GEOPOLITICS AND IMPORTANCE OF THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST (GME)
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Geopolitics And Importance of The Greater Middle East (GME)
The link involving visualized territories and nation geopolitical strategies has piqued
society's curiosity in past decades. Critical geostrategic historians assert that different regulations
are empowered and produced by unique hegemonic narratives, which have constituted world
political system by offering an integrated and holistic wider context in whom the jurisdictions
seek to dominate beyond their borders, seize control over less developed geographic areas and
their mineral wealth, and compete with other significant jurisdictions for global power and
dominance.1 The west has long purported to be working hard to deliver democratization,
progress, open trade, and free commerce to each part of the globe. Since World War I, this
imagined territory, known as the 'Greater Middle East' (GME), has been proposed. The GME
was conceived as an additional rationale for the projection of western influence in the area. The
GME's status shifted, and the west strove to infuse its ideals into the area purposefully.
The GME was a prominent location from Napoleon's era until the conclusion of World
War II and afterwards. Upwards of thirty thousand soldiers under General Napoleon Bonaparte's
authority, as well as twenty-one thousand additional French men and a few women, departed
France in May 1798 and Egypt remained their hidden destiny. The fundamental motivation for
the attempt was a pre-revolutionary subject: the determination to get the dominant position in the
long-running Anglo-French competition that had characterized the 18th:century.2 By denying the
British important accessibility to south Asia, the French planned to hit back at the British and
1 Aylın Güney & Fulya Gökcan, The ‘Greater Middle East’ as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical
Imagination in American Foreign Policy. Geopolitics, 23.
2 Matthew G. Stanard, review of Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, by Juan Cole.
Humanities and Social Sciences Online, (2009), 1. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6244/pdf
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maybe reclaim lost Indian holdings.3 The Ottoman Turks maintained solid control over the GME
until World War One broke out.4 As a result, the British gained command of the Suez Canal,
which remained a vital trade route during both World Wars and was fiercely contested. To
combat the Ottoman Turks and Germans, the British knew earlier in World War One that they
required to form alliances with individuals who administered and inhabited the GME. They
forged various partnerships with individuals from the GME, particularly Arabs, in order to avail
leverage of traditional and unorthodox operations, as well as the use of collaborators, which the
axis powers rarely comprehended.5
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire by the British Rule and its allied forces in
World War I, the Arab World became fragmented into a multitude of different countries, then
under British and French auspices. Throughout the early twentieth century, the supply or lack of
oil had a significant impact on world politics. The abundance of oil in GME had a crucial impact
in majority of the great power struggles that took place during this:period.6 When it came to the
two major geopolitical confrontations of the first portion of the 20th:century, the world military
3 Ibid.
4 Rosemary Hollis, “The greater Middle East,” In SIPRI Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament
and International Security, eds. Bailes, A. J. (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
2005), 224.
5 Paul Gordon, Great Britain and the Middle East: The rise and fall of a hegemonic power and
the pursuit of eternal interests (CEU Institute of Humanities, University CEU San Pablo, 2018),
474.
6 Ergenekon Savrun, From Sykes-Picot to present; The centenary aim of the Zionism on Syria
and Iraq, International Journal of Humanities and Education (2017), 73.
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interventions, the transformation of oil from a merely economic resource to a geopolitical asset
commenced in 1912, when the Royal Navy switched from coal to oil as a fuel source. Even
though oil played a minor role in the result of WWI, after 1918, governments all across the globe
realized that adequate and reliable oil production were a needed if not significant condition for
both macroeconomic development and sovereign stability. 7
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the withdrawal of imperial powers Britain and
France from the geographical area by the close of the 1960s, and the surging impact and
geographic participation of the United States from the 1970s onwards were among the most
significant geographic breakthroughs just after the end of WWII.8 The west did force themselves
on the GME by separating it into distinct entities, introducing Zionism, and seizing sovereignty
of critical resource territories. Led by the United States, the west made attempts:to force itself on
the populace of the GME through a series of accords, including as the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The British and French consented to split up the Ottoman Empire in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Treaties like these have had a long-term impact on the East's faith in the West, as well as the
ongoing animosity and urges for Islamic extremism towards the West. 9
7 Ibid.
8 Yannis Stivachtis, Conflict and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 6.
https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/75898
9 Ergenekon Savrun, From Sykes-Picot to present; The centenary aim of the Zionism on Syria
and Iraq, International Journal of Humanities and Education (2017), 75-76.
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Bibliography
Gordon, Paul. Great Britain and the Middle East: The rise and fall of a hegemonic power and
the pursuit of eternal interests. CEU Institute of Humanities, University CEU San Pablo,
2018. https://repositorioinstitucional.ceu.es/bitstream/10637/
Güney, Aylin and Fulya Gökcan. “The ‘Greater Middle East’ as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical
Imagination in American Foreign Policy.” Geopolitics 15, no. 1 (2010). 22-38.
DOI:10.1080/14650040903420370
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Hollis, Rosemary. “The greater Middle East.” In SIPRI Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament and
International Security, edited by Bailes, A. J., 223-250. Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, 2005.
Savrun, Ergenekon. “From Sykes-Picot to present; The centenary aim of the Zionism on Syria
and Iraq.” International Journal of Humanities and Education, (2017): 64-95.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322138177
Stanard, Mathew G. Review of Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, by Juan Cole.
Humanities and Social Sciences Online, (2009): 1-5.
https://networks.hnet.org/node/6244/pdf
Stivachtis, Yannis. “Conflict and Diplomacy in the Middle East.” E-International Relations,
(2018): 1-9. https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/75898
