The Soviet Union had the Eastern Bloc. The West would soon have NATO. And what did the Middle Eastern countries, suddenly the focus of the world’s attention for the two-thirds of the world’s oil under their sand, have? They formed the Arab League. Originally it was a creation of the British, who controlled most of that part of the world until the outset of WW II: in exchange for pan-Arabian assistance during the war, Britain promised to sponsor a union of Arab states.

On this day, March 22, in 1945, Britain made good on its promise: official representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, North Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan (Jordan and Palestine) signed the pact establishing an Arab League. Their stated goal was to  “[D]raw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate collaboration between them, [and] to safeguard their independence and sovereignty.”

The organization grew into a force of its own in the postwar year, to its present-day status as an arbiter of political conflicts in the region. The Arab league recently sent a monitoring force to Syria to end the bloodshed between government troops and civilians, but when the violence failed to stop or even quiet down, the League withdrew its monitors, causing Syria to lose a vital part of its international legitimacy.