like after the Ottoman Empire collapsed its lands were mostly divided into British and French spheres of influence (the Sykes-Picot thing)

Like local nationalisms would squabble, and the power would send advisors and sell arms to everyone, “good luck, remember us if you win”

And after WWII that was kind of frozen in place for stability (in the major hydrocarbon region)

the Suez Crisis was the first change from this and the US which owned the Euro empires’ debt reined them in to let them know the imperial age was over

then Arab nationalism and we were like fuck fuck backpedal (MUCH THE SAME as how we backpedaled from the Arab Spring stuff under Obama)

then the Iranian Revolution, that stung us hard

then after the Cold War ended and regional disputes weren’t gonna turn into superpower nuclear exchanges Saddam Hussein was like “well I’m gonna conquer the nominal state of Kuwait, which only exists as a vestige of a long-obsolete balance of power, by force”

And instead George Bush the Elder leveled SUPERPOWER into HYPERPOWER

‘cause the idea of the post-WWII system, UN as the successor to the League of Nations, was you couldn’t alter borders by war anymore.

That was why Russia’s conquest of the Crimean peninsula was so important! That was why the State of Israel and its borders and its “right to exist” are important, those were new borders made by post-WWII war!