World War II and the Arab World - Essay Example

?World War II and the Arab World Introduction World War II was the largest conflagration in the history of the world. It can be argued that it began as early as 1931 when Japan invaded China or as late as 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. One could even take the view that World War I and World War II were one long war running from 1914 to the peace settlement that followed 1945. Traditionally, however, the German invasion of Poland in September, 1939 and subsequent British and French declarations of war are taken to signify the commencement of World War II. Similarly, the date that World War II ended is not a simple subject. It could be deemed to have ended with the surrender of Germany – V-E Day (May 8, 1945), the surrender of Japan – V-J Day (August 15, 1945), or, the following year, Churchill's declaration that, “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent” and the advent of the next war, the Cold War. (Churchill, 1946) Even more expansively, the final settlement of the conflicts of World War II can be seen as extending throughout the last half of the 1940s. Chronologically, the following discussion will employ the traditional starting date for World War II (September, 1939) while allowing that the negotiation of the post-war settlement continued until at least 1950. A period of approximately a decade from roughly 1940 to 1949 inclusive will provide the loose parameters of this historical analysis. Geographically, this discussion will focus on the Arab world, from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, from Iraq to Morocco. Its eastern boundary is the Tigris/Euphrates river valleys. From there it runs south into the Gulf, and it runs west through the Eastern Mediterranean and across the length of north coast of Africa. Initially, the state of the Arab world in 1939 will be outlined. Then the military campaigns of the period 1939 to 1945 in the Arab world will be detailed. The impact of the post-war settlement on the region will subsequently be considered: Special attention will be paid to the impact and influence of the establishment of the state of Israel. Finally, a concluding section will draw together the various threads of argument and offer overall insights. The Arab World in 1939 Throughout the western reaches of the Arab world, along the north coast of Africa, colonial domination was the norm. The entire southern coast of the Mediterranean consisted of European colonies with the de jure exception of only Egypt. Egypt, while not formally a colony in 1939, was controlled by Great Britain; a grip as tight as Great Britain's reliance on the Suez Canal's priceless access to India. The situation is exemplified by the treaty between the two, formally granting independence to Egypt, that was signed on August 26, 1936. It's formal title is “Treaty of Alliance between His Majesty, in respect of the United Kingdom, and His Majesty the King of Egypt”: An objective title for an agreement between equals. However, the truth of the matter is revealed in the attachment, a “Convention concerning the Immunities and Privileges to be enjoyed by the British Force in Egypt”. (UK Government, 1936) It is a list of all the concessions that the Egyptian government grants to the British military to maintain bases, operate in Egyptian air space, deploy forces and remain outside Egyptian civil and criminal law. The list of British privileges and concessions even in Egypt (outside the semi-autonomous, British administered Suez Canal Zone) was so extensive that Egypt amounted to a British military base in all but name. Map 1: Colonialism in North Africa, 1930 Source: http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/northafrica/nafrica1930large.gif The eastern Mediterranean was a confusion of mandates and protectorates, an appropriately Byzantine maze of shifting alliances and influences dominated by the European powers – France and Great Britain – that had tried to control the region since the devolution of the Ottoman Empire a generation earlier. Boundary issues were still being resolved by international commissions in the 1930s. Fundamentally, Syria and Lebanon were under the mandate of France. Palestine and Jordan were administered by the British. (Schafer, 2002, 11) Arguably the first campaign of World War II in the Arab world began in 1936 in Palestine. Displeased with the British Mandate's accession to increasing Jewish immigration, Arab residents of Palestine initiated a guerrilla campaign against the British administration. Underlying causes included mal-adaptation to urbanization and poverty. (Yazbak, 2000, passim.) Arguably, the area was the most volatile region in the Arab world in 1939. Iraq attained independence (July 1931), even admission to the League of Nations (October 1932) long before any other Arab state. (Tripp, 2002, viii) Independence was followed by a series of military coups and a period of instability. Not unlike Egypt, the British had granted independence to Iraq only under conditions, namely, as in Egypt, influence over foreign policy and the right to maintain bases and armed forces. Governments alternated between greater and lesser degrees of cooperation with Great Britain. (Tripp, 2002, ix) Despite the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I, and