The Shifting Global Order and its Implications for the Middle East: Part 3

A century of crises has turned the Middle East into the place where the global order’s contradictions are laid bare—and where its collapse would echo far beyond the region.

Editorial Note: This is the third and final installment in this series. The first traced the evolution of the liberal order and its structural vulnerabilities. The second examined the cultural and ideological fractures undermining democracies from within. This final installment brings those insights into the context of the Middle East and its periphery—showing how the region magnifies these global tensions, exposes the limits of international norms, and illustrates what is at stake if they continue to erode.

Suppose the liberal order is a fragile construct, shaped by history and sustained by contested norms. In that case, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is where that fragility becomes most visible. For over a century, the region has acted as a geopolitical strange attractor, pulling global powers back into its orbit no matter how often they try to pivot away. Each attempt at disengagement—from Obama’s tilt toward Asia to Biden’s recalibration—has been undone by crisis: Syria’s civil war, Yemen’s humanitarian collapse, Gaza’s infernos.

These crises rarely remain local. They send shockwaves through energy markets, migration routes, and ideological networks, destabilizing regions far beyond MENA. This is a crucible where the promises and contradictions of the global order collide—and where the struggle over norms is most brutally exposed.

MENA as a Stress Point

The Middle East magnifies the tensions explored in the first two installments: unfinished state formation, grievance politics, and the erosion of norms. Few regions more clearly reveal the gap between ideals such as sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights, and their uneven implementation.

Consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long seen as the region’s core moral wound. Its persistence cannot be blamed solely on outside failures or on one specific regional actor. Internal dynamics—weaponization of the cause in inter-Arab rivalries, zero-sum thinking, hubris, and ideological nihilism—have been equally corrosive. Instead of using diplomacy for incremental gains, many actors embraced all-or-nothing strategies that run counter to the liberal order’s normative grammar, which prizes negotiation, compromise, and gradualism. This refusal not only destroyed diplomatic openings but also entrenched authoritarianism at home, where “defending Palestine” became a justification for repression.

Acknowledging this doesn’t ignore the real power imbalances—such as the ongoing occupation, settlement expansion, and the current wave of violence, which are staggering in scale and remain key obstacles to peace. But it highlights a more profound truth that norms only work when they are genuinely embraced, not selectively invoked for political convenience.

Meanwhile, other conflicts—Sunni-Shia rivalries, Iran’s revolutionary ambitions, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman assertiveness, Gulf security anxieties, Kurdish demands for self-rule, and other longstanding wounds—ensure that sovereignty, intervention, and minority rights remain in constant tension. As crises rise and fall, so do energy prices, refugee flows, and extremist networks—ensuring that MENA’s instability is never contained to the region.

The Legacy of Empire and the Myth of Sykes-Picot

Few ideas dominate Middle Eastern political debates more than the claim that “everything is Sykes-Picot’s fault.” In simple terms, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret 1916 agreement in which Britain and France outlined how they might divide parts of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Over time, it has become shorthand for the belief that European powers invented the modern Middle East by drawing artificial borders on a map.

But the reality is more complicated. The modern Levant was not created solely by European cartographers. It emerged from a mix of imperial maneuvering and local agency.

The Ottoman Empire was already collapsing—undermined by internal decay and an aggressive campaign of Turkification that alienated many of its Arab subjects. When the empire fell apart at the end of World War I, the victorious powers created the “mandate system.” It was hierarchical and deeply unequal, but it was also historically unusual: for the first time, the idea of eventual self-rule entered international politics.

Participation was limited, but it existed—unlike earlier empires where locals had no say at all. And local leaders did shape outcomes:

• Lebanon ended up bigger than France initially imagined.

• Syria survived as a single state despite French efforts to break it up.

• Jordan emerged as a negotiated compromise that endured.

• Gulf states gradually negotiated their way into the borders they now have.

Even the Palestinian tragedy was not predetermined. Britain endorsed partition. The United Nations approved it. Zionist leaders accepted it. But Arab leaders rejected it and chose war. That choice reflected more than just bad strategy—it showed a political culture unprepared for a new international order that rewarded compromise rather than maximalist demands. That lesson still resonates today.

