conquest is supposed to be a momentary affair, a violent disruption after which governance restores order. yet, in the long arc of history, conquest has rarely ended with the signing of treaties or the raising of flags. it metastasizes, adapts, rebrands itself as governance, democracy, liberation. the conquered land never ceases to be conquered; it merely forgets how it got there.
what is the middle east today if not an uninterrupted sequence of occupations, interventions, betrayals? western strategists—who once divvied up ottoman territories with the same casual entitlement as a card game—now speak the language of stability, security, and economic partnership. but under the surface, the logic remains the same: rule, divide, extract, repeat.
the conquest that pretends to be governance
to understand how conquest survives, one must look at its most successful disguise: the state itself. the modern middle eastern state is not an indigenous political body—it is a carefully arranged scaffolding of interests that has little to do with the people who inhabit it. the british and french did not just draw borders; they installed entire political cultures that functioned as colonial machinery even after the colonialists left.
take saudi arabia. a state designed in consultation with british intelligence, engineered to merge the most reactionary theological ideology with a pliable monarchy. its rulers are not merely kings but stewards of empire, playing their part with the precision of well-trained actors. or consider egypt, where successive regimes—from the british-backed monarchy to the american-sponsored military—have all governed with the same script: suppress dissent, ensure regional stability, facilitate western hegemony.
conquest, then, is not about soldiers on horseback or tanks rolling through cities. it is about who sets the terms of governance.
when resistance becomes spectacle
but what of resistance? doesn’t history teach us that the conquered eventually rise? here is where the imperial playbook outdoes itself. for every revolution, there is a counter-revolution ready to co-opt its language, dull its edges, and reduce it to a performance.
look at the arab spring: a moment pregnant with possibility, then methodically dismantled. mubarak falls in egypt, only to be replaced by sisi, a man who understood that democracy is best served in military uniform. libya explodes, syria implodes, and suddenly, the rhetoric of human rights becomes a pretext for nato interventions that render nations ungovernable. resistance is permitted, but only if it follows a script that ensures it leads nowhere.
the most dangerous act of rebellion, then, is not simply to resist, but to do so in a way that is illegible to imperial strategies. to refuse the predetermined roles of the ‘moderate opposition’ or the ‘authoritarian nationalist’.
empire as an economic condition
many still cling to the belief that the empire is a military affair, a geopolitical strategy. but it is, at its core, an economic condition. the global financial system does not merely punish those who resist—it ensures that resistance remains unaffordable. egypt’s military doesn’t rule simply because it is strong; it rules because the u.s. bankrolls it to the tune of billions. saudi arabia doesn’t bomb yemen simply because it can; it does so because its weapons contracts sustain an entire industry that ensures its loyalty.
consider israel, the empire’s most sophisticated laboratory. what started as a settler-colonial project has now been seamlessly integrated into global markets, a hub of military technology, cyber-surveillance, and intelligence outsourcing. the occupation of palestine is no longer a military operation—it is a fully monetized enterprise. the west bank is an experiment in carceral capitalism, where surveillance is the primary export.
the illusion of sovereignty
so what, then, of sovereignty? does it exist at all in the modern middle east? the region is full of states that act sovereign, perform sovereignty, but remain permanently bound to the logic of conquest. turkey dreams of reviving its ottoman past but operates as a subcontractor for western security interests. iran resists western influence yet navigates a precarious existence within the global economy that ensures its revolutionary zeal remains market-friendly.
in truth, sovereignty is less about borders and more about who dictates the rules of engagement. and for most of the world, those rules are still set elsewhere.
what happens when the conquered remember?
history suggests that conquest persists until the conquered remember their history. until they see the invisible chains in which they have been bound—not just militarily, but ideologically, economically, existentially.
perhaps this is why palestine remains the unsolvable problem in the imperial equation. the logic of empire demands that a people forget they were ever free, that their displacement become background noise. yet, decade after decade, palestinians continue to refuse their erasure. this is why the mere existence of palestinian resistance—no matter how fragmented or desperate—is treated as an existential threat by israel. it is a reminder that conquest has not succeeded in becoming governance.
what the imperial project fears most is not war, nor terrorism, nor even revolution. it is historical memory. because once the conquered remember, the empire’s greatest illusion—its permanence—begins to shatter.
reference:
tariq ali, conquered lands, new left review 151, 2025.
