The Suez Crisis
had drastically shifted the pieces on the Middle Eastern chessboard. Following
this crisis, the US realized that the image of traditional Western colonial
powers like Britain and France in the Arab world was completely shattered, and
Soviet Russia (USSR) was rapidly filling this void, increasing its prestige.
America’s Middle East Shield: The Eisenhower Doctrine (1957)
To halt this
trend, US President Eisenhower sent a historic message to the US Congress on
January 5, 1957. In this message, Eisenhower stated that after the Suez Crisis,
the USSR was close to dominating the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern oil
resources, the lifeblood of the West, thereby bringing the region under
political control and dealing a fatal blow to the Western Bloc.
With this move, which would go down in history as the Eisenhower Doctrine, the President requested authorization to provide direct economic and military aid to Middle Eastern countries, to use US armed forces directly if these countries faced an attack from communist nations, and to spend $200 million annually for this purpose.
 |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower |
How did it differ from the Truman Doctrine? Although the US first showed its interest in the Middle Eastern borders with the Truman Doctrine, that was a narrowly framed plan limited only to Türkiye and Greece, primarily envisioning “military aid.” In contrast, the Eisenhower Doctrine encompassed the entire Middle Eastern region and, most importantly, guaranteed that these countries would be defended against communism personally by the US, under the condition of “the actual use of American troops when necessary.”
Through this doctrine, the US completely filled the power vacuum left by Britain and France (following the Suez fiasco) and stepped up against the USSR as the new protector of the Middle East. However, the doctrine split the Arab world in two: while Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, Türkiye, Greece, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco supported the plan; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, swept by nationalist winds, reacted strongly against it.
|
The Doctrine’s
First Test: The Lebanon Crisis (1958) The
first major crisis where the Eisenhower Doctrine was put to the test erupted
shortly after. During the 1957 general elections in Lebanon, pro-Western
President Camille Chamoun rigged the elections to install a parliament that
would extend his term for another 4 years, and on top of that, he accepted
the Eisenhower Doctrine. This created a massive political crisis in the
country. With
the country on the brink of civil war, President Chamoun immediately appealed
to the US, Britain, and France, claiming that everything happening was the
result of “foreign intervention” (specifically by neighbouring Syria, and
indirectly the USSR/Egypt alliance), and requested urgent military aid for
Lebanon. The US,
initially reluctant to engage in direct military intervention, changed its
mind when the balance in the region suddenly turned upside down. The bloody
coup in Iraq that toppled the pro-Western monarchy and heavily damaged the
Baghdad Pact, the Western shield in the Middle East, threw the US into a
panic. Consequently, the US invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine and landed
exactly 15,000 American troops in Lebanon. Under
the show of force by the American navy and troops, coupled with diplomatic
pressure, President Chamoun agreed to drop his bid to extend his term. The
crisis subsided when the Chief of Staff, Fuad Chehab, who was respected by
all factions, was elected as the new president by the Lebanese parliament.
With this, we have concluded that first decade which
drew the borders of the Middle East in blood: the establishment of Israel, the
devastating toll of the Arab-Israeli wars, the imperialist debacle at Suez, and
the Eisenhower Doctrine, which marked direct US military intervention in the
region. We saw step-by-step how the unending fire between Israel and Palestine
was first stoked, and how Iran, attempting to claim its own oil, was silenced
by a coup. Our new series: Developments in the Far East. |
