Most investors know what an emerging market is. Some might even be able to offer a pretty good definition of what puts the “emerge” into emerging markets. But ask about the Middle East, and no one really knows what it is.
Geographically, it’s the region that stretches from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Turkey to the Iran-Afghan border. The region, however, is far more complex than lines on a map...
4. The Middle East is the Arab
core of the Muslim world. But
thinking about the region as
exclusively Arab excludes
Turkey, Iran, and a very large
Kurdish population.
5. Viewing it as exclusively Muslim
would exclude the Jews,
Christians, Druze, Yazidis,
Zoroastrians, Bahai, and other
religious groups in the region.
6. The idea of the Middle East has
become quite vague, but in our
view, it’s where perhaps the
world’s most complex war is
raging.
7. Now, let’s dig deeper into the
demographics and history of
the region to understand its
complexity.
34. The point is that there is
nothing natural about any of
the Middle Eastern borders.
35. Some of the states were
created on a more solid
foundation than others, but
they were all invented over the
last century.
36. In this context, the rise of the
Islamic State in the Middle East
is not surprising, as almost all
the states in this region were
invented.
37. IS is just reshaping a shapeless
area that external powers
created and left to its own
devices.
38. Record-low oil prices have pushed the Middle East into a serious
economic crisis. Saudi Arabia’s economy, however, takes the most pain in
the region. Before the end of this decade, the country could be broke…
ISIS could be entrenched across the Middle East… and the cost of oil could
be shockingly different from today.
The special report from renowned economic analyst John Mauldin and
world-leading geopolitical expert George Friedman reveals what the Saudi
Arabian crisis means for the Middle East and the rest of the world.
Grab your free copy
Free Special Report
39. George Friedman provides unbiased assessment of the global outlook in
his free publication, This Week in Geopolitics.
Subscribe now and get an in-depth view of the forces that will drive
events and investors in the next year, decade, or even a century from
now.
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