ABSTRACT
There could be no greater contrast between the treatment of two regions than that accorded by the US to Africa and the Middle East. US policy in the former is noteworthy not least for its neglect, except for South Africa. For much of this period it was left to America’s West European allies to handle Africa. Besides, the Soviets did not mount a serious challenge there until the 1970s. In contrast, the Middle East was a theatre of fierce rivalry and high stakes. Policy struggled both to keep pace with American economic expansionism and to cope successively with containment, fears of over-extension and for oil supplies, discordant allies, decolonisation, nationalism, Zionism, and Islamic fundamentalism. It was the region in which the limits of both cohesion within the Western alliance and of US power were most evident. Furthermore, the boundaries between the two blocs were most insecure here and occasioned seven of the twenty US nuclear alerts during the Cold War.
