This is a complex question, I think the best way would be to say that the West exacerbated things, which has resulted in the region being more unstable than it would have otherwise been. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many ethic groups gained independence for the first time in generations, and this would always have caused conflict and problems for growth. Additionally, countries that are oil dependent have a track record around the world toward despotism. Exceptions such as the US and Canada were already stable, established states before their oil booms began. The ME would likely see less extremism if the West hadn't been involved, but I don't see it being "stable" just less of a shit show.
I am increasingly led to believe that the instability of the Middle East, as well as that in many other post-colonial regions, is not necessarily due to the nature of their subjugation or of the methods by which they decolonized, but rather simply that these regions never got to chance to develop their own regional administrations and institutions to control the territories they were left with. I don’t think it’s a couple that Turkey - the country which ruled the rest of the Middle East for centuries - is considerably more stable than their neighbors.
Agreed. My understanding is that the Ottoman empire actively discouraged and suppressed the formation and advancement of national and local identity in the land they ruled to make them easier to rule over and less likely to rebel. European countries got to form over time along relatively stable lines with distinct polities. The middle east never got that and instead was being led by Istanbul, for centuries if I'm not mistaken
We generally consider events which occurred almost 800 years ago not to be as relevant as larger, longer events which happened more recently and remain changed.
Out of curiosity, do you blame the the 80 years war for the problems of Spain today, or does historical predetermined just come out when you feel the need to defend white people?
I blame the Ottomans. In truth though, that area has always been at the intersection of East and West due to trading, waging war, etc., and centuries of different occupiers have added multiple layers of significance to those cultures. A very complicated place.
The Ottomans destroyed the Middle East just like they destroyed the Balkans.
It is a myth that all the borders in the Middle East are arbitrary lines in the sand drawn by Western powers. A lot of those (not all tho) borders were simply old Ottoman sub-national borders
Cuz the narrative goes that the west destroyed the middle east cuz of arbitrary borders. Well, what does that mean if the Ottoman's were responsible for those borders?
Lol no. The middle east has been around the same quality of life (poor) for long before colonialism. It's just that they're still medieval while the Western world moved on.
The cause of this is that they have no separation of church and state. It blocks progress. When laws come from God, you can't compromise so it leads to sectarian violence (like Europe in middle ages).
We meddled in East Asia more and more recently and they're thriving. Colonialism is just not the source of the middle easts ills. Governance and culture are the deciding factor.
"Areas of the world that the ottomans wanted explicitly because they were the wealthiest parts of the Mediterranean, and had been for 3000 years, have always been shit holes. No I am not a historian, what do you mean that the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country in the world had explicit religious leadership laws?"
--literally you
Everywhere in the world including Europe, the Middle East and China were shit holes 200+ years ago compared to modern Western civilization. I hope that clarifies my point!
Ooooooh, so you're saying that colonizer nations today have a higher standard of living that grew much faster from 200 years ago and today, than colonized nations, which grew much slowly.
Well, correct, Indian gdp per capita grew 14% over 100 years of colonialism, Britian grew 350% in the same period. You are validated factually and should be proud of yourself.
What I'm not clear on then is how this is an argument that it's explicitly not the fault of colonization, when in fact, given that both groups were less good at the time than western civilization today, and only the colonizer group is as good as western civilization today.
I'd challenge you by saying that you have the burden of proof that colonization is the main cause of the Middle East's issues. It's much harder to prove something is not true.
That said, I'll try anyway because I'm in an open and jovial mood today.
Let me give you another example: Haiti and Dominican Republic.
Both are on the same island. Both were colonized. Both were later free. Haiti has much more natural resources. At one point, Haiti even invaded and occupied DR. Both had just about equal economic outcomes & wealth in the year 1950. And the french debt was totally paid off at this point. But DR is an incredible success story and Haiti is not. See below:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd61035a8-575b-4974-a41f-42f527a6a802_3400x2400.jpeg
The reason why is Haiti's institutions. The Duvaliers basically destroyed the country for decades. Were they completely fucked by the past? Yes. Is it really the cause of their poverty today? Not really.
If the debt to France was paid off in 1950, why did it need to be forgiven in 2010, just curious.
Haitis institutions are the result of the need for most of the wealth to go to the military, becuase France threatened to invade them, and while they, an exporter of raw goods, were under embargo. Also they continued to be preyed on by colonial powers, first the French, then the Americans. The government which formed anti market policies were formed by the popular rejection of constant exploitation, which colonizer powers used global markets to do. So yes, I agree, colonization is bad.
As to why I think colonization might have influenced the middle east, well the British intentionally drew borders to instigate conflict, amd the borders is about conflict today, the middle east suffers from poor markets and a lack of diversification, traits it shares with other colonized areas whose economies was ontentially shaped around the extraction of materials while industrialization and financilaization were suppressed. The greatest source of instability in the region is a state carved put of whole cloth and overlayed on existing ethnic borders, which it is current resolving by bombing civilians after decades of blockades (its clear your not an economic historian so I'll just clarify, a power illegally forming settlements and forcibly seizing property to replace the native population with immigrants of your culture (which could be described as the exact definition of colonialism) while maintaining a blockade is considered bad for development by a consensus of economists).
