Title: How did the Cold War affect the Middle East?
Headings: How did the Cold War affect the Middle East?
How did the Cold War affect the Middle East?
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Content: Eisenhower therefore condemned the trilateral invasion in response to the nuclear threat. That is not to say that the US did not also have their own reasons for condemning the invasion. Eisenhower was surprised by the unilateral action taken by Britain, France and Israel in the invasion and feared that this would have wider consequences in the Cold War context. The United States feared that this aggression would draw Nasser closer to the Soviet Union and become a strategic satellite state in the region. Nasser’s influence in regional politics would also drive other Arab leaders to follow suit. This would pose a threat to neighbouring Israel who was the military strength in the region while Egypt was politically dominant. In this way, the Cold War significantly impacted the region as a nuclear conflict between the superpowers in the Middle East was avoided. Nevertheless, while the superpowers were trying to outmanoeuvre each other, they still had to take into consideration the interests of local agents such as Nasser due to the nature of the Cold War, reinforcing the idea that local agents shape outcomes to an even greater degree than the superpowers. The success of the Soviet Union in the region, following the Suez war, was partly due to the West persistently trying to understand regional dynamics through an essentially Cold War prism (Sayigh, Shlaim 2003, p.33). The US assumed that the power vacuum left by the imperial powers could only be filled by either the United States themselves or the Soviet Union.