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Michael Doran

Ike's Gamble: America's Rise to Dominance in the Middle East Hardcover – October 11, 2016

by Michael Doran (Author)

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This major retelling of the Suez Crisis of 1956—one of the most important events in the history of US policy in the Middle East—shows how President Eisenhower came to realize that Israel, not Egypt, is America’s strongest regional ally.

In 1956 President Nasser of Egypt moved to take possession of the Suez Canal, thereby bringing the Middle East to the brink of war. The British and the French, who operated the canal, joined with Israel in a plan to retake it by force. Despite the special relationship between England and America, Dwight Eisenhower intervened to stop the invasion.

In Ike’s Gamble, Michael Doran shows how Nasser played the US, invoking America’s opposition to European colonialism to drive a wedge between Eisenhower and two British Prime Ministers, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. Meanwhile, in his quest to make himself the strongman of the Arab world, Nasser was making weapons deals with the USSR and destabilizing other Arab countries that the US had been courting. The Suez Crisis was his crowning triumph. In time, Eisenhower would conclude that Nasser had duped him, that the Arab countries were too fractious to anchor America’s interests in the Middle East, and that the US should turn instead to Israel.

Affording deep insight into Eisenhower and his foreign policy, this fascinating and provocative history provides a rich new understanding of how the US became the power broker in the Middle East.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Free Press
Publication date

October 11, 2016
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1451697759
ISBN-13

978-1451697759
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book is subversively revisionist history with sharp relevance to the present. . . . [A] deeply researched, tightly argued and accessibly concise book. . . . [Doran ] writes with the authority of a scholar and the familiarity of a senior policy adviser.”
-- David Frum ― The New York Times Book Review

“Mr. Doran illuminates a narrative with which very few non-specialists will be familiar. . . . A thoroughly researched, closely argued work of traditional diplomatic history.” -- James Traub ― Wall Street Journal

"This is a story that has been told many times, but seldom with the depth and stylistic elegance of Ike's Gamble. Michael Doran does not just challenge the prevailing historiography, he turns it on its head." -- Ray Takeyh ― The Weekly Standard

“The failure of the British-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 was one of the seminal events of the second half of the twentieth century: it marked the end of Britain’s and France’s aspirations to world leadership. America’s involvement is brilliantly described in Ike’s Gamble, a thoughtful and articulate account of the evolution of America’s role in that fateful period.” -- Henry A. Kissinger

“Deeply researched, well-written and powerfully persuasive, this book revises everything we’ve come to accept about America’s role in the Middle East in the 1950s. This highly readable and remarkably forthright book explains how America changed from being a mere 'honest broker' in Middle Eastern affairs to being a committed player.” -- Professor Andrew Roberts, Lehrman Institute Distinguished Fellow, New-York Historical Society

"[Doran] fits the Suez crisis into a broader argument about American policy in the Middle East during the Eisenhower administration. . . . Ike’s Gamble [is] a timely intervention into current debates. Obama won’t read it, but Hillary Clinton should." -- Adam Kirsch ― Tablet

“Ike's Gamble is a brilliant and fascinating story,compellingly told, of American politics, government, and foreign policy. Doran paints a fascinating portrait of how American foreign policy is designed, how mistakes are made, and how Eisenhower came to understand the errors that had strengthened America's enemies.” -- Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

“Riveting, original, and deeply relevant. . . . This is a history of the formative Cold War years that continue to shape current conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the region. Anyone interested in the contemporary Middle East and U.S. foreign policy should read this book.” -- Jeremi Suri, Author of Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama

“With this highly original and persuasive new book, Mike Doran offers a fresh interpretation of Eisenhower’s Middle East policy. Doran also sheds new light on the complexities of the Middle East and American policy challenges there today. This is a compelling history by an accomplished scholar.” -- William Inboden, Executive Director and William Powers, Jr. Chair, theClements Center for National Security at UT-Austin

“Doran is so good at bringing Eisenhower and his challenges to life that one can’t avoid making comparisons with the tough choices confronting the United States today. I can’t think of another book that so thoroughly challenged my assumptions about America’s role in the Middle East.”
-- Will McCants, author of The Isis Apocalypse and Director, Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at The Brookings Institution

About the Author

Michael Doran has served as a Middle East advisor in the White House and as a deputy assistant secretary of defense. An alumnus of Stanford and Princeton Universities, he has held several academic positions and is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he specializes in Middle East security issues. He lives in Washington, DC.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ike’s Gamble

CHAPTER 1 A New President

Picking a fight was an odd way to say good-bye. In January 1953, Prime Minister Winston Churchill crossed the Atlantic to bid farewell to President Harry Truman, who was just two weeks away from retirement. At a dinner in Truman’s honor at the British embassy, the guests included Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Secretary of Defense George Marshall, and a handful of other top American officials. No sooner had dinner begun than Churchill launched into a passionate diatribe in favor of Zionism. According to his right-hand man, Jock Colville, Churchill’s position aroused “the disagreement of practically all the Americans present, though they admitted that the large Jewish vote would prevent them disagreeing publicly.”1

The choice of subjects was impolite. It forced Truman to relive a bitter dispute that had placed him at loggerheads with some of the men around the table—George Marshall in particular. Back in May 1948, Marshall, then secretary of state, nearly resigned in protest over Truman’s intention to recognize Israel. In an especially heated exchange in the White House, Marshall accused the president of pandering to the Jewish vote, and of endangering U.S. national security as a result. If the United States did recognize Israel, Marshall said, then he would cast his vote against Truman in the upcoming election.2 The president, of course, did not follow his secretary of state’s advice, and Marshall somehow made his peace with it, but raw feelings persisted.

After dinner, the argument continued, but Truman drifted away from the group, sat down at the piano, and began playing. When Churchill noticed, he instructed Colville to corral everyone around the piano. Truman performed for the group for about a quarter of an hour, and then made an exit, followed swiftly by Marshall. All the others remained behind, and the debate kicked up again, continuing uninterrupted until one in the morning.

In sidelining his guest of honor, Churchill had not acted alone: an invisible accomplice helped him usher Truman out the door. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president-elect, was spending the evening in New York, planning his new administration, but even from afar he managed to dominate the party. He had already tapped three of Churchill’s dinner guests for jobs in his administration. One of them, Walter Bedell Smith, the director of the CIA, had served as Ike’s chief of staff during the war. Churchill, who had been on familiar terms with “Beetle” for years, could confidently assume that he would enjoy easy access to the new president. Truman may have had two more weeks in the White House, but his power was already gone.