the role of the Great Arab Revolt in that defeat, the Arab world remained subject to colonial domination on the eve of World War I. North Africa was a string of colonies, the eastern Mediterranean a profusion of mandates, and ostensibly independent states such as Iraq and Egypt were treaty bound to make concessions and grant special privileges to Great Britain, their former colonizer. Campaigns, 1939 – 1945 Italy was the first belligerent to engage in offensive operations in the Arab world. Initially on its southern extremities but most significantly in North Africa. The British operated west from Egypt, the Italians east from their colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. When France was defeated in June 1940 the Italian situation in North Africa changed dramatically. The French colonies (Tunisia and Sahara), west of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were no longer belligerents and opponents of Italy. (See Map 1: Colonialism in North Africa, 1930) Now colonies of Vichy France they were erstwhile, if unwilling, allies. This meant the Italian colonies could turn their attention to, and concentrate their forces on, their eastern border with Egypt. In the fall of 1940 the Italian Army advanced east, into Egypt. The Italians were routed, the German's intervened to prop up their forces and the Afrika commanded by Rommel was born. For the next two years British-Commonwealth armies and the combined German-Italian forces fought a series of see-saw battles, back and forth, from east of the Egyptian border to the borders of Tunisia. In November, 1941 Field-Marshal Montgomery's 8th Army, defeated the German's at El Alamein and began the final swing of the pendulum. Six months later the Axis Forces had been driven from North Africa. (van Creveld, 1977, 181-201) Map 2: From El Alamein to Tunis, 1942-1943 Source: http://www.ourstory.info/library/4-ww2/Saber/images/sb001.jpg. The stakes in this campaign for Arab North Africa had been high. The Axis controlled the north shore of the Mediterranean and if they had been victorious in North Africa they would have controlled both coasts. More importantly, defeat of the British in Egypt offered the prospect of control of the Suez Canal. The impact on British access to India and south Asia would have been immeasurable. (van Creveld, 1977, 183) Belatedly, but for the same reason, Iraq played a role in the geopolitical strategies of the two belligerent blocks in World War II. In the same way that control of the Suez Canal would block the maritime route to India, control of Iraq would block the overland route to India. In the spring of 1941 Rommel was leading the Afrika Korps east in a renewed offensive towards Tobruk when a coup in Baghdad installed a military government with fascist sympathies, opposed to Great Britain's continuing role in Iraq. (Tripp, 2002, viii) The German officers responsible for Arab policy in the Wehrmacht summarized the meaning of the coup to the British in a post-war intelligence appraisal for the US Army: “As far as Great Britain was concerned, the fall of the government in Iraq, constituted a crisis of the first magnitude. The hostile attitude of the Iraqis endangered the Empire's oil supply and shook the foundations of the British position in Arabia.” ( Hellmuth and Warlimont, n.d., n.p.) When the British reacted, the German's responded to an appeal from the Iraqi government, and Iraq became a campaign zone. On May 2, the British bombed Iraqi forces and two weeks later German aircraft, based at airfields in Vichy Syria, conducting operations in support of the Iraqi government. Britain responded by invading Syria, eliminating the airfields, and occupying the French administrative area in the bargain. ( Hellmuth and Warlimont, n.d., n.p.) Indirectly, the Second World War had one profound and widespread impact on the Arab world. More accurately, the global economy went through a revolutionary transformation in the middle of the twentieth-century, one that had a particularly profound impact on the Arab world. The Second World War stands as both evidence of and symbol for that change. Armoured vehicles, 'the tank', and motorized armies characterized World War II. All of these vehicles, and aircraft, and ships required petrol, oil and lubricants (POL). (Van Creveld, 2004) The importance of these products to the military power and civilian economic capacity of national states increased astronomically between 1939 and 1945. This meant that the Arab world, as the source of the worlds largest reserves of oil and gas, also increased in importance in global strategic terms. The Post-War Settlement In the wake of World War II Great Britain, although it had 'won' the war, was teetering on the brink of ruin. Physically its industry and urban infrastructure had been ruined be the German bombing campaign and it faced reconstruction in the same way the states of western Europe did (and the US did not). It's human resources had been denuded of working age males and it had even struggled to maintain its army in the field due to manpower shortages by the spring of 1945. (Whiteside, 1996, 86) Imperially, Japan and to a lesser extent Germany and Italy had overrun its colonies. When it came to restoring the state and the Empire, Great Britain's energies