It is odd to see this paragraph in the context of the Middle East. Note because I disagree at any level, but because it can apply to so many places.
.
To understand the conflict in Iraq is to understand the root causes of most animosities in the Middle East. Until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century, the Middle East wasn’t made up of countries. The entire region spanning from Iran in the East to Egypt in the West, and Yemen in the South, was a bunch of territories, locally ruled by tribal chiefs, sultans and sheiks. These territories were roped under one empire from the 16th century—the Ottomans. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1919 as result of World War 1, the people living in the Middle East expected and were promised independence. Instead, the West (Britain, U.S. and France) carved the region up into artificially created nations, with no regard given to culture, ethnicity and history, but much regard given to the region’s oil fields.
When I was in school (USC/ UCLA), this exact same argument was used time and time again to predict the chaos that was expected to descend upon Africa. By and large, it actually has caused a lot of civil wars in Africa both where borders did not change (Zaire, Rwanda, Mali) and where borders did (Ethiopia / Eritrea , Sudan / South Sudan and Somalia), but few that people noticed. Perhaps because the tribal / cultural groupings in Africa were more widespread, i.e. there were a lot of small groupings not a few giant ones. So the wars, genocide and upheaval has been remarkable contained.
.
Instead, it is the Middle East where borders drawn from the old Ottoman Empire are causing the problems. And it isn’t (yet) breaking down along tribal / cultural lines but across the divisions within Islam.
.
In this it mimics the old Protestant / Catholic rift across Europe, the defining conflict of which was the 30 Years war in the 1600s. Let us take a quick look at Wikipedia’s information on this:
.
The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was a series of wars principally fought in Central Europe (primarily present-day Germany), involving most of the European countries. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest continuous wars in modern history.
Initially, religion was a motivation for war as Protestant and Catholic states fought even though many of them were or had been members of the Holy Roman Empire—a situation which was not atypical of the Empire, which had become decentralized and fragmented following the death of Charlemagne (814 AD). Changing the relative balance of power within the Empire was at issue. Gradually, it developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers of Europe. In this general phase, the war became less specifically religious and more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, leading in turn to further warfare between France and the Habsburg powers.
A major consequence of the Thirty Years' War was the devastation of entire regions, denuded by the foraging armies (bellum se ipsum alet). Famine and disease significantly decreased the population of the German and Italian states, Bohemia and the Low Countries; most of the combatant powers were bankrupted. While the regiments within each army were not strictly mercenary, in that they were not units for hire that changed sides from battle to battle, some individual soldiers that made up the regiments were mercenaries. The problem of discipline was made more difficult by the ad hoc nature of 17th-century military financing: armies were expected to be largely self-funding by means of loot taken or tribute extorted from the settlements where they operated. This encouraged a form of lawlessness that imposed severe hardship on inhabitants of the occupied territory.
The Thirty Years' War was ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia. Some of the quarrels that provoked the war went unresolved for a much longer time.
.
Why bring this up now? Well, for all the talk of Obama’s lack of strategy – what is a coherent strategy to insert one’s self into a religious civil war? I am not sure there is a strategy that makes sense. I know that “let them fight it out until they exhaust themselves” is kind of a horrible answer. But I think it may be the only answer that works – unless one wants to be the permanent referee. Treating them like 2 school yard enemies; pulling them apart, scolding them and walking away rarely resolves an issue. It simple flares up again.
.
A question might be asked, how did we avoid it in the Americas (both North and South)? Easy answer, we killed all the indigenous people. Most of them were felled by accident and illnesses from Europe which they had no immunity too, and the rest mainly on purpose.