...and odium is hardly surprising, or unprecedented. Empires - Rome, the British, the Ottomans - were always targeted by the disgruntled, the disenfra... ...o rampant mercenaries, erstwhile "allies" turned bitter enemies. At its peak, the Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Balkan, up to the very gates of... ...Africa including Algeria, and most of the Arab Peninsula. It lasted 600 years. The Ottomans invaded Europe while still serving as a proxy army of m... ... War (1914-8), the disintegration of most of the continental empires - notably the Habsburg and Ottoman - led to a resurgence of a particularly vir... ...lion influx from the oil- for-food scheme, now in its eighth year - though, as Hans von Sponeck, head of the program between 1998-2000, observed in ... ... recognized the East-West divide. The implosion of the four empires - the Ottoman, Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov - following the first world w... ...ome) Europeans - but its gratuitous, unilateral and exclusive application. As even von Clausewitz conceded, military might is only one weapon in th...