The Middle East’s Westphalian Moment? From Chaos to Realism
Ali Murat Kursun
February 2, 2026
The Middle East’s Westphalian Moment? From Chaos to Realism
Recall the image etched in memory: a bulldozer driven by fighters of the self-proclaimed Islamic State smashing through the earthen berm on the Iraq-Syria border, militants cheering atop the machine. That moment was not just a border violation. It was a bullet fired at the history of the modernizing Middle East. Western analysts lamented that the end of artificial states had arrived, while militants celebrated the end of history. They were all wrong. Today, that berm is back, standing in place as if exacting revenge. The line was not erased. On the contrary, it transformed into the region’s life raft. The developments we witness today represent the revenge of the state and the return of a bloody, indigenous process of state formation.
Since the turn of the millennium, the region has been treated as a laboratory for grand experiments — from the George W. Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” to the hopeful idealism of the Arab Spring. Yet, looking back from the rubble of Gaza and the calcified frontlines of the Levant, the claim that the region has drifted into endless chaos is a lazy reading. Instead, we are seeing a brutal, organic process of state formation. Europe needed the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War to understand the value of sovereignty. The Middle East is learning its own lesson on sovereignty in the bloody laboratory of the last quarter century, through the collapse of externally imposed dreams.
This is a belated, bloody Westphalian moment. We are witnessing the collapse of an externally imposed order and the painful birth of a local, realist ecosystem. In this new era, the currency is no longer the values or ideologies of the liberal international order, but raw capacity and the instinct for survival. This restoration is neither seamless nor guaranteed. It is built on deep socio-economic scars and fragile alliances, but it is undeniably real. For Western policymakers, understanding this shift requires discarding the mental maps of 2003 or 2011 and accepting a stark reality: The era of engineering the Middle East has failed. Now is the era of dealing with the survivors.
Act I: Hubris and the Collapse of the State
To understand the current normlessness and the struggle for survival in the Middle East, let us return to the moment the vessel was broken: The 2003 invasion of Iraq was not a simple regime change. Considering its regional effects, the invasion was the wholesale liquidation of central state authority and administrative capacity in the Levant and Mesopotamia — the strategic heart and traditional geopolitical core of the Arab world — and the atomization of the monopoly on violence.
The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue cannot be read as the mere fall of a dictator. It symbolized the fall of leaders who monopolized the instruments of violence and embodied the Weberian state in their person. Washington’s hubris lay in the belief that state-building could be applied like an engineering project. However, the collapse of the monopoly on violence in Baghdad triggered sectarian and ethnic fault lines beneath the national identity and multiplied the sources of violent legitimacy. People who lost their “Leviathans” — their state protective shields — shaped their survival struggles through mechanisms like ethnic and sectarian identity.
This invasion also caused dramatic tremors and shifts in the Middle East’s center of gravity. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the region’s pulse beat for a century along traditional lines: Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad. As these traditional centers imploded or turned inward, the resulting power vacuum drew in those outside the Arab order — Ankara, Tehran, and the wealthy monarchies of the Gulf — to the center.
This institutional wreckage brought with it a problematic legacy that did not stay within Iraqi borders. The collapse of the state radically and suddenly changed the nature of politics in the Middle East. The concept of “opposition,” present in the Arab world for years, gave way to an existential identity war. Pandora’s box, opened by the fall of Baghdad, released not political parties with demands but transnational armed structures eager to fill the violence vacuum, along with their regional mutations.
The rise of figures like Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a declaration that violence was no longer a tool, but a method of identity construction. In this new order where the state lost its role as the sole owner of violence, every sect, ethnicity, and ideology armed itself for security. The region laid the logistical and ideological infrastructure for future, larger fires — such as the Syrian Civil War and the rise of ISIL — during this period.
