drive world war i and the balkans, the bad fit between state boundaries and nationalism, the popular forces of identity, culture, language, we see that all over the middle east today and that's driving a lot of conflicts. >> the -- >> the sunni/shia divide and kurdish question. nationalities whose identities are weak. syria and iraq are both multi-communal states and they're not holding up well. we see these forces ripping them apart in the same way they were ripping apart the great empires at the start of world war i. >> and yet there's a kind of indifference on the part of the great powers regarding the middle east that didn't apply in the balkans. the balkans were a hotly contested area in 1914. they saw their future spreading down to mascedonimacedonia. they were getting control of the balkan peninsula controlling the