Water Becomes Political: Nobody Need Thirst

Water is the world’s most abundant resource. Lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds - not to mention rain - water crops around the world. Fresh drinking water is more available than ever before. Even oceanic saltwater - once thought irredeemably unpotable - is now subject to desalinization at ever shrinking prices.

Why, then, would any human being not have enough water to drink?

Yet it is the case that water is in some places scarce - even to the point at which lives are lost.

The problem is not the amount of water on the planet - there’s more than enough of that. The problem is politics.

While most of the human race has plenty of fresh clean water, people are thirsting and even dying in specific places: (1) nations with socialist or communist governments, (2) Islamic republics, and (3) nations with notoriously corrupt governments.

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between “Islamic republics” on the one hand, and “Muslim majority” or “majority Muslim” nations on the other.

In any case, water shortages are unnecessary, as author David Wallace-Wells writes:

Today, the crisis is political — which is to say, not inevitable or necessary or beyond our capacity to fix — and, therefore, functionally elective. That is one reason it is nevertheless harrowing as a climate parable: an abundant resource made scarce through governmental neglect and indifference, bad infrastructure and contamination, careless urbanization and development. There is no need for a water crisis, in other words, but we have one anyway, and aren’t doing much to address it. Some cities lose more water to leaks than they deliver to homes: even in the United States, leaks and theft account for an estimated loss of 16 percent of freshwater; in Brazil, the estimate is 40 percent.

A political problem demands a political solution - not an engineering or climatological one.

An infinite amount of pipelines and wells will not solve the world’s water problem; neither will gerrymandering human behavior to impact the climate.

Only when a nation has a government which has at least a modicum of respect for human life - only then will the water problem be solved.

China’s Two-Pronged Strategy: Cyber Warfare and Military Buildup

In the early twenty-first century, foreign policy analysts have paid a great deal of attention to China, even if the news media and public at large failed to do so. On those rare occasions when China was the focus of news coverage, the topic was often trade agreements.

The analysts, however, are more concerned about China’s teams of hackers, and about China’s military buildup.

China’s cyberwar teams have gone beyond mere theft of intellectual property. They now focus on disruptive techniques to take American systems offline entirely.

China’s physical military has constructed islands out of concrete and cement in the South China Sea. These islands are home to sophisticated weapons and radar systems, as well as bases for soldiers, as Jim Sciutto writes:

By the mid-2000s, China’s national effort to steal US technology and state secrets was already in high gear and logging up enormous successes in both the public and private sectors. In 2014 China defied both international law and the laws of physics to manufacture entirely new sovereign territory in the middle of the South China Sea, beginning construction of a string of man-made islands in waters claimed by several of its Southeast Asian neighbors. China was also expanding its military capabilities and military footprint from under the waves all the way into space, with the express intention of surpassing the United States and — if necessary — defeating the United States in war.

What’s at stake? Here’s one of many possible scenarios: China could activate its killer satellites to destroy several American satellites. This would cause disruptions in all manner of telecommunication, paralyzing the military, the government, and the businesses of the private-sector economy. Next, China’s hackers overwhelm or otherwise crash major computer systems, further paralyzing the nation and potentially causing permanent loss of data.

Finally, with the U.S. paralyzed, the Chinese military would be positioned in the South China Sea to carry out a sort of piracy or extortion. Passing freighters would be made pay cash or a fraction of their cargo to pass through was are supposed to be free international waters.

Estimates state that perhaps between 30% and 40% of the world’s cargo shipping passes through the South China Sea. Any nation which could control that region would have a stranglehold on the global economy.

Not only have the media failed to inform the public about Chinese threats, but even officials inside the U.S. government often fail to assess or respond to China’s slow-motion aggression, as Jim Sciutto reports:

Inside the US government and the intelligence community, these aggressive steps were first missed and then downplayed. US officials, led by President Barack Obama, accepted China’s assurances it would not militarize its man-made islands in the South China Sea — assurances Beijing reneged on almost immediately. Obama would later accept Chinese assurances that Beijing would dial back its cyber theft of US corporate secrets, malicious activity that remains rampant and aggressive today. Even after finally acknowledging these acts of aggression, many US officials and policy experts continued to portray them as short-term or easily reversible.

