The middle east and the cold war Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The middle east and the cold war - Essay Example The Middle East, owing to its strategic geographical location and abundant energy resources, particularly oil reserves, played a crucial role even during World War II. Despite the imperialistic presence of Britain in the Middle East at the time of the Cold War, the United States also wanted to establish its superpower status in the Middle East (Khalidi). Following the decline of British and French political forces in the Middle East in the years after the World War II and beginning from the 1950s, the two superpowers namely the Soviet Union and America sought to establish their authority in the region. The United States through the Truman Doctrine protested the Soviet and communist influence in the Middle Eastern regions of Greece and Turkey and volunteered to help restrict Soviet actions in the regions. This was soon followed by other doctrines such as the Eisenhower Doctrine that focused on the conflicts between the Arab’s and Israeli’s and the Nixon Doctrine which re sulted in the Persian Gulf policy that ensured regional stability in the Gulf following threats from the Soviet Union. During the Carter Administration, the President wanted to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and sought the help of the Soviet Union to play a constructive role in the process. The cooperation with the Soviet Union was one of the highpoints of the Carter administration which also included the joint issue of a statement that stressed the need for a permanent settlement between the Arab’s and Israeli’s. It also called upon a reconvention of the Geneva conference (Reich and Gotowicki). Following the undertaking of the Sadat initiative by the American government to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, the Carter administration turned its focus on the Gulf region which by then has witnessed several events such as the Iranian revolution, issue of American hostages and the invasion of the Afghanistan by the Soviet. These events raised concerns about the true

Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Report - Essay Example The report will also seek to examine the impact of British popular culture on people outside Britain. The extent to which British popular culture is prevailing in the offshore of Britain, how it is conceived by non-British, the level of influence British popular culture has on strangers and aspects of the phenomenon of popular culture that should be held on to and those that need to be scraped shall all be outlined in this report. The British Popular Culture in the International Status Britain is a highly respectable world force. Britain is also a dominant world force with a lot of influence all over the world. This respect, dominance and respect makes concepts, ideas, and perception that have British origination have a lot of following the world over. The same is true about British culture. Storey (1994) notes that British popular culture have gained international status because it is adhered and practiced by most countries the world over. Prempeh (2005) posits that parts of the int ernational regions where Britain has more following are countries that were once colonised by Britain: thus commonwealth countries. Special mention can be made of countries such as Australia, Ghana, Nigeria, Bahamas, Dominica and Canada. Undeniably, the most common areas of British lifestyle and culture that have so much dominance in international countries and more especially British colonies are education, language, sports, fashion, music and in some cases, governance system. The practice of these systems and culture in international cycles contributes largely to the popularity and dominance of Britain in world politics. The practice of British popular culture in the international arena has in no uncertain terms made Britain popular and worth calling a standard. Even as British popular culture continues to grow in international circles, what needs to be done is a careful scrutiny of how UK as a people can amass deserving profits from the phenomenon. Reports and researches of this kind must continue to show the way worthy of advancing. With such reports and researches, it is also important not to pay attention to popular culture’s positive influence on society but also seek to identify pitfalls, if any so that necessary adjustments can be made on them to make British popular culture all-beneficial. History of popular culture in the UK – The development of popular culture in the UK The Guardian (2000) suggests that Popular Culture had been with Britain long before the term was even espoused. The Guardian notes hat popular culture had been â€Å"preserved in the amber of high literature and art are the traces of the lower amusements of the past.† In this direction, special mention is made of â€Å"Shakespeare, Hogarth or Dickens and you can see the remnants of popular diversions: ballads and songs, fairs and pantomimes, sports and ingenious forms of cruelty to animals† (The Guardian, 2000). Meyer (2008) adds up to this assertion as s he makes reference to the First World War saying â€Å"Much of the scholarship examining British culture of the First World War focuses on the 'high' culture of a limited number of novels, memoirs, plays and works of art, and the cultural reaction to them.† These perceptions that popular cultur