ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four instances of how Middle East problems ensnare and contort American policy. They are the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focusing on Jerusalem and the West Bank, the fate of the Kurds, and the sectarian showdown between Sunnism and Shiism featuring Iran and Saudi Arabia. The result is less focused “lethal landscapes” that center on developing world internal conflicts and continuing interest in the turbulent Middle East that dominate the “menu” of violence. Internal conflict within many developing-world states was an outcome of decolonization. The political factors are the most striking and often difficult. In the violence-prone countries, the major political problem is generally associated with nationalism or, more precisely, its absence. Numerous studies have sought to explain that geography, including its physical effects on people, is an important part of why the developing world did not develop in the same way as the European-dominated region of the Northern Hemisphere.
