The Sykes-Picot agreement can hardly be considered a positive thing for the region and its stability but attributing it to the "ruin" of the middle east is far-fetched
Had there been a pan-Arabian state, what's to say that it wouldn't ultimately end up like Yugoslavia? Which is to say, last a few decades at best under an oppressive regime, before violently fracturing into different states?
You can't say for certain that any moderate political currents would have been continuous, uninterrupted, and have completely suppressed radical religious politics in a pan-Arabian state. Especially with the interference of the US/USSR throughout the cold war.
If you want to talk about decisions that really ruined the middle east, you should really look at what the superpowers did in the cold war by instigating regime change in places like Iran. You should be looking at things like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which created the Mujahadeen, and the US policy under the Reagan doctrine to arm and fund it.
I mean yeah, but the video adresses this, saying how cold war intervention was basically just fucking with something already destined for ruin.
The entire reason all the bullshit in/from the 60s-80s occurring was because what the video discusses, that's how history works.
You're essentially saying "what I learned about the Middle East is more important topically than what happened before that cause what I didn't pay attention to that part so obviously it's not a big deal", and that's funnily enough, how shit like this happens in the first place. Everyone who went in thought they could magic away generations of thought, politics, and animosity with money and colonial austerity, and as we can see today that policy was obviously super effective.
https://files.facepunch.com/garry/2017/11/09/notebook_1f4d3.png
If you think that the Middle East would have been anything approaching a sunshine-and-rainbows land of prosperity with no political radicalism, cohesive and unchallenged Arabian national identity, and shia-sunni religious tolerance, please don't dictate to anyone that they don't understand "how history works". What an arrogant and unfounded thing to say.
To argue that there wouldn't have been political radicalism if not for Sykes-Picot is absurd. To think that there wouldn't be the conditions for political upheaval, radicalism and conflict stemming from issues of the great variation in local and religious identity across the vast expanse of the Arabian peninsula if not for Sykes-Picot is also absurd.
Sykes-Picot has no relevance to the outbreak of the cold war, which underpins my counter argument. If it hadn't been for Sykes-Picot, if there had been a pan-Arabian state, there still would have been superpower politics interfering on the Arabian penisula. So yes, there still would have been "bullshit" in the 60's and 80's.
The Soviets did not invade Afghanistan because of Sykes-Picot.
I have no idea why you included a point about the political ignorance of external players of the middle east. That's the foundation of my argument. Why do you think I mentioned Afghanistan and the Reagan Doctrine? Both ventures were undertaken with ignorance of the local political culture and the potential consequences.
This is a good insight to how borders should be determined by the locals instead of some far away high horse empires.
The black and white(or good or evil, or my home and your home) that is to you is different to others.
Not sure how I feel about AHH's new aesthetic. it's a little vapid
Saying that Sykes-Picot caused all that is determinism. It takes human agency out of the equation. While it certainly added to the atmosphere and influenced decision makers, it doesn't make it the cause of X.
This video reminds me of a John Oliver bit where he says that being British is like being an alcoholic - if somebody says you did something horrible, it is normally sensible and correct to just concede that it probably [i]was[/i] your fault. :P This video is a perfect example of that.
I said no such thing, nor even implied all the shit you just purported I did, and neither did the video, which set up several political vectors and threw in religion and human nature in general to go with it.
You were saying something about bad reading?
I take no responsibility for misreading your post if you fail to make your historical analysis more coherent than vague references to "bullshit in the 60s-80s"
So now that I'm home I finally had a chance to watch this video, and yeah it's way to deterministic for my taste. He got his basic facts right, don't get me wrong, but his analysis is determinism - which I plainly just don't agree with as a historian.
To supplement this, the middle east was unfortunately bound to be a proxy theater as with any other buffer states/land during the Cold War. With the USSR's strategy of gaining and controlling states to supplement their defense whilst the US lead the strategy of containment of communism towards otherwise neutral states during WWII or otherwise.
One could argue that parallels happened with Yugoslavia and the other Baltic states fracturing the way they did due to the fuckery that the two superpowers did around states caught between the buffer zone between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. (To be more accurate, that's not entirely true as the internal strife and artificial territories are what were more of the major causes that lead to say the Bosnian war.)
Vietnam was yet another example of expansion/containment leading to another proxy theater.
So if anything the WWII equivalent to Skyes-Picot would be the Potsdam Conference and other agreements made between the US, UK and USSR after the fall of Germany. This is were the lines were drawn that would lead to eventual proxy fuckery.
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