I have read nothing new in this FT review, but it is a good reminder of key actors and legacies. (I got access to the piece after googling the headline below) Britain, America, and the battle of mastery of the Middle East
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51