They began with the outbreak of the Christian-Druze war in the Mountain leading to Druze advances, with Syrian backing, in the Shouf and Aley districts. The Army had not been deployed in those areas and only intervened belatedly toward the end of the conflict when Druze moves toward the town of Souk al-Gharb threatened the seat of the Presidency in Bavabda.
Souk al-Gharb came to be considered the government's last line of defense against its opponents and fierce battles raged around it. It was at this point that the American military presence in the country evolved from passive peace-supervisor to active participant in defense of the Gemayel government. Marines in Beirut. President Reagan declared "the U. Again, however, the U. Reagan, in effect, authorized military engagement against certain Lebanese factions as well as their Syrian backers without having formulated a clear idea or clear policy as to where this type of military engagement would lead and how willing the U.
In any case, naval artillery joined in the defense of Souk al-Gharb, and opposition assaults on the town soon stopped. Although the hot war stopped momentarily it continued in a cold war style. Although the Army regained control of the situation, the uprising indicated the profound precanousness of the political and security situation.
This was followed in October by the knockout blow against Western forces in Lebanon: the truck-bomb attack against U. This brought the day of reckoning. A previous truck-bomb attack on the U. Embassy compound in April had left over 30 dead and wounded. For the American administration, Congress, and public it was now time to look at the bottom line.
What vital interests was the U. What plan was it pursuing for success? And at what price was this policy to be pursued? On all three questions, the Reagan administration came up short. There were no identifiable vital American interests in Lebanon short of a vague commitment to the country's "independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity" and a belief that solving the Lebanese issue would be the key to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. The administration had never started with a clear policy on Lebanon, and the policy it had put together in the Fall of had come apart after the collapse of the May 17 Agreement and the failure of the new Lebanese government to make solid headway in consolidating political and military power internally.
Finally, as far the American public was concerned, whatever interests and policies were being pursued, they were definitely not worth the loss of American 'boys' — the largest American loss since the Vietnam War. Reagan saw the writing on the wall and instructed his foreign policy team to begin preparing an American exit from Lebanon.
Disengagement II : In Lebanon, the shift in American policy was translated into American suggestions to Gemayel to reach some accommodation with the opposition and with Syria — the newly recognized power on the ground. Meanwhile, the U. Attempts to reach a compromise with the opposition were made in the Geneva national reconciliation conference of November , but reaching accommodation with the opposition and with Syria while American and other European forces remained in Beirut proved impossible.
The situation broke in February when a second attempt by Amal — again with Syrian backing — to take over West Beirut succeeded, this time in the wake of a successful appeal by Amal leader Nabih Birri for Shfite soldiers to quit the Army. The partition of the Army and the loss of control of West Beirut indicated the final collapse of the American plan for Lebanon and put the Marines and other MNF forces in immediate danger.
Within days, the Americans had 'redeployed1 to ships offshore and the other MNF forces were following suit. Gemayel scrapped the moribund May 17 Agreement, dismissed his cabinet, and appointed a new cabinet including members of the opposition and leaders more sympathetic toward Syria.
Unlike in , U. Marines left Lebanon in in defeat. But like in , U. Secretary Shultz bore the additional grudge of seeing the May 17 Agreement, in which he had invested much personal prestige, be overturned. In Lebanon, Syria was gaining increasing influence. In December of it brokered a Tripartite Agreement between Amal, the PSP, and the Lebanese Forces to institute political reform, end the war, and establish "distinctive" relations between Lebanon and Syria. Gemayel's own attempts to reach a workable compromise between the new leadership of the Lebanese Forces and the left-wing Muslim opposition, while at the same time satisfying Syria but not provoking Israel, failed.
The Lebanese government moved fitfully from crisis to crisis. Between and the U. Syrian governments on new proposals for political reform and improving bilateral relations. Provocations by Iran and its proxies in Lebanon through the kidnapping of Americans and other Westerners did not draw an important American response in Lebanon although they led to clandestine U. A turning point came in with the expiration of Gemayel's term of office.
Attempts to agree on a new President for the country had logjammed. The Maronites could not agree on a candidate to put forward while the Syrians would only accept the election of one who was a friend or ally of Syria. The constitutional deadline came and went without electing a new president despite the last-minute high-level intervention of the U. Murphy's mission was motivated partly by bilateral American concern for the continuation of constitutional life in Lebanon and partly by concern for the avoidance of a full collapse of the Lebanese state which might provoke a regional crisis between Syria and Israel.
After talks in Beirut and Damascus, Murphy had gotten Asad to drop his insistence on the election of former President Sulayman Franjiyyeh in favor of Mikhail Daher, a Deputy from the Akkar region who had good relations with Syria and who was thought to be acceptable to the Christian leadership.
Daher's election, however, was rejected by the Lebanese Forces and the Maronite Patriarch. Literally minutes before his term expired, Gemayel appointed Army General Michel Awn to head a transitional military government until a new president could be elected.
It soon became clear that Awn viewed his tenure as far more than transitional, and he set off on his own political course. The Americans did not favor Awn. First, they were against the accession of a military man to power in Lebanon because they feared that it would exacerbate both internal and external tensions.
They feared that a military man would militarize the domestic and regional aspects of the political situation in Lebanon and reignite the Lebanese powderkeg. Indeed, this soon happened as largescale fighting broke out with Lebanese opposition groups, with the Syrians, and finally with the Christian Lebanese Forces. Second, personal contacts with Awn had not been positive.
Awn's primary Western contacts were with France and he charged that Gemayel's 'American' policy was what had brought Lebanon to its sorry condition. He judged that American policy in Lebanon was to support the status quo, and he. He believed that the U. In any case, Washington worked against Awn. They sought to put together a Christian coalition made up of the Lebanese Forces, the Maronite Patriarch, and Christian Deputies, and orchestrated the Bkirki Declaration of 18 April in which these groups decared their serious reservations about Awn's course of action.
After it became clear that the U. This led to protests by his supporters in front of the U. Embassy and a rapid heightening of tensions. Already having a distasteful memory of involvement in Lebanon in , the U. The ambassador and his staff left in September of Behind the scenes, the U. The conflict had developed into one between Awn and Syria which involved most of the local Lebanese actors on one side or the other, and also had a new regional dimension with Iraq backing Awn.
Israel chose to remain uninvolved beyond the strip it occupied in the South. The Arab League met in Casablanca in May and formed a special committee to work out a solution. A preliminary report of the committee came down heavily on Syria and was rejected by Damascus.
The second and final report was more acceptable to Syria and provided the foundations for convening the Lebanese Parliament in Saudi Arabia to approve a comprehensive plan for political reform, the ending of the state of war, and improving bilateral relations with Syria.
The terms of internal political reform had been outlined over a fairly long period beginning with the Geneva and Lausanne National Reconciliation Conferences in and , and continuing in the Tripartite Agreement of December , and the Lebanese-Syrian negotiations of The Americans had participated in the negotiations through the mediations efforts of U.
State Department envoy April Glaspie. With regard to establishing 'distinctive' relations with Syria, as mentioned in the Tripartite Agreement and reaffirmed in the Taif Agreement, the U. Despite the Taif Agreement, Awn remained in place and opposed to both it and Syria. Awn proved unamenable to such a suggestion and the crisis dragged on, exacerbated by the fighting in between Awn's troops and the Lebanese Forces militia.
The Americans had maintained close relations with the LF and approved of their willingness to accept Taif; furthermore, they looked to the LF as a force that could help weaken Awn internally, either to get him to accept Taif, or to topple him and replace him in the position of leadership of the Christian community. After his battles with Syria and the LF, Awn grew weaker but his popular following continued to grow dramatically.
The Syrian Option II : The watershed for the Americans came with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August and the emergence of a U. Awn had opposed Syrian and American policy in Lebanon, but the U. However, as the U. It decided in favor of Syria and gave a tacit green light — hotly denied publicly - for a Syrian move against Awn in October.
The Syrian intervention on October 13 quashed Awn and his supporters and established joint Syrian and Lebanese government that of President Hrawi control over most Lebanese territory except that occupied by Israel in the South. Since then, the U. It acquiesced in the signing of the Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination between Lebanon and Syria in May but has been sending gentle warnings to Syria that neither the Taif Agreement nor the Treaty of Brotherhood are to be interpreted as giving Syria unlimited suzerainty over Lebanon.
Moreover, the U. Meanwhile, the regional and international situation has been changing rapidly. The Gulf War ended with an abject Iraqi defeat and a resounding American victory, and the Soviet Union collapsed as a unified superpower. Both events have a bearing on U. In brief, the American victory and the Soviet collapse weaken Syria's position.
First, it is no longer sorely needed as a necessary ally against a threatening Iraq; second, with the collapse of the Soviet Union it has lost its strategic depth; third, after the cowing of Egypt in the early s and the defeat of Iraq in , it is the last significant militant Arab nationalist regime resisting American dominance. Sensing the precariousness of his position, Asad has shown uncharacteristic flexibility.
After offering troops to fight alongside the Americans against a fellow Basthist regime, Asad agreed to face-to-face talks with the Israelis and agreed to join an American-dominated regional peace conference without a central role for the Soviet Union or the UN. In Lebanon, he has been forthcoming in trying to resolve the longstanding hostage crisis and, most recently, in curbing drug production in the Biqax Valley. If the regional peace conference is a success, then partial Israeli withdrawals from occupied territories are likely to be accompanied by Syrian withdrawals from large parts of Lebanon; full Israeli withdrawals will also probably have to be balanced by full Syrian withdrawals.
If such regional peace is a success, then Lebanon stands to benefit. Lebanon suffered terribly from regional conflicts, both Israeli- Arab, and inter-Arab. If the regional tensions are calmed and the Palestinians, Syrians, and Israelis reach a workable agreement among each other, then Lebanon, which served as an arena for their competition, may be granted a long-deserved respite.
