Developing nations: economic growth and social challenges

Oil and Religion: Europe in the Middle East.

Following the end of the First World War, the European powers, and later the U.S. And the Soviet Union, dominated the Middle East in terms of political, social, and economic structures, and set in motion a series of events which have impacted world events and global peace to the present day. This brief paper will outline the impact of Europe on this critical world region as it played out during the 20th Century.

Any discussion of the Middle East must begin with perhaps the two most important factors which have determined the course of events in the region for the last century: oil and religion. Oil has served as the economic motivation for Europe and other powers which have mingled in the region's affairs. Religion has served as the complicating force which has made social and political stabilization under a Western model difficult to achieve. The geography of the region and its oil reserves have made it strategically important throughout the period of empire building and the Cold War, but the fierce independence and religious heterogeneity of the Arab people have made the populations notoriously difficult organize for both Western and Arab leaders (Grenville, 421). At least part of this difficulty has been the result of the interference of the British and, to a lesser extent, the French in political affairs across the Middle East as Europe attempted to colonize the region politically in order to afford the kind of system they thought necessary to allow the exploitation of oil reserves to proceed peacefully.

Grenville writes that the British attempted to "secure the benefits of empire in the Middle East while minimizing the costs of control" (422). In order to do this, they engaged immediately after WWI in a pattern of establishing British-style constitutions in Egypt, Iraq, and areas of the now dissolute Ottoman Empire. Later, they developed treaties with Transjordan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia which essentially made those areas British protectorates. Both sets of arrangements allowed the British to have advisory impact on the areas without having to incur the costs of rule. Their intent was to set up a peaceful set of governments that would allow them to go in a get the oil. However, this system caused several problems. The Arab monarchies proved to be neglectful and oppressive of their people, and the British stood aside, leading to the development of distrust among the populace of Western influence, a distrust that was exploited by Arab religious leaders in later decades, as an Islamic revolution was formed (Grenville, 424). Similarly, while the arrangements made by the British lasted a relatively short timeframe, the dividing up of land necessary to mark off territory for such constitutional authorities had a more permanent effect. In Iraq, for example, the grouping of ethnic Kurds with Sunni and Shi'a Arabs within the same monarchy territory proved disastrous, as continuing ethnic strife led to the eventual dissolution of the state and the rise of events leading to the wars of the last decades of the 1900s and the first decade of 2000. The establishment of Palestine, and the subsequent favoring of Jewish immigration to the region, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state following WWII and the Holocaust, placed people of distinctly different belief systems and ethnic grudges in close proximity together (Grenville, 428-429, 431-437). This pattern of drawing up of territorial arrangements that suited the British interests rather than accounted for Arab differences even occurred in places where there no significant oil reserves such as Afghanistan. The disastrous results of these activities led to political violence that has lasted more than half a century.

The French influence in the Middle East proceeded along a different, but also unfortunate, vein. They established influence in Syria and Lebanon, and ruled with an iron fist to put down any resistance to their colonization programs. This resulted in nationalist movement arising in those countries which eventually inspired calls for independence across the region (Grenville, 425-426).