West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East, Mohammed Soliman [Polity, UK], 2026, 272 pages.
Churchill first uttered the phrase during the height of the Second World War, as Allied victory was beginning to emerge on the horizon. His point was clear: the postwar world would ultimately be shaped not only by military superiority, but by dominance in knowledge, science, education, and intellectual power.
The symbolic significance of Churchill’s statement reveals the intellectual foundation from which Soliman develops his strategic thesis. His argument proceeds from a careful reading of the emerging international order on the one hand, and of the regional form the Middle East itself must assume within that order on the other.
In his view, the traditional concept of the “Middle East” is no longer adequate to explain the geopolitical transformations now reshaping the world. The regional map largely engineered by European powers during the twentieth century—what Soliman describes as the “European map”—is, he argues, entering a period of profound structural change.
The geopolitics of the twenty-first century, according to Soliman, will instead be shaped by “the multiple active dynamics unfolding along the Eurasian rimlands.” As a result, the geopolitical boundaries of the Middle East will expand to include South Asia, giving decisive strategic importance to the concept of “West Asia.” But what precisely is this new West Asian map intended to replace the traditional Middle East?
Soliman defines it as “the strategic space extending from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and South Asia.” He argues that this transformation reflects the gradual disintegration of the historically European-designed Middle Eastern order, which has endured repeated shocks since the end of the Cold War: from the Iran-Iraq War, to the invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq War, and the ongoing regional conflicts. These upheavals, he contends, compelled rising global powers, beginning in the second decade of the twenty-first century, to reassess the inherited European geopolitical architecture of the region.
In this sense, Soliman insists that the shift from “Middle East” to “West Asia” is not merely a semantic adjustment, but rather a profound strategic reimagining imposed by decades of crises, wars, and geopolitical realignments that have accelerated what he calls “the end of the Middle East.”
Throughout the book, Soliman elaborates this argument—and calls on American policymakers to adopt “West Asia” as a geopolitical alternative to the Middle East—across four major sections.
In the first section, The Strategic Framework, he revisits the historical relationship between the United States and the Middle East. Since the end of the Second World War, the region has occupied a central position in American strategic thinking. Yet unlike other strategically vital regions, Washington never succeeded in constructing a coherent and comprehensive regional order there. Consequently, the Kissingerian balance-of-power doctrine adopted after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War gradually weakened under the pressure of recurring Israeli wars and persistent regional tensions.
According to Soliman, two major turning points accelerated the unraveling of the regional order: the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent destruction of the Iraqi state, followed by the collapse of Syria’s state structure. Together, these developments facilitated the regional ascent of both Turkey and Iran.
The cumulative outcome, he argues, is that the “historical Middle East” has effectively exhausted itself. At the same time, the international system itself has entered a new balance of power. Consequently, if the United States wishes to preserve its influence in the region, it must adopt an entirely new strategic approach.
In the second section, The Rise of West Asia, Soliman explains how the Gulf region has evolved far beyond its traditional identity as merely an oil-producing zone. It has become a major global center for finance, technology, logistics, and diversified investment.
This transformation has been accompanied by deepening economic and strategic ties between the Gulf states and Asia, contributing to what he terms the “Asianization of the Middle East.” Simultaneously, the Gulf has increasingly functioned as a strategic bridge linking Asia and Africa while also strengthening its Eurasian connections.
Within this framework, Soliman advances what he describes as a new equation for the Arab-Israeli conflict based on functional partnerships and “minilateral” arrangements among smaller clusters of states. In this context, he proposes a solution to the Palestinian issue rooted in a two-state framework operating within a shared geopolitical and economic space.
The third section, Redefining the Middle East, builds upon this analysis by proposing the reconstruction of the region as a Eurasian–Indian–Mediterranean space founded on economic and civilizational connectivity. The emerging West Asian order would integrate the expanded geopolitical Middle East with India as a major economic, technological, and civilizational actor within a broader “Indian-Abrahamic” framework, alongside an informal Eurasian alignment. Soliman also assigns particular strategic importance to what he calls the “Suezian corridor,” transforming the Suez Canal into a strategic investment and economic zone capable of positioning Egypt’s canal-linked coastlines as pivotal actors in global trade and connectivity.
In the fourth and final section, Order-Building in West Asia, Soliman presents his most ambitious vision for the emerging strategic landscape. He argues that constructing a “new West Asian order” requires the building of strong systems rather than merely strong states. This order, he suggests, should rest upon three interlocking alliances: first, a geopolitical alliance; second, a security and military alliance; and third, a technological-economic alliance. Within this framework, the “West Asian” arena would become a geopolitical theater for the redistribution of global power in the twenty-first century, as well as a strategic bridge linking Europe with the Indo-Pacific.
Ultimately, there is little doubt that the European formula which engineered the modern Middle East through the Sykes–Picot Agreement more than a century ago has lost much of its historical viability, producing fragmentation, rivalry, and systemic disintegration.
Yet the central question remains: can the proposed American “West Asian” strategy endure amid intensifying global and regional imperial competition? And can it overcome the far-reaching consequences of the ongoing American-Israeli war and the profound transformations it continues to unleash across the region?
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