On the Nature of Things

Following this:

The World Doesn’t Stop Fighting Without You

in the specefic case of the Iran war, does for instance Tucker Carlson not have a point, that the USA is fighting Israel's war and that it is not in the interest of the USA to participate?

It might help to do a what-if scenario: had there not been a state of Israel and no Western interventions post WW2, how would the Meddle East look like? How would the West relate?

A Middle East Without Israel: A Quieter Fault Line, Not a Peaceful Region

Imagine a Middle East in which no Jewish state emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire—no Israel, no defining Arab-Israeli conflict—and, crucially, no continued violent meddling by Western powers after the World Wars. At first glance, this seems like a recipe for a calmer region. One major flashpoint disappears. But remove that layer, and what remains is not harmony, but a landscape shaped by deeper, older forces.

The most immediate change would be the absence of the Arab-Israeli wars and the political mobilization built around them. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq would not have fought a series of interstate wars centered on Palestine. There would likely be no enduring refugee crisis in its current form, and less rhetorical unity built on opposition to a common external enemy. The region’s political discourse might have been less fixated on one symbolic struggle.

But the underlying structure of the Middle East would still be intact—and that structure has historically produced conflict without needing Israel as a catalyst.

First, Arab rivalries would remain central. Competing visions—monarchy versus republicanism, pan-Arabism versus state nationalism—would still drive tensions between countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. A territory like Palestine, rather than becoming a stable Arab state, might have been divided, absorbed, or turned into a zone of competition among its neighbors.

Second, sectarian divides would continue to shape conflict, especially between Sunni and Shia powers. The rivalry between Iran and Iraq would almost certainly still emerge, driven by geography, ideology, and regime survival. Saudi Arabia’s role as a Sunni power and guardian of holy sites would still place it in long-term tension with Iran.

Third, state formation itself would remain fragile. Borders drawn in the post-Ottoman era would still cut across tribes, sects, and ethnic groups. This would continue to generate internal instability, coups, and civil wars—regardless of Israel’s existence.

Fourth, the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf would follow their own dynamics. Saudi Arabia would still consolidate power over the peninsula. Yemen would likely remain divided, unstable, and prone to internal conflict. The Gulf states would still emerge as resource-rich monarchies, balancing internal legitimacy with regional rivalries. Tensions among these states—over ideology, borders, and influence—would persist independently of any Israeli factor.

Fifth, non-Arab regional powers would still compete. Turkey, Iran, and to a lesser extent Pakistan would pursue their own strategic interests. Turkey would remain concerned with Kurdish regions across its borders. Iran would project influence westward. These dynamics have roots that do not depend on Israel’s existence.

Even without Western military interventions after the early 20th century, the region would not be insulated from conflict. Local actors would still pursue power, security, and dominance. Internal repression, revolutions, and interstate wars would likely still occur—perhaps with fewer external distortions, but not with fundamentally different human incentives.

The result is a paradox:

Remove Israel, and you remove one of the most visible and emotionally charged conflicts in modern history—but you do not remove the conditions that produce conflict.

At best, the Middle East might have been less unified in hostility and less globally polarized. At worst, the absence of a common external focus could have intensified internal rivalries even earlier and more directly.

In short:

A Middle East without Israel would likely have been a different region—but not a peaceful one.
The fault lines would shift, not disappear.

Interests Without a Single Axis

Even in a scenario with no Israel and no direct Western military interventions after the World Wars, the relationship between the West and the Middle East would still be deep, persistent, and often tense. The reason is simple: interests do not disappear when intervention does. Oil, trade routes, and geopolitical positioning would continue to bind the regions together.

1. Oil as the Core Driver

The West’s primary interest would remain energy security.

The Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar) would still emerge as crucial oil exporters

Western economies would remain heavily dependent on stable energy flows

The Strait of Hormuz would still be a global chokepoint
Even without military bases or invasions, the West would pursue:

Long-term oil contracts
Strategic partnerships with ruling elites
Diplomatic pressure to ensure stability

The relationship would be less about occupation and more about mutual dependency with asymmetric leverage.

2. A Network of Pragmatic Alliances

Without Israel as a central ally, Western strategy would likely be more distributed:

Saudi Arabia → key energy partner, conservative anchor
Iran → potentially less isolated (depending on internal evolution), a major regional pole

Turkey → bridge between Europe and Asia, NATO-like role even without Israeli factor

Egypt → control of the Suez Canal remains critical
Instead of one strong regional pillar (Israel), the West would hedge across multiple regimes, often with conflicting interests.

This creates a balancing game, not a unified bloc.

