Not everyone in the U.S. government understood the logic of the doctrine. Wilber Crane Eveland of the CIA later recounted his reaction:
I was shocked. Who, I wondered, had reached this determination of what the Arabs considered a danger? Israel's army had just invaded Egypt and still occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. And, had it not been for Russia's threat to intervene on behalf of the Egyptians, the British, French, and Israeli forces might now be sitting in Cairo, celebrating Nasser's ignominious fall from power.
Eveland's reaction was not unusual. Many people believed that the Arabs did not rank the Soviet Union as their number-one threat. According to Eveland, when Eisenhower dispatched an envoy to sound out the Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, and some North African states said they saw no danger from international communism.
In April 1957, when King Hussein of Jordan faced a Pan-Arabist challenge from socialist-nationalists and the Communist party, the U.S. government moved the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean and provided $10 million in economic aid to his country, the first installment of a regular annual subsidy. And when Syria appeared to be moving closer to Nasser and the Soviets, the Eisenhower administration, egged on by Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan, put area forces on alert and issued warnings against outside interference. The crisis subsided without direct intervention. Although the president talked much of the internal communist threat to the Arab countries, Eisenhower's biographer
Stephen Ambrose writes that "what Eisenhower really feared was radical Arab nationalism" and its threat to the feudal monarchies.
A full-blown intervention under the Eisenhower Doctrine finally took place in Lebanon in 1958. Rising Pan-Arabism, which worried several Arab regimes, surged on February 1 when Egypt and Syria joined to become the United Arab Republic. In response, King Hussein entered a unity agreement of his own with his fellow Hashemite ruler in Iraq. And King Saud of Saudi Arabia was also so concerned that he tried to have Nasser assassinated.
In Lebanon the development was viewed as especially upsetting. The fragile Lebanese confessional system, in which religious groups have representation in the government in ratios fixed by the constitution, made the country particularly susceptible to disturbances.
Lebanon's large Sunni Muslim population was sympathetic to Pan-Arabism, as were
its Druzes (a Muslim sect). Camille Chamoun, the country's Maronite Catholic president, feared Nasser and his ideology and favored a close relationship with the United States.
Chamoun aggravated the Pan-Arabist distrust of him by seeking a second six-year term as president, contrary to the Lebanese constitution. To achieve that ambition, he used dubious methods (possibly rigging the election) to elect a parliamentary majority that would change the constitution. The CIA funneled money to selected candidates. When
a pro-Nasser newspaper editor was killed, a rebellion ignited: a coalition of Sunni, Druze, and other opponents of Chamoun demanded his resignation and called for radical reform. The rebels controlled parts of Beirut and rural areas and accepted armed assistance from Syria.
Chamoun appealed to Eisenhower for help on May 13. Initially, the United States was reluctant to intervene, but on July 14 a coup d'etat took place in Iraq, home of the Baghdad Pact, and the monarchy was replaced by a government led by Gen. Abdul Karim Qassem, a reputed Nasserite. When the new Iraqi government allied itself with the United Arab Republic, fear of spreading instability in the region led Eisenhower to send troops to Lebanon. He warned that "this somber turn of events could, without vigorous response on our part, well result in a complete elimination of Western influence in the Middle East." But the Eisenhower administration decided not to intervene in Iraq when Qassem announced that the Iraq Petroleum Company, in which American oil firms held shares, would not be disturbed; in fact, the United States recognized the new government on July 30.
On July 15 the first of 14,357 U.S. troops landed in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's special emissary, Robert Murphy, worked out a solution: Gen. Fuad Chehab, a compromise Christian candidate acceptable to Eisenhower, Nasser, and most Lebanese, would become president; Chamoun would complete his original term; and Washington would provide $10 million in aid. One of Chamoun's opponents, Rashid Karami, became prime minister, however, and promptly announced that recognition of the Eisenhower Doctrine would be withdrawn and that Lebanon would shift to nonaligned status. Washington accepted that policy shift and withdrew all of its troops by October 25. Fortunately, no Lebanese or American was killed in the U.S. military intervention.
The U.S. government counted the operation a success, but that one and only application of the Eisenhower Doctrine was actually a misapplication. The doctrine was ostensibly formulated to deter armed aggression by nations controlled by "International Communism," but neither Syria nor Egypt was controlled by the Soviet Union; they were not even
independent communist regimes. "He [Nasser] curbed and suppressed native Communists both in Egypt and Syria," wrote historian George Len-czowski, "and, despite heavy dependence on Soviet arms and economic aid, jealously maintained his country's sovereignty."
Two lessons National Security Council officials learned from the Lebanon intervention apparently were not heeded by subsequent policymakers. A November 1958 NSC document warned that "to be cast in the role of Nasser's opponent would be to leave the Soviets as his champion." The document also counseled against "becoming too closely identified with individual factions in Lebanese politics." The first lesson would be ignored in 1967, the second in 1983.
~ Sheldon Richman, "'Ancient History': U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," Cato Institute, August 16, 1991, p. 10-11
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