How Did The Cold War Influence The MENA

During the cold war rivalry between the US and USSR influenced the MENA by making everyone either pick a side or be chosen by the rivalists. To us it was clear Israel was aligned with the US, but the soviets not so much. As the cold war didn’t warm up between the two actual nations of the Soviet Union and United States, the war was fought by proxy. The Korean war, the Vietnam war were examples of this but neither regions had enough resources or opposition to the US needed to justify the long term involvement that was and still is seen in the MENA. In the MENA there is oil, multiple countries that can have problems, and contrary to popular belief, there still are people in the region that want to kill us.
During the cold war Israel aligned with the US and Egypt aligned with the USSR. This served to shape the MENAs need to be one way or another, but not neutral.
Israel had their war of independence in 1948 and in 1949 declared it, but after that everyone saw how many Palestinians were killed and ousted from their land.
To the Israelis, what they did seemed righteous and necessary, but the Palestinians who had been there for years prior to the Zionists infiltration in the region were suddenly 700,000 refugees. The Israel was now a nation and Jews from all around the world went to live there. A lot of them are from the US, but they still have family here which naturally would support the defense of Israel as part of their family might live there. Now there is a large constituency of Jews in America that not only support Israel, but oppose anything not pro-Israeli. The US pretty much has to align with Israel even if what it did was wrong, and the Palestinians are going to see the US as an enemy and spread to other countries in hope of getting those countries to ally against Israel. This will create some of anti-US, anti-Israel groups but also
identify those that aren’t fully opposed, and can be worked with. So the US backing this one little country Israel was very polarizing in the region. There are those that could be friendly to the US, but if you are a country that isn’t friendly with the US or Israel or wanting to ally with anyone, the USSR would love to be friendly with you. The soviets needed proxies too especially since the US had already been in the region already. The soviets had Egypt, but that was one country and land for peace would occur at the Camp David accords. There needed to be more communists in the region and so the soviets looked to Afghanistan, right by Iran where the soviets had looked for oil back when Stalin was in power.
The soviets wanted an established presence in the region by way of Afghanistan. They sent in advisors and promoted communism in Afghanistan. The US did not like this, so we trained and equipped the mujahedeen, that was used to repel the soviets invasion, and they were anti-communist. The mujahedeen was composed of local, highly Islamic fighters that we at the time supported because they were opposed to the soviets being in Afghanistan, but we ideologically didn’t like them because they weren’t in favor of a secular democratic government. The soviets liked Afghanistan because it had oil and more importantly was socialist at a time. The biggest influence the rivalry of the US and USSR in Afghanistan did to influence the MENA was change how everyone viewed them. While short term it made sense to back an anti-communist force like the mujahedeen in the repulsion of the soviets, in the long term the US strengthened a minority radical faction that it clearly wouldn’t have without that immediate need. This makes the US look bad and untrustworthy. It looks like the US is in the region to keep itself safer from communism rather than to support free democratic governments that it claimed to. Further a new problem was created that has spread to other countries in the MENA. This small radical group, the Mujahedeen, is now equipped and trained, but without the US needing them for anti-communism, they could go back to fighting for what they really want, united Islamic government. By the US supporting the mujahedeen the MENA was influenced by the rivalry resulting in distrust and a radical militant group.