Outside forces have played a major part in the birth and development of Middle Eastern states as well as in shaping the environment in which these states have operated. Since Napoleon’s intervention in Egypt in the late 18th century, European powers have been an important part of the Middle East’s make-up – its politics, socio-economic development and external orientation. It was the European powers who took control of significant areas of the region from the 19th century, and they gave rise to the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and shared its spoils in the early 20th century. It was the same set of European powers that formed new states from territories under their control. But in the second half of the 20th century, the nature of outside intervention changed somewhat. As a penetrated regional system, the Middle East, for all its active internal dynamics (nationalism, the Arab-Israeli War, etc.), was by the 1950s subject to the influence of strategically-driven calculations made by the world’s two superpowers: the US and the USSR. The superpowers’ calculations not only directly affected politics of the region, but also the environment where the local forces were taking shape. For over a generation, the Cold War between superpowers was the framework of the Middle East’s regional system, from North Africa in the west to the borders of the Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia.