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US Foreign Policy and the Multinational Force in Lebanon pp 1–19Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction

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Abstract

By examining newly released archival material this book importantly illustrates how US interventionist policy in Lebanon was created by the Administration’s desire to see the US as the key military power in the Middle East rather than protecting the national sovereignty of regional Arab States or Soviet containment. This book offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War narratives in the Middle East by analysing the regional and geopolitical drivers that led Reagan into the Lebanese Civil War. It demonstrates that the objectives of such military missions can be dangerously unclear, damaging both the US and the nations in which it intervenes along the way. Beyond Lebanon, this book challenges whether foreign military deployments into Middle Eastern or sectarian conflicts should be considered a part of international peacekeeping and, more broadly, asks whether the use of a military force can ever really make peace in the Middle East.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For reasons of specificity, the MNF will be split into two distinct bodies, namely MNFI, from 29 August to 10 September 1982 and MNFII from 20 September 1982 to 17 February 1984.

  2. 2.

    President Reagan [Message to US Marine Forces Participating in the Multinational Force in Beirut, Lebanon], 25 August 1982, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter RRPL), p.1.

  3. 3.

    ibid .

  4. 4.

    [Address to the Nation Announcing the Formation of the New Multinational Force in Lebanon], 20 September 1982, RRPL, p.1.

  5. 5.

    ‘5800 “soldats de la paix”’, Le Monde, 25 October 1983, p.1.

  6. 6.

    [Statement on the Situation in Lebanon], 6 February 1984, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/20684c.htm,

  7. 7.

    Ralph Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy,’ (New York: Praeger, 1991), pp.123–134, xi.

  8. 8.

    Bernard Gwertzman, ‘Washington Frustration’, New York Times (hereafter NYT), 17 February 1984, p.1.

  9. 9.

    Ramesh Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping, UN Authority and US Power’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 12, 1987, pp.461–492; Ann Marie Baylouny, ‘US Foreign Policy in Lebanon’, in Robert Looney, ed., Handbook on U.S. Middle East Relations, (London: Routledge, 2009), pp.310–323, 315; Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’, pp.174–175; Agnes Korbani, ‘U.S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 and 1982: Presidential Decisionmaking’, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991), p.94 & Ramesh Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping in Lebanon: United Nations Authority and Multinational Force’, (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1987).

  10. 10.

    James Nathan & James Oliver, ‘United States Foreign Policy and World Order’, (Glenview: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989), p.469.

  11. 11.

    Lou Cannon, ‘President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime’, (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p.354.

  12. 12.

    Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’, (London: Centre for Lebanese Studies, Tauris & Co, 1993), pp.551–566.

  13. 13.

    Thomas Brewer, ‘American Foreign Policy: A Contemporary Introduction’, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1980), pp.27–46.

  14. 14.

    Rainey, Ronquillo & Avellaneda, ‘Decision Making in Public Organisation’, in Paul Nutt & David Wilson, eds., Handbook of Decision Making (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp.361–365.

  15. 15.

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  16. 16.

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  17. 17.

    Patrick Haney, ‘Organising for Foreign Policy Crises: Presidents, Advisers, and the Management of Decision Making’, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980).

  18. 18.

    Robert Stookey, ‘The United States’, in Edward Haley & Lewis Snider, eds., Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1979).

  19. 19.

    Michael Hudson, ‘The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon’, (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), Kamal Salibi, ‘A house of Many Mansions- the History of Lebanon Reconsidered’, (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1993); Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’; Marius Deeb, ‘The Lebanese Civil War’, (New York: Praeger, 1980); Wade Goria, ‘Sovereignty and Leadership in Lebanon 1943–1976’, (London: Ithaca Press, 1985); Tabitha Petran, ‘The Struggle over Lebanon’, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987); B.J. Odeh, ‘Lebanon: Dynamics of Conflict’, (London: Zed Books, 1985); Samir Kassir, ‘La guerre du Liban: De la dissension nationale au conflit regional, 1975–1982’ (Beirut: CERMOC, 1994) and Ahmad Beydoun, ‘Le Liban: Itineraires dans une guerre incivile’, (Beirut: Cermoc, 1993).

  20. 20.

    Naseer Aruri, ‘U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict,’ in ‘The United States and the Middle East: A Search for New Perspectives, ed. Hooshang Amirahmadi (Albany: University of New York Press, 1993), pp.89–124.

  21. 21.

