on foreign oil. “North America, for all practical purposes, has already achieved oil independence,” Zeihan said. Consequently, the US relationship with the Middle East has radically changed.

Challenges Impacting the Middle East

Zeihan believes there are five major challenges confronting the Middle East:

Transcontinental terror groups are indeed a very big problem, but their effects are more local than international. Demography across the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is dominated by a bulge of 15- to 25-year-old unmarried males. From a security point of view, this most affects those countries that are unable to finance an effective state security apparatus. US security is now a domestic concern among these nations: “The entire chain of dependencies that kept the United States involved in the PersianGulf have all broken at the same time,” Zeihan said. The Saudis are now on their own, absent their former US support, and worried about a resurgent Iran. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in stoking each other’s political and economic fires. The United States now views the region wholly through its other interests. Russia also sees the Middle East as a means to other ends. With its inherent demographic and geopolitical challenges, Russia needs a distraction and that alone explains why it is in Syria. The Russian play, Zeihan posits, was to flood Turkey and Germany with so many refugees that it sours bilateral relationships, making them incapable of taking steps to counter Russian ambitions in Ukraine. Whether it came about by accident or design, this