Europe and the Middle East are two very contrasting places when it comes to the presence of peace or war in the two regions over the last 70 years. Recently, Europe has consistently been the more peaceful while the Middle East has gotten progressively less peaceful in the past few years and is now one of the most violent regions in the world. Europe contains the most peaceful country in the world: Iceland; and the Middle East has the least peaceful country: Syria. The reason for this dichotomy can most easily be explained by the economic equalities in their relative populations.
Iceland’s lack of violent crime domestically is not due to their lack of guns because guns are actually very common throughout Iceland where hunting is a favored pastime.
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Iceland and the European region focus on unity and equality to achieve peace. Working as a team rather than against each other as they once had has helped the region contain some of the most peaceful countries in the world. The lack of large disparities in their economic class structure has ensure maintain that peace and prevented conflict.
The Middle East as a whole has been generally one of the most violent regions in recent history. A major difference between the Middle East and Europe is that that unlike Europe, the Middle East is not unified nor is their sense of equality. Syria has experienced violent uprisings and war crimes fueled by the masses rebelling against an oppressive dictatorship. Indeed, the differences between the haves and the have nots are significant and often the cause of conflict where the ones less fortunate take to arms in an effort to better their situation.
The regions of Europe and the Mideast as illustrated by Iceland and Syria clearly demonstrate disparities in local economies go a long way in explaining why some regions are peaceful and others engaged in wars or other local conflicts. Until these disparities are narrowed in all regions, the risk of war or other conflict is
The Arab spring has generated much controversy as a result of demonstrating that countries that were apparently peaceful were actually determined to remove their governments and install a new ideology that would be compassionate with regard to its people. Some nations actually went as far as to put oppressors down and to bring reform throughout their countries. However, it rapidly became clear that peace was far away when considering that new leaders were unable to satisfy people's needs and that the masses wanted to be provided with more power.
While the rest of the world appears to be seeing decreasing levels of violence, it appears the Middle East has yet to experience this same trend. The past couple of decades have seen either a decrease in violence and types of violence that the West has not experienced for a time. This then brings the questions, is the Middle East more violent or is nothing more than Islamophobia. One way to answer this question is to look at the numbers. In Pinker's, The Better Angels of our Nature, he compares the number of interstate conflicts with the number of Islamic conflicts. By this graph, it can be clearly seen that since the 1990s, the number of interstate conflicts has been decreasing, but the number of Islamic conflicts has not. With the use of this data, he shows that the Middle East has not been following the trends of less violence as compared with the rest of the world. However, is this data alone to say that the Middle East is more violent? There are a number of issues need to be looked at besides conflict. These include other types of violence.
With the great diversity in the world disagreements over race and religion are ubiquitous. Consequently, opinions over these subjects are the biggest contributors to war and bloodshed. Changes made in long standing traditions were greeted with hostility. Religion and Absolutism caused disharmony in European countries as well as strife over religion and government.
The Middle East has long been a place for turmoil and warfare. In the past, the region was carved up by European powers following the First World War. More recently, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing power struggle and the United States’ operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused untold suffering for civilians. In Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, there are many regions where civilians suffer terrible conditions, and there is much human suffering.
