What should be done in the Middle East? Ask the Romans
The more you travel, the more you realise the obvious: globalisation is nothing new. To fix today’s crises, we must look at the fall of the world’s greatest empire...
The Roman presence in what is now the Arab and Muslim world was as violent as that of later empires. And it left some chilling precedents, not only for the American empire today – and the putative rebirth of the Russian variety – but for the people who lived and still live in those lands. The Roman empire was brought down by vast inequalities of wealth and poverty, by corrupt and megalomaniac dictators and venal militias (rebel legions); not a bad parallel to the modern Middle East.
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Link: What the Roman empire can tell us about modern middle east