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EDITED BY CHARLES L. FEINBERG, Th.D., Ph.D. DIRECTOR, TALBOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
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By PROF. R. LUDWIGSON, Th.D., Wheaton College
T h e troubled'Middle East with its insistent problems placed first in our attention once again with the recent landing of the U. S. Marines in Lebanon. What problems in the Mid dle East called the United States to display military power and the na tions of the world to rivet anxious minds to solve the distress? Are the existing problems capable of solution so as to enable nations of the Middle East to live in harmony with one an other in the future? To some the mag nitude of the problems between the nations and the different approaches of the nations to the problems seem so contrary and irresolvable, that the thought of these nations being bound together in a bond of peace seems ridiculous. Yet, 714 years before Christ, when the relations between the Middle East nations were equally strained and threatening as today, Isaiah boldly declared that, “ In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.” Contemporaries of Isaiah may have felt justified in considering Isaiah a mad man to make such a declaration in their day. For at that time Egypt, in opposition to the ascendancy of Assyria, allied with Syria and Israel against Assyria. Judah had also been approached as a possible ally by these nations, but at the advice of Isaiah Judah refused to join the coalition. In the face of such current, interna tional distress Isaiah dared to proph esy that these opposing nations, Egypt, Assyria (geographically Iraq), and Israel, would in some future day be counted each a third as an equal blessing of the Lord. Egypt’s ultimate conversion and participation in the religion of Israel would be provoked primarily through judgments of in ternal strife, foreign invasions, the drying up of the Nile, and a conse quent decline of industries dependent upon the Nile, according to Isaiah. To the present day reader these words of Isaiah seem quite out of line
with what appears to be the situation in the Middle East today. To think that Egypt, Assyria, and Israel could be so peaceably united that these na tions would cons t i t u t e one-third equally in being the Lord’s blessing, is nothing less than fantastic. As Bi- ble-believing Christians, however, we are aware of the many predictive prophecies that have already been ful filled, such as Israel’s return to Pales tine after being in exile for 2,500 yebrs, that we believe this prophecy also will in its own time and in God’s own way, also be fulfilled. The problems, which seem to be frustrating the realization of peace among the nations of the Middle East, orientate themselves around four major factors: (1) Russia’s desire to gain control of the Straits as a warm water seaway; (2) oil and its neces sity to modern civilization; (3) the Suez as a vital link between the At lantic and Pacific Oceans; and (4) the traditional controversy between the Arab and the Jew. Though perhaps none of these prob lems may be considered of more weight than any one of the others, the problem of Russia and the Straits is older in Middle East history than the others excepting ¡Ahe^relationship between Israel and the Arabs. For nearly two hundred years Rus sia, seeking a warm water sea route, has wanted independent and free access into the Mediterranean Sea through free control of the Black Sea. Peter the Great first attempted in 1700 to gain free control of the Straits, the Dardanelles (the upper straits) and the Bosphorous (the lower straits). He was forced to acquiesce to a Turk ish victory that all Russian cargo pass ing through the Straits be carried in Turkish vessels. Another attempt to break Turkish retention of the Straits was made by Catherine the Great in 1774 by sending her fleet around the western European coast into the Mediterranean toward Turkey. The ships withdrew, however, but by treaty Russia was granted freedom to sail merchant ships t h r o u g h t h e Straits. By the Treaty of Paris in 1856, closing the Crimean War, the Black Sea was neutralized and opened
to the merchant marines of all na tions, but closed perpetually to war vessels of countries possessing its coasts. By this treaty Russia was forced to destroy the forts she had erected on the Black Sea and forbid den to erect new ones. Russia, how ever, in 1877 made a new attempt to get control of the European coast of the Straits by driving through the Balkans, but again she was frustrated. Though Russia failed in this attempt, she almost succeeded in acquiring not only the European side, but also the Asian side of both the Bosphorous and the Dardanelles by secret treaty with Britain in 1911 during World War I. But at the close of the war the twelfth of President Wilson’s fourteen points proclaimed the Dardanelles to be under international guarantee a free seaway to the ships and commerce of all nations. Two small islands, how ever, just outside the Bosphorous Strait, remained under British control. These islands constitute two mighty bases which could be used to advan tage in event of war in virtually clos ing the Straits to unfriendly powers. In 1936 the Montreux Convention al lowed not only merchant ships but also unlimited warships of the Black Sea powers to use the Straits, and placed the use of the Straits by war ships of non-Black Sea powers on United Nations’ authority. At Yalta in 1945 and also at the meeting of Potsdam, the United States advocated complete freedom of the Black Sea, to which Russia consistently replied, “No.” How long Russia’s 250-year pressure to gain control of the Black Sea can be bottled up is a question — a modern question in Middle East affairs! A second factor contributing to Middle East disturbances is oil. Little interest in Middle East oil was shown before 1901, when an Australian financier purchased for $20,000 the oil rights for half a million square miles of Iran. By the time of World War I Britain acquired up to 56% of the interests in Middle East oil. United States was not too interested until the ’20’s when the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey announced a probable exhaustion of our own oil
FEBRUARY, 1959
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