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The Sykes-Picot agreement back in 1916 was absolutely intended to cause war. There were literally no set borders in the Arabian peninsula before it.
Divide and conquer was the game plan of western powers from the start
Many historians attribute the downfall of middle eastern empires to 18th century technological stagnation compared to both western and eastern adversaries, just under two centuries prior to the sykes-picot agreement.
The east has had just as much with destroying the middle east as the west, and arguably far more during the time of the USSR.
Fair point, the influence of the USSR middle eastern politics is something that isn't given as much credit as it should.
Also you're unfortunately absolutely 100% right on the technological stagnation. We had some geniuses here back in the day compared to where we are now! The word "algorithm" straight up has it's etymology going back to the name of a mathematician named "al-khawarizmi". The word ALGEBRA STRAIGHT UP GOES BACK TO THE NAME OF ONE OF HIS WORKS "Al Jabr".
Which means we are unfortunately also to blame as the root cause of the current garbage state of AI Large Language Models. Apologies.
I truly believe that education is the most important thing if you want to keep progress from stagnating. People here got lazy after the knowledge gap set in place by the divide of the Ottoman Empire, and then even lasier after the wealth gap caused by the discovery of oil & gas
"A Line in the Sand" by James Barr is a good book on the topic, it goes into how the rivalry between Britain and France wound up with them attempting to carvr up the middle east between them after the fall of the ottoman empire.
War and destabilisation of the Arabian population was the outcome, but I think it is highly reductive to say it was the intent, for one that would imply some level of cooperation beteen the colonial powers against the native populations when they regarded each other as bitter enemies and didn't really regard the people of the middle east at all.
Every step taken by Britain and France was with the aim increase or secure their territory while undermining the other. A lot of these steps were training arming and funding of local military/gorillas/terrorists opposed to the other country, but usually these were inflaming and exploiting existing religious/ethnic/tribal tensions rather than manufacturing them from nothing or drafting into an officially military force, which has the unpleasant property that even after the colonial powers have departed, the trainings traditions and blood feuds continue.
You're right about the war statement not being clear. What I should have said is that they regarded us as a "tool of war" that can be used to meet their end goal.
And you're definitely right about their dividing of the people through focusing on differences, but some additional differences did stem solely from these border divisions.
As an example, many Lebanese & North African Arabic colloquial words for something are just the French word for it. I'm not saying that those are the kind of differences that could rip a nation apart, but that the differences instilled by British & French colonialism still remain to this day