Title: America’s Search for Control in Iraq in the Early Cold War, 1953-1961
Author: Brandon Robert King
Place of publication: Canada
Publisher: University of Toronto
Release date: 2014
The United States emerged from the destruction of World War II a superpower with burgeoning global interests. Nowhere was this more evident than in Iraq. US policymakers greatly expanded their relationship with the pro-Western regime in Baghdad during the 1950s. To examine these trends more closely, this dissertation analyzes the American relationship with Iraq during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 to 1961). This study discusses how American oil concessions, military aid programs, collective defense arrangements, and modernization initiatives shaped the US-Iraqi bilateral relationship of the 1950s. It also looks intensively at American intelligence assessments and covert action programs in Iraq in this period. An in-depth examination of the Eisenhower administration’s policies vis-à-vis Baghdad offers important lessons about the ways US officials understood and navigated complex political developments in the Middle East. In addition, this dissertation considers US strategies in Iraq in the context of ongoing developments in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. This transnational lens yields fascinating insights into how American interests throughout the Middle East influenced US policies in Iraq. As with their partners in the Iraqi government, American officials privileged the pursuit of “order” and “stability” in Baghdad. When confronted with the prospect of “unrest” in Iraq, the Eisenhower administration decisively supported its Iraqi allies’ moves to clamp down on political dissent. The United States worked energetically to control Iraqi developments in channels favourable to US interests. However, the regime led by Abdel Karim Qasim fundamentally transformed the patterns of the US-Iraqi relationship following the July 1958 Iraqi Revolution. Qasim’s program calling for the “Iraqification” of national economic resources collided with larger American understandings of Washington’s power in Baghdad. The Eisenhower administration proved unable to control the disorderly nature of revolutionary rule in Iraq, suggesting (as with the pre-revolutionary period) the tangible limits to American power in Iraq and the Middle East in this critical period of the Cold War.[1]