Foreign Powers During The Middle East

After decades of cynical and often interventions by the US, Britain, France, Russia and other outside powers, the region’s political institutions are based largely on corruption, sectarian politics, and brute force. Backroom dealings and violence continue to rule the day. Western powers do not like Arab democracy, because of the great anticipated possible risks on US oil interests. After having tried installing, toppling, bribing, or manipulating the region`s government, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives were spent over the last decade, meanwhile causing massive suffering in the affected countries. At the same time, the interventions are actually preventing the Middle East from reaching mutual accommodations through unintentionally injecting the belief to the affected countries that the external powers would deliver a decisive victory on behalf of the countries in the region. Professor Sachs thinks that there is enough hatred, corruption, and arms in the region to keep Middle East in crisis for years to come. Nobody should expect stable democracies any time soon. However, US and other foreign powers should pull back and leave the

“There is, then, an economic basis for the absence of democracy in the Arab world. But it is structural. It has to do with the ways in which oil distorts the state, the market, the class structure, and the entire incentive structure. Particularly in an era of high global oil prices, the effects of the oil curse are relentless: Not a single one of the 23 countries that derive most of their export earnings from oil and gas is a democracy today.”

The superpowers, namely the USSR and US were in engaged in a war by proxy, which is very easy to identify if you analyze the conflicts in the Middle East from 1948 until, and including, the Yom Kippur War of 1978. The superpowers would employ tactics such as supplying their various ‘allies’ in the Middle East with weapons and finances which would afford them the ability to engage in the many conflicts that took place in that period such as the Suez Crisis, Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. All of this was done without either superpower’s putting their own men on the ground to fight, for fear of an all out war between each other. However much the superpowers might have fuelled the conflicts with supplying the Arabs and Israelis with weapons and finances, they were not the cause for the conflicts as they are much deeper rooted. Israel and the Arab states have always seen tension as per their culture and religious differences, and the growing nationalism of the Arab states and Zionism in Israel, which amounted to extreme actions such as the three major conflicts during the time period 1956-1978.

Large busy markets, snake charmers, carpet vendors, and veiled women all invoke ideas of West Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia, but all these ideas come from Oriental fantasies from the nineteenth century. Edward Said the author of Orientalism said that “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, "us") and the strange (the Orient, the East, "them").” The nineteenth century was a period of imperialism and tourism that led many western artists to visit West Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Orientalist paintings depicted two major effects, many artists often portrayed something “exotic,” which was racialized, feminized, and from a sexualized culture from a faraway land. Another effect that artists mainly like Jean-Léon Gérôme often showed was an authentic glimpse of a location and its inhabitants. Nochlin mentioned that many of Gérôme’s paintings worked to persuade their audiences by carefully representing a "preexisting Oriental reality.”

In the Middle East, each country has it’s own form of government. These forms of governments have been consistently changing throughout time. Throughout all the revolutions and overthrows, the national identity of the Middle East has slowly changed, some parts more than others. Over many years, overthrows in countries such as Egypt and Libya have led to a more democratic government. However, many other countries such as Iran and Iraq have remained more oppressive. The Middle East is still changing to this day. For example, Egypt recently overthrew their president Hosni Mubarak. There are also many protests currently going on in Libya.

The damning picture of the state of the Arab world painted in this UN report cannot be blamed on America, or Israel, or global capitalism. The blame lies squarely with the dictators under whom the Arab people have suffered, who have over a long period stolen and squandered the region's wealth, just as Communist apparatchiks did under the Soviet system.

The Middle East region has been seeing and absorbing the effects of war and poverty for decades. The United States (U.S.) has provided support in the past to assist the Middle East, and that has been quite successful. For this reason, the U.S., a world superpower, should be directly involved in ending conflict in the Middle East because they possess a capable military, the global economy is directly affected by the Middle East, and the U.S. is capable of peaceful mediation between conflicted areas in the Middle East. The Middle East is a region that has constantly been involved in warfare, and the U.S. has taken appropriate measures to ensure that peace was possible, even in this war-stricken area. The U.S. has also provided aid in regard to the oil reserves in the Middle East, which are significant to global development. This protection allows the industry to continue, and it benefits nations around the world. Lastly, the U.S. has successfully mediated discussion between conflicted nations, like Egypt and Israel, to achieve a common goal that set them on a path for peace. While there are many reasons the U.S. should be involved, one of the most direct reasons is military capability.

