Archive Report
Archive Report
Middle East Oil and Arab Nationalism
Easing of crisis conditions in the Middle East has relieved in part, but only in part, the anxiety of Western governments over possible interruption to the flow of oil from a region which holds the bulk of the free world's petroleum reserves.1 The British-French invasion of Egypt in 1956, after President Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, showed that Great Britain and France were ready to fight to assure themselves of continued access to Middle East oil. The immediate dispatch of U.S. Marines to Lebanon and of British paratroopers to Jordan, after the successful nationalist revolt in Iraq in mid-July, seemed to show that the United States now attaches the same importance as its North Atlantic allies ...