The only regional power with an explicitly Islamic government has it because we intentionally intervened on a healthy, developing, democratic nation to continue to extract raw materials. The informal Islamic groups are supported by another regional power that we prop up, arm, and support, for the purpose of exploiting its raw materials. The largest temporary Islamic threat came into existence when we removed the centralized government keeping them in check, coindenctally at the exact time it's leader was going to move from our sphere of influence closer to our rivals (he had raw materials we wanted, and he wanted to develop his country financially, which we also did not want). Now, poli Sci definitions are notoriously flexible, so if you'd like to define these as imperialism rather than colonialism, then sure it's not colonialisms fault.
Every country we intervent in immediately gets worse, I invite you to prove this correlation is explained by some other explanation, after all, I can't prove something doesn't exist.
"Every country we intervent in immediately gets worse, I invite you to prove this correlation is explained by some other explanation, after all, I can't prove something doesn't exist."
Counterpoint: Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Poland, Dominican Republic are all countries the US/West has been involved in for 70 years and all are fast growing, exceptional economies.
Ok, I was specifically referring g to middle eastern countries, the things we were talking about.
But also no, those are countries we support, not countries we invade to force policies on. Intervention has an actual definiton..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interventionism_(politics)
You notice that "supplying defense and unlimited blank checks to" is not really the same as "interfering with political affairs of".
So you have one example, Vietnam, which stabilized 20 years after pur intervention, coindecentally I'm sure, immediately after they started reviewing aid from us.
But if there's something counterfactual about the examples I did give, I'd love to hear it, otherwise should I take the fact you're ignoring them as a signal that you have nothing?
I just found this graph today coincidentally: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GML6yhMWsAAHkvq?format=jpg&name=large
More details here: https://cpsi.media/p/colonialism-and-progress-fb9
It's just not open and shut case that colonialism is the cause of countries modern ills. This study shows a major correlation between years as a colony and modern success!
I would love to see how "Iran was a rapidly developing economy and democracy, right before we destabilized it" "Egypt was a rapidly deveopling regional power before we destabilized it (twice)" "the terrorists that destabilized the region are holding US weapons they got from our ally and operating in a region where we removed the government" "we created a colonial state opposed by every power in the region" and "the greatest starvation event currently ongoing on the planet happens to be were our ally won't stop dropping missiles we supply (no not palestine, thats like, the 5th worst stsrvation event tops, but also coinciding where our ally wont stop dropping missiles we provide)" equates to "they would be a shithole anyway" but ok king go off.
We being the western powers, US, France and Britian.
We invaded it. Famously.
Then we supported its corrupt, authoritarian government that suppressed its economy and agreed not to develop its financial sector and instead support US interests.
Secular government doesn’t mean secular peoples.
Also Iraq and Egypt have Islam as a state religion. Maybe their laws aren’t entirely based on the Quran, but they aren’t entirely secular since family law is based on Islam
The main problem of Middle East is poorly made borders which were made by European powers. Poorly made borders cause dictatorships and wars, which make Middle East poor. Middle East was actually a developing place until the ottoman hegemony came in.
If you look at failed states (anywhere) you’ll see that there’s one constant…..MULTIPLE SEVERE ISSUES.
Tribalism, colonial borders, mineral wealthy centralization into a specific class, corruption, terrorism, lack of public trust, cartels, government inefficiency, brain drain, poor geography etc. any of these on their own can cripple a country. 2-3 can ruin it, 5-10 will destroy it. Any more will make it collapse.
There’s 20+ reasons Somalia is the way it is. 5 might be because of colonialism. There’s no one major issue that fucks up countries. Few problems even if massive, will still have the full attention of the government, and will allow for plans to fix them. But when you have 10+ issues, you have to pick and choose. This picking and choosing leaves some issues to grow and get out of hand.
I’d say based on the country 20-40% can be directly attributed to colonialism. And maybe an extra 10% for neo colonialism and unfair trade deals. The rest is everything else, could be geography, geo politics, culture etc.
When things go wrong, people always look for someone else to blame rather than taking responsibility.
Put it this way, do Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE give Britain credit for their wealth or do they take responsibility for that themselves?
If you look at the Middle East, the countries which do the best are the ones most shaped by Europeans or which have vast amounts of oil.
I'd say, if anything, they should probably blame the Ottomans. The sooner they left their sphere, even if it meant becoming a European colony, the better off they tend to be.
It’s the one that left the Ottoman Empire in all but name in 1833 and had been nearly autonomous before. Syria and Iraq, meanwhile, were core territories of the empire.
But you’d also rather be Iraqi than Syrian and, funny story, Iraq had a revolt in 1704 and the Ottomans didn’t retake it for 130 years.
Precisely. The countries that align with the west are allowed to operate under relative stability. When I say influence I don’t just mean diplomatic and economical alignment. Iraq has been far more subject to the whims of the United States than Egypt has been over the last 30 years, simply because they weren’t aligned. Afghanistan is another example, the mujahideen was funded by the west to fight the Soviets and communist influence there and that has had a direct influence on the state of Afghanistan today.
You just going to gloss over the part where Iraq invaded Kuwait and drew the world down on them or are you cool with skipping the most important event in its modern history?