were directed to other than the Middle East. On the western edge of the Arab world Great Britain retained Gibralter. In the geographic heart of the Arab world Great Britain (and the United States) maintained an interest in free transit of the Suez Canal, as they did in the oil fields on the eastern edge of the Arab World. Beyond these objectives Great Britain was not strategically committed to deploy energy and resources in the region beyond the minimum required. In Great Britain imperial policy concerns were focused on the tottering behemoth of the raj. Historically, American interests in the Arab world were limited. They had no colonial interests and few knew why the Marine Corps anthem referred 'to the shores of Tripoli'. With both Great Britain and France forced to retrench to recover from their wartime devastation their was, in terms of global geopolitics, a vacuum in the Arab world. Not surprisingly, therefore, the region caught the attention of the two emergent superpowers, the US and the USSR. Peter L. Hahn in Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961, (2004) argues that increasing U.S. involvement in the region after 1945 was driven not by specific regional goals, or by ideological imperatives but was rather a reaction to Soviet initiatives and most frequently a policy driven by the imperatives of the Cold War and the desire to deny the Soviet union influence in the region. Within the region Iraq had a revolutionary uprising in support of the defeated Germans to make account for. ( Hellmuth and Warlimont) The area also saw a Communist revolt and a Kurdish bid for national autonomy. In the face of these revolts the British chose to accept and support the existing military dictatorship. Framed in terms of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the UK/US a fascist Iraq was preferable to a communist Iraq. In terms of effort, it was most efficacious to accept the existing military regime. Throughout the Arab world (with the elephant in the room, the case of Israel, to be discussed below) one could conclude that politically World War II had an only limited impact on the Arab world. None of the former Italian colonies had been granted independence in North Africa, Egypt remained firmly in the British sphere of influence, and a military dictatorship remained in power in Baghdad. However, the same could also be said about the eastern Mediterranean. None of the stakeholders in the region – the residents, the Jewish settlers, the Arab states and the colonial powers that remained, Great Britain and France – were satisfied with the status quo. The State of Israel Zionists and the demand for establishment of the state of Israel grew exponentially in the wake of World War II. “The horrors of World War II convinced the post-war international community that the Jews could never live as a minority in an Arab dominated state”, according to Stover and Mankaryous. (2008) This shift and the resultant establishment of the state of Israel in the five-years following the surrender of Germany and Japan is the most important and consequential element of the post-war settlement in the Arab world. Discussion of a Jewish state in Palestine had circulated since late in the nineteenth century. The British, the colonial power that controlled the region, had made a commitment to a Jewish state in the area in the 'Balfour Declaration' of 1917. On November 9, 1917 The Times of London published the text of a brief message from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to the Zionist Federation through Baron Rothschild: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” (Balfour, 1917) For Jews the declaration gave unequivocal support of the British government to the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine. The resident Palestinians were living in a different reality. They had expressed their discontent in a revolt and believed that the settlement of that conflict governed the future of Palestine. According to Stover and Mankaryous, there once only one basis for a settlement: The only peace proposal that the Palestinians ever viewed as just was the London White Paper issued in May 1939. It offered Arabs all the land of Palestine in a democratic, secular state with an Arab majority and vague guarantees for the Jewish minority.... To the Palestinians, however, a democratic, secular state in all of Palestine represented justice. All subsequent plans were weighed against this proposal and found wanting. (Stover and Mankaryous, 2008, 128) This distance persisted in the wake of World War II. The Jewish settlers undertook a terrorist campaign against the British administration and the resident Palestinians. Before World War II ended Irgun (a leading Jewish paramilitary organization declared war on the British administration in Palestine. “The military force employed by the Irgun had a clear political goal: to undermine the political power of the British, in the hope that this would drive the British out of the land.” (Lavi, 2005) It is important to note also that the Zionist extremists were not operating without awareness of global circumstances. The British empire was reeling. India was about to achieve independence and Egypt's ostensible independence was to be made meaningful. In Europe the British military was trying to adopt