A century ago, the Arab world admired America above all the great European powers. Today, "almost every regime in the Middle East deplores our meddling in politics and culture." This book studies the US's entry into the Middle East, our impact on the region, and the global tremors that crack outward from that impact.
The "languid and aristocratic" Arthur Balfour was considered a dreamy romantic, extremely lazy, and "lamentably ignorant." There were roughly ten times more Arabs than Jews in Palestine, which Balfour believed was populated largely by Turks. In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration promised "to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," while also stating that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities. Britain believed that the Zionists might be able to help them defend the Suez Canal. Zionist propagandists popularized the phrase that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land." Jews from Europe and money from America poured into Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. After the Nazi takeover of Germany, 250,000 came from Germany and Austria. "Nazism, more than any other single factor, made the Holy Land Jewish." Fearing Arab anger and instability, Britain sharply restricted Jewish immigration. During the war and afterward, Britain faced rising Jewish terrorism, while some Arabs allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. At war's end, Palestine was a powder keg ready to explode.
If Palestine was a pestilential dead-end, Saudi Arabia was "a death-inducing wasteland." It became a country controlled by Ibn Saud in the 1930s, and in 1938, the American oil companies he had invited to search for oil found enormous deposits. Saudi Arabia had some of the world's greatest oil reserves, and its reserves would eventually dwarf those of many other countries. The US became the Saudi protector and beneficent friend. Throughout the Middle East, a system of living that had survived for millennia was replaced by an oil-extraction industry filled with foreigners and non-believers. An American characterized the Saudis as "a tenth-century society in the midst of a convulsive leap into the twentieth." Throughout the 1950s, Saudi wealth exploded, and an endless number of American companies went there to build highways, schools, cities, and a massive oil infrastructure. Notwithstanding the mutually beneficial relationship, each side viewed the other warily. Ibn Saud made clear to Churchill and Roosevelt that Arabia could never tolerate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The end of the war saw a torrent of Europe's surviving Jews head to Palestine, with safety and survival on their minds. "The American public—saddened by Jewish suffering and largely unaware of Arab claims in Palestine—eagerly embraced the Zionist propaganda that appeared in every major newspaper." The Democratic administration was fully supportive, and domestic politics mattered, particularly the importance of Jewish voters in New York. America soon realized that this was a crisis with no black-and-white solution. "Appeasing the Arabs would harm Truman at home; appeasing the Jews would harm him abroad. That was the American security dilemma felt keenly by Truman in 1948," and ever since. The Israeli's quickly defeated the Arabs with the longest-lasting consequence being the displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians who became refugees. Some Americans warned of the potential rise of "fanatical Islamist regimes." The Palestine problem helped eliminate the possibility of moderation in the Arab world and became a rallying cry for generations of anti-American and anti-Israeli Muslims. US "policy defined in the war of 1948 and its messy aftermath would henceforth channel and distort American strategy in the Middle East."
In Iran, the UK and the US, from the 1920s on, were concerned about Stalin's desire to gain access to the oil fields the British had been developing since 1901. The Truman Doctrine helped contain Soviet influence, but did not alter Britain's very inequitable allocation of Iran's oil revenue. AIOC (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) paid Iran a relatively small share of the profits under its concession, while American oil companies had negotiated 50-50 profit-sharing arrangements with Ryidah. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who leaned left and had used the communists in Iran to his advantage, nationalized AIOC, and Britain boycotted Iranian oil. Eisenhower's administration supported the 1953 coup that removed the prime minister and strengthened the Shah's position. Some Shiite clergy, fearful of communism, also supported Mosaddegh's ouster. Under the revised oil arrangement, Iran received 50 percent of the consortium's profits, while the British and American companies shared the other half. The Shah's regime held for another 25 years, but some in the State Department suggested that the Shah might fold if the Soviets ever attacked, and that he would spend his life living luxuriously while pouring money into a military machine that could prove to be a paper tiger.
For the US, "the Egyptian dynasty of King Farouk was yet another embarrassing vestige of the British empire." The corruption and poverty were such that almost everyone not on the payroll despised Farouk and the British. The US initially tried to work with the Free Officers who overthrew Farouk in 1952, on the belief that Egypt might be molded into an American beachhead. However, Nasser would become a dictator preaching Arab nationalism with a deep antipathy toward Israel. As the Soviets increasingly turned against Israel as an imperialist puppet, they looked to Nasser for a toehold in the region. He moved closer to the USSR after the US and Britain refused to supply arms. In 1953, Israeli forces killed over a hundred Palestinian civilians, further inflaming Arab opinion and embarrassing the Eisenhower administration. Ike was shocked but faced strong domestic political pressures. Like Truman, he acknowledged "that there were 5 million Jewish voters in the US and very few Arabs." Nasser then nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain and France clamored for Nasser's removal, while Israel continued to build up the IDF, creating a small but first-rate armed force. The Israelis accepted a secret arrangement with Britain and France to join the campaign against Egypt. On October 29, 1956, Israel attacked Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Britain and France then issued an ultimatum and entered the war under the pretext of separating the combatants and protecting the Canal. Eisenhower and Dulles were shocked at the brazen betrayal, particularly because the invasion occurred just before the US elections. Eisenhower demanded that the British and French cease fire. Khrushchev followed suit. The United States applied heavy financial pressure on Britain. Britain and France withdrew, followed by Israel in early 1957.
The following decade saw Nasser aggressively pursuing Arab socialism and acquiring Soviet weapons. He worked to destabilize the region, while the US tried to work with him, then opposed him, and generally watched and fretted about communism and anti-Americanism. The Soviets were active in the Red Sea and Yemen, causing anxiety throughout Washington. They were looking to draw the Arabs closer and demonstrate the efficacy of their weapons and took steps to start a war even though the Arabs had fallen further and further behind the Israelis militarily. Fully 70 percent of Egypt's soldiers were illiterate, while Israel had a population with a much higher level of education. The Soviets warned the Syrians and Egyptians that Israel was preparing to attack. Nasser took the bait. He moved Egyptian troops into Sinai. On June 5, the Israelis launched an air attack that destroyed almost all of the Egyptian air force before breakfast. Jordan and Syria subsequently entered the war. Nasser falsely announced that the US had attacked Egypt. The IDF quickly reached the Suez Canal, took the Golan Heights from Syria, and captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Israel had completely defeated the Arab armies and now possessed substantial strategic depth. The war also produced another large refugee movement, with displaced Palestinians and Syrians. Israel was now in control of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The Arabs met at Khartoum afterward and adopted the famous "three no's": no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Israel was now responsible for governing a large and hostile Palestinian population, a problem that has remained unresolved for decades. The US continues to weigh its need for access to oil against its philosophical and political commitment to Israel.
Weighing in at almost 900 pages, a midpoint break is the only sensible course for me. This book was published in 2015, and although well received in some corners, seems to have been largely ignored by the mainstream because of its very strong criticisms of Israel and America. Many people believe that the Arabs were evicted from their land on a relatively flimsy pretense. However, there was an inevitability to what happened. In the late 19th century, there were 25,000 Jews in the Holy Land, and 75,000 by 1918. More poured in after the Balfour Declaration and in the ensuing two decades and those were the people who made the desert bloom, while the Arabs stood by. We must also note that every time the Arabs attacked, the Israeli's embarrassed them. The problem is intractable, and it's hard to envision any resolution.
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