ABSTRACT
The Eisenhower administration, frustrated with its attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli issue and its related inability to implement its regional defense plans, decided to address the prospect of increased Soviet influence in the Middle East by adopting Dulles' northern tier approach, which was designed to divorce the regional defense issue from the intricacies of inter-Arab and Arab-Israeli politics. United States policy toward Syria during the period following Shishakli's fall can be described as being fairly passive. This is not surprising since the Eisenhower administration was focusing on the northern tier strategy. The administration was also intent on building up the perception in the Arab world that it was an impartial player in the Arab-Israeli dispute. If the Eisenhower administration was worried about the leftist presence in Syria prior to the September parliamentary elections, afterward the situation would be described as positively grave.
