Orgs #7 - WEEK 9 ORGS#7 Why Work Together Culture Binds...

WEEK 9
ORGS #7
Why Work Together: Culture
 Binds together by cultural identity
o Important because they are mostly very big – some of the biggest
supranationalist organizations
o They don’t do that much though – bordering on wildly unsuccessful
 3 major ones – Arab League, Organization of American States, African Union
 Arab League – League of Arab States
o Regional organization based on “Arabness”
o Arab is an ethnicity and a language
 Most Arab’s are Islamic
o Started up in 1945 – after WW2
o Original members  Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria,
Yemen
 Classic core right there in the center of the Arabian Peninsula
o Expanded to incorporate 22 states altogether and 4 observer states
o The main goal of the league is to draw closer the relations between
member states and coordinate collaboration between them to
safeguard their independent sovereignty and to consider in a general
way, the concerns and interest of the Arab people and countries
 He mocks this organization because this group has
accomplished little to nothing, they mostly fight
 They get together once a year and fight, usually someone
storms out
 They kicked Egypt out of its group after it recognized Israel –
they have since been let back in
 At two different points, Libya straight up quit under the general
leader Muammar Gaddafi
 He even switched dressing from military garb to African
dress
o The Arab League contains most of the OPEC members – Algeria, Libya,
Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran
 This means they should have a lot of economic and political
clout in the world
 They used to – effectively called an embargo to the US and
Western Europe in 1973
 Sparked a whole oil crisis
 First and last time they ever did it
 They could have tremendous power if they just worked together
o If anything there is more conflict than there was when they started this
league
o Does the world want them to be a better organization?

 This is perhaps the reason they haven’t worked together well yet
 The outside world has no vested interest in all of the middle east
speaking as a collective because they would make decisions that
would make the rest of the countries unhappy
 Certainly wouldn’t make Israel happy because of what they
would come up to save their Palestine conflict
 Organization of American States
o Headquartered in D.C.
o 35 member states of the Americas
o They are fine-tuned and focused on what they do
 Goals – to strengthen democracy, work for peace, and defend
human rights
o The group that oversees elections all throughout the Americas
 Cuba may or may not be a member – they were at a time and
got kicked out
