What if the Middle East’s borders were redrawn?

Editor’s note: The next president is in for a rough welcome to the Oval Office given the list of immediate crises and slow-burning policy challenges, both foreign and domestic. What should Washington do? Why should the average American care? We’ve set out to clearly define US strategic interests and provide actionable policy solutions to help the new administration build a 2017 agenda that strengthens American leadership abroad while bolstering prosperity at home.

What to Do: Policy Recommendations for 2017 is an ongoing project from AEI. Click here for access to the complete series, which addresses a wide range of issues from rebuilding America’s military to higher education reform to helping people find work.

It’s been one hundred years since the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret deal between a British and a French diplomat during WWI that designed the modern borders of the Middle East. Many people argue that these imperialist borders are the cause of the Middle East’s troubles and call for new state lines. AEI Resident Scholar Michael Rubin explores how new borders could be drawn and whether or not they would solve any of the problems of the modern Middle East.