The Middle East: Its Location and Delimitation

Abstract

Free of loaded value judgements, the word pairs East-West and Orient-Occident refer to the points of the compass where the sun rises and sets. In terms of cultural history, however, they express a centuries-old cultural tension between the Islamic Orient and the Christian Occident.¹ The term ‘Middle East’, however, is a modern political term, the often very loose geographical definition of a region that — as a geopolitical entity — came into being in the course of recent history, and that is hence expandable and contractible. The terms ‘Middle East’ or ‘Near East’ used in European languages are only meaningful from the European perspective. If one is travelling from India or China to Cairo or Damascus, one is moving westwards, and yet one speaks incorrectly in geographical terms of a journey to the Middle East. This term came about in the narrow context of the imperial interests of European colonial powers. The present-day superpowers, the USA and to a certain extent the former Soviet Union, have adopted it, despite the fact that it is inappropriate to their geographical location. When, during the Iran Contra scandal of 1986–87, Reagan was occupied with arms deals with Iran and Israel from Washington, or even from his ranch in Santa Barbara in California on the West Coast, the vexatious region in question was certainly not in the ‘Middle’ East in relation to him. No more does Damascus lie in the ‘Middle East’ in relation to Moscow. Even in the language of international organisations, above all the United Nations (since spring 1948), this region is known as the ‘Middle East’, even after the dissolution of the European colonial empires.²