ABSTRACT
The US military claimed responsibility for the defense of Canada, Alaska, the western Pacific, and Africa, as well as the near and Middle East. The United States was not to be inhibited by the extensive perimeter of British power or by the ensuing antagonism that characterized Anglo-American relations in the Middle East. US officials in the Middle East between 1947 and 1949 were pessimistic with respect to the prospects of a political solution to the crisis over Palestine. The triad of policies that distinguished the postwar American epoch—the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and National Security Council 68— addressed the interrelated objectives of US policy. The Mediterranean state offered an invaluable physical location and a commendable geopolitical situation, a state with a good port, air bases, and communication system, and a regime that welcomed the oil pipeline that linked US oil interests in Saudi Arabia with Sidon, Lebanon's port on the Mediterranean.
