The foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East has taken many twists and turns since the first American citizens were taken captive by North African pirates in 1784. These foreign lands are a constant presence for contemporary Americans. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the United States has been continuously at war. “Tellingly, the Asian greens that once camouflaged the fatigues of U.S. troops have burnished to Arabian browns and yellows, and Arabic has supplanted Russian as the lingua sancta of the intelligence services.”Unfortunately, constantly shifting motivations for US foreign policy in the Middle East has led to a situation that emboldens our enemies, weakens our allies trust, and makes us an unpredictable player in the Middle East. This thesis will examine the conflict between idealism and pragmatism in American relations with the Middle East, specifically during the 1950s under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Before launching into this task, it is essential to answer basic questions that will guide the reader through this thesis: How has the ‘Middle East’ been defined as a geographic area and a zone of contention? Why does this thesis identify the 1950s as thecrucial period for exploring the tenets of US Foreign Policy in relation to this zone? And how does the conflict between idealism and pragmatism emerge as the key tension in US rhetoric and action related to the Middle East?

As the world became at once more interconnected and more polarized during the twentieth century, the need for the major powers to effectively communicate their perspective to the rest of the world through propaganda grew stronger. However, although the United States was undeniably gaining prestige and influence by the late 1930s, the upstart global power struggled to implement a lasting and successful propaganda program. In the years immediately preceding the Second World War, when the United States was targeted by both Axis and Soviet propaganda, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proved reluctant to implement a peacetime state-sponsored propaganda program. Roosevelt’s successor Harry Truman, on the other hand, did not share this reluctance and throughout the first years of the Cold War sanctioned the establishment of several peacetime programs. However, because of Truman’s lack of understanding of and personal commitment to the use of propaganda, U.S. efforts in this field were uncoordinated, expensive, and largely ineffective. As a result, the highly centralized Soviet propaganda machine constantly tried to divide the United States and its allies and draw more countries into the communist camp. It was not until Dwight Eisenhower, arguably the first true psychological warrior to become president, took office in 1953 that U.S. Cold War propagandists began to match the efforts of their Soviet counterparts. Eisenhower used his organizational talents and military experiences with psychological warfare to restructure U.S. foreign information services into highly coordinated, cost-effective, and efficient Cold War weapons. With the establishment of the United States Information Agency in October 1953, the United States gained more control of its image abroad, casting both U.S. domestic and foreign policies in as favourable a light as possible while simultaneously condemning communists as disingenuous, autocratic imperialists. While U.S. officials struggled to implement effective psychological warfare programs, they were inevitably forced to confront difficult questions concerning the role of propaganda in a democratic society. Whereas a majority of Americans in the interwar period regarded propaganda as anathema, and a tool to which only fascists and communists resorted, by the time Eisenhower took office a growing number of officials had concluded that the stakes in the Cold War were simply too high to leave anything to chance. As a result, these officials argued, it was imperative that the U.S. government target not only international, but also domestic audiences with state-sponsored propaganda in order to ‘educate’ the public on U.S. Cold War objectives and the perils of communism. / Graduate

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84, 107-108).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84, 107-108).

Thesis--Oulu University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-224). Also issued online.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84, 107-108).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1999. / Includes abstract. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-296).

Diss.--Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 1996. / Bibliogr. p. 595-608. Index.

Between 1953 and 1963, during the administrations of President Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, the United States government transformed the way it formulated and executed foreign and defense policies. These changes gave the White House its own foreign policy staff, in the form of the National Security Council, and increased the powers of the Secretary of Defense. Most of these changes began under Eisenhower in the 1950s. Eisenhower, however, delayed making several key reforms despite the recommendations of his staff. He believed some reforms were unnecessary and remained ambivalent about others. Moreover, he wanted to avoid sending complex reorganization legislation through Congress, which Eisenhower feared would allow legislators to interfere in matters of the Executive Branch. Democrats in the 1960 presidential election capitalized on the failure to push through these reforms. The Democratic attacks proved remarkably compelling to a bipartisan audience. Kennedy used this bipartisan agreement to enact many of the reforms Eisenhower had ignored. The motivating factor for many of these decisions was not merely an attempt by either President to concentrate power in the White House, it was a belief that the post-1945 world was so unstable that only giving the White House unfettered access and oversight of the levers of power could ensure the safety of the nation. This work merges Diplomatic History with the field of American Political Development to examine these dramatic changes to the structure of the US government. Historians traditionally have examined these Kennedy era administrative changes in isolation. Studying them together with those that took place under Eisenhower yields a more complete picture of how the national security state developed. Despite Eisenhower’s reluctance to adopt some of the reforms embraced by Kennedy, both presidents believed that major reforms were necessary. Any sound analysis of the ways the contemporary United States makes its foreign and defense policies requires understanding momentous changes that took place during the transformational period of the early Cold War

abstract: When the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency recently declassified documents relating to the 1953 Coup in Iran, it was discovered that American involvement was much deeper than previously known. In fact, the CIA had orchestrated the coup against democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh. This action was sold to the United States public as being essential to democracy, which seems contradictory to its actual purpose. U.S. political leaders justified the coup by linking it to what Charles Mills calls “racial liberalism,” a longstanding ideological tradition in America that elevates the white citizen to a place of power and protection while making the racial noncitizens “others” in the political system. Political leaders in the United States relied on bribing the American media to portray the Shah as the white citizen and Mossadegh as a racial other, the white citizen was restored to power and the racial other was overthrown. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2016