Hope and Destiny: Truman, Eisenhower, Fulbright, and US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1958

By Harry Keatts Chenault Jr. PhD

In Hope and Destiny, author Dr. Harry Keatts Chenault Jr. takes an in-depth look at the Middle East foreign policies of President Truman and President Eisenhower, along with the significant impact Senator J. William Fulbright had during the Eisenhower years. It provides an historical account of how these three men dealt with serious challenges in the Middle East.

The beginning of the Cold War and the genesis of the nuclear age forced Truman and Eisenhower to make tough, savvy decisions that would influence US foreign policy for decades. Fulbright is noted as a key player for his substantial impact on foreign policy decision-making, famous for his stance against Vietnam, but less known for the position he took on the Middle East in the 1950s and how his opinions prevailed.

With exhaustive sources and thoughtfully assembled observations, Hope and Destiny offers a valuable tool to help understand how events today resonate so soundly from the nation’s past. The legacies that Truman, Eisenhower, and Fulbright left on US foreign policy, and especially in the Middle East, leaves a future roadmap for all US political and military leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480883024

Harry Keatts Chenault Jr. PhD

Harry Keatts Chenault Jr., PhD, a former military officer, lived in the Middle East studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his PhD in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies on US presidential foreign policy in the Middle East. He was simultaneously awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Egypt studying Arabic and Islamic sciences at American University of Cairo.

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Copyright © 2019 Harry Keatts Chenault Jr., PhD.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

ABOUNDING PROMINENCE

CHAPTER 2

Greece, Turkey, Palestine, and the Soviet Threat

CHAPTER 3

Eisenhower’s Mission, Fulbright’s Vision

CHAPTER 4

Beirut: The Line in the Sand—How Eisenhower Used the Eisenhower Doctrine

CHAPTER 5

Policy and Controversy

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A

The Truman Doctrine

APPENDIX B

The Eisenhower Doctrine

APPENDIX C

The Fulbright Resolution of 1957

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are saved by Hope. But Hope that is seen is not Hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.¹

—Romans 8:24, 25

Invariably those who suffer from the arrogance or the power of others wrongfully assume that the evils from which they suffer are solely the consequence of the peculiar malice of their oppressors; and fail to recognize the root of the same evils in themselves.²

—Reinhold Niebuhr

More than in any area of the world, our policy in the Middle East has been a creature of crisis, jagged in its ups and downs and ambiguous in its direction.³

—Senator John F. Kennedy

October 1957

These crises [in the Middle East

, which at times threatened to touch off World War III, posed a constant test to the United States will, principle, patience, and resolve.⁴

—from the memoirs of President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Of course, there were many wrinkles and complications, but in the very large picture one could say that the policy put in place by the Truman Administration and built into bipartisan continuity by the Eisenhower Administration—the Pattern of Responsibility to use Acheson’s phrase—did what its proponents said it would. Containment worked.⁵

—William Lee Miller

INTRODUCTION

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the commander in chief of the US armed forces during World War II and the longest serving president in US history (January 20, 1933, to April 12, 1945; elected four times) made his final journey abroad in February 1945 in order to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Russian leader Marshal Joseph Stalin at Yalta. The purpose of the meeting, held February 4–11, was to discuss a plan for collective security and discuss the fate of war-torn Europe. Less than two months later, Roosevelt passed away on April 12, 1945.⁶ On his return trip to the United States, Roosevelt decided to meet with three rulers—two from the Middle East and one from the Horn of Africa. These meetings would begin the US involvement in the Middle East in the modern era.

One of the many issues for Roosevelt was admitting the Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. King ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia met with Roosevelt on USS Quincy on February 12, 1945. In addition to ibn Saud, Roosevelt met with King Farouk of Egypt and King Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Roosevelt arranged to hold the three meetings in Egypt on Great Bitter Lake.

Harry Hopkins, aide to Roosevelt, described King ibn Saud as a man of austere dignity, great power and a born soldier and, above all, an Arabian first, last and all the time.

