Analysis Of The Eisenhower Administration's Middle East Policy

Eisenhower Administration is a critical period in pushing the U. S - Sovietcold war to a higher level and the turbulent situation in the Middle East in1950s is a further pushing element for the process. The administration's Middle East policy can be divided into three stagesby the Suez Crisis and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis along with the Iraq Coup. Thefirst stage's main destination is to hammer out a conciliation between Isreal andthe Arab, which failed because of the indifferent response from the two sides,in order to form an anti - Soviet union in the Middle East. At the same time,the Dulles Scheme, which is to establish a defence organization of"NorthernTier", became a target of Arab nationalism's hostility by the formation of theBaghdad Pact and Britain's participation. As a result, the administration gaveup the posibility of taking part in officially, despite its continuous material sup-port for it. After Anderson Mission failed, the administration changed its policytoward Egypt from"drawing" to"taming", which was further hardened by theEisenhower Doctrine, emphasizing the vaccum left by the Britain and France af-ter their failure in the Suez war and affording military aid, even military inter-vention, to those Arab country that determined to defend themselves from com-munism penetration. Eisenhower Doctrine push the U. S. - Soviet cold war to ahigher level by giving up the 1950 Tripartite Treaty as well as affording militaryintervention to the region.. It was not until the 1958 Lebanon Crisis and the IraqCoup that the administration rerealized the critical role of Egypt in regional poli-tics. What's more important is that, after the crisis and the coup, the situationin the Middle East changed greatly and the administration had to adopt a newMiddle East policy whose main idea is to cooperate with Arab nationalism in or-der to hold back the communism.It is easy to find out that Egypt is the core in the administration's MiddleEast policy in spite of the short period of hostility and holding back the commu-nism is one of the key goal of the Eisenhower administration.