Act II: The Illusion of the Street and the Paradox of Borders
If the first act was defined by American hubris and institutional destruction, the second was defined by the illusion of the street. The wave spreading from Tunisia to Cairo in 2011 was not an external intervention, but a genuine cry for dignity and a demand for a new social contract. Yet, the uprisings harbored a tragedy within the seeds of their victory. The street, with years of accumulated anger, possessed the destructive power to shake and even topple the Mubarak regime, as seen in Tahrir Square.
But the tragedy was this: The street lacked the institutional architecture, organizational capacity, and political imagination to replace the dictators it toppled with a functioning order. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood to overcome bureaucratic resistance in Egypt, or the inability of tribes in Libya to unite under a nation-state umbrella, proved how fragile the street’s victory was.
This institutional void created a perfect storm for non-state actors. From 2011 to 2018, the region’s primary struggle was not between states in the classical sense. It was between a delegitimized state system and revisionist actors seeking to wipe it off the map — the Islamic State claiming a Caliphate in the east, the Kurdish groups pursuing cantonization in the north, and fragmented militias in the west in Libya. Wherever the state retreated, a warlord or an organization filled the authority vacuum.
Here, the greatest paradox of the modern Middle East was revealed amidst the chaos: the stubborn resilience of “artificial” borders. The Sykes-Picot borders, cursed for years in both Western and Eastern academies and coffeehouses as a colonial legacy (for good reason), did not vanish even when the region hit its nadir. Even when armies disbanded, metropolises like Mosul fell, and capitals were besieged, those lines remained. Why?
Because in an order defined by a Hobbesian struggle for survival, a flawed border offered more predictability than the abyss of anarchy. Regional populations learned through bitter experience that the alternative to the Ottoman imperial legacy or the colonial map was not a romantic Pan-Arab utopia or a pragmatic caliphate. It was, as seen in Iraq and Syria, a war of all against all, fought neighborhood by neighborhood, village by village.
In this period, regional states and societies grabbed onto these borders like life rafts. The second act hollowed out the inside of states in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, turning sovereignty into fiction and border control into fantasy. Yet, the container of the state — its borders and legal existence — survived. In those days when ISIL burned passports and the Democratic Union Party drew maps, the conclusion reached by regional minds and the direction of change demanded was clear: No matter how battered or authoritarian, the only unit capable of providing basic security and bread was still the state.
To be sure, this is not a seamless or healthy restoration: It is the return of a “wounded Leviathan.” The resurgent state apparatus has not solved the root causes (corruption, youth unemployment, and income inequality) that set the streets on fire in 2011: Indeed, addressing them has not even made it onto the agenda. On the contrary, from the currency crisis in Cairo to the infrastructure collapse in Damascus, the socio-economic picture looks even darker than in 2010. What has changed, however, is the hierarchy of public preferences. Regional populations have confronted the alternative to state authority firsthand — whether the arbitrary executions by ISIL in Mosul or the looting by militias in the streets of Tripoli. This trauma has reduced social expectations from prosperity and liberty to survival and predictability. People have learned in Iraq, Syria, and Libya that the cost of the state’s absence is far higher than the cost of the state’s tyranny. Therefore, the return of the state we witness today is not a product of trust in rulers, but of a pragmatic consent that prefers the cold concrete walls of the state to the bottomless pit of anarchy.
Yet this consent serves less as a solid foundation for order and more as a temporary tourniquet. We ought not mistake this consent for a renewed social contract. It is a coping mechanism that could easily snap under renewed economic stress or climatic shocks. The stability of this new era, therefore, relies not on legitimacy but on the lack of alternatives. The state endures because it is the only actor left with the raw capacity to hold the ceiling up, even as the floor rots underneath.
Act III: The Return to the Struggle for Survival
Evaluating the last quarter-century, the Middle East is now living its third act. The dust clouds of brawls, conflicts, and wars have begun to settle, replaced by a cold, hard realism. The grand ideologies that once mobilized the region — Pan-Arabism, Pan-Islamism, or the export of Western democracy — have lost their validity. They have been replaced by transactional pragmatism.
