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The Eisenhower doctrine

By the mid-1950s the Cold War had undergone a transformation. Stalin's death in March 1953

ushered in a period of transition for the Soviet Union, prompting the Kremlin's new leadership to

stabilize its own power as well as Moscow's position with regard to the NATO alliance. Yet changes

in the international arena would encourage those men, as well as their counterparts in the West, to

view the developing world as a new site for East-West competition. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

would engage the Soviets in that global battle for hearts and minds, a conflict that threatened to

become particularly fierce in a region vital to U.S. national security: the Middle East. Eisenhower's

January 1957 pledge to defend that region from "any country controlled by international

communism" recalled his predecessor's commitment to "support free peoples" resisting foreign

aggression. Eisenhower's willingness to commit American troops to that project went beyond what

Truman had offered in March 1947; still, both statements were cut from the same cloth. Working

from the premises of the Truman Doctrine while extending its range of policy options, Eisenhower

added his name to a growing list of policymakers whose statements had risen to the level of

American political doctrine.

Like the Monroe and Truman Doctrines, the Eisenhower Doctrine grew out of a specific set of

historical circumstances. Since 1946 the United States had sought to counter Soviet encroachment

in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; its program of assistance to Greece and Turkey, as well

as its rhetorical defense of Iran, served to keep those nations within the Western orbit.

Efforts to strengthen anticommunist forces in the region fell through, however, as Arab support for

a Middle Eastern defense organization foundered over U.S. aid to Israel. Failure to erect a security

structure for the Middle East in generaland for Western oil interests in particularloomed large

as the tide of anticolonialism grew in that part of the world.

Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser would rise to power on the force of anticolonialism, and the

attraction of Nasser's equally potent message of pan-Arabism would pose further challenges to

Western interests. The Eisenhower administration equated Nasser's radicalism and anti-

imperialism with communism and hoped to contain the spread of those forces, a project of equal

interest to Britain. In an effort to foster pro-Western sentiment, Britain tied itself to Iraq, Iran,

Turkey, and Pakistaneach a nation bordering the Soviet Unionin a mutual defense organization

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known as the Baghdad Pact. Tensions in the region continued to ratchet upward as Nasser received

arms from Czechoslovakia and, more dramatically, nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. The

ensuing crisis over Suez damaged British and French prestige, embarrassed the United States, and

resulted in a propaganda windfall for Egypt and the Soviet Union. Political power in the region thus

seemed to be swinging away from the West and toward the communist world.

Eisenhower attempted to reverse that trend in early 1957. Addressing a joint session of Congress on

5 January, the president outlined what came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, a plan of

action for combating communism in the Middle East. A resolution designed to implement the

doctrine authorized the president to provide economic and military cooperation and assistance to

"any nation or group of nations in the general area of the Middle East" fighting to maintain their

independence. Money for that initiative, amounting to $200 million, would come from funds

previously earmarked for the Military Security Act of 1954. Aside from providing economic aid, the

resolution granted the president the option of using armed force "to assist any such nation or group

of nations requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by

international communism." After months of sometimes pointed debatewith lawmakers

questioning both the imminence of communist aggression and the wisdom of granting the president

a blank check for engaging U.S. forcesCongress passed the resolution, providing the commander

in chief with the tools needed to carry out the nation's foreign policy.

The administration would invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine a number of times over the course of the

following two years. A political crisis in Jordan, which involved King Hussein's ouster of pro-Soviet

members from his cabinet in April 1957, provided the first opportunity for doing so. Claiming that

Jordan's independence was vital to the United States, Eisenhower ordered the Sixth Fleet into the

eastern Mediterranean. When stability returned to Jordanian politics, Eisenhower attributed that

relative tranquility to the American show of force. The administration would deploy naval and air

units to the region for a second time in 1957, as Syria's acquisition of Soviet arms generated concern

for the future independence of Turkey and Lebanon. Once again the conflict receded, and once

again Eisenhower ascribed that development to American resolve.

Tensions in the region remained high nevertheless, with Nasserism adding a potent ingredient to

the East-West conflict. Lebanon would bear the brunt of that mix when an internal political struggle

mushroomed into an international one. President Camille Chamoun initiated that conflict in 1958,

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when he tried to circumvent the Lebanese constitution and extend his hold on power. Fearing a loss

of control, Chamoun appealed to the United States for support under the Eisenhower Doctrine,

citing Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs as a pretext for his request. For six weeks the United

States did not oblige him. It was not until 14 July, when a coup in Iraq installed a Nasserite and pro-

Soviet regime in Baghdad, that the administration acted. Responding to Chamoun's renewed calls

for support, and coming on the heels of British aid to Jordan, the United States inserted fifteen

thousand troops into Lebanon, the clearest application of the Eisenhower Doctrine to date.

Some have argued that Eisenhower's Eurocentrism and unfamiliarity with regional concerns

blinded him to Middle Eastern realities, making him too willing to interpret the region's nationalist

movements as hostile to U.S. interests. Much of this stemmed from Eisenhower's equating of

Nasserism with communism. The president, in fact, attributed the Lebanese turbulence to the work

of communist elements, a development that, he believed, threatened to engulf the entire region. His

fear was that a single communist success might precipitate a domino-like chain reaction in which

the governments of Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia would each fall to the forces of Nasserism.

Invoking the Munich analogy as well as the domino metaphor, Eisenhower declared Lebanon to be

the victim of "indirect aggression from without," aggression that spelled trouble for pro-Western

forces from Europe to Asia. His decision to send in the marines, therefore, stemmed largely from

those broader concerns.

It is far from clear whether the destabilization of Lebanon would have resulted in the domino-like

scenario Eisenhower envisioned. Nor is it clear whether anti-Western or pro-Soviet elements in the

region would have been as hostile to America as Eisenhower imagined. Scholars have pointed to

Iraqi general Karim Kassem as a case in point. Although Kassem would sign a defense treaty with

Egypt and take his country out of the Baghdad Pact, Iraq emerged from the crisis as less ensconced

in the Soviet camp than first believed. Neither of those measuresneither the arms deal nor the

abrogation of the defense treatyindicated complete subservience to the Kremlin. Moreover, while

Kassem did increase his ties with Moscow, he also increased the flow of Iraqi oil to the West, hardly

the response of an out-and-out Soviet lackey.

Historians have likewise questioned the wisdom of dispatching the U.S. Sixth Fleet to the eastern

Mediterranean. While that show of force was supposed to deter Syria from meddling in Jordanian,

Lebanese, and Iraqi politics, the move backfired, according to some historians, encouraging greater

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Arab unity in the face of Western intervention. Other scholars have claimed that the Eisenhower

Doctrine sought to combat a threat that was largely imaginary. Nasser had no great affinity for the

Soviet Union, and even less for Marxism. Rather, his anticolonialism was directed largely at Britain

and Francenot at the United Statesleading Eisenhower to squander whatever good will he might

have had with the Egyptian leader. Still others have cited Eisenhower's own actions as testaments to

his doctrine's futility. Six months after the marines landed in Lebanon, they point out, the

administration was reevaluating its entire approach to the Middle East, choosing to work with, and

not against, Arab nationalism. By 1958 the Eisenhower administration was funneling over $150

million in aid to Egypt, hardly the result one would have expected prior to the doctrine's

enunciation.

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