La configuración de oriente próximo tras la primera guerra mundial

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.