Let me begin by warning you that this article is rather straightforward yet too historical- and political- based. It will briefly link the core value that the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919 has thoroughly celebrated with what Kuwait, mainly through its effective 'soft power' instruments, could lead within the general framework of the modern-day Middle East.

On a cold winter day on January 18th 1919, the Big Four - the great four Allied Powers represented by the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy - alongside representatives of more than thirty nation-states were present in Paris, France. The series of conferences that took place thereafter until June 1919 were not only to shape the European continent but rather, in fact much more importantly to the Middle East at least, the entire international stage. Now, after having been recently told about, and thus read reviews of, Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919," the question this article would like to propose circulates around the importance of idealist universal organizations to the international platform. Could peace be imposed through organizations built by conferences and top-down power structures or does stability emerge popularly?

The Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, one of the most consequential outcomes of the Paris Peace Conference, eventually built the League of Nations as a system that would manage frictional forces after the First World War. The League of Nations, a purely Wilsonian universal organization that aimed to provide what post-WWI Europe lacked, namely ordered stability, represented a renewed world system that primarily put the concept of 'balance-of-power' as a core international relations principle. Despite its (limited) effectiveness, the League of Nations, however, carried numerous miscalculations; the unjoining of the United States, the tough penalization of Germany as well as imperial/colonial influences all determined not only the collapse of the idealist organization but also further instability within the disunited continent. The collapse of the League of Nations brought forward the birth of multiple portrayals of how idealism could interlink different nation-states through common interests. Like the pre-League of Nations Europe during the Great War (1914-1918), and definitely like the pre-Treaty of Westphalia Europe during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the Middle East today is being challenged by unprecedented turmoil.

A number of well-known scholars have advocated the 'necessity' of creating a creative regional system that would manage the disorders that the general framework of the modern-day Middle East clearly, inevitably carries. As political shifts take place, causing unique disturbances, and as influential forces are constantly being renewed, institutions that manage how the shifts and forces operate should also be reorganized - based on the principle of interdependence. Kuwait, through its effective 'soft power' instruments, could lead the reorganization of the creative regional order that would manage the Middle East's frictional political operations.

By Bader Al-Dehani

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