<blockquote>'..Geneva III will not be about Syria alone. It will be about how to end a war raging across the entire Middle East.'
- Anne-Marie Slaughter (
Source, Januari 2014)</blockquote>
'..the region is going to descend into a complex miasma of slaughter as surely as Europe did a century ago. Either way there will be a need for a Treaty of Westphalia-style solution — a redrawing of boundaries in a region where boundaries have been bursting for decades.'<blockquote>'..western powers .. no longer have either the cash or the commitment to effect any decent outcome in the region .. There are those who think that the region as a whole may be starting to go through something similar to what Europe went through in the early 17th century during the Thirty Years’ War, when Protestant and Catholic states battled it out. This is a conflict which is not only bigger than al-Qa’eda and similar groups, but far bigger than any of us. It is one which will re-align not only the Middle East, but the religion of Islam.
There is a significant likelihood — as intra-Muslim sectarian tension has had fallout even in Britain and Europe — that this could be the case. Or perhaps the region is going to descend into a complex miasma of slaughter as surely as Europe did a century ago. Either way there will be a need for a Treaty of Westphalia-style solution — a redrawing of boundaries in a region where boundaries have been bursting for decades.'
- Douglas Murray,
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East's 30 year war, January 25, 2014</blockquote>
<blockquote>'..The reason being that the full Sunni vs Shia war already started in 2003 after the US invasion of Iraq and it continues to this day. So thats already 10 years. Meanwhile some of the extremist Sunni groups fighting in the Iraq war have now moved to Syria. There are also Shia forces being dispatched from Iraq to Syria with Iran’s help.
Both Iran and the Saudis seem adamant in wanting to see the overthrow of the other side’s rulers. Unfortunately they seem to believe that a full proxy war against their rival is the most convenient way to bring this about. The two sides have fought each other before in proxy wars, but this time its much more serious. Each side seems to believe that walking away from Syria is more damaging than staying. Time to hunker down for the long haul.'
-
The equivalent of the European 30 Years War in the Middle East?, Januari 17, 2014</blockquote>
'..The Westphalian order gave some meaning to the lives lost in the Thirty Years’ War; the question for today’s Middle East is whether anything worthwhile can be salvaged out of the ashes of the present desolation.'<blockquote>'History teaches through the use of analogies. Inexact though these analogies may be, they represent one of the best ways to draw upon the past to inform, though certainly not dictate, the future.
..
The Thirty Years’ War was a massive and complex conflict that began with the notorious “Defenestration of Prague” on May 23, 1618. It was a multi-faceted affair that requires multiple lenses to look through in order to begin to understand it. It began as a religious conflict between Protestant princes in Germany fighting to preserve their autonomy and their faith against the Catholic Habsburg Empire to their south. Yet it would metastasize into a great-power conflict among several Catholic dynasties—the French, guided by the famed practitioner of realpolitik, Cardinal Richelieu, and the Habsburgs of both Austria and Spain. Richelieu, in a typically calculating move, allied with Protestant Sweden against France’s Habsburg coreligionists. Meanwhile, Spain, and its own Machiavellian political operative, the Duke of Olivares, worked to recapture rebellious Holland. Against this backdrop of sectarian and geopolitical conflict, individual personalities and power seekers (like the ambitious, if tragic, Albrecht von Wallenstein) came to the fore, along with a steady stream of petty German princes seeking to secure independence and new territory for their own dynasties.
..
Europe’s Thirty Years’ War was a massively destructive conflict, perhaps even more destructive in its day for Europe than the twentieth century’s world wars. It is difficult to determine whether or not the bloodshed in the Middle East will continue on for as long or wreak the same amount of devastation. However, for now, the Thirty Years’ War serves as a useful lens through which to analyze the tragic events in the Middle East. Obviously, the differences are legion, but today’s Middle Eastern conflicts share the same driving force as the Thirty Years’ War: a major sectarian conflict that has metastasized into a regional power struggle than in turn is slowly metastasizing into a Great Power competition.
Analysts looking for “win-win” scenarios that reinforce rule of law-based global order will be disheartened; a happy ending does not appear to be in the cards for the region. This is Hell. The Westphalian order gave some meaning to the lives lost in the Thirty Years’ War; the question for today’s Middle East is whether anything worthwhile can be salvaged out of the ashes of the present desolation.'
- Greg R. Lawson,
A Thirty Years' War in the Middle East, April 16, 2014</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
'..a higher criticism of the Koran .. Christians indulged in this higher criticism of the Bible at the end of the 19th century.'</blockquote>