As serious as other situations may be — Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, etc. — China has the potential to easily become a much graver danger than any of the others.

Yet media reporting and government diplomats fail to emphasize the seriousness of China’s long-range plans to dominate not only the South China Sea, but larger segments of the global economy. Smaller ‘developing’ nations in Africa and Asia have already fallen victim to China’s program to reduce them to vassal states.

China offers to help these nations with large infrastructure projects (roads, dams, etc.). When these ‘third-world’ countries are unable to pay the ensuing debts, China offers to ‘forgive’ the debt in return for the rights to permanently station Chinese military units in those nations, and in return for rights to in, around, and through those countries.

Under this pattern, called the “Belt and Road” initiative, China would dominate both world trade and transportation. This goal has been deliberately articulated among the highest levels of Chinese leadership.

One possible response to China would be for American leaders to publicly explain China’s tactics and goals, to create a global awareness. The leaders of many nations could be expected to unite on this matter, even if they disagree about many other topics.

New Global Configurations: The Hostile Beginning of the Millennium’s World Order

Early in the new millennium, a type of book began to appear with increasing frequency. This set of books offered a fresh analysis of the global diplomatic situation.

Exemplary of this category were Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert Kaplan, which underscored how little attention was being paid to southeast Asia by the mainstream American news media; The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto, which pointed to the coordination of seemingly unrelated events; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, which encompassses a longer view of China’s global ambitions; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, which highlights the relentless, constant, and hidden cyberwar unfolding across the globe.

Although two of these works contain the word ‘America’ in their subtitles, none of them are parochial in perspective. The systemic patterns which they reveal will interest readers in Zambia and Chad, in Paraguay and Bolivia, in Cambodia and Thailand.

Neither are these books overly sensationalistic, although their publishers may have titled and marketed them with passion.

The picture which emerges from these books is that any and every nation around the globe is under constant cyberattacks. Every country must therefore be engaged in cybersecurity and countermeasures.

This ceaseless cyberwarfare is no mere harassment, but can be quite deadly, and is also coordinated with economic pressure and occasionally with direct military action. This ongoing conflict is invisible and largely ignored by the news media.

While huge amounts of media coverage were and are devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, actions undertaken by the much larger aggressors - Russia and China - go unreported by newspapers and unchallenged by world governments, as Robert Maginnis writes:

A major factor in the new great power competition is the leadership at the helm of these countries. Both China and Russia are headed by autocrats who test international order just as the United States seems to be losing its way.

China and Russia carefully watch any response to their espionage and weaponized cyber activity. When they see little or none, the increase such efforts. Robert Maginnis continues:

In the fact of this confrontation, the West seems feckless at stopping Putin’s and Xi’s great power ambitions, efforts driven by their authoritarian personalities and evidently accepted and cheered by their domestic power bases.

The nations of the world need a greater degree of awareness, both about China’s and Russia’s plans and goals, and about the consequences which the world would endure, should those goals be realized.

China’s “Belt and Road” strategy includes selling technology and construction projects to ‘emerging’ third-world nations. When those nations can’t pay the debts incurred by those purchases, China offers to ‘forgive’ the obligations in return for permanently stationing Chinese military in those nations, and in return for trade and transportation rights being given to China in, around, and through those countries.

The global community of nations also needs to form a steady resolve to resist, and to engage in countermeasures against, cyber aggression and economic extortion by Russia and China.

Spain’s Conviviality: How It Ended

The 711 A.D. marks a turning point in the history of Spain. Prior to that year, a diversity of people lived peaceably with each other.

The cultural diversity included Germanic Goths, Romans, native Celts, and Semitic individuals from the Middle East. The linguistic diversity was composed of Latin, Germanic dialects like Gothic, Hebrew, and Celtic. Religious diversity consisted of Jews, Christians, and a few reclusive adherents of Celtic paganism.

These groups coexisted in a largely amiable way. Certainly they did not agree with each other on all points, but there was no large-scale conflict or violence among them.

The year 711 A.D. would change that.

An Islamic invasionary fleet landed on Spain’s southern coast. The officers were largely Arabic; the soldiers and sailors were mainly recruited from the Berber population of northern Africa. As historian Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, “Spain was conquered and colonized by the forces of the Islamic Caliphate.”

