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From the Ottoman Empire to the Middle East

 Despite ongoing claims about “ungovernability,” transhistorical blood feuds, or the racialized nature of “the Arab” and “the Muslim,” there is, in fact, nothing exceptional about war and conflict in the Middle East. The region was left with the obscured but violent legacies of notions like the semi-civilized and extraterritoriality. The War on Terror brought these concepts back to center stage. Blowback from weaponized techniques of extraterritoriality impact the United States as well as the Middle East. One hundred and one years after Versailles, the twinned concepts of extraterritoriality and the semi-civilized continue to shape our world in ways that can no longer be overlooked.

From Versailles to the War on Terror

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