Agreed. I don't think anyone, even if it happened today would have saw the Middle East's gradual isolation over several hundred years as the likely outcome of E

Agreed. I don't think anyone, even if it happened today would have saw the Middle East's gradual isolation over several hundred years as the likely outcome of Europeans "hacking" the silk road trade routes (though if a similar case happened today, it would probably be far less gradual). There were other factors as well, such as consecutive bad leadership in the Ottoman Empire following Suleiman the Magnificent (which is often cited as a big reason for the decline of the Western Roman Empire), but the consequences of the trade route disruption has too many ripple effects over time it's hard to say what or what was not in some way attributed to it. Comparing the Ottomans and the Western Romans once again, both lost out on most of their profitable trade (as most of the trade was in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire and was no longer filling the Western tax coffers when the Empire split into two). Although I wouldn't take my conclusion as fault proof, but it would appear that countries can survive a string of bad leaders, but if trade that's taken for granted dries up and never returns, then the country is in bad shape if it cannot adapt.