To make their intentions clear, the Muslim officers burned their ships after the invasionary force had landed on the beaches. The message to the soldiers was clear. There was no option for retreat. The only way to survive was to defeat the inhabitants of Spain.

“The conquest was carried out by force,” as Fernandez-Morera notes. After conquering large portions Spain, the remaining portions sometimes chose to surrender and submit to a life of dhimmitude. The word ‘dhimmitude’ describes a non-Muslim who has been allowed to live in an Islamic region; the non-Muslim must agree to an inferior status as prescribed by Islamic law.

The Islamic invaders burned Jewish synagogues and Christian churches. The rules of dhimmitude, sometimes referred to as the ‘Pact of Umar,’ prevented non-Muslims from wearing certain types of clothing or constructing any house or building of significant size.

Even if they had to endure the humiliation of Islamic ‘Sharia’ law, many of the Spaniards chose to surrender to the Muslim armies, so that they could at least live and hope for the eventual liberation of Spain:

The Muslim conquerors used force to defeat the resistance of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, a nascent civilization. But they also granted pacts to those Visigoth lords and Christian leaders who saw it as advantageous to accept the offered “peace” and become dhimmis (those Christians and Jews living in sub­altern status in Islamic lands) rather than face the consequences of resisting. Behind the “peaceful pacts” was always the threat of brutal force.

Thus began several centuries of “religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of certain groups — all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities.” Spain was not fully liberated until 1492.

But neither was Spain fully subjugated. The Spaniards resisted. Some parts of northern and northeastern Spain were never defeated by the Islamic armies. The Spaniards defended those regions successfully.

Even in the regions which were occupied by the Muslim armies, many Spaniards risked their lives by secretly engaging in acts of defiance, meeting to carry on their religious traditions.

Austria’s Place in the World: Mutating from Century to Century

The modern nation of Austria is geographically smaller than Germany or Poland, and a bit smaller than Hungary too. Austria’s population is likewise smaller than the populations of Germany, Hungary, and Poland.

In previous centuries, however, Austria was bigger in terms of geography, in terms of population, in terms of world influence, and in terms of historical importance.

During the early Middle Ages, Austria did not exist as a concept. Rather, a number of smaller kingdoms which occupy the area which is now Austria functioned semi-independently of each other. Starting in the 700s and 800s, the region came under the influence of the Frankish Empire, which would later be known as the Holy Roman Empire (HRE).

In the late 1200s, the Habsburg family rose to power within the HRE, and would remain in power until 1806. The Habsburg dynasty was an Austrian family, and so the Austrians took control of the empire which had at first been an external influence on Austria. The Habsburg dynasty would develop influences reaching as far as Spain, and therefore be at least the nominal head of nearly all of Europe.

The rulers of the HRE did not have absolute power like the earlier Roman emperors or the later French monarchs. Their reigns were contingent on forming a consensus among a group of electors, called Kurfürsten, of whom there were approximately six.

So for nearly a thousand years, Austria’s identity was that of a loosely connected collection of kingdoms within the HRE, but forming a significant power bloc in the empire because, for the last five centuries of that millennium, the ruling dynasty had its family roots in Austria.

A significant change in Austria, as well as throughout the rest of Europe, happened in 1806. Napoleon’s French army was on a rampage. He was attempting to make himself ruler of all Europe – as well as parts of Africa, Asia, and the Near East. Napoleon, despite some early brilliant victories, failed decisively. In the aftermath, however, the HRE was dissolved.

Austria emerged as its own standalone empire, allied for the most part with the various Germanic kingdoms which would later combine to form Germany. But in the 1860s, Austria pivoted away from those alliances, and formed new alliances, primarily with Hungary. Hungary had been a territory under the rule of the Austrian Empire, but became a proper part of the empire in the 1860s. This new entity was called the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Also incorporated into this new empire were parts of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia, as well as all of Bohemia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bohemia would later be known as the Czech Republic. Austria also included Tyrol, part of which is in modern-day Italy.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was large: it included approximately 240,000 square miles of territory, compared to Austria’s area of 32,382 square miles at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Habsburg dynasty retained control, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a major political, diplomatic, economic, and military player in European affairs.