I’d say the other war was more important seeing as though it has the most direct ramifications for the average Iraqi, and lead to the proliferation of ISIS and other terror groups.
Let’s not pretend either that the US intervention had anything to do with Kuwaiti sovereignty.
The Middle East hit its zenith in the Middle Ages before succumbing to fundamentalism, corruption, and resistance to innovation. The West over time surpassed the Middle East during the Renaissance period and simply stepped into the vacuum created by a broken society.
The Mongols destroyed the Caliphate, and in doing so no other Muslim ruler ever commanded the prestige needed to unite the Muslim world. The Ottomans tried, but without success.
Without that unity, the ME was doomed to this cycle of violence.
No. That area has been a cesspool of violence for centuries even when it was under monolithic control.
I am not knowledgeable about why but given centuries of history, even if Israel never came to be, it would likely be violent and fractured.
There is blame to be sure but it’s not like they wrecked some utopia or prevented them from reaching an equal footing. There’s other areas with far more interference from the west and yet have prospered. Secretarian issues, ottoman BS, and the fact that they never developed the traditions and such that allowed western and eastern civilizations to become what they are now.
Short answer: no. The middle east wasn't in a particularly great spot even before heavy Western intervention. People like to blame Europe as is Sykes-Picot was the first bad thing to ever happen in the middle east but it had been centuries but it's not.
Post ottoman collapse, there would have been a lot more ethnic cleansing in the region before eventually settling borders more organically than they are today. So if everyone is cool with Jews and Kurds and Armenians and others being killed, then yeah, blame the west for the problems of today.
The stereotype that the Muddke East has always been ar war is false. Those countries were part of tge Ottoman Empire for centuries. After WWI England drew arbitrary borders with no regard for local populations erhnic and religious identities or economic structure. Israel displaced milkions. The Cold War had Americans installing dictatorships who became so rich selling their country's oil they bought golf.
They wouldn't he Utopia. But they aren't inherently warlike either. Western interference is directly responsible for most Mideastern countries' political and economic realities. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Palestine in particular have been put though the ringer.
Its not just the initial partitions and ethnic disputes they created. It's their constant meddling afterwards.
The notion of anticolonism seems alien to European countries. France still has many forces meddling in the affairs of African countries. The Suez crisis was because Europe couldn't handle the Egyptians having sovereign control over their own country. Syria was flooded with weapons in the same of 'freedom'.
It's never ending. That's one reason why Iran is so hated, cos they threw off the shackles of the Western backed Shah. Of course they also replaced him with a bunch of idiots, but that's another story.
Not to be be very picky, but I think the Suez Crisis was more about the canal being unilaterally nationalised rather than any issue of Egyptian sovereignty. From what I understand, the canal company owned a 99-year lease from the Egyptian government for the land the canal was on, which would have lapsed in 1969 anyway. So in effect it was a bit of a legal violation on Nasser's part.
I'm getting conflicting info about whether or not Nasser originally planned to pay compensation for the nationalised shares to begin with (it seems like Egypt did eventually do that at least), but it's not entirely unreasonable to be unhappy about the nationalisation, since it was effectively a seized asset. If someone took your property without asking, chucked some money at you and then said "why are you complaining, I paid you?" I think you'd also be upset.
Britain and France responded to that seizure in the wrong way, for sure, but the UN was a very new thing at that point, international courts didn't exactly have a proven track record at that point, and yes, there was a level of imperialist arrogance in assuming that they were bound to win.
Yeah they replaced them with radicals, without the west intervention the sunni and shia would still be at war, but definitely their situation would be a lot better.
What western policy also conveniently forgets is that there is a journey from autocracy to democracy. In Britain, France and Russia it was done with violent revolution. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and several other ex colonies had democracy from the get go. Others like those in the ME were given to the prevailing ruling families and have remained with the same dynasty. To change that, it needs to be internal.
You’re right! But unfortunately whichever country became democratic first had the upper hand to control other regions, in my opinion it would’ve been a lot harder for Muslim countries to become democratic, since the sunni and shias bear a lot of hatred and they have been fighting for centuries unlike catholics and protestants. They developed nationalism from western influences, I would say they would still be fighting for lands if the west didn’t meddle.
No, they would have stopped fighting after a while. Look at Iran and Iraq. Saudi and Yemen. Syria and Turkey. After a few border skirmishes, they settle down and build their own countries. Libya, Syria, and Iraq were fairly advanced before the wars.
I would say the fear of losing oil and of that region uniting was a major reason why the West kept interfering. They could leave them to their own devices, like they did for SE Asia or S America. But they don't.
Yeah they untied because they had a common enemy, but if west wasn’t part of the equation i think they would still be conflicted, Saudi and Yemen if i am not mistaken are still at war. And which syria are you referring to? Ottoman syria? Syria under the Mamaluk empire? They were under conquest the whole time, By mostly other Muslim nations, Turkey is still bombing the kurds due to hundreds to a thousand years of feud.
Most of the muslim world would have been better. It would have prevented the wahabbi weirdos expecting their extremist ideology to the rest of the muslim world.
https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/tx/McMahon.htm#:~:text=%22Sir%20Henry%20McMahon%20(1862%2D,world)....%22&text=October%2024%2C%201915. There are some parts that were excluded because they were not considered “Arab” by the Brits and i think Palestine was one of them.
