The story of the Middle East for decades to come is of a battle for the hegemony of Sunni Islam, especially in the Arab world, and of the efforts by non–Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims to ensure that no dominant Sunni power capable of uniting the Sunni Arab world, and ultimately the Sunni world more broadly, emerges.

The Sunni world in general, and the Arab Sunni world in particular, lies in ruins. In some cases, quite literally. However, the current malaise of the Sunni Arab world shouldn’t cover the simple fact that Sunni Muslims make up the majority of Muslims...

The battle to replace the lost hegemony of the Ottoman Empire is waged among those who could credibly claim leadership of the Sunni world over which it once held sway. The serious players in this game are primarily Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and new Islamist contenders claiming to represent the vision of an Islamic state, or caliphate.

Turkey is the direct heir of the Ottoman Empire and was home to the last accepted caliph, or ruler of the Muslim world. As such, Turkey can make a powerful claim to reuniting the Sunni world under its leadership. However, its development after...

In the grand strategic game of the Middle East—defined here as the battle to lead or thwart Sunni, and especially Sunni Arab, unification and hegemony—the players are grouped into those capable of leading (Turkey, Egypt, Saudi, Islamist contenders) or thwarting (Iran, Israel, Russia). The board on which they are playing the game includes four major ongoing battlegrounds (Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen) and five or six potential battlegrounds (Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the various Gulf states, Egypt, perhaps Turkey). Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are likely to remain at the margins but will be profoundly affected by the outcomes of...

With the game, players and battlegrounds defined, the ability of the players to achieve their aims depends on the tools at their disposal and whether they make effective use of them. In terms of the traditional tools of power—territory, people, military and economic resources—the various actors differ, and none emerges as the absolute clear hegemon. There’s no natural hegemon to the Sunni world, or to the Sunni Arab world, as exists in other regions of the world. There’s no single country that can make a credible claim to uniting the Sunni Arab world that also enjoys a preponderance...

Whereas the basic conditions of the battle for hegemony seem already to presage a long and drawn–out battle, outside factors worsen even that grim outlook. First and foremost among those factors is the youth bulge being experienced across the Muslim world. A youth bulge occurs when advances in medicine lead to a marked drop in infant mortality but social norms still favour high birthrates. When societies experience rapid economic growth, youth bulges can contribute to economic prosperity as the young people enter an expanding work force. However, if the economy fails to create new and productive jobs to meet...

In the years following 9/11, the UN published a series of Arab development reports. The 2009 report, focused on human security, concluded that human insecurity was pervasive in the Arab world and noted that external threats such as pollution, terrorism, migration, pandemics and drug and human trafficking have challenged state security, while growing poverty, civil wars, ethnic and sectarian conflicts and authoritarian regimes were limiting the rights and freedoms of Arab citizens.¹¹ Since the report was published, the situation has become much worse. The Arab Spring turned to winter, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more...

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many a Western nation has sought to ‘fix’ the Middle East with soft, hard and hybrid strategies. Those approaches have been underpinned by an over–simplistic construct in which the various layers of complexity in the region can somehow be harmonised. In the aftermath of these strategies, the international community finds that the region’s multi–layer conflicts are being played out further afield, fed by factors such as forced migration. While this report has examined the future of Middle Eastern borders from a geopolitical perspective, it was commissioned by ASPI’s Border Security...

Ultimately, Australia and other Western countries have to come to terms with their limited role in shaping the outcomes of the battle for hegemony in the Arab Middle East. This doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be done, but those outside the region must clinically and dispassionately consider their interests in the region and what they can reasonably expect to achieve.

To avoid importing or expanding the Middle East’s conflicts, those outside the region need to develop a greater understanding of its various layers of complexity. And, in doing so, they need to avoid the temptation to seek an over-simplistic...