    Dominic Sachsenmaier, ‘Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp.11–109; Chris Alden & Amnon Aran, ‘Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches’, (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2011), pp.1–30; Mary Fulbrook, ‘Historical Theory’, (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.12–50; Jonathan Gorman, ‘Historical Judgment’, (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), pp.17–66; M.C. Lemon, ‘The Discipline of History and the History of Thought’, (London: Routledge, 1995), pp.134–261; Marcus Cunliffe, ‘American History’ in Martin Ballard, eds., ‘New Movements in the Study and Teaching of History, (London: Temple Smith, 1970), pp.116–133; Meera Nanda, ‘Against Social De(con)struction of Science: Cautionary Tales from the Third World’ in Ellen Wood & John Foster, eds., ‘In Defense of History’, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997), pp.74–97; Matthew Jacobs, ‘Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918–1967’, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); William Lucey, ‘History: Methods and Interpretation’, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984), pp.18–44; Burton Sapin, ‘The Making of United States Foreign Policy’, (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution: 1966), pp.15–33 & Ruland, Hanf & Manke, eds., ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Third World: A Post-Cold War Assessment’, (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006).

  22. 22.

    Chris Alden & Amnon Aran, ‘Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches’, (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2011), pp.62–76; James Scott, ‘Deciding to Intervene: the Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy’, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), pp.6–13 & Paul Peterson, ‘The President, the Congress, and the Making of Foreign Policy’, (London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), pp.4–6.

  23. 23.

    John Manley, ‘The Rise of Congress in Foreign Policy’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (hereafter AAPSS), Vol. 397, 1971, pp.60–70 & Lindsay, J.M, Sayrs, L.W. & Steger, W.P., ‘The Determinants of Presidential Foreign Policy Choice’, American Politics Research, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1992, pp.3–25.

  24. 24.

    Coral Bell, ‘The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s’, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p.88.

  25. 25.

    ibid .

  26. 26.

    George Herring, ‘American and Vietnam: The Unending War’, Foreign Affairs, December 1991, pp.104–119.

  27. 27.

    David Pervin & Steven Spiegel, eds., ‘Practical Peacemaking in the Middle East: Arms Control and Regional Security’, (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 1995) pp.21–84, 207–246; William Quandt, ed., ‘The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David’, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution: 1988), pp.357–236.

  28. 28.

    Alan Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991). pp.33–60.

  29. 29.

    Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’, pp.174–176; Robert Dallek, ‘Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism’, (London: Harvard Press, 1984), pp.129–155 & Robert Stookey, ‘The United States’, in Edward Haley & Lewis Snider, eds., Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1979).

  30. 30.

    Jesus Velasco, ‘Neoconservatives in U.S. Foreign Policy Under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’, (John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2010), pp.38–111.

  31. 31.

    Hanf, pp.174–175.

  32. 32.

    Janice Stein, ‘Flawed Strategies and Missed Signals’ in David Lesch, ‘The Middle East and the United States – A Historical and Political Reassessment’, Fourth Edition, (Colorado: Westview Press, 2007) and Ruland, Hanf & Manke, eds., ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Third World: A Post-Cold War Assessment’, (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006).

  33. 33.

    Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, pp.4–22; Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy, pp.67–80 & Richard Nelson, ‘The Multinational Force in Beirut’, in Anthony McDermott and Kjell Skjelsbaek, The Multinational Force in Beirut 1982–1984 (Miami: Florida International University Press: 1991), pp.98–100.

  34. 34.

    Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, p.137.

  35. 35.

    ibid . p.25.

  36. 36.

    David Fieldhouse, ‘Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914–1958’, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp.304–336.

  37. 37.

    Odd Arne Westad, ‘The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Time’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.331–363.

  38. 38.

    ibid . pp.348–353.

  39. 39.

    Robert Freedman, ‘Patterns of Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East’, AAPSS, Vol. 482, 1985, pp.40–64

  40. 40.

    James Stocker, ‘Spheres of Intervention: US Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967–1976’, (New York: Cornell University Press, 2016), pp.1–5.

  41. 41.

    Campbell, ‘The Soviet Union and the United States in The Middle East’, AAPSS, Vol. 401, 1972, pp.126–135.

  42. 42.

    Westad, ‘The Global Cold War’, pp.331–363 & Rashid Khalidi, ‘Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East’, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009), pp.145–150.

  43. 43.

    Ronnie Duger, ‘On Reagan: The Man & His Presidency’, (New York: McGraw Book Company, 1983), pp.350–392; Condoleezza Rice, ‘U.S.- Soviet Relations’, in Larry Berman, ed., Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1990), pp.71–89; Dallek, ‘Ronald Reagan’, pp.30–62; Theodore Lowi, ‘Ronald Reagan – Revolutionary?’, in Salamon & Lund, eds., The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 1984), pp.29–56; John White, ‘The New Politics of Old Values’, (London: University Press of New England, 1988), pp.7–22;

  44. 44.

