The 1958 United States intervention in Lebanon

The 1958 United States intervention in Lebanon was a direct result of the failure of American policy to achieve the objectives established by the Eisenhower Administration for the Middle East. Partly as a result of its preoccupation with Cold War concerns, the Eisenhower Administration failed to devise a regional policy capable of coping with the rapid political changes that swept the Arab world in the post-World War II period. The absence of a coherent regional policy provides the key to resolving the paradox of why the United States chose to use such overwhelming military force to quell a crisis in a country that was, in and of itself, neither politically nor strategically important to Western interests. This study relies on an examination of recently declassified primary source material at the National Archives (Washington, D.C.) and the Eisenhower Presidential Library (Abilene, KA) to determine the policy process and the course of events surrounding the 1958 United States intervention in Lebanon. Intra-Administration documents reveal that the decision to respond favorably to a Lebanese request for external intervention was made in mid-May of 1958, two months before the July 14 Iraqi coup prompted the actual intervention. As a consequence, political options to resolve the crisis were never fully explored. The Eisenhower Administration saw the crisis in Lebanon, a country peripheral to Arab and superpower interests, as an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to safeguarding Western interests in the Middle East without incurring any substantial political costs or military risks. This study concludes that the Lebanon intervention did not have lasting consequences for either political developments within Lebanon or the Middle East as a whole. It did not significantly retard the progress of the Arab nationalist movement, which was the Eisenhower Administration's primary objective. Nor did the use of military force advance the United States relationship with the Arab world. Perhaps more importantly, the intervention did not constitute a precondition for peacefully resolving the Lebanese crisis and it did not provide the basis for a continuation of Lebanon's pro-Western foreign policy orientation.