Thinking in counterfactuals clarifies the stakes: had the Ottomans and Germans won World War I, independence for Syria or Lebanon would have been unlikely; Palestine’s path to statehood, unthinkable. Local cultures—Arab, Kurdish, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian—would likely have been battered by continued Turkification. The mandate system, however paternalistic, was a break from the older model of outright conquest. Independence, imperfect though it was, owes more to the norms (and contradictions) of the emerging liberal order than many prefer to admit.

Agency and the Allure of the External Villain

Blaming imperialism for every regional pathology is analytically weak and politically convenient. Coups in Syria and Iran—often attributed to CIA plots—were driven primarily by domestic actors exploiting local rivalries. Declassified documents confirm Western involvement, but mostly as amplification rather than orchestration. Local agency was decisive.

This distinction matters because scapegoating absolves elites of responsibility. Corruption, sectarianism, failed modernization, and repression of minorities all fade behind the comforting fiction of foreign omnipotence. Authoritarian regimes weaponize this narrative: “We resist imperialism; dissent is treason.” The result is governance by grievance, and paralysis dressed up as principle. Victimhood politics is not liberation; it is a slow-moving suicide that erodes agency and legitimizes tyranny.

The trajectories of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya show the pattern. The Arab Spring caused surface-level change, but deeper structures reasserted themselves. Inertia once again defeated entropy.

Cultural Crosscurrents and Imperial Nostalgia

Sectarianism remains the region’s default political language, now reinforced by nostalgia for lost empires—Ottoman, Persian, Arab. These myths, often amplified by ruling elites, sanctify authoritarian tendencies and justify expansionist visions. External enemies become props in a theater of grievance, and internal dissenters become traitors. In this moral economy, compromise is betrayal, and absolutism poses as honor.

Great-Power Competition in a Fragmented Landscape

Into this volatile landscape step new patrons. Russia and China do not offer a rules-based order; they provide transactional deals—arms, infrastructure, diplomatic cover—without conditions. For regimes hostile to accountability, this is attractive. Their narrative—Western hypocrisy, sovereignty as shield—finds receptive audiences shaped by decades of conspiratorial thinking.

Gulf states hedge, courting Beijing while relying on U.S. security. Turkey oscillates between being an ally of NATO and a revisionist actor. Iran doubles down on asymmetry, though its strategy may be nearing diminishing returns. Is this realignment structural or tactical? Mostly tactical—but perceptions matter. They normalize the belief that norms are flexible and rules are negotiable. Great-power rivalry accelerates normative fragmentation, and principles become bargaining chips.

Implications for Reformists and Pro-Democracy Movements

The erosion of global norms harms one group most: democrats. They are the only actors committed to accountability, pluralism, and negotiated compromise. Abandoning them is a moral failure and strategically self-defeating.

The earlier lessons remain essential:

• Narrative clarity: Reject grievance fatalism and imperial nostalgia; reclaim agency.

• Internal empowerment: Without resilient institutions and civic education, external assistance makes little difference.

• Coalition-building: Link local reformists with global democratic networks—norms need both advocates and power.

• Strategic patience: Democratization is generational. Accepting this is necessary for survival.

Policy Pathways

The core dilemma for regional and external actors is the tension between short-term stability and long-term norm resilience. History suggests:

• Hyper-centralized governance in diverse societies often breeds revolt. Decentralization is not a concession but a structural requirement.

• Authoritarian modernization may provide temporary order but undermines long-term legitimacy.

• External aid without governance benchmarks feeds fragility rather than reducing it.

• Investments in civil society and digital freedoms are not luxuries but essential safeguards against authoritarian dominance of new technologies.

Resolve in an Age of Evasion

If the first installment called for humility and the second for urgency, this final one calls for resolve. The Middle East is not an outlier. It is a mirror reflecting the fractures of the global order. Its crises are not exceptions; they are amplifiers. Disengagement is a fantasy; intervention without strategy, a mistake. The harder path—sustaining a normative framework in a region resistant to it—is the only path that avoids systemic collapse.

The global order was never about perfection; it was about preventing implosion. In MENA, that mission hangs by a thread. If it snaps, the recoil will be felt everywhere—in energy markets, migration flows, and security crises spreading from the Sahel to the Silk Road, from Europe’s streets to the Americas. The choice is stark between agency or alibis, compromise or absolutism. The region cannot afford the wrong choice—and neither can the world.

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