WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: NOTHING NEW

We constantly hear the refrain that the United States is responsible for all the upset and chaos in the Middle East. Thus if we had just stuck to our knitting here at home and not gone into Iraq or even Afghanistan, so this line of thought goes, life in that part of the world would be much closer to hearts and flowers than is now the case.

Unfortunately once again the record and the facts get in the way of this wholly invented fiction. The short piece below speaks to war, specifically civil war, in oil producing nations over the past 15 years or so. Unlike the phony scenario pushed by the media and their far left favorites, the fact is that it is more peaceful throughout the Arab world today than has been the case in over a decade. As a matter of fact there has been far more conflict within the countries of the region than there has been between them.

Of course there can be no doubt that the fight in Iraq has stirred passions in that part of the world but the reality is not much more than is normal. Further, what if Iraq settles down into some form of democracy and moves forward as a nation in the same fashion as have the Kurdish regions of Iraq to date? What if Afghanistan were to settle along the same lines as well? Consider what impact such developments might have on the region in particular and the planet in general.

Maybe the graph line representing chaos and civil war will continue to decline. Not a bad outcome for the world at large.


Notable & Quotable
Michael Ross
May/June issue of Foreign Affairs

The world is far more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. There were 17 major civil wars -- with "major" meaning the kind that kill more than a thousand people a year -- going on at the end of the Cold War; by 2006, there were just five. During that period, the number of smaller conflicts also fell, from 33 to 27.

Despite this trend, there has been no drop in the number of wars in countries that produce oil. The main reason is that oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, makes it easier for insurgents to fund their rebellions, and aggravates ethnic grievances. Today, with violence falling in general, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. According to some, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shows that oil breeds conflict between countries, but the more widespread problem is that it breeds conflict within them.

The number of oil-producer-based conflicts is likely to grow in the future as stratospheric prices of crude oil push more countries in the developing world to produce oil and gas.

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