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English Pages 234 [272] Year 1992
SYRIA
AND THE
UNITED STATES Eisenhower's Cold
War
in the
Middle East
DAVID W. LESCH Westview Press
The "Syrian
sparked by a adminisEisenhower covert attempt by the what it perceived to be tration to overthrow Midin the an emerging Soviet client-state crisis" of 1957,
dle East, represented the
denouement of a
badly misguided US. foreign policy, accord-
David Lesch. The repercussions of incident, which almost precipitated a
ing to this
superpower confrontation, made glaringly obvious the pitfalls of a Middle East policy so obsessed with the "Soviet threat" that
it
precluded a reasoned analysis of the complex
dynamics of the
region.
Focusing on regional politics and utilizing newly available primary documentation,
and the United States offers a multidimensional analysis of Syrian-American Syria
relations during the
presents a crisis"
new
Eisenhower years and
interpretation of the "Syrian
and the evolution of U.S. foreign
icy that led to
it.
pol-
In addition, Lesch offers
important new insight into the roles played by Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and the United Nations as well as a thorough examination of the Syrian political scene. The implications of the past for the present, Lesch emphasizes, should not go unremarked in light of
them
—
in the
—
and Syria's pivotal Middle East.
current events
role in