Greater Middle East

The Greater Middle East is a political term introduced in March 2004 in a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the Group of Eight summit of June 2004. The area denotes a vaguely defined region called the "Arab world" together with Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Turkey, and several other neighboring countries that have cultural or religious ties.[2] The paper presented a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East and North Africa.[3][4]

Greater Middle East

Countries	UN members (36) and UN observer (1) Core area Middle East  Bahrain  Cyprus  Egypt  Iran  Iraq  Israel  Jordan  Kuwait  Lebanon  Oman  Palestine  Qatar  Saudi Arabia  Syria  Turkey  United Arab Emirates  Yemen Marginal area East Africa  Comoros  Djibouti  Somalia North Africa  Algeria  Libya  Morocco  Sudan  Tunisia South Asia  Afghanistan  Maldives  Pakistan Western Africa  Mauritania Peripheral area Caucasus  Armenia  Azerbaijan  Georgia Central Asia  Kazakhstan  Kyrgyzstan  Tajikistan  Turkmenistan  Uzbekistan Other de facto countries (6) Core area Middle East  Northern Cyprus Marginal area East Africa  Somaliland North Africa  Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Peripheral area Caucasus  Abkhazia  South Ossetia
Dependencies	External (1) Core area Middle East  Akrotiri and Dhekelia (United Kingdom) Internal (6) Core area Middle East  Kurdistan (Iraq)  Rojava (Syria) Peripheral area Caucasus  Adjara (Georgia)  Nakhchivan (Azerbaijan) Central Asia  Gorno-Badakhshan (Tajikistan)  Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan) Occupied (5) Core area Middle East East Jerusalem  Gaza Strip Golan Heights  West Bank Marginal area North Africa  Western Sahara UN buffers (2) Core area Middle East UNBZC UNDOF Zone
Largest cities	10 largest cities in the Greater Middle East (2022)[1] Cairo Karachi Istanbul Lahore Tehran Riyadh Baghdad Khartoum Alexandria Ankara

Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute defined the Greater Middle East as the MENA region together with the Caucasus and Central Asia.[5] Other sources have named this world region as the "Middle East Crescent" (which includes North Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucasian and Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union),[6] since this area resembles a crescent straddling in the middle of Europe, Africa, and Asia.[7][8]

The future of the Greater Middle East has sometimes been referred to as the "new Middle East", first so by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who presented the second-term Bush administration's vision for the region's future in June 2006 in Dubai. Rice said would be achieved through "constructive chaos", a phrase she repeated a few weeks later during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the 2006 Lebanon War had broken out; the meaning of this phrase and the Bush administration's vision have been much debated since.[9][10][11] The efforts to achieve this new Middle East are sometimes called "The Great Middle East Project".[12][13]

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that a "political awakening" is taking place in this region which may be an indicator of the multipolar world that is now developing. He alluded to the Greater Middle East as the "Global Balkans", and as a control lever on an area he refers to as Eurasia.[14] According to Andrew Bacevich's book America's War for the Greater Middle East (2016), this region is the theater for a series of conflicts dating back to 1980, which heralded the start of the Iran–Iraq War. Since then, the U.S. has been involved in balancing conflicts amongst these culturally interconnected nations in order to further its interests in the region.