ABSTRACT
Introduction In May 1916, the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement foreshadowed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Under its terms the Middle East was carved up into spheres of infl uence to serve British and French ends. This led in due course to a series of ‘protectorates’, none of which was strong enough to dominate the region but all of which embodied disputes and grievances. During the period of de-colonisation in the 1950s and early 1960s, it appeared that Arab nationalism would become the expression of the ‘Arab nation’. However, there was and is no Arab nation but several very distinct nations and many societies where there is relatively little sense of nationhood. Defeats by Israel in 1967 and 1973, and the perception on the Arab Street that the West is inimical to Arab interests, enabled the steady rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the creed of the caliphate as an alternative to the ‘failed’ state. The rise of fundamentalism was further enabled by Saudi Arabia, whose regime sought to buy Wahhabi acquiescence by the granting of a favoured status to that sect and then to buy off AQ elements by allowing the funding of Salafi jihadism, both in the region and beyond. The situation in Syria and the Shia-Sunni divide in Iraq created the conditions for Islamic fundamentalism to mutate into ISIS, which now poses a threat to all the states in the region and many beyond. It is time to look at all this as a whole.
Options There are today essentially four options for Western policy: to do nothing; to engage with others in humanitarian relief; to construct a coalition of allies and partners for short-term intervention in Syria; or to construct a coalition of allies and partners for long-term intervention more widely. The United States may of course choose its own path, but the same analysis essentially holds true for the West generally. The reason why the United States may be