Saying farewell was a good excuse for Churchill to come, but his true purpose was to begin influencing the new team, not to honor the old. Picking a fight was his way of doing it.

Fatuous Churchill

Once Truman had gone off to bed, the argument focused on two main issues, the European Defense Community (EDC) and the Middle East. On the surface, the issues seemed utterly disconnected, but for Churchill they were two parts of the same challenge: persuading the Americans to accept his vision of the special relationship between Britain and the United States. In both Europe and the Middle East, he argued, the United States should put the alliance with Britain ahead of all other interests. His American guests, however, were not having any of it.

Originally proposed by the French, the EDC was a plan for an integrated, pan-European army—an idea that Churchill hated. In its place he proposed a grand coalition, like the one that had defeated Germany and Japan in World War II. The Cold War alliance should be a pyramid, with the Anglo-American partnership at its apex. Emphasizing the Anglophone bond, he dismissed the multilingual EDC as nothing but “a sludgy amalgam.”3

In the Middle East, the primary threat to Churchill’s vision was the growing friendship between the United States and local nationalists. Particularly disturbing to Churchill was the warm attitude of the Americans toward Egypt’s young military rulers, who had toppled King Faruq in a bloodless coup on July 23, 1952. The Free Officers, as they called themselves, had come to power in the midst of a breakdown in Egyptian-British relations, and they were now publicly demanding nothing less than an immediate and unconditional evacuation of the 80,000 British forces who occupied the base along the Suez Canal. Outwardly, General Muhammad Naguib was in charge of the movement, but behind the scenes, a young colonel, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was the one truly calling the shots. Shortly after taking power, Nasser had quietly reached out to the Americans, whose welcoming response was unsettling to the British. The Americans believed that Egypt, as the largest and most influential Arab country, was the key to delivering the entire Arab world to the West in the Cold War. Moreover, they saw nationalists like the Free Officers as the wave of the future.

“Our last hope” was how Acheson described Naguib to Churchill that night. The phrase was poison to Churchill, who believed that the abandonment of the British position in Egypt would spell the end of empire. Courting the Free Officers was not on his agenda; cutting them down to size was—and he sought American support in doing so. But the Americans were disinclined—so unreceptive that Colville feared his boss had pressed the point too hard for his own good. “I had an uneasy feeling,” he wrote in his diary, that the “remarks—about Israel, the E.D.C. and Egypt . . . had better have been left unsaid in the presence of the three . . . who are staying with Ike and the Republicans.”4

This was not the first time on his trip that Churchill had encountered strong resistance to his message. Only the day before, in New York, he had held a series of meetings with Eisenhower himself. Hoping to build on their wartime association, Churchill described his notion of the special relationship and, in the process, floated the idea of an early bilateral conference. He was prepared, he said, to return to Washington two weeks after the inauguration. What better way for Eisenhower to jump-start his foreign policy than to remind the world of the wartime summit conferences that Churchill had conducted with Roosevelt and Truman?

Eisenhower pretended to mull over the idea. He told Churchill that he certainly agreed that the two leaders should use their warm personal relations for mutual benefit, but on the specific question of whether to convene an early summit, he deferred to the man whom he had tapped to be the next secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. He suggested that the three of them—Eisenhower, Dulles, and Churchill—discuss the issue over dinner that night. Churchill left the meeting ecstatic. Eisenhower was entertaining his plan!

Or was he? At dinner, Dulles was a wet blanket. He called Churchill’s suggestion “most unfortunate.” The American people, he explained, believed that Churchill had the ability “to cast a spell on all American statesmen.” The new administration, therefore, had to find its footing before organizing a summit conference. Churchill, according to Colville, “sat up and growled.” That night in the privacy of his hotel room, he unleashed a tirade “about the Republican Party in general and Dulles in particular. . . . He said he would have no more to do with Dulles whose ‘great slab of a face’ he disliked and distrusted.”5

Churchill blamed Dulles, but in truth he had fallen victim to an old Eisenhower trick. Ike preferred to have his subordinates deliver bad news. During the war, it was Bedell Smith who served as his hatchet man. Late in life, Beetle looked back on the role with bitterness. “I was just Ike’s prat boy,” he complained to Vice President Richard Nixon over a whiskey in 1959. “Ike always had to have a prat boy, someone who’d do the dirty work for him. He always had to have someone else do the firing, or the reprimanding, or give any orders which he knew people would find unpleasant to carry out.” Tears were streaming down his face. “Ike always has to be the nice guy.”6

Eisenhower played the nice guy with Churchill, but afterward he recorded his true feelings in his diary. “Much as I hold Winston in my personal affection and much as I admire him for his past accomplishments and leadership,” he wrote, “I wish that he would turn over leadership of the British Conservative party to younger men.”7 Churchill was, Eisenhower continued, “trying to relive the days of World War II,” when “he had the enjoyable feeling that he and our president were sitting on some rather Olympian platform with respect to the rest of the world and directing world affairs from that point of vantage.” The British statesman’s vision of World War II leadership was a myth, but even if it had been accurate, it was no model for the Cold War. “In the present international complexities,” Eisenhower explained, “any hope of establishing such a relationship is completely fatuous.”8

Felix Leiter

Eisenhower’s reservations about Churchill’s ideas were well founded, and he was hardly alone in entertaining them. If there was anyone who shared his belief that the prime minister should make way for younger men, it was Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary and Churchill’s heir apparent.

Dapper and polished, Eden was known in his early days for his “Noel Coward glamour and style.”9 But he was also an experienced professional. He first became foreign secretary in late 1935, at the age of thirty-eight. After just two years in office, in February 1938, he clashed with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain over British policy toward Mussolini and resigned. Six months later, when Chamberlain reached the Munich Agreement with Hitler, Eden took a stand against it, putting himself on the same side with Churchill, who soon became prime minister. In 1940, Eden again became foreign secretary, remaining in office at Churchill’s side for the next five years.

