The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy Under Eisenhower and Kennedy

by Roby C. Barrett

Overview

Roby C Barrett casts fresh light on US foreign policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy, illuminating the struggles of two American administrations to deal with massive social, economic, and political change in an area sharply divided by regional and Cold War rivalries. With a dramatic backdrop of revolutionary Arab nationalism, Zionism, indigenous communism, teetering colonial empires, unstable traditional monarchies, oil, territorial disputes and the threat of Soviet domination of the region, this book vividly highlights the fundamental similarities between the goals and application of foreign policy in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations as well as the impact of British influence on the process.Drawing on extensive research in archives and document collections from Kansas to Canberra, as well as numerous interviews with key policy makers and observers from both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Roby C Barrett explores the application of the Cold War containment policy through economic development and security assistance.
Within the broader context of the global Cold War struggle, the Greater Middle East also held the potential as the flashpoint for nuclear war, and Barrett analyses fully the implications of this for international relations. In the process, this book draws some unexpected conclusions, arguing that Eisenhower's policies were ultimately more successful than Kennedy's, and offers an important and revisionist contribution to our understanding of the Cold War and the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845113933
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/25/2007
Series:	International Library of Twentieth Century History
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Roby C. Barrett is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington, DC and an Adjunct Professor of History at Texas A&M Commerce. He has a doctorate in Middle East and South Asian history from the University of Texas at Austin and is a former US Foreign Service Officer in the Middle East. He has been an Eisenhower-Roberts Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute in Washington, DC and a Rotary International Fellow at the University of Munich Institute for Russian Studies. He is a specialist on security and defense issues and has over twenty-five years of government, business and academic experience in the Middle East. He is the president of CCOMM Corporation, a firm specializing in national security policy and advanced defense technology applications.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
List of Illustrations xv
Acknowledgments xvii
Preface xix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: The Greater Middle East 1953-1958 10

Part I: 1958 - The New Order and Reconsiderations 40
Chapter 2: The Wave of the Future 43
Chapter 3: 'The Tempest' 64
Chapter 4: The 'Center of All Problems' - Iran and 1958 80
Chapter 5: Controlled Democracy - Pakistan and 1958 93

Part II: Revising Containment, 1959-1960 104
Chapter 6: The Arab Cold War and US Policy 107
Chapter 7: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel - the Bystanders 127
Chapter 8: Iran and Pakistan Cash In on Iraq 149
Chapter 9: 1960 - JFK vs. Nixon, and the Greater Middle East 174

Part III: Lessons from the Past - the Middle East 1961-1962 190
Chapter 10: Courting Nasser, 1961 - New Beginnings? 193

Editorial Reviews

"This valuable study of continuity and change in the years during which the US replaced this country as the dominant world power in the region remains indispensable for a balanced understanding of American involvement in the region" — Contemporary Review
 
"After the diplomatic records of the Eisenhower and Kennedy adminstrations were largely declassified in the 1980s and 1990s, historians produced a flood of books on the foreign  policies of the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth presidents. In recent years, the flood has subsided, and Roby C. Barrett's new volume may be one of its last major contributors." — W. Taylor Fain, American Historical Review
 
"The author emphasizes the elements of continuity between the two administrations and the ways they dealt with the region, both in their early mistakes and later, more pragmatic diplomacies...Barrett's volume is a valuable addition to the literature and provides an excellent starting point for anybody wishing to know more about the Greater Middle East in the darkest days of the Cold War." — W. Taylor Fain, American Historical Review

From the Publisher