Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Eventually American pressure and world public opinion acting through the United Nations forced Israel to give up the territory it had captured, including the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba shores, without any significant guarantees. A UN Emergency Force (UNEF) was sent to supervise the evacuation of Egyptian territory and the Gaza Strip, under pressure of severe economic and financial threats of an unofficial nature from Washington. The effectiveness of such threats rested on the fact that the ‘whole Israeli economy was dependent on the flow of private funds from the United States, while the British attack on Egypt had been abandoned very largely as a consequence of the drain on British dollar and gold reserves, which fell $420 million in September-November 1956.

The American threats of sanctions against its own friends and allies over Egypt at the very time when it was doing nothing to impose sanctions for the Soviet attack on Hungary, and its refusal to cooperate with the Soviet Union in stabilizing the Near East because of Hungary, presented a strange picture of political fantasy as 1956 ended. One of the methods of pressure used by the United States against the Western Powers was support of Egypt’s refusal to allow any clearance of the Suez Canal until the withdrawal of troops from Egypt. This, of course, intensified the shortage of Near Eastern fuel oil in Europe as winter deepened. The evacuation of Anglo-French forces on December 22, 1956, and of Israeli forces on March 8, 1957, permitted clearing of the Canal and the reimposition of Egyptian blockade pressures on Israel. In the interval the American position, ignoring all the real problems of the area, was stated in the form of the so-called Eisenhower Doctrine in January 1957. Regarding the problem solely in terms of military opposition to Communism, this doctrine attacked the Soviet Union and threatened to use the armed forces of the United States to defend any “freedom-loving nations of the area . . . requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.…”

In reply to this unconstructive promise the Soviet Union, in February 1957, suggested a joint effort by four Powers (Russia, the United States, Britain, and France) to reorganize the Near East on the basis of six principles: (1) peaceful settlement of all disputes there, (2) noninterference in internal affairs, (3) renunciation of all efforts to incorporate Near Eastern countries into military blocs of the Great Powers, (4) removal of foreign military bases from the area and the troops based on them, (5) a reciprocal ban on arms deliveries, and (6) promotion of economic development without political or military entanglements.

This promising Soviet offer, which might have been negotiated into some settlement of the Near East’s real problems, was rebuffed by the United States; instead, the Eisenhower Doctrine, in spite of the clear lack of any overt Communist threat, was used against Egypt and Syria in regard to Jordan and Lebanon.

The Jordan monarchy was completely dependent upon the army, which was, in turn, completely dependent upon the financial subsidy from Britain. This subsidy (amounting to £ 12 million a year) was ended by the new Parliament elected in October 1956. Syria and Saudi Arabia, which already had troops on Jordanian soil, joined with Egypt to continue the subsidy. To escape from growing Egyptian and Soviet influence, King Hussein dismissed his prime minister and sought aid from Washington. Rioting from opposition groups led to martial law, a $10 million grant under the Eisenhower Doctrine, and movement of the American Sixth Fleet to the Levant to support Hussein (April 1957).

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Egypt for influence in the other Arab countries was marked by an Egypt-Syria economic union in September 1957, a $112 million loan to Syria from the Soviet bloc, and (in February 1958) the union of these two countries into a United Arab Republic. Iraq and Jordan responded to this with a very ephemeral Arab Federation. By the spring of 1958, Nasser was engaged in controversies with all his neighboring states except Syria. A military coup by pro-Nasser officers in Iraq in July abolished the monarchy and assassinated Nuri al Said and his chief supporters and threatened to overthrow the insecure government of President Chemoun of Lebanon. To prevent this, American forces were landed in Lebanon in the same week (July 15-17) in which a United Nations commission on the spot reported a total lack of evidence of any outside forces trying to subvert Lebanon. On the following day, Hussein of Jordan asked, and obtained, a British parachute brigade to protect his position.

Once again Khrushchev appealed for a Great Power conference (this time to include India) on the Near East, but was met by a series of evasions and legalistic obstacles from Washington. The United States refused to act outside the United Nations, and the suggestion finally ended in a series of recriminatory letters in August. A special session of the United Nations Assembly sent Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold on a mission to the Near East which was able to evacuate the troops from Lebanon and Jordan by November 1958.

This turmoil in the Muslim states continued during the subsequent period of Soviet-American missile rivalry (1956-1963). The United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria, established in February 1958, was broken by Syria after a military coup had overturned the Syrian government in September 1961. Another Syrian military revolt early in 1963 announced its reestablishment, but internal opposition, chiefly from the Ba’ath Party, prevented this. In Iraq the military revolt of July 1958, led by General Abdul Karim Qassim, remained in power on a relatively pro-Communist and anti-Nasser basis until it was overthrown in a bloody military upheaval on February 8-9, 1963.

XIX. THE NEW ERA 1957-1964

The Growth of Nuclear Stalemate

THE SHIFTING POWER BALANCE

THE DENOURMENT OF THE COLD WAR, 1957-1963

The Disintegrating Superblocs

LATIN AMERICA: A RACE BETWEEN DISASTER AND REFORM

THE FAR EAST

The Japanese Miracle

Communist China

The Eclipse of Colonialism

The Growth of Nuclear Stalemate

The decade from 1953 to 1963 was the most critical in modern history. Man’s ability to get through it successfully was a tribute to his good luck and good sense. The avoidance of nuclear war and the extraordinary burst of economic prosperity in the advanced industrial nations during that decade were balanced by the continued growth of acute social disorganization and the even more acute growth of ideological confusions. Nevertheless, man survived, and, by 1963, was at the opening of a new era, based very largely on the relaxation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and on the opportunities to do something about the lagging social and intellectual problems provided by the combination of political relaxation and economic prosperity.

The decade as a whole fell into two parts, divided about 1956. The first three years were marked by the continued “Race for the H-Bomb,” and covered the period from the early thermonuclear explosions in 1953 to the achievement of a fusion bomb that could be dropped from an airplane in 1956. The next seven years were filled with the missile race, and reached their culmination and denouement in the year from the Cuban missile crisis of October-November 1962 to the death of President Kennedy in November 1963.

Closely related to this division based on weapons development was the somewhat delayed division of the decade into two parts by a change in American strategic policy. Here the dividing point was about 1960, and is marked by the shift from the strategy of “massive retaliation,” associated with the name of John Foster Dulles, to the strategy of “graduated deterrence,” associated with the new Democratic Administration of President Kennedy. The shift in 1960, however, was only incidentally associated with the presidential election of that year and the subsequent shift of Administration in the White House. The real change in 1960 was brought about, as we shall see, by the full achievement, at that time, of intercontinental thermonuclear striking ability by the two great Superpowers. The “balance of terror” thus achieved by 1960 led directly to the missile crisis of 1962 and the thermonuclear stalemate of 1963. And