Harry Targ
Eisenhower Fights Communism in the Middle East
During the 1950s in the Middle East, the United States tried to court Arab nationalism to wean the area away from French and British influence. When the Soviet Union established economic and political relations with President Nasser of Egypt, the Eisenhower Administration began to define such nationalism as pro-Communist. The United States turned against Nasser by withdrawing financial support from the Aswan Dam project, whereupon the Soviet Union provided funding. When the British, French, and Israelis invaded Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, the United States, along with the Soviets, condemned the invasion. Then, the United States sought to ingratiate itself with the Arab world against traditional European colonialism.
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U.S. Imperial Policies in the Middle East, the 1960s and 1970s
The
preoccupation with Vietnam did not preclude major U.S. involvement in the
Middle East, Africa, and Latin America as well. In the Middle East, the United
States had consistently supported the government of Israel as an extension of
U.S. power in the area. The Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973
focused on the quest of the Palestinian Arabs to reclaim their homeland from
Western colonialism and the Israeli government. This issue had been the source
of Palestinian guerrilla actions within Israel, Israeli racist practices
against Israeli Arabs, Israeli aggression throughout the Middle East against
the Palestinians and their allies, and wars between Israel and its neighboring
states that were drawn into or exploited the Palestinian issue for regional
political purposes.
After
the 1967 war, the Israeli government occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan
Heights, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. The defeat of the Arabs kindled a
desire for revenge on their part and arrogance in Israel. The United States
provided armaments to the Israelis in ever-increasing quantities (and to the
reactionary regimes in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well), while the USSR armed
Syria and Egypt.
In
October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked
Israel. After many setbacks early in the war, the Israelis began to recoup
their losses. By October 22, 1973, the United States and the Soviet Union
secured a cease-fire agreement within the ambit of the United Nations. The
Soviets were angered by Israel's continuation of military operations after a
cease-fire call and suggested that the USSR and the United States create a
military force to save the Egyptian army, which was encircled on the Sinai
Peninsula.
The
Soviets proclaimed that they would act alone if no action were taken to save
the Egyptians. The United States consequently called a worldwide nuclear alert,
threatening an escalation of hostilities into a confrontation between the
United States and the USSR. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli army ended its
advance, and a cease-fire was secured. Kissinger then began a process of
"shuttle diplomacy" to secure a peaceful settlement of the Middle
East conflicts, but ignoring the influence of the Soviet Union in the process.
He was able to arrange an interim truce in 1975 but was unsuccessful in
securing a permanent peace that would end the thirty years of hostilities.
The 1973
Middle East war highlighted a seemingly new dimension in international
politics—oil. In existence since 1960, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) in the early 1970s assumed control of the price at which it
sold its oil. During the October war, OPEC embargoed the sale of oil to nations
that supported Israeli policy. In 1974 and 1975, OPEC quintupled its oil
prices, which exacerbated an already-endemic inflation in those economies based
on monopoly and huge defense expenditures. Europe and Japan were particularly
hard hit by the OPEC move to control the pricing and distribution of its oil.
The oil companies were by no means losers as a result of OPEC's seizing the
power to price oil. Their profits began to soar, as they still controlled all
downstream phases of oil production, from transport to processing to marketing.
Among
the foreign-policy effects of the October war and the new surge of independence
by OPEC's Middle East members was an attempt by the United States to enhance
cordial relations with selected reactionary regimes in the Middle East and
Persian Gulf areas, particularly Saudi Arabia and the puppet Shah of Iran. This
was to be coupled in the years ahead with some measure of pressure on the
Israelis to institute cosmetic policy changes relative to the Palestinian
people to satisfy reactionary Arab elites, such as the Saudis.
The oil
crisis of the mid-1970s stimulated heightened concern in Washington for controlling
the direction of change in the Middle East. During the last phase of the Ford
administration, officials in Washington and some academics began to write and
talk about the need to intervene militarily in the Middle East to protect
Western oil supplies.
Kissinger's bilateral shuttle diplomacy, designed to create an overall Middle East settlement between the U.S.'s ally, Israel, and conservative Arab states, was never successful. The Carter administration entertained the counterstrategy of the all-Middle East Conference to be held in Geneva. The Soviet Union and the United States even went so far as issuing a joint declaration on October l, 1977, endorsing the Geneva Conference and recognizing the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinian people in any final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The comprehensive approach was superseded in November, 1977, however, when President Sadat of Egypt made a dramatic trip to Israel in pursuit of peace between the two countries. In response the Carter administration reversed itself and sought a Middle East peace that precluded the participation of the Soviet Union and the Palestinian people. Since real peace required Soviet and Palestinian involvement, the meaning of the new approach was that the Carter administration had decided to pursue an anti-Soviet, antiradical coalition in the Middle East.
