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Articles
The Modern Middle East: How Much is Churchill’s Fault?
- By DAVID FROMKIN
- | November 6, 2023
- Category: Churchill Between the Wars Truths and Heresies
Note to readers
The tragic events playing out in Israel and Gaza have produced sundry emissions concerning the probity (or villainy) of Winston Churchill. As Colonial Secretary, Churchill chaired the 1921 Cairo Conference which drew the borders of the modern Middle East. The borders, redrawn from the old Ottoman Empire, are still there—and still contentious. The opportunity to saddle Churchill with the blame for what occurred a century ago is, to some, irresistible.
Until his death in 2017, David Fromkin was a leading authority on Churchill and the Middle East, through his seminal book, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. The 20th Anniversary edition with a new Afterword by the author (2009) is currently available in paperback, Kindle and audiobook formats.
Twenty years ago, in the midst of a hurricane in Washington, Dr. Fromkin lectured on Churchill and the Making of the Middle East. Only fourteen were able to attend, and the text was never published, though I had his permission to do so. Today, in the search for truth on the ever-fulminating Middle East, it seems appropriate to correct the lapse, with respect for his wisdom and in his memory. —RML
David Fromkin, 18 September 2003
I’m here today because I wrote a book about the creation of the modern Middle East. When I submitted my first draft, my editor gave it back and told me I’d done it all wrong. And indeed, he was right.
He said that I had written it as though I were writing an article for Foreign Affairs or The New York Times, because the characters who walked through my pages were not persons but countries. I spoke of Russia’s ambitions and Turkey’s fears and the like.
“Don’t do that,” said my editor. “Here is the way to write a book of history, since you’ve never done it before: Pick a human being. It’s up to you which to choose. Describe him, give the reading audience a sense of what he looked like, what he sounded like when he spoke, what he smelled like. Now take that character, and through his eyes follow through the events you want to narrate.”
Dramatis personae
I tried to think of who would be the best person to use for my book. I found three alternatives. Because nobody else really would fit, the first thought was Lord Kitchener, the great British general and popular idol, who at the beginning of World War I was brought back from Egypt where he served as British Pro-counsel. He was very much the dominating figure in all matters involving the war in the Liberal cabinet. But he was also their authority; it was up to him what to do in all matters that had to do with the East.
Should my key figure be Kitchener? The answer was no. Kitchener died in June 1916 on a sea voyage to Russia, and that was much too soon. There were years and years still to go in my story.
The second choice was David Lloyd George, prime minister from 1916 to 1922, presiding over much of what happened at the peace conferences. But Lloyd George wasn’t there at the beginning of things. Nor was he there at the very end, because by then he had turned the Middle East over to Churchill, his Colonial Secretary.
That left Churchill, who was clearly the best choice. For one thing, he had been very much involved in Turkish affairs even before the war. He knew some of the Turkish leaders, and had sympathy for the Turkish cause. True, in the middle of the war, Churchill was out of power. But he came in at the end and really made the crucial decisions that altered the map of the Middle East.
Unsteady beginnings
The story therefore suggested itself. Beginning in 1914-15, British officials began making contrary and ill-informed decisions, clashing with one another. The British government of India, acting practically as a sovereign state, had policies very much different from those pursued by London and Cairo. This mess or bungle—this accumulated, shattered situation—was just handed to Churchill, with a “take care of it” attitude. Britain would often do that when all else had failed and other policies had proven not to work.
At the beginning of the First World War the Arab-speaking Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, as it had been for almost 500 years. Churchill brought to that part of the world the view of a 19th-century Englishman. Like Kitchener, he saw competition with Russia and France for empire as a permanent “given.” In particular, he saw Britain’s strategic role to protect the road to India by using the Ottoman Empire as a buffer between Britain and Russia.
To that extent Churchill, supported the traditional British policy of propping up the ailing, weak Ottoman Empire. To that extent you could say he was pro-Turk. It is odd that in 1914, he was accused of having brought Turkey into the war on Germany’s side, creating the Middle Eastern issue for the British. But it was only logical for Britain and her allies to think of how to carve up the Ottoman Empire when the war was over.
Churchill and Turkey
The charge against Churchill for alienating Turkey arose over two warships in British yards when war became imminent. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill decided to seize those battleships. They were dreadnoughts, the latest type, powerful enough that their addition to the Royal Navy could help decide what everyone thought would be a brief war.
