ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that US Middle East policy from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s consisted primarily of safeguarding US interests by accommodating the populist pan-Arabism of Egyptian president Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser. After its initial attempt to bring together all regional actors in a grand pro-US alliance collapsed, Washington watched with dismay as Soviet influence appeared to advance, first in Syria and then in Iraq. The third element of US policy during this period envisaged bringing all the "progressive" but pro-Western Arab regimes that could be sustained into a regional anti-Soviet alliance modeled on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. British officials continued to insist that Qasim represented the best hope of preventing an all-out Communist takeover in Iraq and pointed to the strongly anti-Communist sentiments of senior military officers, but the Americans remained far less sanguine. In Iraq, by contrast, the Communist advance seemed inexorable.