Prior to 1900, people rarely confused Austria with Germany. But today, partly due to sloppy education in American high school History classes, such mixups are common, as historian Lonnie Johnson writes:

Austria is often almost exclusively associated with its imperial past or frequently confused with Germany. Germany began to play a much more important role in Europe at about the same time that Austria gradually lost influence in European affairs towards the end of the 19th century.

For nearly all of its existence, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was ruled by Francis Joseph I, or Franz-Josef I. He was coronated as Emperor of the Austrian Empire in 1848, and became Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. He reigned until his death in 1916.

Because of his long reign, Franz-Josef was influential, well-known, loved by many, and hated by some.

When World War I ended in 1918, the empire was dissolved. Austria became a standalone country without an empire, assuming its present geographical boundaries. The Republic of Austria lasted from 1919 to 1933, when it ended abruptly by means of external and internal Nazi takeovers.

At the end of World War II in 1945, Austria’s future was in peril. It seemed as if the Soviet Socialists would enslave Austria as they had enslaved Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other eastern European nations. The Austrians, however, managed to buy their freedom from the Soviet Socialists. The Soviet army, which had occupied much of Austria in 1945, left in 1955, and the Austrians gave the Soviets $152 million dollars and ten million metric tons of crude oil.

The modern nation of Austria has a complicated past, and unless the details of this past are studied, misunderstandings abound, as Lonnie Johnson notes:

With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, Austria assumed a role in Europe comparable to its radically reduced size, and this is one explanation for the fact that so many Austrians associations tend to predate World War I. They have the faded charm of old photographs and awaken nostalgic or sentimental feelings about the good old imperial days of Strauss waltzes, operetta, or the grandfatherly emperor Francis Joseph. Associations with Germany, on the other hand, are frequently as harsh as a 20th century newsreel: World War I, Hitler (incidentally one of the most frequently disclaimed Austrians), World War II, the Iron Curtain, or the Berlin Wall. However, if these historical associations are not present in one way or the other, Austria is nowadays sometime[s] confused with Germany or demoted [in people’s imaginations] to the status of being some kind of a German province.

At the beginning of the 21st century, then, Austria shares a language with Germany, but also has huge cultural influences from Serbia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The daily customs and cultural life grow out of a shared past with other German-speaking regions, but modern Austria, especially the eastern half of the nation, is socially and ethnically shaped to a significant degree by the Slavic regions of eastern Europe.

Austria has its own distinct identity. Students of history and culture will note the differences, and anyone walking the streets of Vienna will not confuse them for the streets of Berlin.

The Slow-Motion War Between Russia and Ukraine: The Church Stands for Freedom

When the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991, Ukraine again became an independent sovereign nation. But its independence was endangered from the start.

During the Soviet Socialist era (1917 to 1991), and during earlier Czarist times, Russian ambitions included Ukraine, which Russia thought to be its possession. During the years in which Gorbachev held office in the USSR, and during the years in which Yeltsin held office in post-Soviet Russia, the Russians seemed, if not friendly, then at least a bit less hostile to Ukraine.

Since Vladimir Putin took office in Russia, however, his policies, reminiscent of the older Soviet Socialist policies, have been more aggressive, including the 2014 military occupation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Working for Barack Obama, diplomat Victoria Nuland urged that the United States and the European Union together take a firm stance against Russian aggression. The credibility of Obama’s and Nuland’s diplomacy dwindled, however, when it was discovered that they were meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics.

Obama and Nuland were using their positions in the United States government to interfere in questions which were Ukraine’s to resolve.

Nuland further undermined relations between the US and EU when she dismissed the EU’s ability to be helpful in the Ukraine situation.

Inside Ukraine, the Orthodox Church took on a renewed significance as the Russians escalated their threats. In a December 2018 edition of the Wall Street Journal, James Marson reported:

For 27 years of Ukraine’s independence, its only internationally recognized Orthodox Church was controlled by Russia, a pillar of the Kremlin’s continued influence in its former vassal.

But 4½ years into an armed conflict against Russia and separatists in the country’s east, Ukraine on Saturday founded its own national church, endorsed by the foremost leader of global Orthodoxy.

