Yes. Exactly. I read a biography of Lawrence of Arabia, where the French and British keep kow-towing to the Sykes-Picot agreement about who was going to control which section of Mesopotamia. This in complete contrast to the actual facts on the ground, where Feisal's (and Lawrence's) Arabs kept taking more territory. And yet -- Sykes-Picot! Put together and signed by two 2nd-tier foreign office flunkies.

Then, a friend who works for an oil company showed me the map that the oil companies of the 1900s had worked out between themselves for who was going to develop what oil reserves. And the Sykes-Picot agreement, it turned out, was just the governments of France and Britain signing off on the oil companies' agreements. All became plain! The Arabs were screwed before they even got into the fight.