The meeting with the biggest consequences was with ibn Saud, and the primary disagreement emerged when Roosevelt talked about the possibility of the Jewish refugees being admitted to Palestine. Each time the subject was brought up, according to Hopkins, the king smiled and said no.⁷ When he met with Churchill in Alexandria to discuss the meetings, Roosevelt did not make a big issue of them, even though he was trying to find out what the Arab perspective was on Jewish refugees being admitted to Palestine. Churchill was alarmed at Roosevelt’s condition and believed the president had a slender contact with life. That was the last time the two wartime leaders saw one another.⁸

After Roosevelt’s meeting at the Great Bitter Lake, Emir Abdallah, who was to become king of Transjordan in May 1946, sent President Roosevelt a letter in Arabic dated March 10, 1945. The letter stated that the king wanted to convey my deepest feelings regarding the matter, pertaining to the issue of Jewish refugees. The interpretation by the US State Department translator left ambiguities in the translation. The king actually wanted to convey his "deepest nationalistic [قومي pronounced: /qaumi/] feelings concerning the Arabs [بالنسبة إلى العرب pronounced: /bin nisbati ila al-Arab/]" (italics added). The translator did not give the US president the essence of what the Jordanian king was actually writing to him.⁹

*****

The end of World War II brought the world to a new level of uncertainty. The United States was propelled to superpower status with an undefined foreign policy, and the world remained dangerous and unsure of old alliances that had won the war, mainly Russia and China. US foreign policy was facing challenges in all corners of the world as the United States was determining how to define its role on the world stage. Europe was decimated militarily and economically, Japan was recovering from nuclear aftermath and total defeat, and China was devastated by the Japanese onslaught and a civil war. In addition, Russia had suffered unprecedented losses in the war and remained an enigma to the West. Arab nations were watching carefully how the world war was going to affect their various nations and alliances. Two US presidents, one Democrat and the other a Republican, had to devise new strategies to keep the world at peace and prevent another world war. In the course of events this led to the Truman Doctrine [see Appendix A] and the Eisenhower Doctrine [see Appendix B], implemented by President Harry S. Truman and President Dwight David Eisenhower, the thirty-third and thirty-fourth presidents, respectively.

Senator J. William Fulbright was a Wilsonian believer in collective security. In the Senate, he acted as the moral conscience of US foreign policy statecraft. He also authored some of the most important legislation in US history with the Fulbright Resolution (September 21, 1943) to institute the United Nations and the Fulbright Act (August 1, 1946) that began the international Fulbright Scholar program. Both of these landmark pieces of legislation will have far-reaching results decades and likely centuries beyond Fulbright’s life.

Senator Fulbright sought to ensure that the foreign policies of the executive branch of government were not allowed to go unchecked or without a rigorous debate. He wrote the Fulbright Resolution of 1957 [see Appendix C] in order to make sure the Eisenhower administration would stay focused on issues in the Middle East that mattered to the nations in that region above and beyond issues relating to the Cold War in all areas of the world. Fulbright’s 1957 Resolution anticipated UN Resolution 242, written after the 1967 Six-Day War, that remains the cornerstone for the peace process in the twenty-first century.

*****

The purpose of this dissertation is to answer two primary questions. The first is about how Palestine—Israel after 1948—affected US foreign policy while the Truman administration concentrated on Greece and Turkey. The contention is that Palestine was just as strategic an issue for US foreign policy. Few historians of US foreign policy discuss how strategically vital Palestine was to the United States during the Greek and Turkish crisis, the crisis that led to the Truman Doctrine. The significance of the crisis was great, as Dean Acheson, then deputy secretary of state, described. The prime necessity was to save the pivotal position occupied by Greece and Turkey.

