The Middle East has now become a topic that is as monopolising as it is divisive: a land of endless conflicts, frayed diplomacy and betrayed hopes.

It has dominated the international agenda for decades, but one question remains unanswered: is this really an exception in the history of international relations, or just yet another illusion constructed by overlapping crises, external perceptions and Orientalism?

In an increasingly incomprehensible and fragile world, what makes the Middle East the most incomprehensible and fragile region?

Secular fragmentation

History has delivered a deeply fragmented Middle East on all possible levels.

From a geopolitical point of view, a weak and emerging state system, inherited from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, characterised by the betrayal of the Hussain McMahon and Sykes Picot accords, which put imperial interests before the needs of the region; but the most obvious axis is the religious one: on the one hand, the sacred places of the three monotheistic religions arose in the region with consequent, often sad and almost inevitable clashes, on the other, bitter internal divisions between Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Alawites, Maronites, Copts, Ismailites and Assyrians.

Complicating the picture are ethnic minorities, from Kurds to Armenians to Yazidis, but also Bedouins and Berbers.

On an ideological level, too, it is a constant battleground: between Zionists and Arab nationalists, pan-Arabists and Islamists, secularists and theocrats.

Finally, economic disparity is extreme, for example Yemen’s GDP per capita is thirty times lower than that of neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

While other regions of the world deal with one or two of these factors, in the Middle East they all coexist, so what may seem like a cold list is actually fuel on the fire of conflict, which is flaring up with unparalleled speed and intensity.

State fragility and weak territorial control

The Middle East is a land where state fragility is not the exception, but the rule. The Weberian concept of state monopoly on legitimate violence is largely absent here: no state is able to exercise complete control over its territory, often coexisting with non-state actors or armed groups, which may operate autonomously or sometimes side by side with the state.

The weakness of sovereignty does not only stop at internal borders: violations of territoriality are the order of the day. The latest example is the recent Israeli attack in Qatar. But it is not limited to Israel, as Turkish operations in northern Iraq and Syria have not only normalised foreign interference in regional politics, but have also given the Assad regime the final push, with implications yet to be deciphered.

In order to understand the Middle East, one has to understand that the very concept of the modern state is a Western concept, totally external to the region, which is seen as an imposition that ignores local traditions, such as tribal authority or established community structures.

Many Arab states did not achieveindependence until after the Second World War, Syria and Jordan in 1946, Libya in 1951, Kuwait in 1961, and the construction of these states is not yet complete, other states still have not achieved independence, just think of the Kurds, the largest people without a state, or theIsraeli-Palestinian impasse.

As Charles Tilly observes, ‘states make war and war makes states’, i.e. the formative process of states is never a peaceful process, wars are often as much foundational to states as they are necessary to obtain sovereignty.

In this region, however, states had to develop against a backdrop of heavy external interventions that hindered the natural evolution of political authority and undermined state sovereignty from the very beginning.

According to Benedict Anderson, the fragility of the Arab countries is not a failure of modernisation, but the lack of solid institutional foundations on which to build the legitimacy and governance necessary for the development of a Weberian state.

Systemic legitimisation of non-state actors

All over the world, non-state actors are a sign of state collapse, or peripheral rebellion; in the Middle East, they are an integral part of the regional power system.

Indeed, in no other region of the world do non-state armed actors have comparable political and military weight.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq, the Kurds of the PKK and the YPG: they are more than militias, but real political actors, they are often sovereigns waiting for a state, as happened in Syria.

Speaking of numbers, Hezbollah, for example, in 2023 could count on an arsenal of over 150,000 rockets and receives around 700 million dollars a year from Iran, a military force superior to that of several internationally recognised regular armies. A military force, now greatly downsized, that was meant to constantly threaten Israel.

The ability to control strategic nodes such as the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb or the Suez Canal make these actors indispensable instruments in regional politics.

In this respect, the important operation Aspides, a diplomatic-military operation of theEuropean Union, with the aim of defending European merchant ships passing through the Gulf of Aden from Houti attacks, does not receive enough attention. The US also has a similar operation, under the name Prosperity Guardian (the Houti have systematically conducted attacks against merchant and commercial ships, in support of Hamas and with the aim of harming Israel and its allies).

Only in the Middle East are non-state actors able to root themselves so deeply in the state itself, and to condition the region at this level.

Beyond the Middle East

I must admit that not all the fragilities described here are exclusive to the Middle East, indeed none. Civil wars, externally financed militias and weak states can also be found in sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America. Ethnic fragmentations are found in the Balkan area. Imperial pasts and foreign interference can be found almost everywhere in the world.

But what makes the Middle East unique is not the presence of these phenomena, but their density, duration and, above all, correlation: religion, ethnicity, ideology and economics do not remain separate spheres, they overlap and feed off each other, creating a unique web of instability.

As Fred Halliday observed, the idea that the Middle East is ‘different’, or rather, unique is as widespread inside as outside the region. But this is neither an Orientalist myth nor an immutable cultural heritage: it is the result of precise historical precedents, which have given rise to a unique structure.

The Middle East is thus not only an endless geopolitical crisis: it is a distorting mirror that exposes the limitations of the lenses through which we view global politics.

From late state formation to proxy wars, from internal fragmentation to constant violations of sovereignty, the Middle East moves on its own rules, which are rewritten every day, and is the region where no analyst can afford to use ready-made schemes.

In an increasingly fragile world, the Middle East emerges as the ultimate laboratory of instability: an exception that does not confirm the rules of our world, but radically questions them.

But if the Middle East rewrites the rules of international politics every day, are we sure that it will not soon be the turn of the rest of the world to play by the same rules?