Strategy And Politics In The Middle East 1954 1960

The period covered by this book, 1954-60, witnessed a significant change in Allied strategy for the Middle East. Its focus switched from Egypt to the states of the so-called northern tier of the Middle East: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. Allied planning focused now on holding up a future Soviet offensive against the Middle East at the strategic passes that cut through the Zagros mountains, across the Iraqi-Iranian border. This was to be done with the indigenous ground forces of the northern tier states, complemented by Allied strategic and tactical nuclear bombing. In 1955, the Baghdad Pact became the political expression of the new strategy. The economic and strategic interests of the West in the Middle East provide the context for the tumultuous events of this period: the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1954 for the evacuation of Egypt; the formation of the Baghdad Pact in 1955; the Suez Crisis which, together with the escalating Arab-Israeli conflict, erupted into open war in November 1956; and finally, the crises that rocked the Middle East in July 1958: the fall of the Hashemite dynasty and the ancien regime in Iraq, and the British and American military interventio in Jordan a

This book presents a synthesis of strategic planning and diplomacy in the Middle East during a critical period The book explains the pivotal role that the young State of Israel played in Middle East politics Will appeal to students of strategy, middle eastern politics and military history.

The period covered by this book witnessed a significant change in Allied strategy for the Middle East. Its focus switched from Egypt to the states of the so-called northern tier of the Middle East: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. This book reveals the extent to which the UK clung on to great-power pretensions and used bluff, even deception, in order to give the impression that it disposed of greater military resources than was in fact the case. It describes not only Anglo-American tensions in the Middle East, but also the Americans' reluctance to take over Britain's former hegemony in the region. Finally, it reveals the extent to which the Allies' relationship with Israel was a constant restraint upon their freedom of action in the area, and their ability to forge military alliances with Arab states.

The revolutionary year of 1958 epitomizes the height of the social uprisings, military coups, and civil wars that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-twentieth century. Amidst waning Anglo-French influence, growing US-USSR rivalry, and competition and alignments between Arab and non-Arab regimes and domestic struggles, this year was a turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. This multi and interdisciplinary book explores this pivotal year in its global, regional and local contexts and from a wide range of linguistic, geographic, academic specialties. The contributors draw on declassified and multilingual archives, reports, memoirs, and newspapers in thirteen country-specific chapters, shedding new light on topics such as the extent of Anglo-American competition after the Suez War, Turkey's efforts to stand as a key pillar in the regional Cold War, the internationalization of the Algerian War of Independence, and Iran and Saudi Arabia's abilities to weather the revolutionary storm that swept across the region. The book includes a foreword from Salim Yaqub which highlights the importance of Jeffrey G. Karam's collection to the scholarship on this vital moment in the political history of the modern middle east.

This book aims to explore Anglo-American defence policies in the Middle East between 1945 and 1955 and the attempts of these two Western powers to contain the Soviet expansion towards the region. It does not attempt to offer a comprehensive history of British and American policies in the Middle East. Instead, it aims to explore those policies with a particular focus on the problems of Middle East defence. It also seeks to determine the aims behind the proposals of MEC, MEDO, NTDC and BP, their failings, and the struggle that was undertaken against them by hostile countries, such as Egypt, India and the Soviet Union. It examines the events surrounding their formation, development and collapse. Furthermore, it explores the policies of the regional countries, namely Turkey, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Thus, it poses the questions of how the participating countries perceived the question of Middle East defence, what their basic aims were, and what problems they faced while trying to achieve these aims and implementing their chosen solutions.

Drawing on various perspectives and analysis, the Handbook problematizes Middle East politics through an interdisciplinary prism, seeking a melioristic account of the field. Thematically organized, the chapters address political, social, and historical questions by showcasing both theoretical and empirical insights, all of which are represented in a style that ease readers into sophisticated induction in the Middle East. It positions the didactic at the centre of inquiry. Contributions by forty-four scholars, both veterans and newcomers, rethink knowledge frames, conceptual categories, and fieldwork praxis. Substantive themes include secularity and religion, gender, democracy, authoritarianism, and new "borderline" politics of the Middle East. Like any field of knowledge, the Middle East is constituted by texts, authors, and readers, but also by the cultural, spatial, and temporal contexts within which diverse intellectual inflections help construct (write–speak) academic meaning, knowing, and practice. By denaturalizing notions of singularity of authorship or scholarship, the Handbook plants a dialogic interplay animated by multi-vocality, multi-modality, and multi-disciplinarity. Targeting graduate students and young scholars of political and social sciences, the Handbook is significant for understanding how the Middle East is written and re-written, read and re-read (epistemology, methodology), and for how it comes to exist (ontology).

At the height of the Cold War, the John F. Kennedy administration designed an ambitious plan for the Middle East-its aim was to seek rapprochement with Nasser's Egypt in order to keep the Arab world neutral and contain the perceived communist threat. In order to offset this approach, Kennedy sought to grow relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and embrace Israel's defense priorities-a decision which would begin the US-Israeli 'special relationship'. Here, Antonio Perra shows for the first time how new relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel which would come to shape the Middle East for decades were in fact a by-product of Kennedy's efforts at Soviet containment. The Saudi's in particular were increasingly viewed as 'an atavistic regime who would soon disappear' but Kennedy's support for them-which hardened during the Yemen Crisis even as he sought to placate Nasser-had the unintended effect of making them, as today, the US' great pillar of support in the Middle East.

In 1951-52, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization established the Southern Flank, a strategy for the defense of the eastern Mediterranean in the Cold War involving Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Among its many aims, the Southern Flank sought to mobilize these countries as allies and integrate them into the Western defense system. Throughout the 1950s, the alliance developed the Southern Flank and in 1959 it was finally stabilized as fractious Greek-Turkish relations were improved by the temporary settlement over Cyprus. The Southern Flank of NATO, 1951–1959: Military Strategy or Political Stabilization examines, among other things, the initial negotiations of 1951-52, the Southern Flank’s structure and function and relative value in NATO’s overall policy, and the alliance’s response to the challenges in the eastern Mediterranean in the early Cold War. It explores not only the military aspects of the Southern Flank, but also the more controversial political aspects: the admission of Greece and Turkey to NATO, the short-lived military cooperation between these states and Yugoslavia during 1953-55 and the effects of the deterioration in Greek-Turkish relations from 1955 due to Cyprus. It also focuses on the part played by other major members of the alliance, principally the United States and Britain, in Southern Flank politics and strategy. Thus, it considers how the United States and the U.K. viewed the power balance between the three Southern Flank members and how the Americans sought to influence affairs through financial, military and technical assistance, including the construction of U.S. bases in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. The book also assesses the threat posed to the Southern Flank at various points by rising tensions in the Middle East. More generally, the book illuminates the complexities of intra-alliance dynamics in a region full of Cold War tensions. However, in its Middle Eastern/Eastern Mediterranean neighborhood, it was not only the Cold War that provided tensions, since the Arab-Israeli dispute and the tensions of decolonization further complicated the picture. Thus, the study of the Southern Flank is a test case of a Cold War theater which was subjected to additional historical pressures, creating a nexus of problems which the Western Alliance needed to address within its effort to respond to the various challenges of the Cold War.