Acheson alludes to the gravity of the situation in his memoir, Present at the Creation, by discussing how an unnamed officer called upon his own artillery to fire on his position in order to block the enemy advancement. Acheson used that analogy to describe how dangerous the world was at that time. The US government had to make serious decisions in order to preserve world peace and not face SOS (support or suppression) fire.¹⁰

Basil Kondis argued that the State Department’s hands-off attitude during the mid-1940s not only looked upon Greece as a British responsibility but also supported the British policies. The United States and Britain both believed that Greece had internal weaknesses and external pressures. Kondis believed these two factors made the case why outside support was so critical for Greece; without it, the collapse of Greece was on the horizon. He believed three factors played a decisive role in US involvement in Greece:

- The Communist uprising in Greece, December 1944

- Truman’s offer to assist Greece in 1947

- Deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow

These factors caused the United States to adjust its foreign policy objectives in Greece from a passive policy of political idealism to an active realistic role in Greek affairs.¹¹

On the other hand, many scholars believe the US government gave scant attention to Palestine. The view of this dissertation is that, although outwardly that is how it seemed, secretly, it may have been just the opposite. Michael J. Cohen’s book Fighting World War Three from the Middle East contends that, after World War II, Palestine was a critical trouble spot in the Middle East.

Soon after the end of World War Two, Palestine became a critical troublespot in the Middle East. By the end of 1945, the British security forces there had been reinforced by 100,000. However, facing a revolt by the Jewish community, they had yet to restore law and order. In August 1946, with the country in civil turmoil, and its political future still far from clear, an American strategy paper assessed the outcome of a Soviet airborne assault on Palestine. The Americans did not expect the Soviets to attack Palestine during the opening stages of a war, due to the distance between that country and the nearest Soviet airbases in the southern Caucasus and Bulgaria. However, once the Soviets had occupied northern Iraq, as the Americans expected them to do within two to three months, they would be able to airlift some 40,000 troops to Haifa. This Soviet airborne force would be able to hold Haifa for up to 45 days, until joined by reinforcements expected to break through from Turkey via the Lebanon and Syria. American strategists did not believe that the British would be able to pre-empt or hold up Soviet operations.¹²

Annex B of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Report related to the Report of the Anglo-American Committee Report in 1946 looked into the possibility of admitting 100,000 Jews from Europe to Palestine. The report stated it would take a US force of 52,000 soldiers four months to arrive in Palestine, though a Special Marine Brigade of 3,250 marines could be deployed in Palestine in five days should the United States need to confront the USSR there. The report stated that, if US forces were sent to pacify Palestine, it would cause such a stir in the Middle East that it might lead to general war; therefore, the Joint Chiefs in 1946 were not keen on sending US forces to Palestine.

However, with the report on USSR forces aiming at Haifa as a stronghold in Soviet military strategy, it becomes very clear how Palestine featured in plans for a tactical war between the United States and USSR.¹³ Twelve years later, on July 15, 1958, Eisenhower would turn military planning into military action by sending US forces to Beirut. It would send a strong message to Russian Premier Khrushchev and President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, as well as keep US military combat forces out of the Middle East until US Marines returned to the Middle East and, specifically, Beirut from 1982 to 1984, nearly twenty-four years later.¹⁴

According to Cohen, US strategists were contemplating the possibilities of a Russian airborne assault on Palestine, and it was believed that the Soviets themselves were targeting Haifa to airlift 40,000 soldiers. Why Haifa? Prior to the war, oil was supplied to Palestine by Iraq. When the War of 1948 began, the supply ceased.

The USSR provided oil to the Israelis through Romania.¹⁵ Political scientist Arthur Jay Klinghoffer’s comprehensive account of this little-discussed matter suggests that the more important crisis was, in fact, Palestine. The fact that the two governments, USSR and pre-state Israel, had an ongoing, secretive relationship places Palestine as a very significant foreign policy issue between the two superpowers.¹⁶

Prior to receiving oil from Romania, during the mandate period, 1918 to 1948, oil was piped into Palestine from the oil field in Kirkuk, Kurdistan. The oil pipeline extended from Kirkuk via Iraq and Jordan to Haifa and was built by the Iraqi Pipeline Company in 1933. The oil refinery in Haifa received oil from Kirkuk until 1947; after the 1948 War, the oil flow stopped.¹⁷