3. Influence Without Direct Control

If we assume no Western wars or coups after WW2, influence shifts form:

Economic leverage → trade, investment, technology
Soft power → education, culture, media
Corporate presence → oil companies, infrastructure, finance

But:

Local regimes retain more autonomy
Anti-Western sentiment may still exist, but less tied to military grievances
Western influence becomes negotiated, not imposed

Think less “empire,” more interdependent spheres of influence.

4. Regional Conflicts Still Pull the West In (Indirectly)

Even without intervention, the West cannot stay indifferent:

Oil disruptions affect global markets
Regional wars threaten trade routes
Refugee flows impact Europe

So the West would likely:

Mediate diplomatically
Support allies economically
Apply sanctions or incentives

But avoid:
Large-scale invasions
Direct regime change

Engagement becomes reactive and indirect, not interventionist.

5. A Less Polarized Narrative

Without the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a symbolic centerpiece:

Western–Middle Eastern relations might be less ideologically charged
Fewer “civilizational” narratives dominating discourse
Conflicts seen more as regional power struggles than global moral battles

However:
Tensions over religion, modernity, governance, and identity would still exist
The West would still be viewed with suspicion and interest in equal measure

6. The Big Picture

In this alternative world:

The West is deeply connected but less visibly entangled
The Middle East is internally divided rather than externally unified against a single enemy
Oil and trade create a permanent relationship, regardless of politics

Final Take

Without Israel and without Western military intervention, the relationship becomes less explosive—but not simple.
Fewer symbolic conflicts
More pragmatic, transactional ties
Continued tension driven by interests, not ideology

The core truth remains:
Geography and resources bind the West and the Middle East together— even when politics tries to keep them apart.

Given the above somewhat wet-dream where there would be no Jewish state and less military interventions by the West, to the isolationist and no-war advocates, the state of Israel must be a very annoying reality. The Jewish state easily becomes the target and symbol for what is wrong with the West and is blamed, as a common enemy, for much of the self-inflicted wounds of the other people in the region.

Your Nakbah, My Nakbah

Each year on May 15, Palestinians commemorate what they call the Nakbah—Arabic for “catastrophe.” It refers to the events surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced or fled from their homes during the war that followed the end of the British Mandate. For Palestinians, the Nakbah is not only a historical episode but an enduring condition: a loss of land, fragmentation of community, and a lingering sense of dispossession that continues across generations.

To acknowledge this is not to diminish it. The Nakbah is real, deeply felt, and central to Palestinian identity. It deserves recognition as a human tragedy.

But it did not occur in isolation.

The first half of the twentieth century was an age of upheaval so vast that it is difficult to grasp in full. The same decades that produced the Nakbah also witnessed what might be called a global catastrophe—a chain of events that uprooted, displaced, and destroyed lives on a scale rarely seen in human history.

World War I shattered empires—the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German—leaving millions dead and entire regions destabilized. Borders were redrawn with little regard for the people living within them, planting seeds of future conflict across Europe and the Middle East alike.

Then came revolutions and ideological upheavals. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia unleashed civil war, repression, and famine. In Ukraine, the Holodomor famine of the early 1930s led to the deaths of millions. Across Eurasia, societies were violently re-engineered in the name of utopian visions.

World War II followed with even greater devastation. Tens of millions perished—soldiers and civilians alike. Cities were flattened. Entire populations were displaced. The Holocaust saw the systematic murder of six million Jews, alongside millions of others deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime. It was not merely a tragedy but a rupture in the moral fabric of civilization.

Elsewhere, catastrophe continued. In China, the Maoist revolution and its aftermath brought famine and political purges that cost tens of millions of lives. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot attempted to remake society from the ground up, resulting in the deaths of roughly a quarter of the population.

Across continents, people experienced their own versions of catastrophe—forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, famine, war, and ideological terror. Families were uprooted. Communities vanished. Entire ways of life were extinguished.

Seen in this broader context, the Nakbah becomes part of a larger human story: a century in which the world itself seemed to convulse, casting millions into loss and displacement. This does not lessen the Palestinian experience—it situates it.

The danger, lies in treating any one catastrophe as singular, incomparable, or exclusive. Suffering is not a competition, but neither is it confined to one people. When grief becomes isolated—“our catastrophe” versus “theirs”—it can harden into identity, into grievance that resists perspective.

What if, instead, we recognized a shared inheritance of loss?

“Your Nakbah, my Nakbah” is not a statement of equivalence, but of connection. It suggests that beneath different histories lies a common human vulnerability: the capacity to lose everything—home, family, certainty—and to carry that loss forward.

The twentieth century did not belong to one tragedy. It was, in many ways, an international Nakbah.

And perhaps understanding that does not erase pain—but it might widen the lens through which we see one another.

Iran is winning the agitprop contest.