to a nuclear world. Britain was handicapped in administration of its mandate. Most importantly, the world was not unaware of the Holocaust that had accompanied World War II, devastating European Jewry and it was difficult to resist Jewish demands that a national state was the only solution and that Palestine was that land historically. Map 3: The Green Line, 1949 Source: http://www.mideastweb.org/1949armistice.htm Ultimately, order collapsed. The British withdrew, the Jews attacked the Palestinian residents, and the Arab League attacked the Jewish state. The negotiated agreement established a 'Green Line' clearly delineating Arab and Jewish territory. This settlement is illustrated in 'Map 3: The Green Line, 1949 on the preceding page. As the map demonstrates the Sinai remained Egyptian, insuring that the Suez canal ran through Egypt rather than formed its eastern border, protecting British/American interests. However, the Negev became an Israeli, not a Bedouin desert. Palestine was landlocked and restricted to a kidney shaped piece of land on the west bank of the Jordan River. The state of Israeli stretched along the Mediterranean from Gaza to Lebanon. Most shocking, was the massive transfer in control and ownership of land in the region. The Green Line completed demolished the majority Palestinian land ownership pattern of 1946. It even exceeded the boundaries originally proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Moreover, as the final image on the right below indicates, the wholesale loss of land during the Nakba has persisted since. The benign neglect of the British coupled with America's lack of links to the region saw the state of Israel established. Americans perceived of it as a bastion of liberal-democracy in the midst of the Arab world, and, within the global context of the Cold War, as a bastion against communism in the region. Map 4: Land Ownership Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy4iftwk5JM/TMh7tOPVLRI/AAAAAAAAJeE/B8IBdGdHRDE/s1600/israel-palestine_map.jpg In the latter sense, it had an unintended consequence. Many Arab states were driven into the Soviet sphere of influence as a result of America's sudden role as Israel's principle supporter. Nasser attributed the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in the 1950s to the support that the US offered reflexively to Israel. (Jankowski, 2001, 68) American support for Israel lies at the root of the antagonism that persists today. Its roots lie in the establishment of the state of Israel and America's willingness to adopt the role of its protector and benefactor. By 1950 their were two clear trends in the Arab world directly consequent upon the post-war settlements in the wake of World War II. On the one-hand Arab nationalism was slowly building against colonialism. The former colonies of Italy in North Africa would be granted independence within the year. Syria had been independent for almost 5 years. In two years Lt-Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser would lead a coup in Egypt and his vision of pan-Arabism would invigorate Arab nationalism throughout the 1950s. In Algeria a revolt was brewing that would drag France into an atrocity filled, decade long As surely, however, as Arab nationalism advanced and colonialism retreated Israel remained: A bastion of liberal-democracy in the view of Americans, and an alien imposition in the view of the Arab world. Conclusions Viewing the Arab world in the period from the British declaration of war on Germany in September, 1939 through to 1950 a variety of cogent themes emerge. Initially, one is struck by the direct impact that colonialism continued to have on the Arab world in 1939. The Ottoman empire had finally dissolved in the wake of the First World War. Arab nationalists saw in this event a potential window of opportunity for them and supported the Great Arab Revolt and the British throughout World War I. However, their aspirations were not realized and the Arab world around the Mediterranean largely passed from one colonial master and one colonial system to another. Furthermore, even states independent in name such as Egypt and Iraq remained beholden to their former colonizer, Great Britain. Characterizing the actual military campaigns of World War II the Arab world was an active theatre of operations. From 1940 until 1943 the North African desert was a major theatre of operations. Throughout the years immediately surrounding World War II Palestine was also the subject of military operations. Before the war it was the British administration was subject to an irregular campaign by Palestinians opposed to Jewish immigration and after the war it was the campaign of Irgun, and other Jewish extremist organizations advocating a Jewish national state. Finally, Iraq expelled a pro-British government and saw air raids by both German and British air forces. A struggle that led to the British invasion and occupation of Vichy Syria. From Casablanca to Baghdad the Arab world was a theatre of operations throughout World War II. Despite this pivotal role region played in the campaigning the status quo was largely maintained in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Britain remained deeply engaged in Egypt and mired in the Palestinian mandate issue. Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon all returned to France and the military government remained in power in Iraq. However, over the next five years four significant changes occurred that altered the face of the Arab world: 1. Arab nationalism continued to develop impetus. 2. The state of Israel was established. 3. The Cold War developed. 4. The emergence of oil as an essential commodity made the Arab world of paramount importance in global geopolitics. Arab nationalism could claim few victories during the war years. However, by 1950 the political complexion of the Arab world was changing. The colours of colonialism were disappearing from the map. Where they were not, such as Algeria, social unrest prefacing a violent civil war was developing. At the same time Arab nationalism confronted a major defeat with the establishment of the state of Israel. Moreover, in the years following the 1947 mandated partition Israel had demonstrated that it was willing and able to aggressively expand its boundaries at any opportunity. This coupled with the unfailing support that the United States and Great Britain were perceived to offer Israel alienated much of the Arab world from the western block during the Cold War. This independent or non-aligned approach magnified the importance of the states in the Arab world as both sides in the Cold War viewed them as potential proxies and inevitably battlefields in the cultural and economic conflicts that accompanied the Cold War. They were able to offer their loyalty to the highest bidder and both sides were rarely willing to leave the table. Finally, the emergence of petrol, oil and lubricants as essential to an industrial economy and the military-industrial complex further increased the relevance of the Arab world in global geopolitical conflicts. The Arab world was a target of Cold War rivals it was alone the among the targets of Cold War rivalries to control a significant portion of the world's known reserves of oil and gas. Thus, emerging from the post-war settlement in 1950 the Arab world was witnessing resurgent Arab nationalism. Nationalism the stakes of which had increased as the global players were willing to gamble more in economic and military terms. However, it was also a region that was being forced to swallow a bitter pill, the state of Israel. Even today, a half-century later the region is still trying to digest the presence of Israel. The Cold War has been over for at least 20 years and Arab states no longer can play off the competing superpowers USSR and the UK/US in negotiations. Regimes have come and gone in the Middle East. Even with Egyptians in the streets and the end of the series of military dictators that extends from Nasser, through Sadat to Mubarek about to end these are not the most significant flashpoints in the Arab world. The conflict surrounding the state of Israel persists and its establishment, therefore, must be seen as the significant event in the Arab world during, and in the immediate aftermath, of World War II. References Balfour, Arthur James. “Balfour Declaration”. November 9, 1917. http://www.number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/prime-ministers-in-history/arthur-james-balfour. Churchill, Winston. “Sinews of Peace, (the Iron Curtain Speech)”. March 5, 1946. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/churchill.html. van Creveld, Martin. Supplying War. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 2004. Felmy, Hellmuth and Walter Warlimont. “German Exploitation of Arab Nationalist Movements in World War II”. http://www.allworldwars.com/German-Exploitation-of-Arab-Nationalist-Movements-in-World-War-II.html. Gil-har, Yitshak. "Boundaries Delimitation: Palestine and Trans-Jordan." Middle Eastern Studies. (2000) 36.1: 68. Hahn, Peter L. Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Jankowski, James P. Nasser's Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic. Lynne Rienner Publishers : 2001. Kochavi, Arieh J. "The Struggle against Jewish Immigration to Palestine." Middle Eastern Studies (1998): 146. Lavi, Shai J. "The use of force beyond the liberal imagination: terror and empire in Palestine, 1947." Theoretical Inquiries in Law 2005 7.1: 199+. Schafer, David. "The seeds of enmity: in continuing the discussion begun in the July/August 2002 Humanist regarding the origins of the strife between Israelis and Palestinians, events of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s figure strongly in the unfolding story. (Origins of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict)." The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 2002: 9-14. Stover, William James, and Marina Mankaryous. "Sovereignty over Jerusalem: a legal solution to a disputed capital." International Journal on World Peace 25.4 (2008): 115-36. Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. United Kingdom. “Treaty of Alliance between His Majesty, in respect of the United Kingdom, and His Majesty the King of Egypt (August 26, 1936)”. http://www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/treaties/TS1/1937/6. United Nations. “Palestine”. ST/DPI/SER.A/4720 April 1949 Background Paper No. 47. http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/2248AF9A92B498718525694B007239C6. Whiteside, Noel. 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