ABSTRACT
The Suez Crisis of October 1956-March 1957 profoundly altered Washington’s MiddleEastern policy. The episode and its memory made the United States for the first time strive to become the major outside power in the Middle East, replacing Britain and France. After having joined with the Soviet Union at the United Nations to stop the British, French and Israeli attack on Egypt, the Eisenhower administration worried about Moscow. Suez convinced American diplomats that the Soviet Union was a major rival in the region. From January 1957, when President Dwight D.Eisenhower announced a new ‘doctrine’ for assisting non-communist states in the region, until July 1958, when 14,000 United States marines landed in Beirut, the Eisenhower administration applied what it believed were the three principal lessons of Suez:
(1) the United States had greater influence in the Middle East than any other outside power;
(2) communism was the major problem of the Arab Middle East; (3) Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt was an agent of the Soviet Union.
