Post-1945 Middle East great-power succession changed players but not the script

Evidence

It may be useful at this point to review, briefly and schematically, the chief phases in the development of great-power influence in the Middle East. After the victory of 1918, Great Britain and France were in exclusive control of the area, unchallenged except by one another. In the 1930s and 1940s Britain and France drew together to meet and, ultimately, defeat the attempt of the Axis powers to oust them from the area. Since then, first France and then—with a change in the casting, but not in the script—Great Britain have been eliminated from most of their positions of power and influence, leaving the center of the arena to a new set of contestants. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1178

Categorization

• XREF: ‘A change in the casting, but not in the script’ — the observation that US-Soviet rivalry merely replaced European imperial rivalry in the Middle East echoes Cold War revisionist historiography and later critiques of US neocolonial continuity. — connects to: Postwar Middle Eastern republics often masked continued dynastic dominance
• CANDY: ‘With a change in the casting, but not in the script’ is a crisp, memorable formulation of great-power succession worth quoting.