In September,1978, Sadat and Prime Minister Begin of Israel met under the auspices of Carter at Camp David and agreed to an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that returned the occupied Sinai peninsula to Egypt in exchange for guaranteed sales of Egyptian oil from the peninsula to Israel. The accords called for some kind of Palestinian autonomy on the West Bank and the Gaza strip. While Carter hailed the accords as a major accomplishment in foreign policy, the accords left to future negotiation the rights of the Palestinians under Israeli control. Also the accords significantly left out of the negotiating process other Arab states as well as the Palestinians themselves. In protest, seventeen Arab states severed relations with Egypt after the treaty had been signed.
The U.S.
strategy in the Camp David negotiations was to secure an agreement that would
freeze the Soviet Union out of the area at a time when access to Middle East
oil was becoming problematic. U.S. policy makers saw an opportunity to create
in Egypt another powerful state in the Middle East that could act regionally to
maintain the structure of imperialism in the area. With this in mind, the
United States agreed to provide $1.8 billion in economic assistance to Egypt as
well as $3.8 billion to Israel in return for signing the accords.
In an
attempt to soften opposition from reactionary Arab states to the accords and to
maintain access to oil, the United States increased arms aid by fifty percent
to Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia alone contracted for $4.8 billion
worth of U.S. weapons in 1978. In fact, in 1978, Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia
received seventy percent of U.S. arms shipments in the Third World.
It is important
to remember that the revolution in 1979 that would finally oust the brutal Shah
of Iran, who had imprisoned and tortured thousands of political opponents, had
begun in 1978. Since Iran had been the recipient of more U.S. military
equipment than any other country in the world and had been defined by several
U.S. administrations as the U.S. bulwark for influence in the Middle East,
attempts to defuse Arab-Israeli hostilities took on renewed importance as the
Shah was on the verge of being overthrown. New anti-communist regional gendarmes,
such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were needed in case the pliant Shah was
overthrown.
Seeking Anti-Soviet Clients in the Middle East: The Reagan
Administration
The
Reagan administration defined instability in the Middle East as Soviet-inspired.
Middle Eastern countries, however, even
profoundly anti-Soviet countries, were resistant to such a formulation of
regional problems, given the historic Arab-Israeli conflict. To convince the
so-called moderate Arab states of the
Meanwhile,
a Syrian peacekeeping force in strife-torn Lebanon had been fired upon by
right-wing Christian Lebanese forces, which were supplied by Israel. The
Syrians moved antiaircraft missiles into Lebanon to counter indiscriminate
Israeli air attacks. The Israelis threatened to attack and destroy the Syrian
missiles. A U.S. diplomatic mission was sent to defuse the crisis, and the
Reagan administration found itself in the difficult position of trying to
maintain the pro-Israeli stance of the United States without offending local
Arab states that were needed in an anti-Soviet alliance. The administration had
to mute its hostility to the Syrians, who had close ties with the Soviet Union,
because of the general Arab hostility to Israel.
Middle East conflicts were
compounded in June,1981, when the Israelis precipitously bombed a nuclear
reactor under construction in Iraq. The Israelis claimed that the nuclear
reactor would at some time in the future produce nuclear weapons which would be
used against Israel. The aggressive government of Menachem Begin reserved the
right to attack preemptively any state that was constructing facilities for
weapons that might be used against Israel in the future. The United States was
put in a position in the UN where it was forced to condemn the Israeli action,
although the US. ambassador to the UN refused to endorse any declaration tied
to sanctions against Israel.
Reports
began to appear in June, 1981, that the Israeli government was collaborating
with other "pariah" regimes in the construction of nuclear weapons.
Israeli scientists were reported to be working with the governments of Taiwan
and South Africa to develop nuclear weapons. Taiwanese scientists were advising
the South Africans. Finally, the South Africans were supplying uranium to both
Israel and Taiwan. All three governments, of course, remained close allies of
the United States at the same time that they were being broadly condemned by
the international community for aggression and racism.
In June,
1982, after several months of threats, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon,
claiming their mission was to extricate Palestinian guerrillas from the
twenty-five mile strip of land adjacent to the Israeli border. Despite this
stated objective, the army proceeded all the way to Beirut, the capital of
Lebanon. In the process thousands of Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians were
killed and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese were left homeless in the
aftermath of the destruction.
The
Reagan administration, while leveling some criticism at the Israeli aggression,
did not seriously challenge the Israeli invasion or the occupation, With
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas in West Beirut under siege
by the Israeli army, the United States secured a cease-fire, allowing them to
leave the country. In the Reagan view the PLO was yet another surrogate of the
Soviet Union.
