Shifting Alliances in the Middle

East
A commentary
Great Decisions, Foreign Policy
Discussion Group, March 2016

Topics to discuss

1.) Regime Security in the Middle east

2.) Balance of Power in the Region
3.) Sunni-Shia differences
4.) U.S. Iran relationship
5.) Impact of the Arab Spring
6.) Israeli-Palestinian issue
7.) Syrian Civil War
8.) ISIS

The challenge of history

History, wrote the British historian C.V.
Wedgwood, is lived forwards but it is
written in retrospect. We know the end
before we consider the beginning and we
can never wholly recapture what it was to
know the beginning only.

General observations
1.) Middle East has been a central arena of
great power competition for more than a
century
2.) Retreat of American power from the
region is a contributing cause to the current
disorder in the region
3.) Population redistribution, migrations, and
ethnic cleansing may create a new state
system in the region

Ottoman Empire in decline

WORLD WAR I: 1914-1918

Total Mobilized: 65,038,000

Total Killed or Died: 8,538,315
Total Wounded: 21,220,00
Total Casualties as a Percentage of those Mobilized: 57.6%

SYKES PICOT
SS AGREEMENT
1916

The Middle east after World War I

TURKEY

EGYPT

British
French

Allied
Occupation
British in
Istanbul

Italian
Spanish

Independen
t

HEJAZ

TURKEY 1919 - 1923

RISING FROM THE ASHES

Mustafa Kemal Attaturk

President 1923 1938

North Africa and the Middle East af

The Arab League

The Road to the Arab Spring: The Changing Arab World and American Relations
William S. Longwell & Thomas A. Schwartz
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt University

The three pillars of U.S. policy

in the Middle East, 1945-1991
1.) The contest with the Soviet Union
especially in connection with Europe
2.) Support for Israels security and
eventually Israel as a strategic asset
3.) Access to Oil as central to the
functioning of the Western economy
close ties to Saudi Arabia and Iran

The History of U.S. Policy in the

Middle East

1945-1991 Three pillars:

A.) Cold War
B.) Israel
C.) Oil
1991-Present
A.) Terrorism/Iran
B.) Israel
C.) Oil

Greece and Turkey

Iran in early 1946

Crisis in Iran Mohammed

Mossadegh

The Baghdad Pact - CENTO

REVOLUTION IN IRAN
1978 79

Ayatollah Khomeini

Shah Muhammad Pahlavi

Iranian Hostage Crisis, November

4, 1979

Carter Doctrine, January 1980

Beginning of Iran-Iraq War,

September 1980

Iran-Contra Affair, (Nov.-Dec. 1986)

The Long War with Iraq, 19902003

THE FREE OFFICERS REVOLT IN EG

1952

Col. Gamal Nasser and General Naguib

Celebrations in Cairo

King Faruq

Nasser and Khrushchev

October 1956 - Invasion

The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957

assistance and cooperation to include the
employment of the armed forces of the
United States to secure and protect the
territorial integrity and political
independence of such nations, requesting
such aid, against overt armed aggression
from any nation controlled by International
Communism.

Nasser and Yemen: The Past as

Prequel

UN Partition Plan - 1947

Comparison: Israel in 1949

ARAB DEFEAT (al-Naksah)BACLE & THE BIRTH OF GREATER ISRA

THE SIX DAY WAR IN JUNE 1967

Israeli PM Levi Eshkol

President Nasser
Israel & the Occupied Terr.: 1967 - 1982

Gen. Moshe Dyan

King Hussein
of Jordan

OM KIPPUR / RAMADAN WAR IN 1973

TO
HE CAMP DAVID ACCORDS IN 1978

Sadat, Carter, & Begin in 1978

Golda Meir
Israeli Prime Minister
1969 - 1974

Anwar Sadat
President of Egypt
1970 - 1981

Sinai Returned to Egypt 1980 -

Death of Sadat, October 1981

Role of Islamic jihad

US Forces in Lebanon 1200

Marines, September 1982

Bombing of Marine barracks,

October 1983 241 dead

Peace proposals, 2000