This is the reason Saudi Arabia advocated for the continuity of the Iranian regime in the face of protests. This is why Turkey and Egypt thawed a decade-long freeze despite all rhetorical disputes. These moves were not born of ideological alignment or newfound friendship. They were born of exhaustion and the mutual acceptance of the balance of power. This is a stalemate similar to the exhaustion that pushed European powers to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The region has begun to realize in this third act that total victory is impossible, and the cost of perpetual conflict is unsustainable.
However, this regional Westphalia is being born in a vacuum devoid of international norms. The war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attacks served as the final funeral rite for the “rules-based international order” in the Middle East. For regional publics and elites alike, the inability — or unwillingness — of Western powers to enforce international humanitarian law in Gaza has destroyed the last crumbs of Western normative authority. The West is no longer viewed as an order-builder. At best, it is a transactional partner — at worst, a spoiler.
This erosion of norms is not cost-free for regional actors themselves. The spectacle of unchecked violence exposes the state’s incompetence, revealing an uncomfortable inability to protect the region’s own people. Over time, this dissonance between the state’s projection of hard power and its paralysis in the face of regional slaughter risks hollowing out the very domestic legitimacy these regimes have fought so hard to restore.
This situation has accelerated the trend of self-help. Regional capitals now operate on the assumption that no cavalry is coming to save them. They are forced to cut their own deals, build their own defense industries, and protect their own borders.
The Search for Regional Concert: From External Blocs to Internal Balance
The restoration of the nation-state and the balance of power bequeathed to Europe not just the concept of sovereignty, but a legacy of flexible alliance systems that did not leave the continent’s security to the mercy of a single hegemon — a system where states balanced each other and cooperated when necessary. The mechanism that ensured Europe’s continuity as a regional order for centuries was this balance mechanism established by states driven by survival. The process the Middle East is undergoing today is precisely the belated construction of this mechanism.
Throughout the Cold War and after, alliances in the Middle East did not form organically. Reflections of global competition drawn in Washington and Moscow shaped this alliance system. From the Baghdad Pact to the “Global War on Terror” coalitions, regional states aligned around the orbit of external superpowers. Today, however, the puncturing of the American umbrella (or its retreat from the region) and Russia’s own entanglement are forcing the region away from an imported security architecture toward internally produced alliance and balance systems.
The picture currently taking shape on the ground may look complex from the outside, but it sits on a consistent logic of internal balance. On one side, the Israel–United Arab Emirates line, shaped by security concerns and technological cooperation, forms a status quo bloc moving beyond the Abraham Accords. On the other side, the Turkey–Saudi Arabia equation, gaining momentum with recent normalization processes and deepening through defense industry cooperation (specifically drone diplomacy and joint production visions), is emerging as a new axis representing the region’s traditional center of gravity. The mortar for this foundation is not mixed merely with diplomatic goodwill: It is mixed with Turkey’s military doctrine and defense industry capacity, tested in the fields of Libya, Syria, and Karabakh. Ankara sits at the table not just to shake hands, but as a tangible hard power provider capable of plugging the region’s security gaps.
These lines developing in the region are not rigid, impermeable blocs possessing the ideological discipline of the Cold War. On the contrary, they are flexible and permeable power nodes that maintain contact where interests dictate. The intense economic traffic between Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, or the back-door diplomacy continuing between Saudi Arabia and Israel (despite all crises), is proof that this new architecture is not a rigid encampment but a multi-layered and flexible game of balance.
Another fundamental difference of this new structure from past blocs is its indigeneity. In the 1950s or ‘90s, alliances were built on surrendering sovereignty in exchange for a superpower’s protection. Today, the rapprochement between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, or the realignment within the Gulf, is shaped not by suggestions from the White House, but by the imperative of self-help imposed by a security vacuum and regional threats.