The Turks, of course, protested. Some of Churchill’s critics—including Lloyd George—believed this caused the Ottoman Empire to join the Germans. But that is not so. We now know that the Turks, weeks before the seizure of their ships, had decided to seek a German alliance. In pursuance of that alliance, they didn’t decide to go to war until two months after the battleships were seized. Churchill’s action played no part in their decision.
Churchill and Kitchener were both involved in the ill-starred Dardanelles-Gallipoli affair, which doesn’t bear on our subject—other than to explain why Churchill lost his position at the center of war-making in May 1915. For a while, he served with the army in France. In 1917 he was made Minister of Munitions, but without a seat in the War Cabinet. While he was out of it, many plans and commitments were made about the future of the Middle East.
Closed covenants, secretly arrived at
Churchill’s involvement in the area thus began with the Dardanelles expedition, during which Russia demanded Constantinople and the Dardanelles straits after the war was won. That started the long chain that led to secret deals about who would get what in the Middle East. The French, if they couldn’t have the Ottoman Empire intact, at least wanted Syria, Lebanon and Palestine (today’s Israel and Jordan), what was then called “Greater Syria.”
Churchill sensibly opposed the Russian demand for Constantinople. He said presciently that the war hadn’t brought history to an end, that history would continue after it. He was overruled. Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, said he preferred to keep the Ottoman Empire intact. But wanting to keep Russia in the war, he supported Russian and French demands. Britain too had ambitions. From the beginning it was clear that Britain wanted the provinces of Basra and Baghdad, two of the three areas that today make up Iraq. A port in the Mediterranean, and a railroad from that port to Baghdad and Basra were also desirable.
Accordingly the objective of an intact Ottoman Empire, Britain’s idea for more than a century, was abandoned. Secret treaties, such as the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, were drafted to implement the new policy. Ultimately, from the League of Nations, Britain received a “mandate” (authority) over Palestine (including Transjordan) and Mesopotamia (Iraq). France received mandates over Syria and Lebanon.
Churchill’s Middle East proposals
With the war won, Britain immediately held an election on 14 December 1918. It moved Britain closer than ever before to full democracy (achieved finally in 1929). In 1918 the British electorate was already very different: twenty-one million voted, versus only eight million in the preceding election. Two-thirds of the electorate was newly enfranchised. All men and many women were eligible to vote. Most new voters were not inclined to spend money on Empire when there was so much need for rebuilding, reconstruction, and improving the economy. So it was against a far different background that Britain pondered plans for the Middle East after the war.
By the time of that election, the Middle East was occupied by a British army of about a million men. There was no other major military force in the area. Churchill, now Minister of War and Air, had a twofold plan.
Part one was (and he said this repeatedly) that Britain mustn’t demobilize the army until she had the peace terms she wanted from the Turks and Germans. Accordingly, Churchill wanted conscription to continue. In this he was overruled.
Part two was a return to the prewar policy of keeping the Ottoman Empire intact. Churchill seems to be the only major figure who so argued. Again, he was overruled.
The Allied alternative
The Allies decided to make peace with each enemy country separately, and the Ottoman Empire came last. That in itself was a major fact, because the world was changing while the Middle East was waiting and simmering. Lloyd George was against letting France have Greater Syria, but had no clear alternative. He also supported Greek claims against Turkey, and there was no peace settlement with Turkey in sight.
The armies were “melting away,” in Churchill’s phrase, losing the ability to impose terms. The British economy took a nose-dive, and spending money on foreign adventures was increasingly unpopular. Thus began a time of trouble for Britain. In British-run Egypt, demands were made for independence. Riots occurred in March 1919; communications were cut, and only with the greatest difficulty did the British restore order.
In Arabia the conflict between King Hussein of the Hashemites, whom Britain had supported; and Ibn Saud, a Lord of Arabia, whom Britain had also supported, resulted in Ibn Saud’s forces inflicting a crushing defeat of the Hashemites led by Prince Abdullah. The Saudi forces got as far as Amman, capital of what is now Jordan, before British aircraft and armored cars drove them back. Britain was in a curious position: Two of her clients, each of whom received British subsidies, were fighting one another. And at least one was prepared to fight against Britain.
Then there was Syria, unhappy with the notion of France holding a mandate or any position there. Britain had attempted to install its protégé, Prince Faisal, as King of Syria, but French forces crushed Syrian nationalists marching into Damascus and sent Faisal into exile.
Trouble everywhere
Transjordan was kind of a wild west. Lawless Bedouins roamed at will and there seemed to be no law enforcement. The British felt they could ill afford to bring order but knew not what to do. Faisal’s brother Abdullah, who had been defeated by Ibn Saud, arrived in Transjordan with a small band of warriors from Palestine. It was not clear what his motives were, and his intentions toward the British were quite unknown.