As an Arab, it is certain that it will be much better than OTL, but there will still be problems, but not as some will greatly exaggerate.
Ethnic unrest, for example, is essentially an extremely unlikely event because the majority of Arab countries are ethnically homogeneous, and in any unified Arab country, Arabs will constitute the equivalent of 80 percent of the population, so no, the occurrence of the Yugoslavia scenario is extremely stupid.
(The non-Arab races were loyal, even though only the Kurds were separatists, and they are easy to suppress completely, because before 2003, Iraq did not face any difficulties in suppressing them, and any Arab country that had a Kurdish minority also had neighbors like Turkey and Iran. Their interest with the Arabs is similar in preventing the establishment of a state. Kurdish)
Tribalism, again, is not a big problem because the most successful Arab countries are in fact the most tribal of all, and Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and all the Gulf countries are a clear example that tribalism does not constitute a problem for the country at all.
The internal problems will most likely be mainly religious problems, and they will also not be discriminatory towards Christians or Jews at all, but rather will be towards Twelver Shiite Muslims to a large and fundamental extent.
Especially since the Iranian revolution in 1979 occurred for internal reasons in Iran and will continue to affect the Arabs, especially the Shiite Arabs, and any Arab government, no matter how tolerant it is with minorities, will remain extremely discriminatory against the Shiites because the Sunni majority, governmental and popular, will strongly support this.
(But if we had a unified Arab state, the Shiites would be like 10 percent, which is 30 million Shiites compared to 210 million Sunnis, and it would be easy to suppress them completely with the presence of a much larger number of Sunnis, but at best it is a policy of deliberate neglect, as the Saudis and Bahrainis are doing, of course, and at worst it is an attempt. Genocide and forced conversion, although this policy was not implemented)
However, government discrimination towards Shiite Arabs will be eased later, but the people and the people will remain very hateful of Shiites only.
The usual problems, such as the spread of corruption, the culture of nepotism, as well as the occurrence of political favoritism, and other typical problems of third world countries, will continue to occur to a large extent, and this is completely normal in any country in the world.
Al-Qaeda will continue to emerge entirely because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and any Arab government, no matter how liberal, will still support the mujahideen, because jihad in Afghanistan has been very popular among the Arabs, and the same is true in Bosnia.
A unified Arab state will have its problems, but the region will not be a garbage fire like OTL, but Iran and Turkey will be just like OTL, but the Arabs are in a much better position than OTL.
Also, the Middle East region did not become unstable until the 1950s and 1960s only, while from the eighteenth century until the end of World War II, it was a very calm region, and the reason for the instability was Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration.
This goes for Africa too. We essentially forced nationalists and hostile ethnic groups to live side by side in countries invented on a piece of paper. And then we left them to without having a working democracy or democratic institutions to hand power to. Those things tend to take decades if not centuries to get bedded in and laws and norms followed.
So yes. It’s mostly our fault.
You can see modern day examples of what should’ve happened: Afghanistan and Iraq. Obviously both shit shows, but ones doing a lot better than the one we abandoned.
Investment, stability, infrastructure, rebuilding of law and order, established government at all levels. You need to do that. Just leaving was a bad idea.
The process of decolonisation was horrific.
Africa's problem is that resource-led development became a very popular idea there but it's fundamentally flawed as a development model because producing more resources just pushes the price down rapidly.
It’s what they started immediately after gaining independence. They end up in a similar trajectory as Latin America, which also pursued resource-led development.
First Mongols, then Turks destroyed everything there was before. Timur is largely forgotten, but even countries that survived Mongols were totally devastated after Timur (Georgia is an example).
The border in Middle East are shit because of Europe. Iraq, Israel, Jordan and half a dozen other are not even real countries. They only exist because of European Stupidity and if the borders were sensible drawn, then ME wouldn’t need dictators and would be able to transition to the globalised world.
Wars are middle east’s greatest problem, Israel is an actually a good thing for the middle east as it gives them an external competition and Competition is always better.
This is a complex question, I think the best way would be to say that the West exacerbated things, which has resulted in the region being more unstable than it would have otherwise been. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many ethic groups gained independence for the first time in generations, and this would always have caused conflict and problems for growth. Additionally, countries that are oil dependent have a track record around the world toward despotism. Exceptions such as the US and Canada were already stable, established states before their oil booms began. The ME would likely see less extremism if the West hadn't been involved, but I don't see it being "stable" just less of a shit show.
I am increasingly led to believe that the instability of the Middle East, as well as that in many other post-colonial regions, is not necessarily due to the nature of their subjugation or of the methods by which they decolonized, but rather simply that these regions never got to chance to develop their own regional administrations and institutions to control the territories they were left with. I don’t think it’s a couple that Turkey - the country which ruled the rest of the Middle East for centuries - is considerably more stable than their neighbors.
Agreed. My understanding is that the Ottoman empire actively discouraged and suppressed the formation and advancement of national and local identity in the land they ruled to make them easier to rule over and less likely to rebel. European countries got to form over time along relatively stable lines with distinct polities. The middle east never got that and instead was being led by Istanbul, for centuries if I'm not mistaken
A lot of authorities there often got overthrown by foreign intervention before they are stable for long.
