Introduction

Latif Wahid

Chapter 1 in Military Expenditure and Economic Growth in the Middle East, 2009, pp 1-14 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, the Middle East, unlike any other region of the world, has been afflicted with frequent military conflict, inter-state hostility and civil wars. Great Britain and France largely, and arbitrarily, carved the current states out of the former. The border demarcations of the states and international agreements were decided upon with no consideration of the wishes of the people of the region. Even the states’ names, as Lewis (2003) points out, reflect their artificiality: Iran, Syria, Palestine and Libya are names from classical antiquity that haven’t been used in the region for thousands of years and names such as Algeria, Tunisia and Arabia don’t exist as words in Arabic. Most, if not all, current conflicts have, in some way or another, historical roots in the problems inherited in these colonial settings of the countries of the region.

Keywords: Middle East; Arab Country; Military Expenditure; Military Conflict; Colonial Setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-25076-5_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230250765

DOI: 10.1057/9780230250765_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().