This work argues that the political complexities of today's Middle East and the region's enmeshment in great power politics are best explained in terms of the distinctive international relations subsystem that has evolved over the past two centuries. L. Carl Brown shows how present tensions grew out of "the Eastern Question"--The elaborate diplomatic game in which European states dismembered the Ottoman Empire from the late eighteenth century until after World War I. This game still goes on, with the outside parties neither effectively absorbing the Middle East nor releasing it from their hold. The author describes the rules of this game--their roots, their application under the varying circumstances of the past two hundred years, and their tenacious durability in a region otherwise undergiong revolutionary change. Present political trends in the Middle East bode ill for the people of the region and the rest of the world--all the more reason to study their underlying structure.