Having managed the international relations of Britain during World War II, he was a seasoned diplomat, a highly experienced politician—certainly one who was prepared to become prime minister. But Churchill was not ready to quit. When the duo returned to power in 1951, they fell back into old patterns, with Churchill taking the lead on the issues that mattered to him—relations with America, first and foremost. On that score, Eden was often closer in spirit to Ike than to his own prime minister. In contrast to Churchill, who still believed in the British Empire, Eden was a modernist, believing, like Eisenhower, that it was important to find an accommodation with the rising generation of Middle Eastern nationalists. But agreeing with the Americans on general principles was one thing; devising policies that harmonized the interests of the two countries was another one altogether.

In June 1952, Eden had presented the Cabinet with a paper, titled “British Overseas Obligations,” which presented his basic ideas about how to forge a common Anglo-American approach to the Middle East. It opened with a stark admission of economic weakness. “It is becoming clear,” the paper stated, “that rigorous maintenance of the presently-accepted policies of Her Majesty’s Government at home and abroad is placing a burden on the country’s economy which it is beyond the resources of the country to meet.” Consequently, some British obligations had to be “transferred to others’ shoulders”—meaning, of course, those of the United States. The goal of British policy was to create international structures, such as a Middle East Defense Organization, which the Americans would bankroll, “while retaining for ourselves as much political control—and hence prestige and world influence—as we can.”10

Call it the James Bond strategy. The Americans would provide the money and the muscle, while the British would supply the savoir-faire. This vision of Anglo-American partnership had a deep impact on the first novel in the Bond series, Casino Royale, which author Ian Fleming completed just a few months before Eden presented his paper to the Cabinet. The success of Bond’s mission depended on defeating the Soviet agent, Le Chiffre, at a single game of high-stakes baccarat. A series of unlucky hands, however, stripped Bond of all of his money. As he stood at the table stunned, with no options left, his American friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, miraculously appeared with a solution. Leiter passed Bond an envelope “as thick as a dictionary.” Inside was a wad of cash and a note: “Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA.” Resuscitated with American funds, Bond continued to play and, of course, trounced Le Chiffre.11

Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, was a personal friend of Anthony Eden, and he successfully channeled the emotions of the British elite into a satisfying myth. In the view of Eden and his colleagues, the British were hardly coming to the Americans cap in hand. Like James Bond, they were bankrupt, but they were placing uniquely valuable assets at the disposal of the United States. This, they believed, was especially true in the Middle East, where they brought to the table an established regional security system and years of deep experience in the region. The hub of their network was the base along the Suez Canal, which contained workshops, supply warehouses, and training grounds that serviced British forces not just in the Middle East but in East Africa as well. Britain also maintained bases in Aden, Iraq, Jordan, Cyprus, and Malta. The sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf were protectorates, whose foreign relations were conducted entirely by a British official, “the Resident,” who sat in Bahrain. The commander of the Jordanian army, the Arab Legion, was British, as were most of his top commanders. Thanks to this informal empire, American strategic planners could confidently assume that, in the event of a war with the Soviet Union, the British would be prepared to take the lead in defending the region.

Eden, then, hardly considered himself to be a beggar. And if ever there was an American president open to playing the role of Felix Leiter, it was Ike—or so Eden hoped. In 1945, the British made General Eisenhower an honorary citizen of London. The address that he delivered on the occasion is as moving an expression of Anglo-American unity as any American leader has penned. Eisenhower presented himself as a product of Abilene, Kansas, a place as distant as one could imagine from sophisticated London. Yet he and the Londoners were united by their common values. “To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before the law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit . . . ,” Ike proclaimed, “the Londoner will fight! So will the citizen of Abilene!”12 His audience melted.

But the very love of liberty that Eisenhower celebrated in his speech made it impossible for him to accept the idea of forging a common Anglo-American front in the Middle East. Like many of his fellow Americans, Eisenhower was uncomfortable with imperialism. He had registered his qualms clearly when Churchill visited him in New York—if only to his diary. With respect to problems like the Anglo-Egyptian conflict, he explained, Churchill had taken an “old-fashioned, paternalistic approach.” Because Britain and the United States were “required to support and carry the heavy burdens of decent international plans, as well as to aid infant nations towards self-dependence,” Churchill felt that “other nations should recognize the wisdom of our suggestions and follow them.”13

In Ike’s view, the problem was not so simple. Churchill’s approach, he believed, would only benefit the Soviet Union. “Moscow leads many misguided people to believe that they can count on communist help to achieve and sustain nationalist ambitions.” It was vitally important, therefore, to avoid policies that made it seem as if the West, as a bloc, had set its face against nationalism. The implications for the James Bond strategy were dire. There was a “great danger,” Eisenhower wrote, “in the two most powerful free nations banding together to present their case in a ‘take it or leave it’ fashion.”14 Eisenhower was no Felix Leiter.

The Honest Broker

But who was he, exactly? Eisenhower saw the United States as an honest broker—a mediator helping nationalists seek fair redress from the British. In no way idiosyncratic, this view of the American role was by far the dominant perspective in Washington—and it was a perspective that the American elite’s attitudes toward Israel strongly reinforced. Like Britain, Israel was a country inextricably linked to the United States but which also stirred up deep hostility among the Arabs. The desire to escape the stigma that American officials believed came from an association with the Jewish state led them to distance the United States from Israel and to establish the United States as a mediator between Arab nationalism and Zionism.

In short, Eisenhower and his top advisors, especially Dulles, saw Israel as a liability. The strategic goal of American policy was to reclaim as much Arab goodwill as possible by demonstrating, in the terminology of the Eisenhower administration, “impartiality”—a word that implied tacking away from Israel. This attitude expressed itself in the flowering, under the Eisenhower administration, of the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME), a CIA front organization, whose goals included countering the support for Zionism in domestic American politics. The organization had direct ties to the president and secretary of state through Reverend Edward L. R. Elson, who, in addition to being a leading officer in AFME, was the pastor of the National Presbyterian Church, which both the president and the secretary of state attended.15

It is impossible to exaggerate the impact that the image of America as an honest broker had on Eisenhower’s thought. Words like idea, concept, and strategy mischaracterize the nature of the vision. Terms like paradigm, worldview, or belief system are more apt. The notion that the top priority of the United States was to co-opt Arab nationalists by helping them extract concessions—within limits—from Britain and Israel was not open to debate. It was a view that shaped all other policy proposals. In fact, the concept was so pervasive that Eisenhower and his colleagues regarded it not as an intellectual construct but as a description of reality itself.

