Review: Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East by Michael Doran. New York: Free Press, 2016.

Doran’s informative and well-written book chronicles the blunders of the Eisenhower Administration in dealing with the demagogue Gamal Nasser. Both men came to power at around the same time. Nasser was part of a military coup that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy that was friendly to the West. The book narrates the events leading up to the Suez Crisis of fall 1956. These events are a pivotal moment in post-World War II history and we are still suffering the consequences of the mistakes made over sixty years ago. 

Ike’s foreign policy focus was on containing the Soviet Union and other Communist states, such as Red China. He, and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, sought to prevent Soviet inroads and influence in the Middle East. The region’s oil production had already proven vital to Western Europe’s postwar economic recovery. Most of Europe’s oil imports arrive via the Suez Canal and oil pipelines that terminated on the eastern Mediterranean coast. From the early twentieth century, Middle Eastern oil reserves and transportation networks had been developed and controlled mainly by the British and French. By the early 1950s that control was beginning to weaken.

Three factors were judged by the US State Department as potential conduits for Soviet influence in the region. These issues were decolonialism, burgeoning Arab nationalism and the creation of the state of Israel. Erroneously, the new administration believed these issues were all interrelated, solvable and would require the USA as an “honest broker” to remedy. As with the overthrow of Iranian leader Mossadegh in 1953, Eisenhower’s only consideration was keeping the Soviets out of the region. European interests, commitments, strategy and even energy requirements were not significant compared to the policy of containment.

I have felt it necessary to provide some extensive background on the Suez Crisis because it is largely forgotten by most people. Even such an informed scholar as Daniel Pipes wrote that prior to reading Doran’s book he believed the Crisis was only of “mainly antiquarian interest.” This contention could not be further from the truth as Doran ably demonstrates.

Eisenhower’s gamble was his attempt to win over Nasser by supporting his claims to Egyptian control over the Canal despite the strenuous objections by America’s two most important Cold War allies, France and Britain. During 1954, Eisenhower backed Nasser’s demands that all British troops be pulled out of the Canal Zone. This massive blunder made most of Nasser’s subsequent hostile moves possible. The only thing that could guarantee the good behavior of a thug such as Nasser was the threat of force. British troops a day’s march from Cairo was a realistic threat that Nasser could not ignore. With the pull-out of the British Army, Nasser was free to increase his demands. He was also free to foment “nationalist” movements throughout the region aimed at creating Egyptian hegemony. Ike’s main failure was not understanding that the central fault lines in the region were Arab versus Arab, Arab versus Turk and Arab versus Persian. Nasser played Eisenhower and Dulles* like a violin.

The Baghdad Pact was an alliance of the “Northern Tier” states in the region designed to stem Soviet incursions. These nations were Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, all of which were Western allies in the early 1950s. Nasser was extremely hostile to the Pact because it created a coalition not under his control. It also elevated the influence of his arch-enemies the Hashemite clan who ruled the monarchies of Iraq and Jordan. Even Nasser’s torpedoing of the Pact did not wake up the Eisenhower Administration to the danger he presented:

Nasser was publicly announcing a policy of neutrality in the Cold War, attacking an American ally [Turkey], and heaping scorn on Dulles’s major foreign policy initiative in the Middle East—yet Washington lodged no protest in Cairo. Remarkable, the Americans were so confident in Nasser’s commitment to the West that they actually furnished him with the tools to spread his revolutionary message across the Arab world. (p. 83)

The last line in the above quote refers to the CIA bankrolling Nasser’s region-wide propaganda radio network “Voice of the Arabs.” The CIA even went so far as to provide psychological warfare export Paul Linebarger for Nasser’s use. One extremely disturbing aspect of Doran’s book is how he documents that, even in the 1950s, officials in the State Department and CIA worked to undermine both administration policy and American national interest to further their own agendas. In several cases he illustrates that these officials seemed to think they were working for Nasser and not the US government.

