Containing Arab Nationalism

Salim Yaqub · 2005

The Eisenhower administration, too, would worry about the proliferation of Nasserist ideology, especially its neutralist element. U.S. officials feared that Arab neutralism could ultimately result in a Soviet takeover of the Middle East or, failing that, in the denial to the West of the region’s strategic positions and oil reserves. It was in five Arab nations lying to Egypt’s east—Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon—that Nasserist influence would arouse the most vigorous and sustained controversy with the United States. Each of those nations would figure prominently in one or more of the political crises associated with the Eisenhower Doctrine.

Was USA was reacting to a Nasserite plague?

similar to how USA ringed Vietnam with dictatorships to react to the virus of nationalism?