This book examines the influence of the honest broker paradigm on American relations with the Arabs. It is a tale of Frankenstein’s monster, with the United States as the mad scientist and the new regime in Egypt as his uncontrollable creation.

From among the young officers around General Naguib, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser would soon emerge publicly as the true leader of the Free Officers and as a charismatic figure in the wider Arab world. In keeping with the honest broker approach, Eisenhower identified him as a strategic partner, as the only leader capable of ushering in a new era of cooperation between all of the Arabs and the West. With this goal in mind, Eisenhower helped Nasser oust the British from Egypt. While doing so, he also allowed the CIA to equip Nasser with a powerful, state-of-the-art broadcasting system, which beamed his radical pan-Arab ideology, in all its anti-Western and anti-Zionist glory, into every Arab household. The Americans assisted Nasser in the expectation that, in the end, he would use this equipment to help unify the Arabs behind the United States in the Cold War. Instead, he gravitated toward the Soviet Union and worked assiduously to undermine the Western position in the Middle East.

What went wrong? The literature on the question is vast, but a major theme runs through much of it. Eisenhower and Dulles, so the tale goes, came into office with the right ideas and good intentions, but, in the end, they followed in the footsteps of empire. Against their better angels, they alienated Nasser and, along with him, much of the rest of the Arab world; by the time that they realized their mistake, it was already too late. The precise cause of Nasser’s alienation differs from account to account—in some versions, a ham-fisted America undermines itself; in others, it is a belligerent Israel that drives Egypt into the arms of the Soviet Union. In still others, both factors conspire together.

This book tells a different story. Imbued with the honest broker ethos, Eisenhower and Dulles prioritized the settlement of the Anglo-Egyptian and Arab-Israeli conflicts over all other issues—in order to eliminate the obstacles to strategic partnership with the Arabs. This approach suffered from a severe defect: it turned a blind eye to the conflicts between the regional, Muslim powers, and to the hegemonic aspirations of Egypt. Nasser used the American fixation on peacemaking as a means of deflecting the attention of Washington from his revolutionary pan-Arab program, which screamed about Zionism and imperialism, but which also sought to eliminate Arab rivals to regional leadership.

It was the long-term impact of the 1956 Suez Crisis that finally brought home to Eisenhower the deficiencies of the honest broker approach. The crisis came to a head when Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt simultaneously. Eisenhower took a strong position against the three attackers, even going so far as to side with the Soviet Union against his allies in the United Nations. He believed that if the United States would publicly demonstrate firm opposition to the Europeans and the Israelis, it would receive a strategic payoff in the form of widespread Arab goodwill. But the payoff never came. Instead, Eisenhower handed Nasser yet another political victory—the greatest of his career. He helped transform the Egyptian leader into a pan-Arab hero of epic proportions.

The consequences for the United States were profound. When Eisenhower took office in 1953, the Arab world was still tied to the West, thanks in no small measure to the continued influence of British and French imperialism. The Soviet Union had been successfully locked out of the region for three decades, and the American goal was to keep it out. By the end of his second term, however, a wave of revolution had swept the region. It did its greatest damage in Iraq, where revolutionaries, modeling themselves on Nasser, toppled the Hashemite monarchy. The new leaders quickly looked to Moscow for support, and the Middle East became a major arena of Cold War competition.

In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, as Eisenhower watched these results unfold, he discarded, once and for all, his fundamental assumptions about the Middle East. He no longer believed that helping the Arabs balance the power of the Israelis and the Europeans was the key to a successful regional strategy. In fact, he dispensed altogether with the notion of making policy toward the Arabs collectively. The key challenge before the United States, he now realized, was to manage inter-Arab conflict, to help one network of Arab states balance the power of a rival network. In later life, he expressed regret for having treated his allies so harshly at Suez, and he came to see Israel as a strategic asset.

Then and Now

“History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain supposedly said. There is no period in twentieth-century Middle Eastern history that rhymes more powerfully with the present than the Eisenhower era. Today, as then, we are witnessing the fall of a discredited old order and the rise of something new. Transnational Islamist movements are shaking the region in a manner similar to Nasser’s pan-Arabism. While Nasser had Radio Cairo to spread his message, today’s revolutionaries have Facebook and Twitter.

To be sure, there are also big differences. Vladimir Putin’s Russia might be a thorn in the side of the United States today, but it does not pose as grave a threat as the Soviet Union did, and there is certainly no contemporary Arab figure analogous to Nasser. The role that Egypt played in the international system in the 1950s is somewhat analogous to the role that Iran plays today, but the differences between the two are almost as great as the similarities. Nevertheless, many of the key questions that plagued Eisenhower continue to challenge us. Should Washington make policy toward Arab and Muslim public opinion generally, or should it focus on the narrow interests of specific elites? Is Israel a liability or an asset? In a region so riven with conflict, how much support does America owe its allies? Indeed, what criteria should the United States use to distinguish between allies and enemies?

The story of Eisenhower’s relations with Nasser is nothing if not a lesson in the dangers of calibrating the distinction between ally and enemy incorrectly. Eisenhower was the first American president to formulate a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East, and he was one of the most sophisticated and experienced practitioners of international politics ever to reside in the White House. Thanks to his military experience, he was accustomed to reviewing his actions and assessing their effectiveness; when he made mistakes, he paused and thought deeply about them. The lessons he learned from the Suez Crisis were weighty, and they have an enduring quality. They may not provide us with a detailed route out of the Middle Eastern labyrinth today, but they will certainly make us wiser about how to negotiate it.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press (October 11, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1451697759
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451697759
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches

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Michael Doran

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Michael Doran sits in a tank and thinks - mainly about the Middle East. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, but in the past, he served in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon. He also worked at the Brookings Institution, and taught at NYU, Princeton, and the University of Central Florida.

He is the author of two path-breaking articles. "Somebody Else's Civil War" (Foreign Affairs, 2002) was the first to advance the "near-enemy/far-enemy" thesis: the idea that, on 9/11, al-Qaeda attacked the far enemy, the United States, as a way of striking at the near enemy, Muslim regimes in the Middle East. "Obama's Secret Iran Strategy" (Mosaic Magazine, 2015) revealed that President Obama was using the nuclear negotiations with Tehran as a means of effecting a detente in US-Iranian relations a broad realignment of American power in the Middle East.

