THE MIDDLE EAST
The term the 'Middle East' has an exogenous policy-contingent origin and evolution.
Mahan, a U.S. naval officer and strategist coined the term the 'Middle East' in 1902, which referred to the area between Arabia and India, namely the Persian Gulf. He stated that in order to secure the route to India and to keep Russia in check Great Britain should assume responsibility for the security of the Gulf area. The geographical boundaries of the 'Middle East' were not fixed; the term was used as a kind of 'shifting strategic concept' to indicate the importance of the area and the upcoming challenge between Russia and Britain in Asia. After the First World War, Britain and France had gained control over Transjordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and as such the 'Middle East' was expanded to include these territories as well. Except, now the term was not only linked to the security of the region, but was as well tied to the large resources of oil in the area. During World War II, Great Britain started to use the 'Middle East' concept to describe the area covering all Asian and North African lands to the west of India. In the same period, the U.S. got more involved in the region and followed the British interpretation of the region. For both countries, the region was not only important for geo-strategic reasons, but also for its tremendous reserves of oil. Who actually formed part of the region was of lesser importance. However, this changed with the increasing number of Jewish settlers in Palestine and the eventual establishment of the state Israel (1948). Thus, the 'Middle East' was used for purposes external to the region, without consideration for the interests of the people concerned. Basically, the security of the 'Middle East' boiled down to defending the 'Middle East' from any external power which could form a threat to the interests of Britain and the U.S.. During the Cold War, the Anglo-American policy was directed on the prevention of communism to gain access to the region by keeping the area stable, which implied keeping bases in the region.
The exogenous policy-contingent origins of the term 'Middle East' render the term highly contested. After the first Arab-Israeli War, when the Arab forces were defeated, the peoples of the region started to scrutinise the 'Middle East' concept. Those were the days when Arab nationalism ran rampant. The Arab vision, which dates back to the 19th Century and which is primarily rooted in culture and reinforced by history, geography and demography, was revived. The term 'Arab regional order' was put forward to replace the contested concept of the 'Middle East'. The argument of Ali Eddin Hellal Dessouki and Jamil Matar was that the 'Middle East' represented a political term instead of referring to a geographical area; that the term was not derived from the nature of the area or its political, cultural, civilizational and demographic characteristics, because when one uses the term 'Middle', one has to ask 'middle' in reference to what; plus the term tears up the Arab homeland as a distinct unit since it has always included non-Arab states. Instead of portraying the region as an ethnic mosaic the term should underpin the Arab unity. The 'Arab regional order' included all Arab states: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine/PLO, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. The advantage of the term 'Arab regional order' is that it is generated from the inside; the disadvantage is that there is no consideration for the non-Arab peoples in the region plus that it ignores the role played by Israel, Iran and Turkey in the region.
There are others, however, who emphasise the 'Mediterranean' as an alternative regional conception. This conception links the South European states to the other Mediterranean littoral states. Thus, it encompasses two prominent international regions: the geographical space which borders the northwest sector of the Mediterranean, which is labelled the EU, and the geographical area covering the south-eastern flank of the basis, which is labelled the Middle East. The sub-regions included in the Mediterranean are southern Europe, the Balkans, the Maghreb, and the Mashreq.
The Mediterranean dimension of the region is not new, but was definitely given a boost after the Cold War, and especially after the Gulf War in1990-1991. Notwithstanding that the concept 'Mediterranean' is widely used, the concept remains vague and is predominantly used to describe the cooperation between European countries and Arab states. This cooperation ranges from bilateral cooperation agreements under the 'Mediterranean' policy; multilateral relations with all Arab states via the Euro-Arab dialogue (established in 1973); multilateral agreements with sub-regional organisations in the Middle East (Arab Magreb Union; Gulf Cooperation Council; Arab League); to the Conference of Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CSCM), and the Euro-Mediterranean process established by the EU at the European Council Meeting in Barcelona in 1995. Whereby the major issues of EU's concern are: energy security; regional stability; and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process. The impression, however, remains that the 'Mediterranean' concept is rather conceived as a sort of meeting ground for Europe and the Middle East than as a region in itself. The advantage of a Mediterranean vision lies in the fact that is not contested. True enough, there are not too many proponents of the idea, but there are not too many opponents either. In any event, it does not provoke hostility in the Arab region, which was clearly the case with the 'Middle East' label.
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