Abstract
The Soviet-American confrontation after 1945 reflected the intersection of two trends in US history, one long-term—a fear of the “demonic other” dating from Age of Discovery—and the other more recent—a hatred of communism dating from the Bolshevik Revolution. Harry Truman established a new national security state designed to “contain” the Kremlin. After briefly considering “rolling back” the red threat, Dwight Eisenhower also pursued containment. In the Middle East, this produced a series of doctrines—Truman’s, Eisenhower’s, and Nixon’s—which utilized friendly Muslim tyrants like the Shah of Iran to combat alleged communist subversion. When political turmoil enveloped the Muslim world—Arab nationalism directed against Israel, anti-Western revolution in Iran, and left-wing radicalism in Afghanistan—Washington blamed Moscow and eventually turned to Muslim guerrillas to contain the Kremlin. The Carter and Reagan administrations, however, failed to realize that Islamic extremism might pose a threat to American security as grave as international communism. As a result, when the Cold War ended, US officials were ill prepared to deal with the radical ideologies coursing through the Muslim world.
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