The church, an essentially spiritual institution, would not allow itself to be an instrument of Russian foreign policy. The creation of a Ukrainian church manifests the church’s alliance with the oppressed, despite the oppressor’s attempt to use the church.

Although the event was formally the creation of a new church, it was more a redefinition of an already-existing church. Both the clergy and the members of the new church are largely from the old church, as James Marson writes:

“We will get out from under Moscow’s hoof,” said Viktor Kolesnyk, a 67-year-old retiree who was among several thousand people gathered near St. Sophia Cathedral, where bishops from three Orthodox churches met for a Unification Council.

The creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is a signature victory for U.S.-backed President Petro Poroshenko, whose country has lost control over parts of its territory in the conflict, which has left more than 10,000 people dead. Mr. Poroshenko, who faces an election in March, told the crowd that “today we finally attained our Ukrainian independence from Russia.”

The assertion of the church is a “setback for” Russia’s “Putin, who has used” Russia’s and Ukraine’s “shared cultures and pasts to justify his efforts to keep Ukraine in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.”

The Russian-backed church leadership had “long been a proponent of close ties with Russia, supporting politicians favored by Moscow.” The priests and ordinary members of the church refused to endure such political influence in the church.

Russian influence in the church directed church leaders to give “vague statements calling for peace without condemning Mr. Putin.” Now, the true nature of the church emerges, favoring no political agenda. Churches, and groups which merely claim to be churches, routinely call for peace and justice. But to make concrete steps toward those noble goals, the church must deliberately distance itself from the ghosts of Soviet Socialism and its imperialist desires.

The Orthodox Church survived over seventy years of Soviet Socialist persecution. Despite the surveillance, imprisonment, beatings, torture, and murder of both church leaders and ordinary members, the church did not surrender its belief in Jesus.

The era of Putin presents the same challenges. The church is responding with the same steady conviction. The ability of the church to endure, and to continue advocating for the oppressed, derives from its understanding of Jesus.

Muslim vs. Muslim: Turkey’s Ambition to Be the New Ottoman Empire Fuels Violent Clashes with Saudi Arabia, Repeating the Wars of Previous Centuries

A map of the world deceptively divides Islam into a number of various nation-states. These divisions function like administrative districts, and are sometimes vehicles for the ambitions of their respective rulers. Islam itself is the primary unit.

“The long struggle for supremacy in the muslim world,” as Yaroslav Trofimov phrases it, must be understood as a sort of civil war within Islam. What seems to be a conflict between nation-states is in fact an intramural dispute. Within the Islamic world, the concept of ‘nation-state’ may not apply at all.

Islam unifies the Muslim world, as a social, political, and military movement. Islam functions primarily this way, and less as a meditative personal spirituality.

In these civil wars within Islam, “Turks and Saudis have been enemies for centuries.” The city of Jerusalem has been fought over, besieged, defended, and conquered many times over the centuries. The bloodiest battles for Jerusalem involved neither Christians nor Jews, but rather occurred when one Muslim army sought to take the city from another Muslim army.

Two Islamic armies, the Seljuk Turks on one side, and the Egyptian Fatimids on the other, fought each other several times for control of Jerusalem. Thousands of Muslim soldiers killed each other, and the city changed hands back and forth (e.g., in 1071 and 1098) between the two warring factions.

Recounting a “gruesome episode in the shared history of Turkey and Saudi Arabia,” Yaroslav Trofimov recounts how,

two centuries ago, in the fall of 1818, the Saudi monarch was brought to Istanbul in chains. He was displayed in a cage to the cheering crowds outside the Hagia Sophia mosque, and then, amid celebratory fireworks, his head was chopped off.

In the long history of warfare between Turkey and Saudi Arabia - or, sometimes, between Turkey and the House of Saud - the beheading of the Saudi king is merely one instance. This particular beheading, one of many, happened after

an Ottoman expeditionary corps comprised mostly of Turkish and Albanian soldiers seized the Saudi capital of Diriya, on the outskirts of Riyadh, on Sept. 11, 1818. The city was razed. According to a Russian diplomatic dispatch, the Turkish sultan then had the captured Saudi ruler, Abdullah bin Saud, escorted to Istanbul, alongside the chief Wahhabi cleric. After the deposed Saudi monarch was beheaded outside the Hagia Sophia, his body was propped up in public for three days with his severed head under his arm. (As for the Wahhabi imam, he was sent to Istanbul’s bazaar for beheading, the diplomat reported.)