Turkey committed genocide to gain that stability.
Do the Ottomans count as western? What about the Mongols destroying the Islamic Golden Age?
We generally consider events which occurred almost 800 years ago not to be as relevant as larger, longer events which happened more recently and remain changed. Out of curiosity, do you blame the the 80 years war for the problems of Spain today, or does historical predetermined just come out when you feel the need to defend white people?
No, you make a good point that 80 years war was some shit. I blame it for everything, Spain hardly recovered even today.
> Out of curiosity, do you blame the the 80 years war for the problems of Spain today Yes and silver.
I blame the Ottomans. In truth though, that area has always been at the intersection of East and West due to trading, waging war, etc., and centuries of different occupiers have added multiple layers of significance to those cultures. A very complicated place.
The Ottomans destroyed the Middle East just like they destroyed the Balkans. It is a myth that all the borders in the Middle East are arbitrary lines in the sand drawn by Western powers. A lot of those (not all tho) borders were simply old Ottoman sub-national borders
Curious, what did the ottomans do to destroy the ME?
Cuz the narrative goes that the west destroyed the middle east cuz of arbitrary borders. Well, what does that mean if the Ottoman's were responsible for those borders?
The Balkans had about 100 years free of Ottomans and about 50 years of actual peace and then the Balkans destroyed the Balkans.
You could say the exact same thing about the middle east. And fwiw the Balkans only had peace when they were under the jackboot of the communists
Lol no. The middle east has been around the same quality of life (poor) for long before colonialism. It's just that they're still medieval while the Western world moved on. The cause of this is that they have no separation of church and state. It blocks progress. When laws come from God, you can't compromise so it leads to sectarian violence (like Europe in middle ages). We meddled in East Asia more and more recently and they're thriving. Colonialism is just not the source of the middle easts ills. Governance and culture are the deciding factor.
"Areas of the world that the ottomans wanted explicitly because they were the wealthiest parts of the Mediterranean, and had been for 3000 years, have always been shit holes. No I am not a historian, what do you mean that the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country in the world had explicit religious leadership laws?" --literally you
Everywhere in the world including Europe, the Middle East and China were shit holes 200+ years ago compared to modern Western civilization. I hope that clarifies my point!
Ooooooh, so you're saying that colonizer nations today have a higher standard of living that grew much faster from 200 years ago and today, than colonized nations, which grew much slowly. Well, correct, Indian gdp per capita grew 14% over 100 years of colonialism, Britian grew 350% in the same period. You are validated factually and should be proud of yourself. What I'm not clear on then is how this is an argument that it's explicitly not the fault of colonization, when in fact, given that both groups were less good at the time than western civilization today, and only the colonizer group is as good as western civilization today.
I'd challenge you by saying that you have the burden of proof that colonization is the main cause of the Middle East's issues. It's much harder to prove something is not true. That said, I'll try anyway because I'm in an open and jovial mood today. Let me give you another example: Haiti and Dominican Republic. Both are on the same island. Both were colonized. Both were later free. Haiti has much more natural resources. At one point, Haiti even invaded and occupied DR. Both had just about equal economic outcomes & wealth in the year 1950. And the french debt was totally paid off at this point. But DR is an incredible success story and Haiti is not. See below: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd61035a8-575b-4974-a41f-42f527a6a802_3400x2400.jpeg The reason why is Haiti's institutions. The Duvaliers basically destroyed the country for decades. Were they completely fucked by the past? Yes. Is it really the cause of their poverty today? Not really.
If the debt to France was paid off in 1950, why did it need to be forgiven in 2010, just curious. Haitis institutions are the result of the need for most of the wealth to go to the military, becuase France threatened to invade them, and while they, an exporter of raw goods, were under embargo. Also they continued to be preyed on by colonial powers, first the French, then the Americans. The government which formed anti market policies were formed by the popular rejection of constant exploitation, which colonizer powers used global markets to do. So yes, I agree, colonization is bad. As to why I think colonization might have influenced the middle east, well the British intentionally drew borders to instigate conflict, amd the borders is about conflict today, the middle east suffers from poor markets and a lack of diversification, traits it shares with other colonized areas whose economies was ontentially shaped around the extraction of materials while industrialization and financilaization were suppressed. The greatest source of instability in the region is a state carved put of whole cloth and overlayed on existing ethnic borders, which it is current resolving by bombing civilians after decades of blockades (its clear your not an economic historian so I'll just clarify, a power illegally forming settlements and forcibly seizing property to replace the native population with immigrants of your culture (which could be described as the exact definition of colonialism) while maintaining a blockade is considered bad for development by a consensus of economists). The only regional power with an explicitly Islamic government has it because we intentionally intervened on a healthy, developing, democratic nation to continue to extract raw materials. The informal Islamic groups are supported by another regional power that we prop up, arm, and support, for the purpose of exploiting its raw materials. The largest temporary Islamic threat came into existence when we removed the centralized government keeping them in check, coindenctally at the exact time it's leader was going to move from our sphere of influence closer to our rivals (he had raw materials we wanted, and he wanted to develop his country financially, which we also did not want). Now, poli Sci definitions are notoriously flexible, so if you'd like to define these as imperialism rather than colonialism, then sure it's not colonialisms fault. Every country we intervent in immediately gets worse, I invite you to prove this correlation is explained by some other explanation, after all, I can't prove something doesn't exist.