Vis-a-vis the U. Lebanon today is regarded as the sick man of the Middle East, and the U. They are welcome to the task. A review of the dynamics of the relationship. Before discussing this dynamic, one should note that it has suddenly disappeared. With Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union as a unified superpower, the Cold War is no more. However, for the four decades that it lasted, the Cold War had a powerful disintegrative effect on Lebanon.
Cold War dynamics were closely linked to the polarization that preceded the civil war as well as the heightening tension that preceded the collapse of , and it is no coincidence that the year that saw the end of the Cold War, , was the same year in which Lebanese deputies were hustled to a resort town in Saudi Arabia to sign a document ending their year old war.
The Americans and Soviets were active in Lebanon both directly and by proxy. Before , the Americans backed Chamoun against his opponents and the CIA channelled funds to the Kata'ib, the Tashnaq, and to Chamoun's parliamentary election war chest.
In the early s, they backed Franjiyyeh against the PLO then looked for a compromise while the CIA Athens station and Israel helped Christian militias equip themselves for the battle against the Palestinians. In the s, the U. Despite various overtures in the s, the Soviet Union never developed close relations with the Lebanese government. As war broke out in , political support was translated into military support in terms of training and equipment.
More than the U. Moscow's client, Syria, was involved on all sides with an especially effective role in strengthening the Palestinian presence in the early s, arming the Druze PSP and the Shfite Amal militia, and promoting the growth of the Pro-Iranian Hizballah.
In other words, the Cold War set the stage for general world confrontation; in a country like Lebanon where the population was basically divided, where the two superpowers and their clients enjoyed strong influence, and where the state was weak, global tensions could only too easily lead to.
There is little doubt that the end of the Cold War will ease internal political tensions in Lebanon. An interesting point to note about the Cold War and its influence on Lebanon is that the U. While the U.
When the U. The Regional Dynamic. Regional polarization had an even more visibly disintegrative effect on Lebanon than global polarization. The establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to Lebanon provided the human foundation for the long-term involvement of Lebanon in regional conflicts. In the s, the Arab Cold War between Nasir and his opponents brought Lebanon to the brink of disaster as the Lebanese government lined up on the conservative side and the opposition sided with Nasir.
The War and the subsequent years of conflict between Israel and Palestinian commandos in Lebanon devastated the south of the country, depleted the resources of the state, and completely polarized the Lebanese body politic. The War opened the doors for a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace which only heightened tensions between Israel and Syria. This led to a race for influence and strategic advantage along Israel's Eastern Front of which Lebanon was a part, with both Syrian and Israeli armies expanding freely into the country.
More recently, even Iran joined the game of proxy wars through Hizballah. Discontent with superpower domination was not confined to Hindu nationalists.
Throughout the Cold War, citizens across the globe objected to the inequalities in international power and the intrusion of Washington and Moscow's influences. Many of these same people also praised superpower interventions when they served their interests. Nonetheless, Cold War discontents reached a visible crescendo in the late s as young people in nearly every society condemned what they perceived as the moral injustices of the international system. American and Soviet military attacks on North Vietnam and Czechoslovakia during this period symbolised the apparent bankruptcy of the superpowers' respective claims to build a better world.
The Cold War did not, as many hoped, end after Small states and mobilised citizens could attract attention and create short-term crises, but they could not redesign the structure of international power that grew out of the Second World War.
The continuation of the Cold War through the late s, despite so much opposition, proves the extraordinary resilience of superpower hegemony. In many ways, the Cold War ended as it began. They did not have to do this. The domestic and international pressures acting upon them were strong, but fundamentally these two men chose out of personal conviction to leave the Cold War behind.
Their decision to end the Cold War rivalry, like Truman's and Stalin's choice to accept this rivalry, created an opening for fundamental changes. The revolutions of in Eastern Europe, the Tiananmen Square protests in China the same year, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a formidable international force all grew out of the superpower actions that ended the Cold War.
Reagan and Gorbachev neither anticipated nor desired most of these developments, but they made them possible. Although the power of the superpowers had definite limits, they made and un-made the Cold War world.
Kennedy and the Press John F. Kennedy and PT John F. The Cold War. The Worldwide Cold War. Identifier Accession. Rights Access Status. Relation Is Part Of Desc. Subject Geog. Type Category. Format Medium. Format Media Type. Creator Maker. Language ISO Type ARC. Title Folder. Rights Copyright Status. Relation Container Digid. Rights Access Restrictions. Rights Access Restriction Note.
Subseries Name. Series Name. Description Historical Note. Subject Organization. Subject Person. End Date. Start Date. Subject Geog Full Text. Van Ness, Peter. Xia, Yafeng. Negotiating with the Enemy: U. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam War. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team.
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Revolutionary Self-Reliance Mao Zedong and his associates began to reassess the changing balance of power between the two opposing blocs in the early s. Triangular Diplomacy The perception of grave threat from the Soviet Union pushed Mao Zedong to lift existing conceptual restrictions in order to improve relations with the United States in early s. Ideology The Cold War was originally a confrontation between two contending ideologies — Communism and liberal democracy.
Bibliography Chang, Gordon H. Please Consider Donating Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.
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