US Envoy Questions Nation-State Model In Middle East

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Transcript

00:00The Middle East, there is no Middle East, you know that.

00:02There's tribes, there's villages.

00:05The nation-state was created by the British and the French in 1916.

00:10The Sykes-Picot said, okay, we're going to take what was the Ottoman Empire

00:14and we're going to draw straight lines around it and we're going to call these nation-states.

00:19But the Middle East doesn't work that way.

00:21It starts with an individual, then family, then village, then tribe, then community, then religion.

00:27Lastly, it's what this nation is.

00:31So when I say it's an illusion, to think that somehow we're going to get 27 different nations

00:38that have 110 different ethnic groups to align with political concepts,

00:45what will they align with, make my life and my children's life better.