Libya
was also defined as a Soviet surrogate. When President Sadat of Egypt was
assassinated on October 6, 1981, the United States warned Libya against any
attacks on Egypt or the Sudan, both Libyan adversaries. Two AWACS planes were
assigned to the Middle East to monitor Libyan activities. Two months earlier,
U.S. aircraft fired on Libyan planes over the Mediterranean. As 1981 ended the
Reagan administration made the fantastic charge that Muammar Qaddafi of Libya
had sent an assassination team to kill the president. As with most foreign
policy pronouncements of this administration, no evidence to support the charge
was presented. In 1982, Reagan ordered U.S. citizens working in Libya to leave
that country because they were in potential danger. The administration was
basically doing its best to hinder the oil-based economy of Libya by coercing
U.S. oil companies to reduce operations.
As was the case with every other region of the world, much was at stake in the Middle East. The United States needed oil, Countries like Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia were large markets for U.S. exports, especially arms and high-technology aircraft. In geopolitical terms the Middle East was also astride the great Soviet land mass. Consequently, the Reagan administration saw the necessity of currying favor with the so-called moderate Arab states, especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, together with Israel. Spreading Soviet influence, Arab socialism, and Islamic nationalism endangered U.S. access to oil, to foreign investments, and to export markets. The complexities and contradictions of Middle East politics were immense, however. Israel remained the most powerful regional regime. By the summer of 1982 it was close to annihilating Palestinians in Lebanon. It escalated its repression of Palestinian peoples living on the West Bank and had officially annexed the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in the June, 1967, war.
On
September 15, 1982, Israeli soldiers allowed Lebanese Christian military units
to enter two main Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila. These forces
massacred hundreds of men, women, and children. World condemnation of the
slaughter and its relationship to the Israeli invasion and occupation was broad-based,
including massive protest demonstrations led by the
The Lebanese crisis deepened as the occupation heightened violence between Muslim and Christian Lebanese and against the Israeli occupying army. U.S. marines entered Lebanon in August 1982, as part of a. multinational "peacekeeping" force. In the summer of 1983 marines began shelling areas controlled by Leban
Finally,
regional conflict was made more complex by the continuation of the Iraqi
Iranian war, which had begun in the fall of 1980. The Iraqis were seeking the
return of disputed territory lost to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. They were
also responding to Iranian exhortations to Iraqi citizens to overthrow their
government. Iraq probably sought to establish its regional hegemony in the
Middle East as well. The Iranians were resisting an invasion. The confusion of
the war was compounded by a growing civil war in Iran itself between Islamic
fundamentalists and westernized liberals and Iranian leftists. Amidst this
confusion, the Reagan administration, which may have been providing covert
support to one or several of the factions, publicly warned the Soviet Union
"not to take advantage" of the political instability in Iraq or Iran
"for their own purposes.” In the summer of 1982, the Iraqi army was forced
out of Iran, whereupon Iranian military units invaded Iraq. In the years that
followed, the war stabilized at a high level of violence and destruction. All
of these contradictions placed limits on the ability of the United States to
control events in the Middle East.
The Relevance of This History for Today
First, a review of this complicated history suggests that Israel,
since 1948, has been a surrogate in the region for United States foreign
policy. The initial US project in the Middle East was to replace the presence
of former colonial powers, primarily Britain and France, with the United
States. After that was achieved, the US target became any semblance of
pro-Soviet, pro-‘communist’ influence in the region. It was this fear that led
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to threaten the use of nuclear weapons in October 1973 when the Soviet Union announced it might protect sectors of the Egyptian
military.
Second, emerging secular regimes in the Middle East were seen as manifestations
of communist influence. The popular leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nassar, was particularly
seen as a surrogate for the Soviet Union in the region. Nassar’s initiation of
the creation of the United Arab Republic, along with Syria, was proof of the
spread of communism.
Third, as the years unfolded, the United States overtly or
covertly gave support to what some observers called “political Islam,” that is movements
and regimes that were committed to religious fundamentalism rather than secular
visions of Arab states. The United States initiated support for the rise of opposition to the pro-Soviet
government in Afghanistan in 1979. This opposition included Osama Bin Laden.
There is evidence that the United States and Israel later gave support to the
construction of Hamas, because the latter represented a faction opposed to the
secular Palestine Liberation Organization.
Fourth, ever since the 1950s to today, the United States has
supported Middle East countries with the largest share of US military
assistance and weapons of all its sales and aid to the world. The ongoing
Middle East conflicts have fueled the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.
Fifth, U.S. policy in the Middle East has always been about geopolitics, anti-communism, oil, and the messianic ideology that fuels the drive for United States hegemony. The implication of these explanations of U,S, policy in the region is that it is not motivated by the security and wellbeing of Israelis or Palestinians (nor is it primarily motivated by U.S. domestic politics.)
Israel: 50 Years of Occupation Abuses | Human Rights
Watch (hrw.org)
The essay below addresses the Palestinian economy today,
updating the first essay above.
Posted on CubaNews 11/14/23
