Home › Features › Essays › The Middle East: A House of Containment Built on Shifting Sands

The Middle East: A House of Containment Built on Shifting Sands

By John C. Campbell
America and the World 1981
Article Summary and Author Biography

If either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan needed any special persuasion to become convinced of the centrality of the Middle East in the total picture of American foreign policy, harsh experience provided it. The former had some notable diplomatic successes in the region, the Camp David accords and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, but he struggled through the final year of his presidency under the impact of two shattering events--the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However history may judge his efforts to cope with them, there was no avoiding the impression of a humiliated and frustrated America which must have contributed to his electoral defeat in November 1980. President Reagan came into office determined to restore American strength and prestige, but one year later his Administration, shocked by the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, at odds with Israel after a series of disputes culminating in the barbed exchange following Israel's de facto annexation of the Golan Heights, and unable either to put aside the Palestine problem or make any progress toward settling it, was still groping for a political structure on which to build the position of strength deemed necessary to hold off the Russians and protect vital oil supplies.

John C. Campbell is former Director of Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of, among other books, Defense of the Middle East and The West and the Middle East.

Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

If either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan needed any special persuasion to become convinced of the centrality of the Middle East in the total picture of American foreign policy, harsh experience provided it. The former had some notable diplomatic successes in the region, the Camp David accords and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, but he struggled through the final year of his presidency under the impact of two shattering events-the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However history may judge his efforts to cope with them, there was no avoiding the impression of a humiliated and frustrated America which must have contributed to his electoral defeat in November 1980. President Reagan came into office determined to restore American strength and prestige, but one year later his Administration, shocked by the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, at odds with Israel after a series of disputes culminating in the barbed exchange following Israel's de facto annexation of the Golan Heights, and unable either to put aside the Palestine problem or make any progress toward settling it, was still groping for a political structure on which to build the position of strength deemed necessary to hold off the Russians and protect vital oil supplies.

This is a premium article

You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access.

Related

Essay, Special 1980
The Middle East: A Year of Turmoil
J.C. Hurewitz

Once again events in the Middle East and adjacent areas dominated the world situation in 1980. To Americans, the inability to obtain the release of the 52 diplomats held hostage in Tehran since November 1979 was particularly dismaying. But of even greater underlying importance was the inability to mount a firm allied or regional response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, where a grinding and brutal war went on with no sign of ending. In the fall, military conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran, again with no end in sight and with consequences for oil supply that by the end of the year had further tightened market prospects, and caused a new jump in oil prices. Finally, the Camp David process--which the Carter Administration had regarded as its greatest achievement--bogged down over issues of autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza that lay at the core of any hope for settlement of the issues between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Read
Essay, Summer 1981
The Third World and U.S.-Soviet Competition
Henry Trofimenko

The overdramatized political and diplomatic reaction of Washington to the military aid which the U.S.S.R. and Cuba have given to Angola and Ethiopia and, in recent times, to the aid which the U.S.S.R. has offered Afghanistan, has been one of the major factors clouding Soviet-American relations in the last few years. Alluding not only to these events but also to the general support and assistance which the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have been giving the Third World movements for national and social liberation, the American press has been claiming for years that while the United States and the Soviet Union seem to have agreed on stabilizing the world situation, the Soviet Union has been destabilizing it by its actions. In point of fact, the charge that the Soviet Union has "broken the rules of détente" in the developing world has been one of the main pretexts used by the Ford and Carter Administrations in domestic debates to try to justify their own abandonment of the policy of détente.

Read
Essay, Fall 1982
Reconsiderations: A Decade of Sino-American Relations
Michel Oksenberg

While the past decade of Sino-American relations has been largely constructive, the ten years have not been on a steady incline. Rather, there have been two strong forward spurts, from spring 1971 through May 1973, and from May 1978 through early 1980. The relationship has also endured two periods of some acrimony and erosion: from the fall of 1975 to late 1976 and from mid-1980 to the effort to stabilize the relationship reflected in the communiqué on arms sales to Taiwan that was agreed in August 1982. In addition to the periods of rapid forward movement and retrogression, several periods are best portrayed through metaphors such as "plateaus" or "mixed pictures." Even the best periods were punctuated by moments of doubt and uncertainty, while the phases of deterioration were constrained by a common desire to limit the erosion and to preserve a more positive public facade than the private exchanges warranted.

Read