David A. Nichols: Obama Should Model Eisenhower in the Mideast
[David A. Nichols is an authority on the Eisenhower presidency and the author of the just-released book "Eisenhower 1956: The President's Year of Crisis — Suez and the Brink of War."]
The Middle East will undoubtedly continue to be unstable. Its legacy of colonialist exploitation, badly drawn borders, decades of power struggles, the scramble for oil and, since 1948, the Arab-Israeli conflict has ensured a rocky future. For every American president, the question is not whether but when and where the next Middle East crisis will erupt.
As President Obama considers his options in the region, which president should he look to as a model for effective leadership in the Middle East? Ronald Reagan is the favorite of pundits these days, but Reagan's actions in the Middle East bordered on disastrous.
Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Reagan landed a token military force that set the stage for the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines in a terrorist attack on their U.S. barracks at the Beirut airport. He climaxed a confusing policy toward Libya with a two-day bombing campaign in 1986 that left Moammar Kadafi in power stronger than ever. Reagan betrayed his own policy of not bargaining with terrorists when his administration sold antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon, and then used the proceeds to secretly arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
A better president to emulate is Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like every president since World War II, Ike confronted the unexpected in the Middle East, but he was ready, having hammered out his principles and priorities in advance. Eisenhower captured his approach in a maxim: "Plans are worthless — but planning is everything." His planning process examined multiple contingencies and meticulously defined policy goals so that he, as president, could "do the normal thing when everybody else is going nuts."..
Read entire article at LA Times
The Middle East will undoubtedly continue to be unstable. Its legacy of colonialist exploitation, badly drawn borders, decades of power struggles, the scramble for oil and, since 1948, the Arab-Israeli conflict has ensured a rocky future. For every American president, the question is not whether but when and where the next Middle East crisis will erupt.
As President Obama considers his options in the region, which president should he look to as a model for effective leadership in the Middle East? Ronald Reagan is the favorite of pundits these days, but Reagan's actions in the Middle East bordered on disastrous.
Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Reagan landed a token military force that set the stage for the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines in a terrorist attack on their U.S. barracks at the Beirut airport. He climaxed a confusing policy toward Libya with a two-day bombing campaign in 1986 that left Moammar Kadafi in power stronger than ever. Reagan betrayed his own policy of not bargaining with terrorists when his administration sold antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon, and then used the proceeds to secretly arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
A better president to emulate is Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like every president since World War II, Ike confronted the unexpected in the Middle East, but he was ready, having hammered out his principles and priorities in advance. Eisenhower captured his approach in a maxim: "Plans are worthless — but planning is everything." His planning process examined multiple contingencies and meticulously defined policy goals so that he, as president, could "do the normal thing when everybody else is going nuts."..