The Middle East´s Configuration after First World War

Abstract

A century after the outbreak of the First World War, this article presents a thoughtful balance of all implications arising from a complex set of policy decisions, diplomatic commitments, international agreements and both institutional and personal actions undertaken by leaders of the victorious powers, as well as other stakeholders, in a complex post-war process, which impinged on the Middle East and which was framed in Wilsonian principles meant to define a new world order, and embodied in the Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. As a consequence, not only a new political map was drawn but along with it, the conditions too, that would determine the political life of the peoples concerned, and that for decades to come. These peoples´ hypothetical economic, social and cultural progress and, above all, their geopolitical ties, strategic objectives and civilization´s core values were either implicitly or explicitly determined by the core plan dictated almost in its entirety by the interests of the contemporary powers.