To play the hegemon: Fifty years of US policy toward the middle east

Middle East Journal

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 1996, Pages

  Hudson, Michael C ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040189458     PISSN: 00263141     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Paul J. Hare, Diplomatic Chronicles of the Middle East, A Biography of Raymond Hare (Washington: The Middle East Institute, 1993), pp. 31-32.
2. James A. Field, Jr. America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969).
3. Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry into the Middle East (Beirut: Khayat, 1963).
4. Robert Kaplan, The Arabists (New York: The Free Press, 1993).
5. Hare, Diplomatic Chronicles of the Middle East, p. 20.
6. The Command Proposal involved establishing a US, British, French, and Turkish military command in Cairo, augmented by Egyptian forces. Egypt rejected it. In 1952. Britain and the United States floated the idea of a Middle East defense organization, involving, in addition, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. But after an initial expression of interest, Egypt's new military government declined to participate, and the project was abandonned. See Thomas A. Bryson, American Diplomatic Relations with the Middle East, 1784-1975 (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1977), pp. 179-81.
7. The "Red Line" delimited the World War I Ottoman Empire (including Anatolia, the Levant, Iraq, and the entire Arabian Peninsula except for Kuwait). The signatories to the agreement, and their share of the oil, were: Royal Dutch Shell (23.75%), Anglo-Persian (23.75%), Compagnie Française des Pétroles (23.75%), the American Near East Development Company (23.75%), and Calouste Gulbenkian (5%). The signatories agreed to a "self-denying" clause requiring mutual agreement on oil operations in the area.
8. In August 1953, American operatives plotted the overthrow of the nationalist prime minister, Muhammad Mussadiq, who had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the shah, at American urging, tried to dismiss the popular prime minister, the effort backfired and the shah himself was forced to flee the country. But the US agents organized a countercoup in which Mussadiq was deposed and the shah restored. See James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 86-94.
9. In 1977, the Carter administration proposed a comprehensive energy policy, including the establishment of a 500 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Other industrialized societies established similar stockpiles. Other measures included encouraging usage of alternative forms of energy, and more fuel-efficient vehicles. As a result of these and other measures, US dependence on OPEC oil was reduced.
10. Hare, Diplomatic Chronicles, p. 20.
11. Kermit Roosevelt, "The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics," Middle East Journal 2, no.1 (1948), p. 1. Roosevelt, an author and Middle East intelligence specialist with the Office of Strategic Services during and after World War II, later became head of the Middle East Department of the CIA. He played a key role in "Operation Ajax."
12. The 1949 Economic Survey Mission was headed by Gordon Clapp of the Tennessee Valley authority, and sought to apply economic relief measures to ease the Palestinian refugee problem. The "Johnston Plan" focussed on the efficient allocation of Jordan River basin waters as a means toward solving the Arab-israeli conflict.
13. John C. Campbell, Defense of the Middle East (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), pp. 4-5.
14. Ibid., p. 4.
15. Ibid., pp. 351-52.
16. William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1993), p. 9.
17. Albert Hourani, "The Decline of the West in the Middle East," International Affairs (London) 29 (1953), p. 157.
18. Shimon Peres (with Aori Naori), The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), especially chapters 3-6.
19. Interview conducted by the author with an official in the United Arab Emirates, 14 March 1996.
20. Elizabeth Monroe, Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914-1971 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981).
21. Guilain P. Denoeux, "The United States and the Challenge of Democratization in the Arab World," (Georgetown University, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Occasional Paper, April, 1996), p. 8.
22. Fareed Zakaria, "Divining Russia" review of George F. Kennan's Reflections, 1982-1995, New York Times Book Review, 1 April, 1996, p. 6.