The Decline of the West in the Middle East-I

Abstract

T | tHERE was a time, not so long ago, when British statesmen could look out upon the Middle East and tell themselves that there at least was a region where Britain had built well: where old States saved from ruin and new ones brought to birth by British skill and devotion were moving gradually from tutelage to complete independence, and where a harmony of interests, cemented by mutual sympathy and trust, formed a solid basis for lasting alliances. That dream has vanished, and now we see things as they really are. The Middle East is in turmoil. Egypt is still not far from chaos; Arabs and Jews are still far from peace; it is doubtful whether Arabia will not some day be drowned in the sea of oil on which it now floats happily, and whether even the virtues of the Turks are solid enough to bear the stresses of the modem world. So much is clear to everyone, and it is clear too that in all the turmoil the first object of hatred and opposition is the Western world, and particularly Great Britain. My purpose here is to explain why this should be so: to analyse the causes of the deep and almost universal feeling against Britain and the West, and to ask in what ways and to what extent it can be altered. I shall deal specifically not with the whole Middle East but with two closely related parts of it: first, Egypt, and secondly, the group of Arab countries lying in the Fertile Crescent between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf-Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and the land of Palestine now divided between Jordan and Israel. Much of what I shall say, however, is more or less relevant to other parts of the Middle East, the Arab world, and the Muslim world; and some of it perhaps is true of all those parts of the world where the Western Powers have dominated peoples belonging to other civilizations. Faced with present events in the Middle East, the Western politician or journalist tends to regard them as a judgement upon the Middle Eastern peoples themselves. It has become fashionable to explain the violent outbursts of Eastern nationalism in terms of two factors for which the Oriental peoples themselves are (or seem to be) mainly responsible. On the one hand there is a mass of irrational feeling, described variously as 'xenophobia' or 'fanaticism'; and on the other there is an unjust social and economic system, which concentrates wealth and power in a few hands while keeping the masses at the level of bare subsistence. When the