In Iraq a major uprising shocked British opinion. After the assassinations of key British officers there was a full-scale revolt of the tribes. T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and others wrote to The Times, protesting British rule of Iraq, while the disorder continued. Then nationalist forces in Turkey under Mustafa Kemal suddenly impinged on everyone’s consciousness, putting at risk Britain’s very victory over Turkey.
Everywhere one looked there was trouble; everywhere British plans were in shambles. Foreign intrigues were suspected. Was there a Communist plot directed by Bolshevik Russia? Were remnants of the German General Staff collaborating with the Bolsheviks? According to one British intelligence officer it was all an enormous Jewish plot since, according to him, the Jews controlled Islam.
Colonial Secretary
At this truly horrendous moment Lloyd George in effect turned to Churchill and said: You deal with it. Churchill was made Colonial Secretary with a vastly expanded Middle East department. He recruited some of the most capable people in Britain to serve as civil servants. One of these was T.E. Lawrence, who had once set to work to devise a way out of the morass.
The Cairo Conference, 1921
Realizing that the main requirement was unity, Churchill brought every British official who had anything to do with the Middle East to a conference just outside Cairo in 1921. Then as now, there were many parties to the dispute, all with an ideological agenda. Some believed in Arab unity, some in a Jewish state, some in whatever.
Churchill was on a different wavelength. His aim was to solve specific problems, such as how, for the least amount of money, Britain could maintain control of a goodly portion of the Arab world. Could it be done in a way acceptable to all circles within Britain that was tolerable to the Arab populations? He sought a practical, pragmatic outcome.
Just as an aside, let me mention one thing that was always clear about Churchill. As an individual human being, he had great sympathy for Zionist aspirations in Palestine. But as a minister of the Crown, he never let those feelings determine his policy. He saw the difference and studiously observed it.
His arrangement over Transjordan was that Abdullah, for a brief period anyway, would take charge of maintaining order. A British police force was eventually brought in and trained to support him. It was intended to be for a period of months. But as such things tend to do, it became permanent. Abdullah reached agreement with Churchill that Jewish settlers would not be allowed in the Transjordanian part of Palestine. Later it ended up becoming the state of Jordan, still under the Hashemite monarchy: Abdullah, his son Hussein, and today his grandson Abdullah. Churchill foresaw none of this. To him it was temporary solution pending future events.
Trying to please everyone
During the war the British statesman Arthur Balfour had declared that Britain favored a “Jewish national home” in Palestine west of the River Jordan. Churchill now asked Balfour and Lloyd George whether this meant a Jewish state or just a “homeland.” Both told him they had meant a Jewish state. Their answer that didn’t help Churchill, who did not feel he could go that far at that time. He plumbed instead for a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine. He was always a great friend to this idea when he could be.
At one time a British interdepartmental committee had partitioned Mesopotamia, governing Basra from British India and Baghdad from British Cairo. This was neither workable nor practical. So, Churchill and his advisors decided to combine Basra and Baghdad in a new country called Iraq. The Iraqis were invited to accept Prince Faisal as their King and British authorities held a referendum that confirmed him.
One of those things that just went through the cracks, as far as I can tell, was the third area of Mosul with its large Kurdish population that now is part of Iraq. Churchill’s notion was for an independent Kurdistan, serving as a buffer against a resurgence of Turkish nationalism. Lawrence and one or two others agreed with him. But somehow or other this didn’t get communicated. The British High Commissioner for Iraq arranged with the League of Nations that Iraq should be formed of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, with some level of autonomy for the Kurds. This was not what Churchill wanted, and he was rather puzzled when it turned out that way.
Was it a good settlement?
Egypt was dealt with by others: Lord Milner had a committee there. The Turks fought their war and eventually brought down the Lloyd George government in Great Britain. It was a very “put-together thing.” Churchill had imposed a settlement at acceptable cost. He had devised a strategy straight from his position as Minister of Air and War. It was to maintain order with a combination of armored cars and aircraft, something that might work in the desert steppe kind of conditions of Iraq. Airplanes were very effective in such areas as the Middle East. He had a strategy for imposing this.
