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. US interests in the Middle East can be boiled down to two strategic objectives, both of which emerged after World War II. First, the United States was intent on keeping Saudi Arabia and its smaller oil-rich neighbors securely under the US umbrella; and second, it wanted to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence in the Arab world. US troops were landed in Lebanon to prop up the Christian Maronite government already besieged by pro-United Arab Republic (UAR) rebels, and British forces arrived in Jordan to stabilize the situation there. The years between 1963 and 1967 witnessed a series of foreign policy gambits by Nasser aimed at showing United States that it could not take him for granted. All of them failed when US counter-pressure forced him to retreat.