Doran's first book, Pan-Arabism before Nasser, analyzed the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as an inter-Arab conflict. His second book, Ike's Gamble, which was just released, traces the evolution in President Eisenhower's thinking about the Middle East.

He writes in major magazines and newspapers, testifies before Congress, appears on TV, and tweets - @Doranimated.

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David Lindsay

Ike's Middle East Strategy

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2017

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Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Doran reviews Eisenhower’s Middle East strategy mainly from a US perspective. It is a riveting read. When Eisenhower became president in 1953, the Arab world was still tied to the West. Britain and France still had significant influence. The Soviet Union did not have any allies in the region. By the end of his second term, Britain and France were no longer players in the region and Egypt, Syria, and Iraq had moved into the Soviet camp. Doran believes that Ike misunderstood the Middle East and later admitted to Nixon and the Israeli ambassador that he made a mistake in backing Egypt over Britain, France, and Israel during the Suez Crises of 1956. Doran criticizes Ike for abandoning America’s friends.

John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. Dulles believed that there were three problems in the Middle East: Soviet communism, European imperialism, and Zionism. He wanted to move the Arabs into America’s orbit. Ike and Dulles concluded that the Arabs hated the imperialists (e.g., Britain and France) and the Jews. They concluded that the US had to side with Arab nationalists like Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser. Ike and Dulles decided that for the US to win friends in the Arab world they had to throw Britain, France, and Israel under the bus. Eisenhower assumed that the Arabs behaved as a unified bloc, especially with respect to Israel.

Ike and Dulles wanted Nasser to be their partner, like the Shah of Iran. Nasser came to power via a coup in 1952. Ike and Dulles gave Nasser everything he wanted. However, Nasser wanted to be more than an American puppet. He wanted to lead the Arab world and believed in pan-Arab nationalism. He also sought to eliminate other Arab rivals. Ike persuaded the British to leave Egypt. The British had a military base which guarded the Suez Canal. Doran does not stress the importance of the canal to the Europeans. The Suez Canal was built by the French in 1869 and was owned by French and British investors. The canal was 100 miles long and an important waterway between Asia and Europe. Two-thirds of Britain and France’s oil came through the canal.

The US built Nasser a powerful, state-of-the-art broadcasting system, expecting that Nasser would use this equipment to help unify the Arabs behind the US. Instead, Nasser used it broadcast his pan-Arab propaganda, which was anti-Western and anti-Israeli. Every Arab household in the region heard his message. Nasser was undermining the Western position in the Middle East and Ike was helping him.

Nasser wanted to destroy Israel and was the instigator of the Six Day War in 1967. In 1956 Israeli intelligence believed that Nasser planned to attack Israel. Egypt was acquiring military equipment and a new Air Force from the Soviets. The Israelis wanted to strike before the Egyptian military became too powerful. Two weeks after British troops had left Egypt, Nasser nationalized the canal. Britain and France decided to help Israel and also retake the canal. The three countries met in Paris to coordinate the use of military force against Egypt. Britain was worried that the pro-Soviet Nasser would interrupt Europe’s oil supplies. Nasser was also stirring up trouble in France's North African colonies. The three countries did not tell Eisenhower what they were doing although the CIA claimed that Ike knew what was going on. The Israelis launched a ground attack. Britain destroyed Egypt’s air force which had Russian fighter bombers. Britain and France followed up by landing troops in Egypt. Britain was a third of the way through capturing the canal when it pulled the plug on the operation because of American pressure.

Eisenhower went ballistic. He demanded that the attacking forces evacuate Egypt immediately and imposed crippling economic sanctions on France and Britain. Against Israel, Ike threatened sanctions. At the United Nations, he sided with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower pondered “How could we possibly support Britain and France if in doing so we lose the whole Arab world?” Eisenhower brought Britain’s economy to the verge of collapse and it cost British Prime Minister Anthony Eden his career.

Nasser emerged from the conflict much stronger and more hostile to American interests. The president expected gratitude from the Arabs, instead, Nasser got the credit and became a pan-Arab hero. The main problem was that Nasser had already decided to work with the Soviets. Empowered and emboldened by his “victory” over the imperialists, Nasser immediately began to undermine other pro-Western countries in the region, particularly Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. Eventually, the US woke up to Nasser’s duplicity. Dulles noted in 1958 following the fall of the Iraqi government that Nasser “enjoyed an unbroken series of success, due largely to our support…Our actions had enabled Nasser to emerge as a great hero, who seemingly took on the great powers and came out with a victory.” Ike came to regret his policies. “Years later,” Richard Nixon wrote in the 1980s, “I talked to Eisenhower about Suez; he told me it was his major foreign policy mistake.”

Anthony Eden was concerned about maintaining world order in a post-colonial world which contained nationalist third world dictators. Eden had been British foreign secretary 1935-1938 and resigned over Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Eden spoke German and had met Hitler in 1935. He and Hitler discovered at a dinner that they had served in trenches opposite one another in WW1. They happily sketched out their respective positions on the back of a dinner card. Eden was a captain and Hitler a corporal. However, Eden realized that Hitler was a threat. His French counterpart at the dinner suggested that had Eden shot Hitler at the time it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Eden also spoke Farsi and Arabic and understood the Middle East. He met Nasser in 1955 and compared to him to Mussolini. He believed that appeasing Nasser, just like Hitler, was a mistake.

According to Doran, the US would continue to pay for its mistake and not just in the Middle East. Doran notes that when the United States was stuck in Vietnam, Britain and France had refused to help. Doran does not discuss how Suez was viewed in Europe. The lesson that the French, Germans, and Israelis took away was that they could never fully trust the Americans.

German Chancellor Adenauer completely supported the attack and was appalled that the Americans had sided with Nasser and the Soviets. The Soviets threatened Britain and France with nuclear war and that seemed OK with Ike. The creation of the EU started out as a reaction to Suez. Germany and France concluded that the only way to have influence and avoid being bullied was to work together. France left NATO in 1966. Israel has kept its distance as well. In the words of Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general who delivered victory in the Six Day War: "Our American friends give us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms but we decline the advice." Doran implies that many people in Washington still don't understand the Middle East. He mentions that Chuck Hagel, who was a US Senator and Obama’s Defense Secretary, believed that Ike handled Suez brilliantly.

