The Middle East: A Legacy of WWI

Here are a couple great stories about the origins of the conflict in the Middle East that you might want to book mark for next year when we cover World War I.

In the first essay, The Middle East That France and Britain Drew Is Finally Unravelling, John B. Judis traces the roots of the problems today to the way Britain and France drew the borders in the Middle East after the first World War.

"What is happening is that the arrangements that the British and French created during and after World War I—which established the very existence of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, and later contributed to the creation of Israel—are unraveling," Judis argues.

In the second essay,The Last Crusade: The First World War and the Birth of Modern Islam Philip Jenkins traces the rise of modern Islam, including Islamic extremism, to the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the World War I.

"When the war started, the Ottoman Empire was the only remaining Islamic nation that could even loosely claim Great Power status."