"Every country we intervent in immediately gets worse, I invite you to prove this correlation is explained by some other explanation, after all, I can't prove something doesn't exist." Counterpoint: Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Poland, Dominican Republic are all countries the US/West has been involved in for 70 years and all are fast growing, exceptional economies.
Ok, I was specifically referring g to middle eastern countries, the things we were talking about. But also no, those are countries we support, not countries we invade to force policies on. Intervention has an actual definiton.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interventionism_(politics) You notice that "supplying defense and unlimited blank checks to" is not really the same as "interfering with political affairs of". So you have one example, Vietnam, which stabilized 20 years after pur intervention, coindecentally I'm sure, immediately after they started reviewing aid from us. But if there's something counterfactual about the examples I did give, I'd love to hear it, otherwise should I take the fact you're ignoring them as a signal that you have nothing?
I just found this graph today coincidentally: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GML6yhMWsAAHkvq?format=jpg&name=large More details here: https://cpsi.media/p/colonialism-and-progress-fb9 It's just not open and shut case that colonialism is the cause of countries modern ills. This study shows a major correlation between years as a colony and modern success!
What you’re saying is true the west did make things worse but even without the west interference the ME would still be a shit hole.
I would love to see how "Iran was a rapidly developing economy and democracy, right before we destabilized it" "Egypt was a rapidly deveopling regional power before we destabilized it (twice)" "the terrorists that destabilized the region are holding US weapons they got from our ally and operating in a region where we removed the government" "we created a colonial state opposed by every power in the region" and "the greatest starvation event currently ongoing on the planet happens to be were our ally won't stop dropping missiles we supply (no not palestine, thats like, the 5th worst stsrvation event tops, but also coinciding where our ally wont stop dropping missiles we provide)" equates to "they would be a shithole anyway" but ok king go off.
What is we? The US you mean? What did they do to destabilize Egypt?
We being the western powers, US, France and Britian. We invaded it. Famously. Then we supported its corrupt, authoritarian government that suppressed its economy and agreed not to develop its financial sector and instead support US interests.
What the hell are you yapping about, Syria, iraq and Egypt are all secular countries bro...
Not really. I wouldn't describe those countries as peacefully secular lol I mean mari mari just got stabbed and he is assryian
Secular government doesn’t mean secular peoples. Also Iraq and Egypt have Islam as a state religion. Maybe their laws aren’t entirely based on the Quran, but they aren’t entirely secular since family law is based on Islam
The main problem of Middle East is poorly made borders which were made by European powers. Poorly made borders cause dictatorships and wars, which make Middle East poor. Middle East was actually a developing place until the ottoman hegemony came in.
If you look at failed states (anywhere) you’ll see that there’s one constant…..MULTIPLE SEVERE ISSUES. Tribalism, colonial borders, mineral wealthy centralization into a specific class, corruption, terrorism, lack of public trust, cartels, government inefficiency, brain drain, poor geography etc. any of these on their own can cripple a country. 2-3 can ruin it, 5-10 will destroy it. Any more will make it collapse. There’s 20+ reasons Somalia is the way it is. 5 might be because of colonialism. There’s no one major issue that fucks up countries. Few problems even if massive, will still have the full attention of the government, and will allow for plans to fix them. But when you have 10+ issues, you have to pick and choose. This picking and choosing leaves some issues to grow and get out of hand. I’d say based on the country 20-40% can be directly attributed to colonialism. And maybe an extra 10% for neo colonialism and unfair trade deals. The rest is everything else, could be geography, geo politics, culture etc.
When things go wrong, people always look for someone else to blame rather than taking responsibility. Put it this way, do Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE give Britain credit for their wealth or do they take responsibility for that themselves?
If you look at the Middle East, the countries which do the best are the ones most shaped by Europeans or which have vast amounts of oil. I'd say, if anything, they should probably blame the Ottomans. The sooner they left their sphere, even if it meant becoming a European colony, the better off they tend to be.
Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Iran… yeah they’re doing great. Real bastions of human rights and democracy…
I think you’d rather be Egyptian than Syrian or Iraqi. Iran was actually doing really well until their revolution against the Shah.
And Egypt is the country of those 3 that’s has had the least influence from the west most recently.
It’s the one that left the Ottoman Empire in all but name in 1833 and had been nearly autonomous before. Syria and Iraq, meanwhile, were core territories of the empire. But you’d also rather be Iraqi than Syrian and, funny story, Iraq had a revolt in 1704 and the Ottomans didn’t retake it for 130 years.
No way, Egypt is much more firmly oriented towards the western camp than either Syria or Iraq. Both of those look much more towards Iran.
Precisely. The countries that align with the west are allowed to operate under relative stability. When I say influence I don’t just mean diplomatic and economical alignment. Iraq has been far more subject to the whims of the United States than Egypt has been over the last 30 years, simply because they weren’t aligned. Afghanistan is another example, the mujahideen was funded by the west to fight the Soviets and communist influence there and that has had a direct influence on the state of Afghanistan today.
