Cold Wars & US Foreign Policy

Cold Wars & US Foreign Policy

Introduction

Since 1967, the Middle East has posed a series of great challenges to the United States. The region's Cold War dynamics, intra-regional rivalries, anti-American nationalism, and wars and revolutions have tested the resolve of US diplomats. Americans have found it difficult clearly to understand the region's multiplicity of cultures, religions, ethnic groups, and political systems. Historians, political scientists, journalists, and others have recorded and analyzed the legacy of US involvement with the region. This essay seeks to identify and analyze the most significant works of scholarship dealing with US diplomacy in the Middle East since 1967.

Thesis Statement

Understanding US policy in the post-1967 era sometimes demands an exploration of trends that date to the dawn of official US involvement in the region and the collapse of European empires there in the 1940s-1950s.

Analysis

Several scholars examine the background and origins of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, in which forces loyal to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the US-supported Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The first major analysis published after the revolution, Rubin (1980) surveys US-Iran relations after World War II and argues that the traditional US quest to bolster the Shah as an anti-communist bulwark reflected ignorance and poor judgment among officials in Washington. On the basis of more extensive research, including examination of sources in Persian, Bill (1988) adds that bureaucratic infighting within the US government and domestic political pressures exerted by the pro-Shah lobby contributed to the unwise reliance on the Shah. Goode (1997), also based on bilingual research, faults US officials for only vaguely understanding Iran during their long relationship with the Shah. Implicitly exonerating US officials, Dorman and Farhang (1987) note that ethnocentrism also prevented US media experts from foreseeing the anti-Shah revolution, while Sick (1985) notes that other Western states were also unprepared to deal with a revolutionary movement with powerful, religious undertones.

General US policy in the Middle East since 1967 is included in a number of overview, synthetic, and interpretive works that range over the post-1945 period. Tillman (1982), Fraser (1989), and Lenczowski (1990) evaluate the relative importance of such objectives as access to oil, containment of Soviet influence, preservation of Israel, and domestic political interests in the making of US policy in the region since World War II. During the Cold War, Sayigh and Shlaim (1997) conclude, the local powers of the Middle East resisted US pressures in their international, regional, and domestic politics. Brands (1994), a text suitable for undergraduate instruction, covers the broad parameters of US policy.

Several works adopt specific interpretive frameworks toward US policy in the Middle East. Stivers (1986) critically analyzes the US tendency to side with conservative political forces in the region against radical and nationalist alternatives, noting that Nixon's “Twin Pillars” strategy of relying on Saudi Arabia and Iran as bastions of stability merely blinded the United States to the imminent Iranian revolution. Kolko (1988) stresses economic objectives - specifically a quest to capture markets and trade routes - as ...