Throughout much of Islamic history, the chief rivals have been the Muslims of Turkey, i.e., of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, struggling against the Muslims of Arabia or Saudi Arabia. The terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia’ are used, and the lands of Iran and Iraq are mentioned, but the internal dynamic of Islam is often more dominated by Turkey and Arabia than by those other segments.

The Turks had mounted their 1818 attack on their fellow Muslims because,

in Ottoman eyes, the Saudis were bloodthirsty murderers who had plundered the holy city of Karbala in Ottoman Iraq, slaughtering 4,000 civilian inhabitants (most of them Shiite), and later destroyed many shrines in Mecca and Medina.

By the time the Turks beheaded the Saudi king in 1818, Muslims had been slaughtering each other for over a millennium. Since then, the pattern has not changed. “The long legacy of rivalry between the two Sunni Muslim powers,” notes Jaroslav Trofimov, “has fueled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s determination to punish the House of Saud.” The wars of past centuries live on in the Muslim mind, and fuel today’s violence.

This, of course, is also the role that the House of Saud sees as its natural right because of the kingdom’s control over Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, and over the hajj pilgrimage that brings more than two million Muslims there each year.

Iran and Iraq are major objects of interest on the global scene, but inside Islam, they aren’t the main contenders.

In this contest, Iran — whose Shiite version of Islam represents a small minority of the predominantly Sunni Muslim world — can’t really compete. For now, Tehran is happy to watch from the sidelines as its two main regional rivals undermine each other.

From an outsider’s perspective, it is easy to get the impression that Islam’s hatred is directed toward Europeans and Americans, toward Jews and Christians. But a more careful look at the Muslim world reveals that Muslims direct huge amounts of hostility toward each other.

In addition to warfare and assassinations, it’s worth noting that a great deal of Islamic terrorism targets competing Muslim groups. Again, the outsiders may assume that Islamic terror is aimed primarily at Europeans, American, Jews, and Christians. But insiders see it differently.

Saudi Arabia’s 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has tried to assert Riyadh’s ambition to lead the Middle East ever since his father ascended to the throne in 2015. In a major departure from Saudi Arabia’s previous policy of behind-the-scenes checkbook diplomacy, Prince Mohammed has built a coalition of Sunni states such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to launch a war against Iranian allies in Yemen. He imposed an embargo that unsuccessfully sought regime change in Qatar. He also attempted to meddle in Lebanese politics by forcing that nation’s prime minister to announce during a stay in the kingdom that he would resign, a decision that the prime minister rescinded once he was home.

The maneuvering and scheming for power and influence continues nonstop among the Saudis and the Turks. Neighboring countries are pawns in this power struggle.

A number of organizations who operate in both politics and terrorism serve as further tools which the rivals use against each other. To identify these groups as either ‘terror groups’ or ‘political parties’ is to miss the point that the two are inseparable and interrelated in this context. “Saudi Arabia and its allies also have relentlessly pursued the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement,” writes Trofimov. Typical of such groups, the Muslim Brotherhood is linked to other terrorists: “its affiliates include Hamas.”

Though professing a commitment to democracy under Islamic law, the Brotherhood has turned autocratic when in power in Egypt and Sudan. Mr. Erdogan has supported the group across the Arab world since the 2011 revolutions of the Arab Spring.

As the leader of the Turkish government, Erdogan is willing to use his connections with terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to attack the Saudis.

Mr. Erdogan has made several efforts to resist Saudi Arabia’s rise. He sent Turkish troops to protect Qatar, ousted Saudi allies from Somalia and announced a deal to lease an island across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia in Sudan, possibly for a military base. He has also become a vociferous champion of traditional Muslim causes, such as Palestine, and of new ones, such as the suffering of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Istanbul has turned into a favorite hub for Islamist dissidents from across the Arab world.

Erdogan hopes to win the long struggle and become the leader of Islam. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire saw itself as the rightful government of the Muslim world. Erdogan wants to draw on that older attitude. Turkey is the modern remnant of the Ottoman Empire.

