65 years, >3T dollars, and an unimaginable web of blowback and unintended consequences. This image will be updated with Libya in the future.
A primer:
This series of diaries is intended to give a background on on US financial, military, and political support to various governments and agencies throughout the Middle East (including non-ME nations which are of significant tangential involvement).
This is not intended to be a 100% thorough and detailed analysis, but a 30,000ft overview of where the US started investing and where those investments have gone.
Citations are listed for the figure (for the most part), with the main discussion stemming from tertiary research.
American foreign policy in the Middle East since WWII has been dynamic and varied, with much of the discussion being about how complex the area is. Accepting the complexities of the nations, tribes, religions, and cultures from Morocco to Pakistan is one thing; taking a holistic view of the United States commitments throughout this region, with their associated repercussions, is another. Although this discussion does not provide for a total and granular level history of the US's interactions, it does try to provide a modicum objectivity into just how dynamic the US's policies and politics have been over the last 75 years.
The image attached attempts to lay out the approximate amount of "support" the US has given to some of the major players in the region, how those players have directed that support, and some of the unpredictable blowback stemming from such policies. Sadly, this image does not include Libya, for which there was no more space, but may be added to a revised draft.
Green lines represent transfer of military aid, civilian aid, oil, or international political patronage. Red lines represent hostile acts, and black lines represent nuclear technology. There are also gaps in some of the hostilities regarding the various Israeli-Arab wars (for example, Iraq isn't shown attacking Israel - this decision was based on the limited impact Iraq had on that campaign). There was also an attempt to include hostilities which may have been small, but would normal have been considered an act of war if perpetrated against the US. It is acknowledged that this first draft is clearly imperfect. Finally, the nations of Pakistan, India, and South Africa are also mentioned in this analysis due to their connections with the overall policies of the region.
If we simply start with the amount of direct transfers of wealth to the subject nations (as well as the cost of "liberation" of Afghanistan and Iraq), we can conclude that the US has spent some 3.17T on its Middle East investments (173B which was in direct military or civilian aid to one government or another). It should also be noted that, due to the various sources and 75 years worth of involvement, that the values presented should be considered conservative ballpark values. If the value of maintaining naval operations, loan interest, inflation, or political costs were taken into consideration, it is easy to conceive an investment multiple times greater than the aforementioned 3.17T. It is also worth pointing out that the only nation on this list that is currently providing significant tangible utility to the US is KSA, which provides some one million barrels of oil per day. This energy security has been rewarded with over 130B worth of weapons transfers (the 130B figure is not included in the numbers above).
Perhaps the best framing for this discussion is to consider the times when the US first decided it needed a Middle East policy. After WWII, there was a desire to play a more prominent role in preventing communism in many of the countries discussed herein. There was also the collapsing British and French colonial rule in the nations of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, India, Pakistan, and Jordan. This, combined with the continuing fallout of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire some 30 years prior and the establishment of the KSA (with their Wahabi ideology) over the previous rulers of the Hejaz, the Hashemites, would lead to a turbulent dynamic spanning the region that had never been seen.
Prior to the fall of the Ottomans at the end of WWI, the Middle East had been a relatively stable amalgam of Christians, Sephardic & Mizrahi Jews, Muslims, Druze, and countless tribes and languages. This "stability" was kept in place via a combination of violent oppression (as was demonstrated against the various Wahabi uprisings), as well as passive oversight and autonomy (via the millet system). It isn't mentioned much in the present, but the Ottoman caliph was far more receptive to Jewish immigration and settlement than many, if not all, of the European powers of the time (this is reflected in the aftermath of the inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula, the rabid anti Jewish sentiments of the Lutherans during the reformation, and the pogroms found in the Slavic parts of Europe). The Romanians actually expelled all the Jews after their independence from the empire, with many of those Jews moving to Ottoman Palestine. In addition to the large Jewish population, one of the other things the Ottoman's had was oil. Lots of it.
Adjoining the Ottoman Empire was a weak Persian Empire and a neighboring British Empire encompassing Pakistan, India, and on/off possession of parts of Afghanistan. Although Persia had maintained an impoverished territorial integrity (not withstanding occasional Russian and British occupations), the Indian subcontinent was a bit more fluid. Here, parts of the empire were maintained directly by the crown, others via the Princely States (semi-autonomous states under local monarchs), most with a varying degree of Muslim/Hindu conflicts and/or local populations fighting against the British.
Following WWI, The French would take Syria and break Lebanon off into a separate country. The British would take Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, leaving the Hejaz a more or less separate entity. Contrary to the promises to the Hashemites, who had been promised governance over a unified Arabia, the French and the British would take direct control of these territories for their own (mostly oil and colonial expansionist) ends. The Hashemites would start with weak leaders in Iraq, Jordan, Syria and the Hejaz, but would find their ruler of Syria thrown out by the French in less than a year, the monarchy in Iraq deposed within a few decades, and the Hashemite patriarch in the Hejzas overrun by the Saudi family within a few years. Of note is that the Saudi family had been supported by the foreign office of British India during WWI, whereas the Hashemite family had been supported by the British Egyptian department (think Lawrence of Arabia). The Hashemites had also been loyal to the Ottomans up until WWI, with both the Ottomans and the Hashemites working to keep a the Wahabies from expanding their influence outside of the Arabian peninsula interior. Some of these coups were due to colonial pressure (Syria), some due to internal strife (Iraq), and some due to foreign indifference (KSA). The rise of the Wahabi sect would impact more than just the Hejaz; the entire Arabian peninsula and gulf coast would ultimately find itself subject to a combination of absolute monarchies combined with this ultra puritanical interpretation of Islam (minus Oman, which practices a different variant of Islam).
This carousel of leadership changes would take place up through WWII. During this time, oil would be discovered in Iraq in 1927, in KSA in 1938, and major oil extraction starting in Persia in 1935 (with the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian oil company). Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine would not prove to be as fruitful on the oil front (much to France's chagrin). These discoveries would prove to be well timed, with WWII just around the corner, the need for oil for the empires' militaries would prove to be needed.
Up through this point, the United States government would play a minimal role in the affairs of the Middle East (with Britain and France being the primary beneficiaries). However, after the end of WWII, the subsequent collapse of European control of the former League of Nations mandates, the partition of India and Pakistan, the fear of a spreading communism, the declaration of independence of Israel from Palestine, and the transformation of the US from an isolationist nation with a "big stick" to one of two world superpowers, the Middle East would never be the same.
Now, at about 1950, things would start to change and change fast. The follow-on parts will be a brief synopsis of the players and their interjections. Stay tuned.
Citations for the image:
LET - Lashkar E Taiba
AQ - Al Qaeda
SA - South Africa
MB - Muslim Brotherhood
TLBN - Taliban
KSA - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
LBN -Lebanon
HZBL - Hezbullah
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[2] http://www.wrmea.org/...
[3] http://www.reuters.com/...
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[5] www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33533.pdf
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[7] www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf
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[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/...
[11] https://www.whitehouse.gov/...
[12] http://ivl.8m.com/...
[13] http://www.theguardian.com/...
[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/...
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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[17] http://www.wired.com/...
[18] http://www.slate.com/...
[19] http://www.cbsnews.com/...
[20] http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
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[21] http://www.bbc.com/...