{"id":37194,"date":"2019-01-14T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T06:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37194"},"modified":"2018-12-24T10:22:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T15:22:15","slug":"qotd-eisenhowers-middle-east-policy-about-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/14\/qotd-eisenhowers-middle-east-policy-about-face\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Eisenhower’s Middle East policy about-face"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike some American presidents, however, Eisenhower learned from his mistakes. In 1958, five years after being sworn into office, he reversed course. Rather than suck up to Egypt, Ike deployed American Marines to Lebanon to shore up President Camille Chamoun, who was under siege by Nasser\u2019s local allies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Lebanon,\u201d Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, \u201cthe question was whether it would be better to incur the deep resentment of nearly all of the Arab world (and some of the rest of the Free World) and in doing so risk general war with the Soviet Union or to do something worse \u2014 which was to do nothing.\u201d That is almost verbatim what the British said to justify their own war against Nasser when Eisenhower slapped them with crippling sanctions.<\/p>\n

Reality forced the United States into a total about-face. Ike\u2019s entire Middle Eastern worldview collapsed. Even before sending the Marines to Lebanon he announced that America was taking Britain\u2019s place as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. He had to start over even if he didn\u2019t want to. \u201cNasser,\u201d Doran writes, \u201cthe giant who rose from the Suez Crisis, crushed Eisenhower\u2019s doctrine like a cigarette under his shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened between the Suez Crisis and Eisenhower\u2019s intervention in Lebanon? A couple of things.<\/p>\n

Ike\u2019s hope to bring Syria into the American orbit alongside Turkey and Pakistan collapsed in spectacular fashion. So many Syrians swooned over Nasser after Egypt\u2019s victory in the Suez Canal that Syria, astonishingly, allowed itself to be annexed by Cairo. Egypt and Syria became one country\u2014the United Arab Republic\u2014with Nasser as the dictator of both.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s attempt to groom Saudi Arabia as a regional counterbalance to Egypt also hit the skids when Nasser accused the Saudis of trying to assassinate him and foment a military coup in Damascus. The Saudis responded by shoving King Saud aside and replacing him with his Nasserist younger brother, Crown Prince Faisal.<\/p>\n

The final blow came with the brutal overthrow of the pro-Western Hashemite monarchy in Iraq and the mutilation of the royal family\u2019s corpses in public, thus toppling the last pillar of America\u2019s anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East. Eisenhower had no choice but to stop being clever and return to the first rule of foreign policy: reward your friends and punish your enemies.<\/p>\n

Michael J. Totten, “We Are Still Living With Eisenhower\u2019s Biggest Mistake”, The Tower Magazine<\/em><\/a>, 2017-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike some American presidents, however, Eisenhower learned from his mistakes. In 1958, five years after being sworn into office, he reversed course. Rather than suck up to Egypt, Ike deployed American Marines to Lebanon to shore up President Camille Chamoun, who was under siege by Nasser\u2019s local allies. \u201cIn Lebanon,\u201d Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,370,41,13],"tags":[1092,588,680,694],"class_list":["post-37194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-middle-east","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-dwightdeisenhower","tag-egypt","tag-lebanon","tag-syria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9FU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37195,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37194\/revisions\/37195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}