But the Saudis also see themselves as the rightful leader of Islam. So the same contest continues. Only the names change.

“The Turkish president’s foreign policy strategy aims to make Muslims proud again,” said Soner Cagaptay, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of a recent biography of Mr. Erdogan, “The New Sultan.” “Under this vision, a reimagined and modernized version of the Ottoman past, the Turks are to lead Muslims to greatness.”

There is a long history behind that claim. For four centuries, the sultan in Istanbul was also the religious leader, or caliph, of the entire Muslim world. His spiritual authority was recognized well beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire, which at its peak included parts of central and eastern Europe, north Africa and the Arabian peninsula.

In previous centuries, the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire fought with the Muslims of Arabia for a chance to be the leading force within Islam. In the twenty-first century, Turkey is fighting against Saudi Arabia. The fight remains the same; the names have changed.

There was an interval, however, when it seemed like the situation might get better. When the Ottoman Empire ended, around 1923 or 1924, a modern Turkey started to emerge under the leadership of Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, a popular president of the country. During Ataturk’s time, Turkey began to shed the rigid demands of Islam. The harsh demands of Sharia law were relaxed, and a modern trend made itself felt in education and politics.

Turkey seemed on the verge of a breakthrough. Ataturk ended the Caliphate, the Islamic notion of imperial government, and the country moved toward rule by freely-elected representatives. Freedom of speech and modern universities were starting to emerge. Ataturk’s dream didn’t include wasting lives and energy fighting with the Arabs for control of Islam.

Sadly, Erdogan’s effort have been to do the very opposite of Ataturk’s. Erdogan is working to reinstate the harsh oppression of Islam in every area of live and society.

The Arabs did not engage in the type of modernization that Ataturk brought to Turkey:

The caliphate was abolished only in 1924, six years after the Ottomans lost control over Mecca and Medina to a British-sponsored Arab revolt during World War I. The modern, secular Turkish Republic, which rose from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat by the Allied powers, banished the last sultan, Mehmed VI, to Europe in 1922. With the Ottomans gone, the House of Saud quickly expanded from its desert strongholds to much of the Arabian peninsula, first capturing Mecca and then establishing a powerful new state in 1932.

With Turkey pursuing a modernized path, and Saudi Arabia clinging to the strict enforcement of Islam, the two nations could peacefully coexist, because they were each pursuing different goals. They weren’t in competition.

Until Mr. Erdogan’s embrace of neo-Ottoman politics — and more authoritarian rule — a decade or so ago, the modern Turkish state wasn’t much interested in leading the Muslim world and was content to leave religious proselytizing to Saudi Arabia. Turkey joined NATO, sought membership in the European Union and nurtured close military links with Israel.

But when Turkey abandoned modernization, and Erdogan began to instate an oppressive Islamic regime, Turkey and Saudi Arabia came into conflict: they were in competition, each wanting to be the source of leadership in Islam.

Mr. Erdogan’s new Turkey, by contrast, presents a major challenge to Saudi Arabia by offering an alternative Islamic model, said Madawi al Rasheed, a Saudi professor at the London School of Economics and the author of a history of Saudi Arabia. “It is an existential threat to Saudi Arabia because of Turkey’s combination of Islam and a kind of democracy,” she said. “After all, Erdogan is still ruling over a republic that has a parliament, opposition parties and a civil society — while Saudi Arabia has nothing like that.”

Erdogan has not been able to erase all traces of modernization. Those remaining fragments of modernity give Turkey an edge over Saudi Arabia. But how long can those shreds of modernization last under Erdogan’s imposition of strict Islamic social and political concepts?

While Turkey seems to be sliding back into the darkness of Islamic oppression, Saudi Arabia seems never to have left it.

Indeed, today’s kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a monarchy as absolute as they come. It’s also the third state run by the House of Saud since the family’s alliance with the puritan preacher Mohammed ibn Abdel Wahhab rallied the Bedouin of the Arabian peninsula under the banner of an uncompromising new creed (since known as Wahhabism) in 1745.

Understanding the conflicts within Islam is essential for understanding the past and present of the Muslim world. Europeans and Americans can tend to think of themselves as the primary target of Islamic hate, but Muslims are often more likely to be the victims of Islamic terrorism than Jews or Christians.