On this day in History: Eisenhower proposes new Middle East policy

The year is 1957. This helps demonstrate how the ongoing conflict in the Middle East evolved over the past century. It also highlights the role president's have in shaping foreign policy.

- Click here for the article.

In response to the increasingly tense situation in the Middle East, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a proposal to Congress that calls for a new and more proactive U.S. policy in the region. The “Eisenhower Doctrine,” as the proposal soon came to be known, established the Middle East as a Cold War battlefield.

The United States believed that the situation in the Middle East degenerated badly during 1956, and Egypt leader Gamal Nasser was deemed largely responsible. The U.S. used Nasser’s anti-western nationalism and his increasingly close relations with the Soviet Union as justification for withdrawing U.S. support for the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River in July 1956. Less than a month later, Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal. This action prompted, in late October, a coordinated attack by French, British, and Israeli military on Egypt. Suddenly, it appeared that the Middle East might be the site of World War III.

In response to these disturbing developments, President Eisenhower called for “joint action by the Congress and the Executive” in meeting the “increased danger from International Communism” in the Middle East. Specifically, he asked for authorization to begin new programs of economic and military cooperation with friendly nations in the region. He also requested authorization to use U.S. troops “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations.”

Eisenhower did not ask for a specific appropriation of funds at the time; nevertheless, he indicated that he would seek $200 million for economic and military aid in each of the years 1958 and 1959. Only such action, he warned, would dissuade “power-hungry Communists” from interfering in the Middle East.

While some newspapers and critics were uneasy with the open-ended policy for U.S. action in the Middle East (the Chicago Tribune called the doctrine “goofy”), the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate responded with overwhelming votes in favor of Eisenhower’s proposal.

The “Eisenhower Doctrine” received its first call to action in the summer of 1958, when civil strife in Lebanon led that nation’s president to request U.S. assistance. Nearly 15,000 U.S. troops were sent to help quell the disturbances. With the Eisenhower Doctrine and the first action taken in its name, the United States demonstrated its interest in Middle East developments.

For more:

- The Eisenhower Doctrine.
- Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East.
- Suez Crisis.
- Cold War (1953-1962).

So what is the Iranian nuclear deal all about anyway?

It's one of the items that Congress had on its agenda as it came back to DC this week. Republicans had the opportunity to derail it, but enough Democrats seem to have lined up behind the president to prevent that from happening. We will discuss that procedural issue in a separate post, but here are links where you get background about the deal itself.

First, what are the existing sanctions?
- Wikipedia: U.S. sanctions against Iran.
- CFR: International Sanctions on Iran.

And what is in the deal?
- Vox: Here's the full text of the Iran nuclear deal.
- Vox: The Iran deal, explained in clear language by a nuclear expert.
- Wikipedia: Iran nuclear deal framework.
- PolitiFact Sheet: 6 things to know about the Iran nuclear deal.

Understanding Your Enemy

Britain, and by extension we, are still coming to terms with the fact that many of the bombers affiliated with Al Qaeda, who we have stereotyped into being poor, hopeless and driven to violence by a lack of opportunity, do not fit that stereotype at all.

The recent bombings in Britain were carried out by doctors who had other opportunities, but seemed fueled by an ideological hatred of the west. The problem that poses is that while we feel that we understand poverty and its solutions (though we are not quite successful in implementing the solutions), we are at a loss to understand ideologically motivated animosity.

Writing in the London Observer, Henry Potter points to Sayyid Qutb, the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who spent critical moments in his life in the United States and saw materialism, individual freedom and an equal role for women as evidence of the west's decadence and a justification for attacks on it.

Potter agues that Qutb's theories on how to do it owed more to Lenin than Islam and suggests that our strategies be adjusted accordingly. Potter is short on specifics, but his analysis rests on what some argue may be liberal democracy's Achilles heel: A open, tolerant nation may resist efforts to restrict the inclusion of groups that seek to undermine it. Censorship and exclusion violate the principles of democracy, but to not censor and exclude puts the security of the republic at risk. This violates the primary responsibility of government--to secure unalienable rights.

To complicate the discussion, David Warren points to other writings which argue that groups like Al Qaeda do in fact base their ideas on the religious underpinnings of the societies they exist within. his makes them a larger long term threat than either Nazism or Communism could have been since each cut against the (religious) grain of the culture they emerged within.

Pleasant thoughts on a Sunday morning.

Both build of a concept we hit when we cover public opinion: the role of stereotypes--or schemas--in the development of opinion. We find it very difficult to process information unless it can fit within a general concept we are already comfortable with--like a western political ideology or the rules of baseball. New information about a foreign concept is very difficult for us to process because we attempt to fit it into a known concept first rather than develop a completely new framework for it.

Both articles suggest that we have yet to completely figure out what we are fighting in Al Qaeda and similar organizations and we are unlikely to achieve any success until we do.