PSC 321 Chapter 3: Week 3 Readings
18 May 2018
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“Don’t Blame Sykes-Picot for the Middle East’s Mess”
● Sykes-Picot agreement: one of the first attempts to reorder the Middle East after the
Ottoman Empire’s demise
○ Invoking its “end” became a thing among journalists, analysts, and commentators
● Four states in the middle east are failing: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya
● Sykes and Picot never negotiated borders, but rather zones of influence
● The middle east’s modern borders are not completely without precedent either
○ They are works of European diplomats and colonial officers, but they were based
mostly on pre-existing political, social, and economic realities of the region,
including Ottoman administrative divisions and practices
● The actual source of the boundaries of the present middle east can be traced to the San
Remo conference, which produced the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920
● Borders in the middle east were determined by balancing colonial interests against local
resistance
● The origin of the struggles within these countries is not necessarily about the legitimacy
of borders of the validity of places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya, but rather; who has the
right to rule these countries
● Even the rampant ethnic and religious sectarianism as a result of this authoritarianism,
which has come to define the Middle East’s state system far more than the Sykes-Picot
agreement ever did
● Cynical political leaders who foster these ethnic and religious divisions within regions
and borders in the hopes of maintaining their rule are the ones to blame
○ Ex: In Iraq, Saddam Hussein built a patronage system through his ruling Baath
Party that empowered a state governed largely by Sunnis at the expense of
Shiites and Kurds
● It is the style of politics and government chosen by successive Middle Eastern leaders
that has pitted their own populations against each other, more so than identity politics
● The Sykes-Picot agreement explains little, if anything, about the region’s problems today
“The Modern Middle East - A Political History since the First World War”
From Territories to Independent States
● The end of the Ottoman dynasty marked the termination of caliphal rule as the Middle
East had come to know it since the earliest years of Islam
○ Changes began before the end of the rule though, with Europe’s growing
economic and military interests in the region and an incipient Arab revolt
State Formation in the 1920s
● 3 primary sets of players emerged in the early 20th century: Britain and France, and
local political actors and individuals
● The slow death of the Ottoman empire left a power vacuum
● Britain’s diplomacy was based on 3 main objectives
○ It’s hold over the “crown jewel” India, specifically against Russia and France
■ This meant ensuring that India’s neighbors complied with British interests,
necessitating Britain involvement in Iran, and British control of the Suez
Canal
■ Much of British policy revolved around the defense of the Suez Canal until
the strategic waterway was nationalized by a new, revolutionary
government in Cairo in 1956
○ Britain was also keen on maintaining secure and free access to newly discovered
oil along the northern tier of the Persian Gulf
○ There was also the concern of what to do with the territories soon to be
partitioned from the Ottoman Empire
■ Britain embarked on a series of historic diplomatic initiatives, most notably
the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and
the Balfour declaration
● French policy had two primary motives
○ Competition with other European powers, namely Britain and Germany
○ The protection of the region’s Christians, many of whom were historically
concentrated in the Levant
● Like Britain, most of France’s interests in the Middle East at this time revolved around
commercial investments
● France had the majority of Ottoman loans on the eve of WWI
● Toward the beginning of the 20th century France and Britain decided to cooperate rather
than compete, with an agreement known as the Entente Cordial
○ France would retain a free hand in the Ottoman colony of Morocco in exchange
for giving Britain free rain in Egypt
● The European powers and even the Sublime Porte had come to recognize France’s
special role as the protector of the Levantine Christians, especially the Maronites
● When France and Britain carved up the Asiatic Ottoman territories in the Sykes-Picot
agreement; Mesopotamia (Iraq), Arabia, and Palestine became British protectorates,
while Syria and Lebanese protectorates went to the French
● This is where the local nation builders came in
○ Men like Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Muhammad V in
Morocco, and Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, were determined to end the
backwardness of their peoples and the domination of European powers
○ Others like members of the Hashemite and Ibn Saud clans, realized that they
could not acquire power without the support of the outsiders dominating their land
at the time and therefore entered into strategic alliances with the British, or, in a
few instances, with the French, or with both
● The Middle East of the early 20th century also saw the unfolding of 3 interrelated and
reinforcing developments
○ The Arab Revolt launched against Ottoman rule in June 1916
■ Established a short-lived dynasty in Syria, but eventually resulted in a
longer-lasting monarchy in Iraq
○ The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence
■ Namely the allocation of colonial territories called mandates and the
drawing of maps through a series of bilateral and multilateral treaties
○ The birth of countries carved out of former Ottoman territories
■ Turkey, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia
● Of these Palestine had the shortest life span, ceasing to exist in
1948 and being replaced by Israel
● The Arab result marked the beginning of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and
ushered in an era of extremely close relationships between Britain and those who came
to eventually rule Transjordan and parts of Arabia, including Iraq
● British policy during and immediately after WWI was largely determined by its concern
for the protection of Ireland, India, and Egypt (whose importance was magnified by the
opening of the Suez Canal)
● During WWI, Britain searched for al ally to check the Ottoman empire from within
● Beginning in 1914, Hussein started seeking British support for an uprising he hoped
would leads to the establishment of an independent Arab state, whose boundaries
stretched from the Iranian border in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west
● By October 1916, Britain and France had finalized the Sykes-Picot Agreement
○ Greater Syria, which included southwestern Turkey in the north and Lebanon in
the west, along with parts of northern Iraq, was to become the sphere of
influence of France
○ Britain gained control over Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, and Transjordan
○ Palestine was subject to an international regime
○ To ensure their support for the Allied cause, Italy was promised southern
Anatolia, and Russia was to obtain control over Istanbul, the strategically
important Bosphorus Straits, and parts of eastern Anatolia
● The Sykes-Picot agreement was later revised in many ways
○ One major change was the exclusion of Russia and Italy from its provisions, that
of the former being due to the October 1917 revolution
● The ultimate importance of the Sykes-Picot agreement lay in its allocation of spheres of
influence to Europe’s two remaining paramount powers
● The British eventually declared the Balfour declaration which stated that they favor an
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, but nothing shall be
done to prejudice the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or any other country
○ Politically, it seems Britain hoped that this would please American Jewry, which
would pressure the US government into giving more assistance in the allied war
○ It also hoped that Russian Jews would apply pressure to Russia’s revolutionary
government to once again return to the war theater
○ Underlying the political concerns were very close connections between leading
advocates of the Zionist cause and members of the British cabinet
● The outcome of WWI was the concept of mandatory rule, a polite disguise for what a
couple of decades earlier had been unabashedly called colonialism
● The actual carving up occurred at the Conference of San Remo in April 1920 and was
soon adopted by the League of Nations
Document Summary
Don"t blame sykes-picot for the middle east"s mess . Sykes-picot agreement: one of the first attempts to reorder the middle east after the. Invoking its end became a thing among journalists, analysts, and commentators. Four states in the middle east are failing: syria, iraq, yemen, and libya. Sykes and picot never negotiated borders, but rather zones of influence. The middle east"s modern borders are not completely without precedent either. They are works of european diplomats and colonial officers, but they were based mostly on pre-existing political, social, and economic realities of the region, including ottoman administrative divisions and practices. The actual source of the boundaries of the present middle east can be traced to the san. Remo conference, which produced the treaty of sevres in august 1920. Borders in the middle east were determined by balancing colonial interests against local resistance.
