Richard N. Haass contradicts the prevailing perception that the 100-year old Sykes-Picot agreement were the source of many evils in the Middle East, bearing "considerable blame for the frequency and durability of the region’s conflicts." He believes Mark Sykes and François Picot had acted wisely and avoided a "ruinous rivalry" between Britain and France. Thanks to this "design" the region had been spared from being torn "between the two European powers, and it managed to survive for a century." This argument is unconvincing, because Haass has failed to elaborate what the Middle East would have looked like today without their meddling.

The author dismisses the downsides of drawing borders, that didn't reflect the ethnic, sectarian faultlines or "historical realities." Indeed, Sykes and Picot thought the Ottoman Empire had for centuries subjugated all ethnic groups, tribes and sects, assuming these people would be able to coexist under new circumstances. It is true that "most borders around the world owe their legacy less to thoughtful design or popular choice than to some mixture of violence, ambition, geography, and chance." However the conflicts had not been as perennial as the thousand-year-old Sunni-Shia schism in Islam. Since Iran ushered in a theocratic regime in 1979, it and Saudi Arabia have been at loggerheads with each other, vying for "mastery" and stoking sectarian violence among Sunnis and Shiites. With the exception of Libya, in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting a proxy war.

Haass insists that the agreement "cannot be blamed for the region’s pervasive lack of tolerance and political freedom, poor schools, or the unfair ways in which girls and women are treated," but its "leaders and people" themselves. While "history, culture, religion" do help shape the reality in the Middle, "personalities" count much more, because policies revolve around leaders, and foreign relations are based very much on personal ties among these policy-makers, who tend to be autocrats with unlimited tenure.

The author maintains that the Sykes-Picot agreement is worth "preserving" and he proposes three options to "restore" it. His first option suggests a break-up of countries, that "will not go back to what they were." It would only be a "folly" to try to reunify them, because "ties to region, religion, tribe, ethnicity, and/or ideology" matter more than "national identities." The second option "would be to try to negotiate the terms of a new Middle East, a successor to Sykes-Picot." However this is time consuming and unlikely to succeed, because - momentarily - there is "no consensus" on how borders should be drawn, and "no party or alliance that could impose or uphold it." Haass says diplomacy would only work with "facts on the ground, not to create them." The reality shows that "the facts on the ground stand in the way of a regional settlement." Finally we might all have to accept that "for the foreseeable future the Middle East will not resemble what appears on maps and globes." But this shouldn't allow us to be passive, as the situation "can always get worse." To prevent it from happening, Haass proposes a strengthening of "governments and organizations that meet certain standards" while "those that do not can and should be weakened." He is basically suggesting a regime change in certain countries. But does he have any idea for what to do next? To usher in new governments and help with them with nation building is a highly ungrateful task. Irak, Afghanistan had been useful lesson. It is true that Iraq, Libya and Syria are "countries in name only" since they are on the verge of a breakup. Given the danger that "the Middle East stands to suffer far worse in the next century than it did in the last," Haass says the "unpleasant reality" might soon leave him "nostalgic for the times of Sykes and Picot." The trouble with him is that he sees the region through the lens of a hawkish Republican.