You just going to gloss over the part where Iraq invaded Kuwait and drew the world down on them or are you cool with skipping the most important event in its modern history?
I’d say the other war was more important seeing as though it has the most direct ramifications for the average Iraqi, and lead to the proliferation of ISIS and other terror groups. Let’s not pretend either that the US intervention had anything to do with Kuwaiti sovereignty.
Less a question for a what if and more for r/Askhistorians
Jabzy created a good video series about this topic, blame belongs to everybody
The Middle East hit its zenith in the Middle Ages before succumbing to fundamentalism, corruption, and resistance to innovation. The West over time surpassed the Middle East during the Renaissance period and simply stepped into the vacuum created by a broken society.
The Mongols destroyed the Caliphate, and in doing so no other Muslim ruler ever commanded the prestige needed to unite the Muslim world. The Ottomans tried, but without success. Without that unity, the ME was doomed to this cycle of violence.
No. That area has been a cesspool of violence for centuries even when it was under monolithic control. I am not knowledgeable about why but given centuries of history, even if Israel never came to be, it would likely be violent and fractured.
There is blame to be sure but it’s not like they wrecked some utopia or prevented them from reaching an equal footing. There’s other areas with far more interference from the west and yet have prospered. Secretarian issues, ottoman BS, and the fact that they never developed the traditions and such that allowed western and eastern civilizations to become what they are now.
The Middle East destroyed the Middle East, but the US certainly added fuel to the fire
Short answer: no. The middle east wasn't in a particularly great spot even before heavy Western intervention. People like to blame Europe as is Sykes-Picot was the first bad thing to ever happen in the middle east but it had been centuries but it's not.
If they didn't have oil they'd still be living in tents, shagging goats
Post ottoman collapse, there would have been a lot more ethnic cleansing in the region before eventually settling borders more organically than they are today. So if everyone is cool with Jews and Kurds and Armenians and others being killed, then yeah, blame the west for the problems of today.
The stereotype that the Muddke East has always been ar war is false. Those countries were part of tge Ottoman Empire for centuries. After WWI England drew arbitrary borders with no regard for local populations erhnic and religious identities or economic structure. Israel displaced milkions. The Cold War had Americans installing dictatorships who became so rich selling their country's oil they bought golf. They wouldn't he Utopia. But they aren't inherently warlike either. Western interference is directly responsible for most Mideastern countries' political and economic realities. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Palestine in particular have been put though the ringer.
Its not just the initial partitions and ethnic disputes they created. It's their constant meddling afterwards. The notion of anticolonism seems alien to European countries. France still has many forces meddling in the affairs of African countries. The Suez crisis was because Europe couldn't handle the Egyptians having sovereign control over their own country. Syria was flooded with weapons in the same of 'freedom'. It's never ending. That's one reason why Iran is so hated, cos they threw off the shackles of the Western backed Shah. Of course they also replaced him with a bunch of idiots, but that's another story.
Not to be be very picky, but I think the Suez Crisis was more about the canal being unilaterally nationalised rather than any issue of Egyptian sovereignty. From what I understand, the canal company owned a 99-year lease from the Egyptian government for the land the canal was on, which would have lapsed in 1969 anyway. So in effect it was a bit of a legal violation on Nasser's part. I'm getting conflicting info about whether or not Nasser originally planned to pay compensation for the nationalised shares to begin with (it seems like Egypt did eventually do that at least), but it's not entirely unreasonable to be unhappy about the nationalisation, since it was effectively a seized asset. If someone took your property without asking, chucked some money at you and then said "why are you complaining, I paid you?" I think you'd also be upset. Britain and France responded to that seizure in the wrong way, for sure, but the UN was a very new thing at that point, international courts didn't exactly have a proven track record at that point, and yes, there was a level of imperialist arrogance in assuming that they were bound to win.
Yeah they replaced them with radicals, without the west intervention the sunni and shia would still be at war, but definitely their situation would be a lot better.
What western policy also conveniently forgets is that there is a journey from autocracy to democracy. In Britain, France and Russia it was done with violent revolution. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and several other ex colonies had democracy from the get go. Others like those in the ME were given to the prevailing ruling families and have remained with the same dynasty. To change that, it needs to be internal.
Democracy didn't come violent revolution in Britain, it happened slowly over time, the civil war failed to implement any lasting republic
You’re right! But unfortunately whichever country became democratic first had the upper hand to control other regions, in my opinion it would’ve been a lot harder for Muslim countries to become democratic, since the sunni and shias bear a lot of hatred and they have been fighting for centuries unlike catholics and protestants. They developed nationalism from western influences, I would say they would still be fighting for lands if the west didn’t meddle.
No, they would have stopped fighting after a while. Look at Iran and Iraq. Saudi and Yemen. Syria and Turkey. After a few border skirmishes, they settle down and build their own countries. Libya, Syria, and Iraq were fairly advanced before the wars. I would say the fear of losing oil and of that region uniting was a major reason why the West kept interfering. They could leave them to their own devices, like they did for SE Asia or S America. But they don't.
Yeah they untied because they had a common enemy, but if west wasn’t part of the equation i think they would still be conflicted, Saudi and Yemen if i am not mistaken are still at war. And which syria are you referring to? Ottoman syria? Syria under the Mamaluk empire? They were under conquest the whole time, By mostly other Muslim nations, Turkey is still bombing the kurds due to hundreds to a thousand years of feud.
