The Eisenhower exchange, part 1: How Ike changed his views on the Middle East

” target=”_blank”>Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East (Free Press, 2016).

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Dear Professor Doran,

Your new book examines America's “rise to dominance in the Middle East” in the Eisenhower period. My first introductory question: Why is this a good time to revisit Eisenhower and discuss his Middle East policy? What would you like your readers, and present-day America, to learn from Ike and his attitude toward the region?

Yours,

Shmuel

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Dear Shmuel,

No administration has been more dedicated, in word and deed, to the proposition that Israel is a drag on the United States than the Eisenhower administration. For six years, Ike followed a policy designed, in the words of his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, to “deflate the Jews.” Largely unknown is the fact that Ike changed course. As he became increasingly informed about Middle East politics, his attitude softened, and he began to view Israel as an asset in the Cold War. In fact, it was actually Eisenhower who laid the intellectual seeds of the “special relationship” that flowered under Kennedy. 

Eisenhower and his top officials defined themselves in opposition to Harry Truman. In their eyes, Truman had been recklessly pro-Israel, pandering to the domestic Jewish vote when the national interests of the United States dictated a pro-Arab policy. This attitude was clearly expressed at a meeting of the National Security Council in 1958, when Dulles reviewed the history of the administration’s attitude toward peace making. Logically, Dulles explained, the best way to counter the Soviet Union would be for the United States to court the Arab position, which called for the elimination of Israel. But such a policy was impossible, because “the state of Israel was in fact the darling of Jewry throughout the world, and world Jewry was a formidable force indeed.” Under the circumstances, he continued, the administration had done the best it could: it “had gone further in trying to moderate the policy and position of Israel, and to show greater sympathy for the Arabs” than the previous administration. Still, the influence of the Jews restricted its room for maneuver. “The best proof of the potency of international Jewry,” Dulles reasoned, was the fact “that the Soviet Union, while constantly hinting to the Arab states that it will agree to help the Arabs to dismember Israel, has never actually come out publicly with such a statement of support.” The Jews were so powerful that they were tying the hands of both superpowers simultaneously.  “Accordingly, if the USSR doesn't dare to tackle this situation forthrightly, other nations must approach the problem with care too,” Dulles said.

While Eisenhower never shared Dulles’s views on the power of world Jewry, he did buy the notion that tacking away from Israel was vital to winning over the Arabs. Ike’s Gamble tells how Eisenhower gradually but steadily realized that this idea had destructive results. Its inlfuence on policy reached its logical conclusion at the climax of the Suez crisis, in October 1956, when Britain, France and Israel launched coordinated attacks against Egypt. Eisenhower didn't just oppose the war. Working in parallel with the Soviet Union, he brought the British economy to the brink of destruction and demanded that Britain, France, and Israel stop in their tracks and evacuate Egypt immediately. The invaders buckled under the pressure. American policy thus handed Nasser the victory of his life, and the Egyptian leader’s reputation in Arab politics skyrocketed to mythic heights. How did he repay the American president for his support? By becoming more radical, more anti-Western and more pro-Soviet.  In 1958, Dulles ruefully observed that Nasser “has become the hero of the masses because he has enjoyed an unbroken series of successes, due largely to our support.” Eisenhower wholeheartedly agreed. 

No two periods are identical, but there is a startling similarity between the 1950s and our own era. Then, as now, a new order was forming in the Middle East. Popular movements were challenging the status quo, and a communications revolution increased their power. Unlike the Islamist movements that confront us today, these movements were nationalist in nature, and it was the transistor radio, not Facebook and Twitter, that energized them. The result, however, was the same. The earth began to shake beneath the Arab leaders.

And it is not just the conditions in the Middle East that are similar. When Barack Obama took office, his mental map bore a strong family resemblance to Ike’s. George W. Bush, he believed, had moved too close to Israel, just as Truman had in Ike's eyes. More generally, Bush had pursued a Middle East policy that was excessively militarized. To win back the trust of the Arabs and Muslims, therefore, Obama distanced himself from Israel while dissociating the United States from “imperialistic” policies of his predecessor. While he set to work on these projects, the Arab world exploded in ways that no one saw coming, and that no one had seen since the 1950s. Just like Eisenhower, Obama experienced a wave of revolution that laid bare the hitherto invisible drivers of Arab politics. History repeated itself, except that Obama never drew Ike’s lessons.