West was truly capable of imposing its will on the Middle East. The Middle East's current weakness is the result of a climate collapse, and is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world if climate change escalates.

[LeftInTX]

8. I don't think climate change is the main issue.

Iran was and is pretty much a monolith.. Trump didn't realize this.....

The Levant (former Ottoman Empire) is fragile and politically unstable since WWI.

Trump equated Iran with Iraq. But they're night and day.

[PufPuf23]

14. WWI was A Peace to End All Peace.

Good book to read.

A Peace to End All Peace

The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

David Fromkin (1989)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Peace_to_End_All_Peace

[Sympthsical]

20. I was about to say

Since the time of the Romans?

OP kinda left out . . . everything there. Islamic conquests, the Ottoman Empire. The Byzantines, to quote the great historian Eddie Izzard, just kind of slowly collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. Their apex was probably around 11th Century, then all downhill. Even then, their only real territory in the region consisted more or less of Turkey. Hardly all of the Middle East. The Crusades accomplished very little and were a drop in the bucket compared everything else that happened in the region during the past 1,500 years. We just care about them because we take a Eurocentric view of things. The Caliphates were sittin over there like, "Tf they doin . . ." Even the Mongols tried to yolo their way into Central Europe in the 13th Century.

Europe spent the vast bulk of the post-Roman era in either a defensive posture or fighting with themselves. A good chunk of the reason European colonialism kicked off is because they didn't want to fuck around with the Middle East.

It never ceases to amaze me when "West bad!" points for applause seem to have zero understanding of . . . any history at all.

[H2O Man]

9. Recommended.

[WarGamer]

10. Never worked?

Pompey the Great invaded present day Syria in 63BCE and the Roman/Byzantine Empires controlled the middle east until the 7th Century Arab Conquests...

600+ years of Roman rule in the "Levant".

Trajan even pushed Roman control into modern day Iraq in the 2nd Century CE... for a period of time

[MineralMan]

11. Control has gone back and forth, and is still fluctuating

My point is that the issue continues and will continue. The West keeps trying, and keeps getting kicked out again.

Why are we doing this? That's the question.

[pcdb]

16. We're doing this to preserve the petrodollar

When an oil producing country starts selling its product in anything other than USD, we go to war with them. If the petrodollar fails, the US will collapse.

[snot]

12. It might make sense

to think of these things in terms of, "sociopathic elites based in various regions have been trying to dominate/colonize/exploit everyone else."

Ditto w.r.t. the generations: instead of viewing things in terms of younger generations vs. boomers, it make more sense to me to view them in terms of the sociopathic elites within every generation trying to run everyone else.

[MineralMan]

13. It's always a power struggle, isn't it?

That seems to be the nature of things.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

15. It shouldn't "work"

The west doesn't want the middle east to run the west, either.

[ananda]

17. In modern times it's been about oil.

And boy it's been ugly, and still is.