AHC: North America is like the Middle East

@Skallagrim is making a mixture like the todays Middle East of statements of what I meant. The Middle East culture is shaped much by climate. The region is completely desert and large swatches of land on all sides except Anatolia are mostly uninhabitable by an agricultural civilization of a significantly large population except in River valleys which of course are precious but narrow. Harsh climate creates huge shortages of resources. This is reflected in the psychological makeup of the people of the region. Middle East is also easily accessible to all major regions of the World. It is a confluence of three massively affecting continents of the World Civilization. It stands at the forefront of invasions from Central Asia,East Asia,Africa,Europe and it lived up to this. Middle East has maintained a distinction of being more affected by conflicts than other regions. Yes,conflicts did happen in other parts too,I agree. But most of those conflicts aren't never ending. They end somewhere. And they did. Middle East is also a Geological scenario. It is the plate junction that created the Oil that is abundant in there. The plate junction has also caused the unique continental junction. In Europe and elsewhere,it's a tale of two traditional enemies. But Middle East saw waves of invaders almost uninterrupted. First were the Hittites and the Mesopotamian Civilizations,then shortly came the Indo-European Hittites,then came the Babylonian invaders, Then came the Iranians,then came the Greeks,then came the Romans,then came an another dynasty of Persia,then came the Arabs,then came the Mongols,then came the Turks and various conflicts between their settlers that took place. The destructions caused by each wars were huge and almost unparalleled. All this shaped the cultures,borders,Governments,the various beliefs originating. The religious originating there have all their most holy places there making the whole conflict to an another level. In general,Middle East is a class apart in itself no matter what conflicts arose and were fought and eliminated elsewhere.
So, erm...are we just going to ignore the long spans of history where the Middle East wasn't in perpetual warfare? The times of hegemonic powers like the Roman Empire, Caliphates, and the Ottoman Empire, namely, which saw the Middle East more or less united and not in some form of conflict. Sure, there were revolts occasionally but every empire had those, from Britain to Japan, over religion, class conflict, etc. In any case, we had centuries where the Middle East wasn't a bloody mess while Europe and China very much were (the 1600s, with the Wars of Religion in Europe and the Qing conquest of China in, well, China, saw the Middle East much more peaceful than the former two).


Yes,conflicts did happen in other parts too,I agree. But most of those conflicts aren't never ending. They end somewhere. And they did.
And which conflicts never ended in the Middle East? If that's a reference to the Sunni-Shia conflicts, much of the sectarian violence in the modern Middle East stems from the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry and their respective patronage of extremist groups in their battle for influence over the Middle East.
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For example, the Baghdad, the second largest city in the Arab world, had a large mixed Shia-Sunni community (something like 20% of the population was from mixed Shia-Sunni marriages, or Sushis) which has been increasingly split along sectarian lines in the last few decades, even years in fact.

Mind, there was a stop to the hostilities, at least temporarily. In the immediate aftermath of the Ottoman Empire's fall, the Middle East was fairly united against European imperialism and, well, Israel's existence. That bit's not a geographical matter so much as sociopolitical and religious but does point to the possibility of cooperation between the Middle Eastern countries (which didn't work out in that particular case due to varying reasons that you'd have better explained in the post-1900 discussion forum).

And besides, sectarianism spanning centuries not exactly unique to Islam. The sectarianism played not a small role in the atrocities of the Yugoslav Wars. The Irish had conflicts between Catholics and Protestants (the Troubles) until the 1990s. And while there's much less overt violence in the present day, there's still tension between religious groups in those regions.

It is the plate junction that created the Oil that is abundant in there.
Oil's been a source of conflict for how many years now? 90 of the 6000 years of human history in the Middle East?

In Europe and elsewhere,it's a tale of two traditional enemies.
Exactly how and why are you reducing nearly the whole world and its history of conflicts down to two sides? If it's Catholic vs. Protestant you're looking at, 1. that's only Western and Central Europe since the Orthodox have been woefully left out here, 2. that's ignoring the whole stately quadrille and balance of power that defined 18th century Europe, 3. ignores every other instance of migrations, invasions, and internal conflicts out there (the Warring States Periods of China and Japan had multiple different factions duking it out over centuries. The Three States period of China and Korea involved not 2 traditional enemies but 3 Kingdoms, funny how that is).

2 traditional enemies only applies to a small number of conflicts in the long run, seeing as England and France, the most traditional of enemies, allied to fight the Spanish and Germans at multiple points in history and most other conflicts have been repainted to appear as such (like the Polish-German bit, where the duke of Prussia was subservient to the Polish king for a good while before the whole matter of Partitions).
 
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