The Balkan Peninsula has long been known as the “tinderbox of Europe” because it has been an area of conflict and political unrest for centuries. The countries and people that occupy the peninsula are constantly in chaos and at war with each other. This trend continues today with the problems in Bosnia and the recent international crisis in Kosovo. Throughout history, small local incidents in the Balkan Peninsula have escalated into large international crises. World War I is a perfect example of what started as a regional conflict and grew into an all-out European war. A small local European struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia over the territory of Bosnia erupted into a full-blown worldwide conflict
The Syrian Civil War continues to be a major issue in the world today. Though it began as an issue over the resignation of President Bashar Al Assad against the government and Syrians, the war has greatly escalated. It currently involves over 50 different groups, all supporting either the government or the Syrian people, but possessing a slightly different goal. All of this violence poses a threat to individual nations all through the world, focusing on the immigration of refugees into such nations and the impact of such a movement upon that nation. Furthermore, all of this violence has violated the human rights of millions of people, with rape , torture, and harsh execution style killings occurring on a daily basis. Millions of people caught
The ambition of the often autocratic leaders to acquire more land, which may bring them access to oil, water or arable land. The problem according to Sørli et. al is “scarcity” and “abundance” (147). Water is scarce, and oil is in abundance, but the access to both is limited. According to our text, the new “water wars” have emerged as a major source of conflict, in addition to the “oil wars” (Anderson et. al, 226). Water is scarce in the Middle East, and will continue to dwindle as the population rises. Not every country has the same access to the water sources, which will naturally cause problems. For example, Israel has control of the Golan, and Egypt of the Nile, and Kuwait of the Persian Gulf. Oil is in abundance, but only to a limited number of countries in the Middle East causing great economic disparity between those who have, and those who do not. Kuwait, having access to the Persian Gulf, produces a large supply of oil to international players. Given its high value internationally, and its worth, oil is much sought after.
The Middle East is far from monumental and homogenous. Its differences have been a source of both strength and inspiration. The most visible, most pervasive, and the least recognized aspects of
Now there is still conflict between the West and Middle East, with the activities of radical Islamic groups, and the fear and stereotypes created by them. While the West sits back and watches the continuous bombings and hardships of the Middle East on TV, the Middle East is forced to take everything in the face.
For decades, the Middle East has been a hot bed for one conflict after another. Countries like Russia, China, and North Korea are using
In conclusion, the strategic importance of Middle East benefits most if not all nations in the World. However, the parameters to measure this have to be in a globally extended framework. This means that any conflict, especially that which may between the West and the East, May ultimately spell the Middle East doom by defeating its strategic importance, Anderson & William (2000). However, the Middle East is to maintain its geostrategic importance if foreign relations between the West and the East and
The state of terror and violence that exists in many parts of this strategically invaluable region
Frequent discussions about the possibility of peace in the Middle East often route into the subject of Islam and the inability or lack of desire of the Middle East countries to separate state from religion. It is common to hear arguments blame “Islamic extremists” for the unsettled atmosphere of the Middle East. Where in some instances this may be accurate, it is highly inaccurate in most cases; but I would like to emphasize the word some. Going back to the timeline of the Middle East disputes, we can see that majority of these battles were not established out of religious means. Most were catapulted from land, tax, and regime issues. Take the Wars of the Hellenistic Monarchies in Syria in 318-170 B.C. for example. This is a demonstration of generations of war between the Seleucids and Ptolemy’s in an effort to gain control of Syria. Does this differ in comparison to the decades long Palestinian/Israeli war? Not much. The only difference is that peace is on the world’s radar as something to strive for and ultimately achieve. As the Middle East continues to repeat history for very similar principles, the rest of the world is left wondering when it will all end; when in fact, the rest of the world’s countries and continents have all had a very similar history of conflict as well.
Violence and bloodshed within and among communities is perhaps the most salient and overarching problem to afflict the world since civilizations emerged. Academics and policy-makers have strove for stable peace amongst the world since the enlightenment, with little success. In order to curb the world’s rampant communal violence, agreeing upon the sources of conflict need is imperative. Many attribute today’s violence to economic forces, that unfairly dispersed economic gains have pitted the poor up against their richer counterparts. While economic factors might have used to be the main actors in fomenting conflict, their impact is being now being overshadowed by cultural factors. Two nations that exemplify the modern world’s main
The Middle East is clearly out of hand. Why is this region prone to so much bloodshed? All we need to do is refer back to our history books. In preparation for the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of WW1 the Sykes and Picot agreement was signed, which called for British and French influence in the region and the creation of states. This agreement was to benefit French and British interests and had very little concern regarding the ethnic and religious makeup of the region. After analyzing the region it is evident that the current border situation is ineffective and causing much of the problems. The current foreign policies the Western world has towards the Middle East need to be seriously reconsidered.