The USSR had been the first to give Israel de jure recognition and provide Czech arms when neither the Americans not the British or French would do so. In July 1948, Israeli diplomat Mordechai Namir negotiated with the Romanian government for oil and the release of Romanian Jews to emigrate to Israel. As Romania was a satellite of the USSR, it is believed the Romanians acted with the approval of the Kremlin, since the Romanian oil and partial ownership were interconnected to the Kremlin. The Romanians wanted to send crude oil to Haifa; however, Shell Oil refused to open the refineries.

As the war progressed, by October 1948, Shell Oil believed the Israelis might win the war and reopened the refineries in Haifa. The oil from Romania stopped after 1948, but the USSR did resume selling oil to Israel again in 1953 after Israel was having to pay maximum prices to oil companies in the West. The Israelis paid for part of their oil in citrus fruit to the Soviet Union.

As the oil trade between the USSR and Israel continued, the Arab states were not pleased. The Soviet government tried to reassure the Arabs that the USSR had their friendship in mind while simultaneously keeping the oil arrangements with Israel secret. By 1956, the year of the Suez War, the Soviets were favoring the Arabs over the Israelis while, at the same time, oil sales to Israel were probably related to a Soviet desire to keep all options open.¹⁸

The Soviets were hoping Israel would break away from dependence on Western oil and become economically independent of the West in general. The USSR kept the sales going for profits and for the citrus.

The works by Cohen and Klinghoffer indicate that Palestine was a very significant factor pertaining to White House policy.¹⁹

During his presentation at the American Jewish Historical Society in December 1976, Eugene V. Rostow, who served in the US State Department during the Greece and Turkish crisis, claimed that the US government missed opportunities during the period between 1947 and 1949. He said that, although the crisis in Greece occurred at the same time as the crisis in Palestine, the reactions of the US government were different—namely, in Greece, the United States reacted decisively while, in Palestine, the reaction was lethargic.

The problem in Greece was simple, as compared to that in Palestine.²⁰ Rostow talked about the difficulties of US foreign policy not being able to prevent the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. He also stated that it was Israel that stood in Nasser’s path to conquering Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Israel was the only sure access point the US has between Western Europe and US allies in the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan.

Rostow wrote, From the security point of view, this is a fact of cardinal importance in many perspectives. Ideally, if the Middle East were at peace, Israel could be an important influence for progress throughout the area.²¹ He did talk about the dilemma the United States was in with Israel during the late 1940s and said the US government was hard at work on the issue of Palestine, even when it appeared that it was not acting decisively.

Rostow said that, as secretary of state, [George] Marshall emphasized that on matters as important as Palestine, vital national security interests must take precedence over domestic political considerations.²²

Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, requested that a battalion of US Marines be sent to Jerusalem. Marshall turned him down on the grounds US armed forces might become involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Marshall’s concern for stability and desire to foreclose Soviet intervention were so intense that he did not rule out the possibility of using US troops in the future.²³

While Rostow stated the US response to Palestine was different from that to the crisis in Greece, he did not go into detail about the role that the US government had in opposing the USSR in Palestine. Many of the details were highly classified, and only through archival review of unclassified documents is it possible to understand what actually took place. That will be clarified in the following chapters. He said that, during the period from 1945 to 1947, there was no common US policy in the Middle East and that the State Department much preferred to leave it to the British in the Middle East. He said the United States should have pushed hard for a peace treaty in 1949, instead of an armistice following the 1948 War between Israel and several Arab states. That decision, according to Rostow, was a fundamental mistake; the USSR was pursuing peace, and the United States was not.²⁴

As the US government worked behind the scenes on how to deal with the Soviet threat in the Middle East, it became very clear that the United States had to act and assume the role of the superpower in the region. Truman and Eisenhower both had to maneuver to keep the USSR and her satellites out of Palestine/Israel and the countries of the Middle East. This was not always successful. Both presidents did secure the oil in the region while preserving the national security and economic interests of Europe and the United States.