To be sure, viewing this new order as a project of perpetual peace would be naive. The rapprochement between Ankara, Riyadh, and Cairo on one side, and Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi on the other, is born not of shared identity or forgotten rivalries, but of cold, transactional marriages of convenience fueled by shared fears. These actors are sitting at the table not out of deep mutual respect, but out of the necessity to balance one another. Thus, this regional concert resembles the knife-edge balance of 19th-century Europe rather than an E.U.-style integration. When threat perceptions shift or the pressure for domestic survival eases, the potential for these flexible power nodes to revert to competition remains ever present. Yet, the region’s history suggests a paradox: It is precisely this mutual distrust that ensures the regional order’s stability.
This is not a rupture for the region, but a development promising stability, if not permanent peace. Alliances imposed from the outside can collapse overnight when external support is withdrawn. However, alliances woven through internal dynamics and mutual interest balances (defense, energy, trade) constitute the immune system of the regional order. It is crucial to define the function of this system correctly: These internal alignments do not resolve deep-seated rivalries or end conflicts overnight. Rather, they dampen escalation and keep competition below the threshold of total war. Thus, the emerging equilibrium is not a serene peace, but a resilient structure capable of absorbing chronic low-level conflicts and sudden shocks without collapsing.
The Middle East, much like 19th-century Europe, is realizing that the path to preventing conflict lies in establishing a regional concert and balance of power, and that this can only be achieved through its own internal alliances. Therefore, the alignments we witness today are not a polarization, but the region’s effort to find its own center of gravity.
This brings us to the most critical question: How sustainable is a system based solely on the balance of power without a normative backbone? The rubble of Gaza has inflicted severe damage on the idea of a modern international society and Western-centric universal norms within the region. However, this does not mean the region is floating in a complete normative void. On the contrary, what we are witnessing is the struggle between the weakening of imported norms and indigenous, yet competing, normative models. Various visions are still colliding on the table: Turkey’s 2000s vision of zero problems and commercial integration, Iran’s revolutionary Shiite solidarity constructed via the axis of resistance, Qatar’s model of faith-based diplomacy, and the assertive model of the United Arab Emirates–Saudi axis.
However, it is important avoid the teleological trap of assuming this struggle will inevitably mirror Europe’s path to a unified settlement. While the Westphalian order reached a consensus on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio after thirty years of war, the Middle East faces the distinct possibility that it may never converge on a single normative outcome. Instead of a progression toward a unified order, we may be witnessing the crystallization of a permanent normative fragmentation, where these rival visions coexist in perpetual friction. Therefore, until — or unless — a shared set of rules of the game is agreed upon, this new order will remain fragmented, volatile, and prone to accidents. The state has returned, yes, but it has not yet found its spirit or its law.
Dealing with the Survivors
What does this mean for the United States and its allies? The time for sermonizing is over. The Middle East now has its own agency, its own traumas, and its own cold logic.
First, accept that the normative lever is broken. Future influence will rely not on sermons, but on transactional relationships based on interests, trade, and security cooperation.
Second, stop looking for the moderates of the 2000s or the revolutionaries of 2011. They are gone. The future of the region belongs to the survivors, the strong states. If stability is to come, it will not come from weak governments propped up by foreign aid, but from coherent states capable of monopolizing violence within their borders.
Finally, engage with powers like Turkey not as unruly junior partners who need to be brought back in line, but as independent architects of this new order. The artificial borders of the Middle East have proven stronger than the grandest plans to redraw them. The region is scarred, cynical, and heavily armed. But for the first time in a century, it is undeniably charting its own path.
The choice for the West is clear: It will either sit at the table with those drawing this new, hard map, or it will turn into a spectator waiting on the sidelines as the new order takes shape.
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Ali Murat Kursun is an assistant professor of international relations at Marmara University in Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from Aberystwyth University, focusing on the regional order of the Middle East. He has published on Middle Eastern borders, Turkish foreign policy, and the Middle East order. His academic work has appeared in journals such as International Politics, Third World Quarterly, and All Azimuth, and he writes op-eds for various media outlets. Kursun is a member of the Istanbul-based Association of Researchers on the Middle East and Africa.
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