In 1956, in Egypt the Suez canal became the focus of a major world crisis. The canal represents the only direct means of travel from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, making it vital to the flow of trade between Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. Normally, free passage was granted to all who used the canal, but Britain and France desired control of it. The new leader of Egypt believed that the canal should be under egyptian control, so Britain, France, joined forces with Israel (a long time enemy of egypt) and launched attacks on the canal. For Canada, the Suez Crisis presented a particularly worrying state of affairs as it jeopardized the relationship between its two most important allies.
Britain had recently removed its troop from the area around the canal, so Nasser decided to nationalise the canal and impose a toll which he could use to fund the dam. Many countries would be influenced by how Britain reacted to this and relied upon Anthony Eden and the conservative party to make the decision. Anthony Eden became prime minister as a member of the conservative party after serving as foreign secretary during World War II. He decided firm action was needed against Nasser’s nationalisation of the Canal and decided to act independently against him, this decision was bound to annoy the USA who were currently involved in the Cold War with Russia, Eisenhower was furious at Britain and at the start of November America pressure fuelled a run on the pound, so that 15% of Britain’s gold and dollar reserves quickly disappeared. As Eden made this decision, many blamed him directly for the outcome rather than the conservative party.
Ramesses II had many war campaigns. “Soldiers who served Ramessess made up one of the worlds earliest large scale armies.”(Nardo, 59) Their most renown rival were the Hittites, “Many cities such as Kadesh had moved their allegiance to the hittitie king”(Nardo,57) Ramesses II moved to attack territory in the Levant which was enemy territory of the Hittite Empire. “He was eager to dislodge the Hittities and their influence from Syria.” (Nardo, 64) Ramesses's forces were ambushed and outnumbered at Kadesh by the Hittites. He fought the battle to a tie and returned home a hero. The Battle of Kadesh was a personal achievement for Ramesses.
During this, Sadat met with Gamal Abdel Nasser, who would end up ruling Egypt later on. Both Sadat and Nasser bonded very well and formed a revolutionary group that was designed to overthrow the British rule over Egypt and expel them from the country. However, before their revolutionary group succeeded, the British became aware of Sadat’s involvement which resulted in Sadat being arrested and jailed by the British in 1942. Sadat would end up escaping imprisonment two years later, yet in 1946 was caught and arrested once again; this time after being implicated in the assassination of pro-British minister Amin Uthman. Sadat would remain in jail until 1948.
CIA Beach Party: The Bay of Pigs By: Lee Mcginnis [pic] The United States Central Intelligence Agency spent its first two decades dealing with Communist incursions into western spheres of power in the same way: over throwing foreign governments from within. This response was the US golden standard until the CIA decided to try this against the great white whale of Communism in the western hemisphere: Castro’s Cuba. This doomed to fail from the start plan was executed in a series of errors that led several hundred Cuban exiles to slaughter against Cuba’s Military and bring the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon and signal a falling out of favor of the CIA among American government for the next twenty years until the Soviet
[1] Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919, and was printed in The League of Nations Treaty Series. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war (along with Austria and Hungary, according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Trianon, respectively) and, under the terms of articles 231–248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay heavy reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US $442 billion or UK £284 billion in 2012), a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay. [2][3] The final payments ended up being made on 4 October 2010,[4] the 20th anniversary of German reunification, and some 92 years after the end of the war for which they were exacted.
Causes of Six Day War (5th – 10th June) Arab refusal to recognise Israel since 48 and rise of Arab Nationalism is important in understanding long term reason for war. Arabs suffer humiliation in ‘48 – ‘49 conflict and this leads to Nasser and Arab Nationalism in ‘52, further military humiliation in Suez Crisis but political victory for Nasser. Although long term it explains Nov ‘66 Syrian Egyptian Mutual Defence treaty which is a more short term leading to Egyptian deployment of troops on May 15 after false Russian report. Israeli confidence – arrogance makes them provocative and overreact important in understanding Israel’s role in causing the conflict; Israel had emerged from 1948 war as a fighting Jew and it was determined that its Arab neighbours should get used to the idea that even if they haven’t recognised it’s right to exist it was not worth fighting Israel, Dayan said in 1976 interview that Israel provoked 80% of conflicts like the 7th April ‘67 tractor incident which resulted shooting down 6 Migs and victory pass over Damascus. Importance evident from fly over Damascus and Dayan’s statement but Dayan had radical political views and often inconsistent.
EGYPT’S ROLE IN THE ARAB SPRING The world has been watching a very important political event called the “Arab Spring” since 18th of December, 2010. The “Arab Spring” stands for the revolutionary changes that happened in the Arab Nations, which caused the fall of many governments including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya; and protests in countries such as Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Iraq and Bahrain. It can be said that those revolts have a similar reason of occurance: those countries all lack democracy. Between all of those countries that have political problems; such as the governments being overthrown, large protests with a high death rate and civil wars; Egypt is different in one way. Egypt is a Muslim/Christian country that is situated in North-East Africa and has the population of 76 million people.
Few days before this important event had taken place, eleven states, that at that time were part of the Soviet Republic, had met in the capital-city of Kazakhstan and they all decided they will no longer be part of the USSR political entity, but they will now be part of the new interstate entity which was called the Commonwealth of the Independent States. The collapse of the history’s biggest communist bloc had mostly occurred because of the multitude of awful policies and the huge number of radical implementation of reforms. All these actions where taken by the soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whom, later on had resigned on Christmas day, thus, communism came to an end. The Soviet Union has given way to fifteen states, which can be characterized as being distributed in three partial geo-systems: 1. The Geo-system of Eastern Europe: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia, Russia (Russian Federation).
In 1956 Sudan gained independence from Great Britain, but by then war was already starting between the north and the south. One cause to the starting of this war was the Sharia law(Sudan). The president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has been in office for 21 years. During these years Sudan has seen nothing but war, but removing Omar would only cause more conflict in Sudan. Omar’s government is under attack by combined armies of over 60,000 rebels.