아이젠하워 행정부의 중동 집단방위체제 구상의 좌절

Eisenhower's Failure in the Making of Middle East Collective Security System

The purpose of this article is to investigate the problem of American global strategy towards the Middle East without considering regional traits. In this sense, this article attempts to show the failure of American global cold war policy due to the conflicts between American global containment strategy and the unique aspects in the Middle East. The failure of the Baghdad Pact can be considered as a historical case in which American global cold war policy ended up failure after misperceiving regional traits of Nasserism, that is Arab nationalism led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In this regard, the United States tried to manipulate Nasser's revolutionary government in order to make Egypt to join in the Middle East collective security system. However, this manipulation strategy can be seen as the outcome of misperceiving Nasser's intentions. With this in mind, after the Anglo-Egyptian treaty on the Suez Canal in 1954, Washington tried to establish good relations with the military junta through various strategies such as economic aid and the Alpha plan. However, Nasser participated in the Bandung conference and purchased weapons from the Communist bloc contrary to American expectation. Above all, it seems reasonable to assume that Eisenhower's idea of the Middle East collective security had fundamental limits stemming from the absence of collective identity and difference of threat perceptions among countries in the Middle East. With such inherit problems, it is difficult to bring Egypt into American sphere of influence in the context of the Cold War rivalry, thus resulting in the outbreak of the Suez War. On the other hand, the Eisenhower doctrine to contain Nasser's influence after the Suez War can also be regarded as the American strategy resulted from misperception of the influence of Nasserism. Contrary to American expectation, the authority of Khadim al-haramain (Keepers of the two holy places) in Saudi Arabia could not confront with Nasserism since Arab people more supported Nasser with his Arab nationalism particularly after the Suez War. Accordingly, after experiencing regional turmoil, Washington became aware of the Nasser's enormous influence and changed its coercive strategy into conciliatory one. Under this transformed strategy, the Baghdad Pact had to remain as the Northern Tier without expanding into the Middle East collective security system. After all, the idea of the Middle East collective security system ended in failure when the Baghdad Pact was dissolved into CENTO in 1959 after Iraqi withdrawal.