ABSTRACT
Regional objectives of a psychological nature also influenced US policy in the 1950s. In responding to developments in a secondary state, the Eisenhower administration often took actions designed to send a specific message to the state’s more important and more troubling neighbors. The governments of Lebanon, Costa Rica, and Austria each sought substantial US economic and military support in the 1950s. In the late 1950s, the Eisenhower administration formulated policy toward Lebanon in the shadow of troubling developments concerning Egypt, Syria, and the Middle East as a whole. Throughout most of the 1950s, top policy makers in the Eisenhower administration supported pro-US, anti-communist dictators in Central America while opposing more democratic, progressive governments. Moreover, the Lebanese case reveals strikingly that the administration sometimes jeopardized US interests in states of secondary importance in order to forestall psychological defeats in more vital theaters.