It is not as the region has been denied of all democratic forces. It has actually experienced the neophyte emergence of civil society (human rights groups, professional associations, self-help groups), simply to see most of them either crushed or corporatized by the state. Statist regimes progressively liberalized their economies (frequently under pressure from international forces), but an independent political initiative by their new private sectors is usually reprimanded. Nevertheless, progressive interpretations of Islam that advocate democratic norms and ideals have been analyzed by Islamic theorists, only to be suppressed by hostile state elites. In any case a coercive state profoundly unfavorable to democratic reform has crushed initiatives propitious to

It seems that humans as a species tend to struggle with what is unknown to them. To cope, we create generalizations that ambiguous that we can apply at our leisure. Clashing norms and different beliefs for society should be constructive and help diversify us but this tends to not be the case.. “... the general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam in the United States has improved somewhat, but alas, it really hasn't (pg. xvii)” asserts Said. While I feel that the United States was heading in the right direction for a while (becoming more accepting and understanding of other cultures), somehow a president was elected who is radically racist against anyone in the Middle East. In this sense, I completely agree with Said.

The Arab world seemed to have been poised for an era of political and cultural renewal. The 2011 uprisings that toppled long-reigning dictators inspired hope to those within the region and the rest of the world that change may finally come to the Middle East. Like many eager journalists and intellectuals during the Arab Spring, Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan and a popular political blogger, had high hopes. “A new generation has been awakened,” Cole writes in his latest book, “The New Arabs,” which chronicles the positive new historical dynamic is taking hold in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. In 2011, Westerners expected the Arab world to “spring” into democracy. But like most at the time, Juan Cole was wrong.

Imperialism began in the 1870s, European states established vast empires mainly in Africa, but also in Asia and the Middle East. Imperialism can be used as an act of expanding used as an act of developing a country’s empire through the use of force, colonization, or coercion. This method can be used to benefit one or both sides of the process. By means of benefiting one side would be considered as being a world bully because the nation is trying to expand or develop with the help of others without doing the other nation any good. As a result of advancing both nations can give a nation the name of a world leader with it helping both sides, everyone is developing in a way to help not just themselves, but others as well. America used imperialism for the good or bad as long as they got something out of it in some way. Many in the U.S. thought that country must be able to compete and saw the opportunity to take its own colonies before European countries got them all. Colonial powers often struggled with each other over the best potential features. These motives tend to believe its purpose is gaining additional wealth, power, and control. America used this approach as an intimidator to get economic growth, expand their political power, spread of the culture’s religion, and build military and naval bases.

Many of the problems in the Middle East today are a direct result of actions undertaken in the region 's colonial past. I will argue that both imperialist ineptitude, deliberate meddling and outright deceit by colonial powers have sown seeds of distrust that linger in the Middle East today towards the West. I will claim that artificial boundaries, government structures and societal schisms created in colonial times have entrenched animosities and created internal structural instabilities in the area that are still being resolved. The imposition of Israel into Palestine, I will argue, remains an unresolved product of colonial rule. I will discuss how the discovery of oil and the regions importance as a trade route caused the World Powers to remain engaged in the area and oppressive in their demeanour. Finally I will argue that perhaps the greatest ongoing legacy of colonialism in the Middle east is an imperialist attitude by the west which continues to this day.

Although the people’s voice is being heard and changes are being made, blood flows down the streets as people are being killed violently everyday. Many people believe it would have been more beneficial if the Middle East had completely avoid the Arab Spring or at least have gone a more passive road. Through the history of the region, leaders of Arab countries have anchored their position to later become rich and

The Arab Spring has been a life changing phenomena, not only for the people who are attempting to overthrow their governments but for political scientists everywhere. The events originating in the North African country of Tunisia have led to the snowballing of several other Middle Eastern, predominantly Muslim, nation states. The figurative breaking point might have finally been reached as the oppressed peoples of the Middle East have risen up to overthrow long-standing dictatorial governments in hopes of revolutionary change; change that is subject to the will of the people.

Over the last century, the Middle East has been the location of ethnic rivalry, political and economic instability, religious conflict, territorial dispute and war. Much of this tension in the Middle East comes from the various interpretations of Islam and how the religion should be applied to politics and society. Over the last ten years, the United States and their allies have pushed to promote democracy in the Middle East. However, they too have many obstacles they must overcome. They face problems such as the compatibility of Islamic law and democracy, the issue of women’s rights, and there is always the problem of how to go about implementing a democratic reform in these countries. Many initially would assume that it is only the