The article critiques the geopolitical involvement of the US and Israel in the region, suggesting that their current policies may be generating more utility than mere instability. It questions the conventional assumption that foreign involvement automatically leads to disorder.

The conventional indictment runs like this: blinded by ideology and captured by special interests, the US and Israel have blundered into a region they never understood, sowing instability they neither anticipated nor desired. It is a damning argument. It also happens to be, in one important respect, too generous. The more unsettling possibility, supported by two decades of observable behaviour, is that these policies produce not disorder as a side effect but something far more useful: a conflict...