Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States pledged to give increased economic and military aid to receptive Middle Eastern countries and to protect - with US armed forces if necessary - the territorial integrity and political independence of these nations from the threat of ""international communism"". Salim Yaqub demonstrates that although the United States officially aimed to protect the Middle East from Soviet encroachment, the Eisenhower Doctrine had the unspoken mission of containing the radical Arab nationalism ...
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Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States pledged to give increased economic and military aid to receptive Middle Eastern countries and to protect - with US armed forces if necessary - the territorial integrity and political independence of these nations from the threat of ""international communism"". Salim Yaqub demonstrates that although the United States officially aimed to protect the Middle East from Soviet encroachment, the Eisenhower Doctrine had the unspoken mission of containing the radical Arab nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom Eisenhower regarded as an unwitting agent of Soviet expansionism. By offering aid and protection, the Eisenhower administration hoped to convince a majority of Arab governments to side openly with the West in the Cold War, thus isolating Nasser and decreasing the likelihood that the Middle East would fall under Soviet domination. Employing a wide range of declassified Egyptian, British and American archival sources, Yaqub offers a comprehensive account of Eisenhower's efforts to counter Nasserism's appeal throughout the Arab Middle East. Challenging interpretations of US-Arab relations that emphasize cultural antipathies and clashing values, Yaqub instead argues that the political dispute between the United States and the Nasserist movement occurred within a shared moral framework - a pattern that continues to characterize US-Arab controversies in the 21st century.
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This book is a worthwhile study of the time when Nasser's ideal of Arab independence from European neo-colonialism was riding high, when it could rouse entire populations behind any governments that claimed (or really did) to stand for it. It had a lot to do with the ideals behind the non-Aligned movement, established at the Bandung conference of 1955, Nasser and Tito its best known proponents. But the book also deals with the sad unraveling of it all, when the victories of Israel over the UAR pushed them further into the Soviets' arms, making them dependent on Soviet military and economic aid, as they saw Israel getting closer to the US, and itself become dependent on US military aid. In other words, the CW did away with any hopes of real sovereignty in the region, and even to this day most countries there need the US or Russia for the survival of their regimes and in some cases the defense of their territory.
