He makes the point that thinking of geopolitics in terms of nation states has become anachronistic.

Israel has a messianic End Times view calling for Greater Israel. And in Iran, Khomeini “insisted theme was to express the view that a government consistent with Islamic values could not be reliably established on democratic principles without it being subject to unelected religious guidance from top Islamic clerical scholars as the source of highest political authority.”

            And America also is messianic with its Evangelicals preaching the end time and Chosen Nation ideology. Pretending that this is democracy vs autocracy.

            And Communism – at first Soviet Russia and then China – sees socialism as the End Time.

            As Crooke says, these countries are all beyond the “nation state” as political actors.