Was it a good settlement? What Churchill did was to solve all the problems he was given to solve. In politics I suppose that should be enough. Jordan and its Hashemite King are there still. Some people said that because Iraq was an artificial state, put together from three different components, it would fall apart under the strain of internal differences. But in the war that Iran and Iraq waged in the 1980s, Iraq held together—and it still holds together. This suggests that possibly there was more merit in this settlement than anybody at the time supposed.
Given the problem he was assigned to solve, it seems to me that Churchill did a great job. I’m not sure who could have done a better one.
Questions and answers
The Q&A session that followed Dr. Fromkin’s lecture afforded further observations. The first and perhaps most pertinent question, from the standpoint of a century later, involved Churchill’s choice of heads of state. Why did he believe monarchy was the best solution for Iraq and Jordan? Why did he choose Hashemites from Arabia? Another key question was the role oil played in the international machinations. Dr. Fromkin replied comprehensively….
Why install kings?
In the world in which Churchill grew up, that’s what you did. When it was decided, just before the First World War, to create an independent state of Albania, an intrinsic part of the thing was to find it a king. In the Middle East in 1921, the same thinking applied.
Remember, the Ottoman Empire had no nationality. It was a Turkish-speaking Muslim polity. It was very difficult to establish ethnicity and loyalty since it was only based on religion. Thus, any Muslim government was pretty much acceptable to people of the area.
We have to separate the two Hashemite kings because they are different. Abdullah was part of the problem, so they made him part of the solution. He was in Jordan; he had armed followers. For all the British knew, Abdullah might upset their tenuous rule. It’s like deputizing a thief to sheriff because there aren’t any other deputies. It was logical to ask Abdullah to take charge for eight months or whatever. Remember, this was thought to be a temporary solution.
As for Faisal, there was a feeling at the time that when you brought in a king for a new country, it ought to be somebody who is not from that country—not involved its internal feuds. You look for an outsider and a unifier. Lawrence’s fondness for Faisal was part of the decision, and the British felt they owed Faisal something. He had, after all, fought the Turks. It seemed like a very neat solution. By the way, they immediately repented of it because Faisal, once in office, made many nationalist claims, and Churchill feared that Faisal had betrayed him.
How much of a factor was Middle East oil?
In 1911-14, the United States was the biggest oil producer, and most Middle East oil came from Iran. Churchill had secured Iranian oil for the Royal Navy, so it was not a pressing British need. The British thought there was oil in Mosul, but were not certain. Some people, Churchill among them, were quick to appreciate the strategic importance of oil. Many others were not. Clemenceau didn’t see it until about 1918. A lot of people were just slow learners in that sense.
In the Sykes-Picot agreement, British negotiators were instructed by Kitchener to give Mosul to the French as a buffer between the British Middle East and Russia. By war’s end the situation had changed. Clemenceau met privately with Lloyd George and asked his support for France’s demands on Germany. Clemenceau said, “Tell me anything—what do you want?” Lloyd George said, “I want Palestine.” “It’s yours,” Clemenceau replied. “What else do you want?” Lloyd George said: “I want Mosul.” Clemenceau said: “It’s yours.” So as late as 1918, Clemenceau was perfectly willing to give away Mosul, with all its suspected oil.
Churchill and the Middle East: further reading
Churchill Project, “Creating Jordan ‘With the Stroke of a Pen on a Sunday Afternoon,’” 2021.
Ronald I. Cohen, “Churchill, the Jews and Israel, Part I,” 2016.
Patrick J. Garrity, “Churchill, Kitchener and Lloyd George, by Steve Cliffe,” 2017.
Sara Reguer, “A Conversation on Churchill and the Middle East, 1919-1922,” 2022.
William John Shepherd, “A New Account of Churchill Remaking the Mideast,” 2023.
_____ _____, “Sara Reguer Focuses on Churchill Reorganizing the ‘Fertile Crescent,’” 2021.
The author
David Fromkin (1932-2017) was Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations and Law at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. He was also the Director of The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Long-Range Future. Before his career as a historian he was an attorney, who was a political adviser to Hubert Humphrey in the 1972 Democratic primary campaign. His classic work, A Peace to End all Peace, was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. This text, hitherto unpublished, is from Dr. Fromkin’s lecture at George Washington University on 18 September 2003.
A fascinating insight into the historical complexities of the Middle East, and the role Winston Churchill played in shaping the region. David Fromkin’s lecture provides valuable context and understanding of the intricate decisions and challenges of the time.
A thank you to the author David Fromkin, and to Hillsdale College for providing his writing. As Avukat wrote, you have provided fascinating insight into the historical complexities of the Middle East. We know that God alone has the answers, and those will come at the appropriate time.