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The myopia of the State Department's Arabist tradition

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2016

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The book draws a great picture of how misconception or a paradigm can mislead policy. The State Department Arabist were so in love with Arab Nationalism that they became shills for Nasser made him into a hero and led Ike to the greatest policy fiasco until Bush.
Unfortunately Obama did not read history of the Near East, he would have learnt that it is counter productive to be an honest broker between Arabs or between them and Israel.
Either way the book paints a great scenario of the historical events with the perspective of time.
Finally it is clear that the US intervention of 1956 Suez Crisis planted the seeds of the Six Day War and the rest is history.
Loved the honest impartial narrative.

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Uri Pilichowski

President Eisenhower was the worst President for the US-Israel relationship

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017

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I just finished Mike Doran's Ike's Gamble about the Eisenhower administration's faulty approach to the Middle East. It is a must read for any Israel advocate. I have consistently maintained that President Eisenhower was the worst President for the US-Israel relationship, and this book proves it.
As for the book itself, it flows smoothly and is an easy read. Doran puts you in the room for high powered meetings. You feel like you are back in the 1950's and are incredulous at the mistakes being made.
I was impressed by the author's highlighting of alternate theories and why he chose his approach. I highly recommend it!

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Laurence Goldstein

Definitely worth reading.

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2017

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Michael Doran, “Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East.” The sub-title is misleading. In my reading of history, “America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East” was created by President Nixon after the Yom Kippur War. This is a history of US relations with (mostly) Egypt from 1953 to 1958. Doran’s reading is that President Eisenhower (from 1953 to 1956) was disposed to treat Egyptian ruler Nasser as a possible ally of the West. After the Suez crisis, Doran holds that Eisenhower recast his vision such that he saw Nasser as a troublemaker and Israel as an asset to the West. The evidence that Eisenhower so thought is thin, but it is there. For now, I am suspending judgement. Definitely worth reading.

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J. Julio E. Herrera V

Excellent book, which provides insight into the diplomacy of ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017

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Excellent book, which provides insight into the diplomacy of the USA in the Middle East in the 1950s. It shows how, by waving the flag of democracy and anti-imperialism, Washington muzzled the British and French aspiration to recover grip on the Suez canal and topple Nasser, while it replaced them as the major Western player in the region. However it misses the wider picture; namely, that the main purpose of the US was to keep the influence of the USSR in the World, even if it meant supporting dictators. The trouble is that such policy, which worked in Latin America didn't work with Nasser, who had a mind of his own and craved to become the Arab World leader, regardless of where he could muster support. While reading this book, as well as Alex Von Tunzelmann's "Blood and Sand", one wonders how so many lessons on the Middle East issues have been forgotten.

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Timely Lessons

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017

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An important work describing the arc of American Middle East policy during the Eisenhower presidency. It traces the rise of Nasser, the decline of Britain, and the entanglement of America in post WW2 Mid-East power politics. The events leading to the Suez Crisis of 1956 and it's impact and aftermath form the primary focus. It also debunks numerous myths concerning Nasser's motivations and promotion of Pan-Arab Nationalism. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the early chapters of American involvement in the morass of mid-East politics. The book proves yet again the truism that would haunt American efforts in the region to this day; "It's not what you don't know that gets you, as much as what you think you know that ain't necessarily true."

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DUSA

READ IT --BUT BE WARNED

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2017

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At first the book laid out an impressive array of history. But...toward the end of the book, the reader
is led into the dark world of neoconservative thought. Doran began as a respectable historian and
finished this book as a cheap opinion writer.

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Supriyo Chaudhuri

A revisionist history backing a preconceived thesis

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2018

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It was one of those revisionist histories written to justify American imperialism. The other characteristic, a pretension of history with a tabloid enthusiasm of speculative interpretation, may pass as an act of imaginative provocation in some parts of the Washington establishment, but it would be easier to describe the book as an one-sided, rather feeble, account to present an alternative account of Suez crisis. It's big claim that lessons have not been learned is all too clear, ironically, in it's own attempt to promote a worldview where the imperialists, like Churchill and Eden, appear statesmen like while trying to preserve British interests in the middle east, whereas Nasser was 'cunning' and 'deceitful' as he endeavours to protect Egyptian sovereignty. In the end, this is pinned on a preconceived idea, a blast from the past as the Cold War is long over, and yet a chilly reminder of the Western Liberal world-view, which remains the prisoner of the 'empire of liberty' thesis.

J. Rupp

Falsche Freunde

Reviewed in Germany on May 20, 2018

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„In Ike’s Gamble, Michael Doran offers a persuasive and riveting revisionist history of President Eisenhower’s foreign policy approach to the Middle East. Contained within the pages is a not-so-subtle warning to current and future American statesmen looking to place the country on “the right side of history” at the expense of our allies and interests.“ (Small Wars Journal - 01/11/2017)
Mit diesen knappen Worten, die aus der Rezension von Sam Wilkins stammen, wird der Tenor des Buches von Michael Doran gut wiedergegeben. Dem Autor geht es zum einen um eine revisionistische Darstellung der Nahost-Politik von Präsident Eisenhower. Zum anderen ist seine Arbeit als eine Warnung zu verstehen, die heutige Außenpolitiker daran erinnern soll, dass man im Nahen Osten niemals Freunde und Feinde miteinander verwechseln darf.
Dies ist natürlich eine unübersehbare Kritik an der Obama-Administration, die mit ihrer Einbeziehungsstrategie gegenüber dem Iran gerade dabei war, diesen fatalen Fehler zu begehen. Hierin sehen auch konservative Analysten wie Daniel Pipes den Wert des Buches, dem sie eine ungebrochene Aktualität zugestehen. Anerkennend schreibt Pipes in seiner Besprechung der Arbeit dazu:
„When Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute told me he's writing a book on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Middle East policy, I nodded politely, wondering why someone engaged in current policy issues would devote himself to a topic of mainly antiquarian interest. Well, having now read Ike's Gamble, I know the answer: his topic is both fascinating in itself and has continuing relevance for U.S. foreign policy.“ (Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2017)

