By Nicholas S. Kass

Sunday October 4^th, 2026

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the entire world has watched the Middle East endure a spiral of acute instability and violence.  For over a century the region has been plagued by religious, ideological, ethnic, and power conflicts, fueled and molded in good part by states from what was once known as the “Christian” West pursuing mundane, ideological, and blinkered interests of their own. The results, coming to a head amid scant concern and even outright hostility toward the innocent people who have lived on the land for eons, have been disastrous physically, morally, and spiritually.

Today, the Middle East-West Asia region has been forced into an existential crisis and, in the original meaning of that Greek word, a turning point that will have long-term civilizational and spiritual implications across the globe. Some examples from the past 26 years will help illustrate the situation.

A generation ago, the US  war against Iraq destroyed much of that country, energized intercommunal conflict, and destabilized the wider region.  As an unintended but scarcely lamented consequence of that war, the ancient Christian communities there were largely destroyed; only shrinking vestiges of those once-vibrant communities remain. In the ensuing chaos across Iraq and in Syria, the terrorist group ISIS emerged, bent on further destruction of all who opposed it—Muslims, Christians, Jews, Yezidis, secularists, and others alike.

On 7 October 2023, we saw the horrific violence of the terrorist group Hamas in an attack killing 1,200 Israelis, and the Israeli response of unspeakable violence of their own in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians including over 21 thousand children, and dislocating and destroying the homes of millions, including Christians.

Today in Lebanon, we see the application of similar violent methods. There, ancient Christian communities which for centuries have lived side by side with their Shia Muslim neighbors are now being destroyed as a consequence of Israel’s pursuit of what it asserts are its security interests, in part ostensibly by attacking (Shia) Hizbullah terrorists.  So far, according to observers on the ground, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced, including the depopulation of some 63 Christian villages and towns, perhaps never to return. Christians there fear the growth of a Hizbullah state within a state, but also see the Israelis as the aggressors, with longstanding expansionist designs on Lebanese territory.

Meanwhile, the war instigated by the US and Israel against Iran is expanding into vast areas of the Middle East including the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and Iraq and Syria as they struggle to establish stability and rebuild after decades of devastation, potentially inciting intercommunal religious and ethnic violence. That war is also fueling a potential armed conflict between the Zionist, officially Jewish state of Israel and predominantly Sunni Muslim, officially secular Turkiye over (largely Sunni) Syria,which both Jerusalem and Ankara see as key to their security.

Some aspects of this enduring crisis in the Middle East are home-grown and must be solved by the locals themselves. Humans are fallen creatures, and so human frailty and sin are ever present everywhere, in the East no less than the West.

Nevertheless, we must consider that the regional states and political societies operate in a context that has long been shaped in large part by Western and westernizing powers that have dominated the region, which is simply to say that the West is responsible for its actions to the extent that they have contributed to or even created the current crisis. Consequently, going forward Westerners in particular would be well-served first to remember Hippocrates’ admonition to “do no harm.” They should draw on the hard lessons learned, including from the dubious efforts earlier this century to graft Western secularist political and social ideologies onto a region with a rich non-Western civilizational and religious heritage of its own.

And so it is incumbent on the West, born in the Christian faith, to act wisely: to bring an end to war and other short-sighted policies that fuel anti-Western animus across the region, exploit notions of religious freedom to officially promote radical secularist agendas hostile to religious belief, generate suspicions of Christians as fifth-columnists working on behalf of increasingly unwelcome Western powers, and otherwise fuel instability to the detriment of Christians and others in the Middle East.

War, it might be said, is like a fire that burns the wet and dry together; whatever its stated purpose, it ends in death and destruction of human beings and untold damage to  humanity itself.  It is well past time to return to diplomacy, and to consider the welfare of the peoples of all faiths whose lives are being destroyed on a daily basis.

Note: The views expressed are the author’s and do not imply endorsement by any US government entity.

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Nicholas Spyridon Kass is an international business consultant based in Europe.  He served in the U.S. government for 32 years at the White House/National Security Council, State Department, CIA, and most recently (until January 2026) as the acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). He can be found on X and LinkedIn .