Historians writing about the Eisenhower presidency shortly after he left office misinterpreted Eisenhower’s conduct as the commander in chief. Some believed he delegated his authority in the day-to-day affairs and acted as a hands-off president. Nothing could have been more inaccurate.²⁵ Eisenhower was intimately involved in running the nation’s affairs.

The same can be said about Truman and why he rushed to recognize Israel before the Kremlin did—he wanted to keep the Soviet Union out of the Middle East.²⁶ How he went about doing this will be clarified.

The late Professor Yaacov Bar Siman Tov put it thusly: The State of Israel changed the landscape of the Middle East forever.²⁷

Greece and Turkey were important, but the difference with Palestine is that the Greek and Turkey crisis did not change the landscape of Europe. The new state of Israel forced the United States and the USSR to revise their approaches to foreign policy in the Middle East and how they reacted to each other in the Cold War. Greece might have had a similar effect on US and USSR relations in Europe, but that is only speculation, since Greece did not succumb to Communism, largely thanks to the Truman Doctrine and the role US military advisors played in Greece.

The historian Peter Hahn’s view of Israel and the Truman administration was that, "Israel also assumed strategic importance because of its location at the center of the region and its internal political complexion.²⁸

Israel would go on to become a client state of the United States. The USSR would turn to the Arab world to gain its entry to the region, while simultaneously using the secret oil deal with Israel to keep another pathway open. Spheres of influence were set after the founding of the State of Israel and remain so in the twenty-first century. The Truman administration did not ignore its role in Palestine and believed the greater threat zone in the Cold War was Palestine, rather than Greece, as will be explained in chapter 2, based on the archives from the Truman administration.

The Jewish perspective between 1945 and 1947 is critical to understanding the US role in the Middle East as it dealt with its British and Soviet counterparts in Palestine prior to the statehood in Israel. According to Professor Uri Bialer, after World War II, the world powers began a series of political actions that were being keenly watched by Mapai, the political party of David Ben-Gurion, who would become the first prime minister of modern Israel. Before the war, the Zionists in Palestine did not have a lot of dealings with the USSR, and the British remained the dominant foreign power in Palestine. The war changed that in several ways:

- The increased involvement by the US government during and after World War II, indicating the growing role the United States was going to have on the world stage

- The British Labour government’s hardened policy toward Zionist interests

- The beginning of Russia’s change of attitude toward Zionist political aspirations

Consequently, Ben-Gurion and his supporters decided that the United States would be the first nation they would reach out to as the British were planning to return the question of Palestine to the United Nations. The British were the backup to the United States in Ben-Gurion’s view. His resolve began to waver by 1947, when the Jews in Palestine were willing to reach out to any nation that would assist them; at that time, it meant the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR. Moshe Sharett, the first Israeli foreign minister, stated that his party was knocking on any door.²⁹

Between 1945 and 1947, the northern provinces of Greece were invaded by Communist troops from Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia who were trying to score a victory for the Kremlin by bringing down the government in Greece. Truman sent US military advisors to Greece and began the first of many unconventional wars the United States would become involved in. The US military greatly assisted the Greek military. And that assistance, combined with the provisions from the Truman Doctrine, helped save Greece from falling into the hands of the Communist insurgents. This is not to oversimplify a very serious problem facing the West and its freedom at the time, but it is to say the issue of Palestine was quite different and more complex.

Palestine was not as easy to deal with. While Truman needed to send US military advisors to Greece, that was the last thing he wanted to do in Palestine. The situation there was murky. It has been thought that the Truman White House was wringing its hands and did not know how to handle Palestine.

However:

- There was a great concern that Soviet spies would be among the Jewish refugees migrating to Palestine after World War II and would use Palestine as a gateway to the Middle East. The US government was not taking that lightly and was watching that situation carefully.

- The US government was keenly aware of the importance of keeping UN