Der eigentliche Zeitraum, den der Autor in seinem Buch untersucht, reicht von 1953 bis 1958. Er beginnt mit der amerikanischen Reaktion auf die Bemühungen der Ägypter, die Briten aus ihrem Land zu vertreiben. Zu Beginn der fünfziger Jahre befanden sich eine beachtliche Anzahl von britischen Truppen in der Zone des Sueskanals, die für London immer noch eine hohe strategische Relevanz besass. In Whitehall war man deshalb keinesfalls dazu bereit, sich von den neuen Machthabern am Nil, den sogenannten „Freien Offizieren“, einfach hinauswerfen zu lassen.
Insbesondere Winston Churchill, der wieder als Premierminister diente, vertrat die Ansicht, dass ein vollständiger Truppenabzug für das Vereinigte Königreich gänzlich inakzeptabel sei. Er ging fälschlicherweise davon aus, dass Präsident Eisenhower ihm dabei helfen würde, eine harte Haltung gegenüber der nationalistischen Regierung in Kairo einzunehmen.
Zu seiner großen Enttäuschung kam es jedoch anders. Die Eisenhower-Administration verstand sich nämlich als ein „ehrlicher Makler“, der einen Ausgleich zwischen den divergierenden Positionen erreichen wollte. In der Praxis bedeutete dies jedoch nichts anderes, als dass man weitgehend die ägyptische Seite unterstützte. In Washington sah man die panarabischen Nationalisten, die jetzt in Kairo das Sagen hatten, als die geschichtsmächtige Kraft an, welche die Zukunft des Nahen Ostens bestimmen würde. Demgegenüber erschien Großbritannien als eine verbrauchte Kraft, die klar im Absteigen begriffen war.
Um die arabische Welt, die man in Washington als einen monolithischen Blog wahrnahm, im Kalten Krieg für sich zu gewinnen, distanzierte sich „Uncle Sam“ bewusst vom Britischen Reich, welches durch seine koloniale Vergangenheit in keinem guten Licht dastand.

Dementsprechend trugen die USA maßgeblich dazu bei, dass die britischen Truppen aus der Kanalzone komplett abgezogen wurden. Die Amerikaner unterstützten Gamal Abdel Nasser, den starken Mann am Nil, auch bei seiner Informationskriegführung. Sie stellten ihm materielle und personelle Ressourcen zur Verfügung, die es ihm erlaubten, eine antiwestliche und antizionistische Hetzkampagne zu starten.
Präsident Eisenhower und Außenminister Dulles, denen Nassers Feindseligkeit lange Zeit verborgen blieb, hofften auf eine Beendigung des arabisch-israelischen Gegensatzes, den sie als ein Haupthindernis betrachteten, wenn es darum ging, den Nahen Osten zu befrieden und die arabischen Staaten fest im westlichen Lager zu verankern. Ausgerechnet Nasser, der sich als primärer Brandstifter betätigte, sollte zum Friedensstifter werden.
Der ägyptische Führer nutzte diese absurde Idee gnadenlos zu seinen Gunsten aus. Doran schreibt: „Nasser used the American fixation on peacemaking as a means of deflecting the attention of Washington from his revolutionary pan-Arab program, which screamed about Zionism and imperialism, but which also sought to eliminate Arab rivals to regional leadership.“
Als Nasser dann im September 1955 ein massives Rüstungsgeschäft mit dem Ostblock abschloss, begannen sich in Washington ernste Zweifel einzustellen. Nasser, der den amerikanischen Botschafter in Kairo auf seiner Seite wusste, schaffte es aber, einen proamerikanischen Schein zu wahren. Er stilisierte sich zum Opfer einer israelischen Aggression, dem nichts anderes übrig geblieben wäre, als die osteuropäischen Waffen zu kaufen. Ansonsten hätte er es angeblich riskiert, von den "Falken“ in der Regierung und im Militär gestürzt zu werden.

Dennoch hatte Nasser damit eine rote Linie überschritten, welche die westliche Supermacht nicht mehr ignorieren konnte, zumal er im Mai 1956 auch noch die Volksrepublik China offiziell anerkannte. Jetzt war man daran interessiert ihm einen Denkzettel zu verpassen, der ihn veranlassen sollte, auf den Pfad der Tugend zurückzukehren. Hierzu wurde die beabsichtigte Finanzierung des Assuan-Staudammes, die vom US-Kongress ohnehin abgelehnt wurde, zurückgenommen.
Nasser, der es hervorragend verstand, die Schuld an dieser Entwicklung „Uncle Sam“ zuzuschieben, reagierte mit einem Paukenschlag. Er verstaatlichte den Sueskanal und enteignete damit dessen britische und französische Eigentümer. Dieser Schritt konnte in London und Paris nicht einfach hingenommen werden. Die Eisenhower-Administration tat ihrerseits nun alles, um Zeit zu gewinnen. Sie wollte auf jeden Fall verhindern, dass ihre europäischen Verbündeten militärische Mittel zur Problemlösung verwendeten.
Washington setzte auf Verhandlungen und eine Internationalisierung des Konflikts, wohlwissend, dass es dann für die Briten und Franzosen immer schwerer werden würde, einen Militäreinsatz glaubhaft zu rechtfertigen. Eisenhower und Dulles kam es vor allem darauf an, einen gegen den Westen gerichteten Zusammenschluss der islamischen Welt zu verhindern. In dieser Perspektive gab es für ein imperiales Gebaren der alten Kolonialmächte, das lediglich Moskau in die Hände spielte, keinen Platz mehr.
Eine kriegerische Auseinandersetzung war für die USA also völlig inakzeptabel. In einem Schreiben vom 31.07.1956 warnte Eisenhower Premierminister Eden ausdrücklich vor militärischen Operationen. Unmissverständlich hieß es dort: „Moreover, initial military successes might be easy, but the eventual price might become far too heavy.“

