...For the first time in recorded history, none of the major powers has any reason to fight any of the others. All of the major powers enjoy levels of economic growth that range from respectable to ebullient, and none of them shows any vulnerability to financial crisis. A great deal of violence flashes across the news screens, to be sure, but the perpetrators of the violence are not the decisive players in the modern world, but rather those who reject the modern world because they cannot adapt to it. By definition, the rejectionists have small impact on the major currents of the idea, precisely because they have isolated themselves from these currents....

...Bernard Lewis observed that the entire Arab world, except for oil, exports less than the 5.2 million people of Finland. The economic significance of the Shi'ites of Iraq and Lebanon is negligible; the Palestinians represent a net drain on the world economy, as consumers of subsidies. If space aliens were to transport all of them to another planet Tuesday next, world markets would not notice. By the same token, if the Sunnis and Shi'ites of Iraq and Lebanon were to eat each other up like the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, and the Palestinians of Gaza were to annihilate one another, the impact on the world would fall below the threshold of observation. I do not mean to suggest that this would be a good thing, for human tragedy never is a good thing; I mean only to state the obvious, that it would not be a matter of material importance for anyone else...

...I do not think any responsible analyst now believes that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue has much bearing on stability in the Middle East. Which Israeli was it who began the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict? Iran's delusions of grandeur and messianic expectations stem, I have long argued, from the simple fact that the country is entering a combined economic and demographic crisis from which it has poor hopes of recovering.

The present conflict in the Middle East is not between Arab and Jew, but between Arabs and Jews who seek their way in the modern world on the one hand, and Arabs and Persians who reject the modern world on the other...