    Christopher Layne, ‘Requiem for the Reagan Doctrine’, in David Boaz, ed., Assessing the Reagan Years (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1988), p.96.

  45. 45.

    George Shultz, ‘The Ecology of International Change’ in Greg Schmergel, ed., US Foreign Policy in the 1990s, (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp.3–14.

  46. 46.

    Jesus Velasco, ‘Neoconservatives in U.S. Foreign Policy Under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’, (John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2010), pp.38–111.

  47. 47.

    Christopher Layne, ‘Requiem for the Reagan Doctrine’, p.103.

  48. 48.

    Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon’, pp.174–175.

  49. 49.

    Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy; Nelson, ‘The Multinational Force in Beirut’; Norton, ‘The Demise of the MNF’; Kemp, ‘The American Peacekeeping Role in Lebanon’, in Anthony McDermott and Kjell Skjelsbaek, The Multinational Force in Beirut, 1982–1984 (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991) & Ramesh Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping in Lebanon: United Nations Authority and Multinational Force’, (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1987).

  50. 50.

    Condoleezza Rice, ‘U.S.- Soviet Relations’ & Robert Leiber, ‘The Middle East’, in Berman, Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency, pp.50–70, 71–92.

  51. 51.

    This could owe, in part, to Hallenbeck’s Role as US Chief of Current Operations in the Directorate of Operations and Plans between 1983–1984.

  52. 52.

    Bell, ‘The Reagan Paradox’, p.88.

  53. 53.

    Agnes Korbani, ‘U.S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 and 1982’, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991), p.94.

  54. 54.

    Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon’, pp.174–175, 264–274.

  55. 55.

    Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy’, pp.15–18.

  56. 56.

    Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping, UN Authority and US Power’, pp.461–492.

  57. 57.

    Arlid Schou, ‘The Breakdown of Conflict Management in Lebanon’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1989, p.201.

  58. 58.

    Eichelberger, ‘The Role the United Nations in the East-West Dispute’, AAPSS, Vol. 336, 1961, pp.106–113; Richard Ovinnikov, ‘The USSR Position on Disarmament in the United Nations’, AAPSS, Vol. 414, 1974, pp.51–63 & Robert Pfaltzgraff, ‘The Superpower Relationship and U.S. National Security Policy in the 1980s’, AAPSS, Vol. 457, 1981, pp.186–197.

  59. 59.

    Richard Gabriel, ‘Operation Peace for Galilee: The Israeli PLO War in Lebanon’, (USA: Collins Publishers, 1984), p.50.

  60. 60.

    Baylouny, ‘US Foreign Policy in Lebanon’, pp.310–323.

  61. 61.

    Gabriel, ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’, pp.45–55.

  62. 62.

    Philip Stoddard, ‘U.S. Policy and the Arab Israeli Conflict: Observations on the current Scene’, AAPSS, Vol. 482, 1985, pp.19–39.

  63. 63.

    ibid & Joseph Sisco, ‘The United States and the Arab-Israeli Dispute’, AAPSS, Vol. 384, 1969, pp.66–72.

  64. 64.

    Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping’, p.472.

  65. 65.

    Alden & Aran, ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’, pp.23–25.

  66. 66.

    Ronald Reagan, ‘The Reagan Diaries’, (USA: Harper Collins, 2007); Amine Gemayel, ‘L’Offense et le Pardon’, (Paris: Gallimard et Lieu Commun, 1988); Caspar Weinberger, ‘Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon’, (New York: Warner Communications, 1990); Alexander Haig, ‘Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy’, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984); George Shultz, ‘Triumph and Turmoil: My Years as Secretary of State’, (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1993) & Elie Salem, ‘Violence and Diplomacy in Lebanon, The Troubled Years 1982–1988’ (London: Tauris, 1995).

  67. 67.

    George Egerton, ‘The Politics of Memory: Form and Function in the History of Political Memoir from Antiquity to Modernity’, in George Egerton, ed., Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London: Frank Cass & Co Ltd, 1994), pp.3–6.

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    Sean Scalmer, ‘The Rise of the Insider: Memoirs and Diaries in Recent Australian Political History’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 56, No. 1, 2010, pp.82–104.

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  1. Institute of Digital Education Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Corrin Varady

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Varady, C. (2017). Introduction. In: US Foreign Policy and the Multinational Force in Lebanon. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53973-7_1

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