Die Regierungen in London und Paris entschlossen sich dennoch dazu, mit Waffengewalt gegen das ägyptische Regime vorzugehen. Zusammen mit Israel, welches die Aktivitäten Nassers als gemeingefährlich einstufte, beschlossen sie im Geheimen einen Plan, der ihre offensive Vorgehensweise legitimieren sollte.
Die israelischen Streitkräfte würden die Operation eröffnen, indem sie auf der Sinai-Halbinsel tief ins Feindesland vorstießen. Danach würden Frankreich und das Vereinigte Königreich die Einstellung der Kampfhandlungen ultimativ einfordern, wobei die Bedingungen für den Waffenstillstand so angelegt waren, dass sie von Nasser nur abgelehnt werden konnten. Nach der erwarteten Ablehnung sollten britische und französische Luftlandetruppen die Kanalzone einnehmen.
Ende Oktober begannen die drei Alliierten damit, ihren Plan in die Praxis umzusetzen. Sie gingen davon aus, dass die US-Regierung es mit einem formalen Protest belassen würde. Tatsächlich fiel die Reaktion der Amerikaner verheerend aus. Sie stellten sich öffentlich gegen ihre Verbündeten und ließen keinen Zweifel daran aufkommen, dass sich die britischen, französischen und israelischen Verbände vollständig zurückziehen müssten. Der diplomatische und ökonomische Druck, den Washington aufbaute, war derart groß, dass den drei Verbündeten nichts anderes übrig blieb, als kleinlaut nachzugeben.
Der einkalkulierte Gewinn an Popularität, mit dem Eisenhower bei den Arabern fest gerechnet hatte, fiel jedoch aus. In seinem Beitrag „Ike vs. Obama in the Middle East“, der am 11.10.2016 im Mosaic Magazine veröffentlicht worden ist, meint Doran hierzu treffend: „By publicly demonstrating his firm opposition to the European and Israeli action, the president expected to reap a large strategic payoff for the United States in the form of widespread Arab goodwill. Instead, Washington handed Nasser yet another political victory — the greatest of his career — thereby helping to transform the Egyptian leader into a pan-Arab hero of epic proportions.“

1958 sahen Eisenhower und Dulles endlich ein, dass ihre bisherige Politik gegenüber Ägypten und der arabischen Welt gescheitert war. Mit dazu bei trug der Staatsstreich im Irak, der im Sommer des Jahres einen Eckpfeiler der amerikanischen Nahost-Strategie zerstörte. Jordanien und der Libanon drohten als nächstes zu fallen. Washington musste handeln, wenn es nicht ganz aus der Region verdrängt werden wollte.
Die Vereinigten Staaten intervenierten nun im Libanon und das Vereinigte Königreich wahrte seine Interessen in Jordanien. Die Zeiten, in denen der ägyptische Diktator die Westmächte gegeneinander ausspielen konnte, waren vorbei. Man hatte die richtigen Lehren aus Nassers doppeltem Spiel, seinen Intrigen und Täuschungsmanövern gezogen.
In der Öffentlichkeit räumte Eisenhower aber nie ein, dass er in den Jahren vor 1958 Nasser und dessen panarabische Ambitionen falsch eingeschätzt hatte. Lediglich in privaten Gesprächen, die er Jahre später führte, gab er zu, diesbezüglich Fehler begangen zu haben. Der Autor hat nicht unrecht, wenn er dazu feststellt: „Like all politicians, Eisenhower was loath to admit publicly that he had blundered, but the brutal truth hung before his eyes like a corpse on a rope.“
Leider trug diese öffentliche Zurückhaltung mit dazu bei, dass sich ein historisches Narrativ unangefochten durchsetzen konnte, welches Eisenhowers Verhalten während der Suezkrise als besonders "staatsmännisch“ lobte. Dies liegt nicht zuletzt auch daran, dass die Perspektive von Nasser zum Interpretationsmaßstab wurde. Amerikanische Diplomaten und Geheimdienstler, die in Kairo tätig waren, übernahmen in ihren Dokumenten und Aussagen nämlich die Sichtweisen des ägyptischen Despoten, ohne diese mit Skepsis zu hinterfragen. Journalisten und Historiker bezogen sich ihrerseits unkritisch auf eben diese Diplomaten und Geheimdienstler, die selbst Jahrzehnte später noch nicht begriffen hatten, dass sie von Nasser schamlos manipuliert und instrumentalisiert worden waren.

Die Lektionen, die sich aus der verfehlten Nahost-Politik der Eisenhower-Administration lernen lassen, sind bis in die Gegenwart hinein von enormer Bedeutung. So darf man niemals in Versuchung geraten, seine Freunde zu bestrafen und seine Feinde zu belohnen. „To shun friends and embrace enemies“, wie es Doran in seinem Buch formuliert, ist keine sinnvolle Option.
Betrachtet man sich jedoch das Atomabkommen, welches Präsident Obama und seine europäischen Alliierten mit dem Iran geschlossen haben, wird einem schmerzhaft deutlich, wie wenig Obama von Eisenhower gelernt hat. Aus diesem Grund verwies auch Omri Ceren auf die Verantwortung der nächsten Regierung, die darüber entscheiden müsse, die korrekten Schlussfolgerungen aus den negativen Erfahrungen der Eisenhower-Administration zu ziehen. In der Dezember-Ausgabe 2016 von Commentary bemerkte er dazu passend:
„The next administration will have to choose which side to take. The superb Ike’s Gamble makes the case that it must be America’s traditional allies, especially Israel, and that any other option — including and especially outreach to avowed enemies of the United States — will end in catastrophe.“
Wie es bislang aussieht, ist Präsident Trump im Unterschied zu seinem unmittelbaren Amtsvorgänger dazu im Stande, zwischen Freund und Feind im Nahostkonflikt klar zu differenzieren.
Insgesamt gesehen ist es Michael Doran wirklich geglückt, eine revisionistische Arbeit vorzulegen. Selbst für ein Fachpublikum bietet sie interessante Einsichten, weshalb David M. Watry in seiner Besprechung wohlwollend urteilt: „Doran's provocative and sophisticated analysis is well written and meticulously researched.“ (Journal of Cold War Studies - Volume 19 | Issue 4 | Fall 2017)
Dem kann man sicherlich zustimmen.

Jürgen Rupp

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Dropzone

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on December 7, 2016

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Very interesting... helps put today in perspective.

Jim Simpson

Well researched and written. I filled in a gap ...

Reviewed in Canada on January 6, 2017

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Well researched and written. I filled in a gap in my understanding of the evolution of US policy in the middle east.

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