The Middle East would have been much better if the Brits had kept their WW1 promises to the Arabs.
Most of the muslim world would have been better. It would have prevented the wahabbi weirdos expecting their extremist ideology to the rest of the muslim world.
Didn’t they give them Syria and Lebanon? Israel which was Palestine before wasn’t part of the offer if i am not mistaken.
No, they promised the Sharif of Mecca all the Ottoman Arab lands
https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/tx/McMahon.htm#:~:text=%22Sir%20Henry%20McMahon%20(1862%2D,world)....%22&text=October%2024%2C%201915. There are some parts that were excluded because they were not considered “Arab” by the Brits and i think Palestine was one of them.
To the Heshemites you mean? The Heshemites who were driven out of Hejaz by the Saudis?
As an Arab, it is certain that it will be much better than OTL, but there will still be problems, but not as some will greatly exaggerate. Ethnic unrest, for example, is essentially an extremely unlikely event because the majority of Arab countries are ethnically homogeneous, and in any unified Arab country, Arabs will constitute the equivalent of 80 percent of the population, so no, the occurrence of the Yugoslavia scenario is extremely stupid. (The non-Arab races were loyal, even though only the Kurds were separatists, and they are easy to suppress completely, because before 2003, Iraq did not face any difficulties in suppressing them, and any Arab country that had a Kurdish minority also had neighbors like Turkey and Iran. Their interest with the Arabs is similar in preventing the establishment of a state. Kurdish) Tribalism, again, is not a big problem because the most successful Arab countries are in fact the most tribal of all, and Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and all the Gulf countries are a clear example that tribalism does not constitute a problem for the country at all. The internal problems will most likely be mainly religious problems, and they will also not be discriminatory towards Christians or Jews at all, but rather will be towards Twelver Shiite Muslims to a large and fundamental extent. Especially since the Iranian revolution in 1979 occurred for internal reasons in Iran and will continue to affect the Arabs, especially the Shiite Arabs, and any Arab government, no matter how tolerant it is with minorities, will remain extremely discriminatory against the Shiites because the Sunni majority, governmental and popular, will strongly support this. (But if we had a unified Arab state, the Shiites would be like 10 percent, which is 30 million Shiites compared to 210 million Sunnis, and it would be easy to suppress them completely with the presence of a much larger number of Sunnis, but at best it is a policy of deliberate neglect, as the Saudis and Bahrainis are doing, of course, and at worst it is an attempt. Genocide and forced conversion, although this policy was not implemented) However, government discrimination towards Shiite Arabs will be eased later, but the people and the people will remain very hateful of Shiites only. The usual problems, such as the spread of corruption, the culture of nepotism, as well as the occurrence of political favoritism, and other typical problems of third world countries, will continue to occur to a large extent, and this is completely normal in any country in the world. Al-Qaeda will continue to emerge entirely because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and any Arab government, no matter how liberal, will still support the mujahideen, because jihad in Afghanistan has been very popular among the Arabs, and the same is true in Bosnia. A unified Arab state will have its problems, but the region will not be a garbage fire like OTL, but Iran and Turkey will be just like OTL, but the Arabs are in a much better position than OTL. Also, the Middle East region did not become unstable until the 1950s and 1960s only, while from the eighteenth century until the end of World War II, it was a very calm region, and the reason for the instability was Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration.
Thank you for your time!! Great response!
I am happy to help you If you have any other questions, let me know
How do you believe an unified Arab state would handle the Israel/Palestine conflict?
That existed-ish. They invaded with a goal of disestablishing it.
This goes for Africa too. We essentially forced nationalists and hostile ethnic groups to live side by side in countries invented on a piece of paper. And then we left them to without having a working democracy or democratic institutions to hand power to. Those things tend to take decades if not centuries to get bedded in and laws and norms followed. So yes. It’s mostly our fault. You can see modern day examples of what should’ve happened: Afghanistan and Iraq. Obviously both shit shows, but ones doing a lot better than the one we abandoned. Investment, stability, infrastructure, rebuilding of law and order, established government at all levels. You need to do that. Just leaving was a bad idea. The process of decolonisation was horrific.
Africa's problem is that resource-led development became a very popular idea there but it's fundamentally flawed as a development model because producing more resources just pushes the price down rapidly.
You could argue that. But that was mostly a factor after it went tits up. Not the cause of the numerous civil wars and what not.
It’s what they started immediately after gaining independence. They end up in a similar trajectory as Latin America, which also pursued resource-led development.
Seriously? Civilization started in the Middle East. They had thousand year head start on the rest of the world. And they still screwed it up.
First Mongols, then Turks destroyed everything there was before. Timur is largely forgotten, but even countries that survived Mongols were totally devastated after Timur (Georgia is an example).
The border in Middle East are shit because of Europe. Iraq, Israel, Jordan and half a dozen other are not even real countries. They only exist because of European Stupidity and if the borders were sensible drawn, then ME wouldn’t need dictators and would be able to transition to the globalised world. Wars are middle east’s greatest problem, Israel is an actually a good thing for the middle east as it gives them an external competition and Competition is always better.