In September 1955, Nasser announced that he had entered into an arms agreement with the Soviet Union. The Soviets would supply Egypt with modern tanks and jet warplanes among other military hardware. The British, French and Israelis were alarmed. Eisenhower was losing patience and decided to “contain” Nasser and minimize his influence in the region without engaging in overt military action. He still believed that it was possible to pressure Nasser into the Allied camp with carrots and sticks.

The most famous carrot was the alleged American promise to help fund the Aswan High Dam. By the summer of 1956 it was clear that Congress was fed-up with Nasser’s antics and would block funding for the Dam. Doran provides a summation of Nasser’s duplicity that caused the administration to reevaluate its support:

 

Their unease only increased when they considered the escalation in his policies of defiance, which now included supporting anti-French rebels in Algeria; backing anti-British forces in East Africa; prosecuting an endless border war with Israel; conducting subversive activities in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon; and steadily increasing economic, military, and diplomatic cooperation with East Bloc countries. In May, Nasser recognized Communist China, a move that Washington regarded as a slap in the face…. (p. 168)

In Doran’s view, the cancelling of American support for the Aswan Dam was an excuse for Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. As the author states, “Why did Nasser nationalize the canal in July 1956? Because he could” (175). It is significant that the last British troops had left the Canal Zone in June 1956.

Eisenhower and Dulles still wanted to use only soft power in dealing with Nasser. The French, British and Israelis had had enough of his provocations and decided to use military force to retake the Canal and, hopefully, rid the world of Gamal Nasser. Doran ably explains the oft told story of Eisenhower’s ruthless economic sanctions imposed upon our most important ally that forced the British, and by extension the French, to pull out. He also pressured the Israelis to leave the Sinai based on Nasser’s worthless paper promises.

Doran argues that by 1958, Eisenhower came to understand that his Middle East policy was bankrupt. The final straw was the Nasser inspired overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq by Baathist thugs in July 1958. Having opposed military intervention two years prior, Ike now deployed Marines to Lebanon to protect that small nation from any coup attempts.

Needless to say, the Baathist takeover of Iraq reverberates down to the present day. But, it may not have been the worst result of Ike’s losing bet. The legal looting of Western property by two-bit Middle Eastern despots was an evil precedent recognized by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden at the time:

In Eden’s view, Nasser had established a dangerous precedent of defying Britain with impunity. If he were not seen to pay a price for such behavior, then British basing rights in Jordan and Iraq would evaporate; soon thereafter, other actors would move to plunder British oil interests in the Persian Gulf. (p. 188)

It wasn’t just British property that were looted. Over the next twenty years, various “other actors” proceeded to “nationalize” oil production facilities which they could never create or even maintain.** The “globalists” of the time defended Nasser’s seizing of the Suez Canal by referencing Egyptian “national sovereignty. The irony was/is lost upon them.

One interesting sub-theme of the book is on American-Israeli relations. During his first term, Ike was indifferent to Israel and viewed the Jewish state as a problem to be solved by their trading “land for peace” with the Arabs. But by the time of the Lebanon incursion, he judged the Israeli military as an asset. Doran argues that it was fundamental conflicts of interest that soured American relations with Nasser and other Arab leaders and not alleged support for Israel. The Arabists in the State Department and CIA apparently never realized that their policy of destroying European influence in the region only served to increase Israel’s importance to the United States.  

Michael Doran is a Middle Eastern scholar who is currently employed by the Hudson Institute. Although he has an academic background, his book is exceedingly readable and accessible to the non-specialist. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in this crucial period of Middle Eastern and Cold War history.

 

* As Winston Churchill quipped: “Dull, Duller, Dulles.”

** In 1938, Mexico nationalized its oil production that was largely owned by European companies. The European powers used economic measures in retaliation. The Mexican people are still paying for their one-party government’s experiment with socialism. Although, they don’t seem to care or notice.