Johnson and the Arab Nationalists: November 1963–June 1967

Abstract

At the time of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the US foreign policy establishment was busy assessing the implications of the Arab nationalist military coup in Iraq that had overthrown the Ba’th Party just four days earlier. Despite the devastating blow Kennedy’s assassination had on the US foreign policy establishment in Washington, the transition of power to Lyndon Baines Johnson went smoothly, largely because he kept on many of Kennedy’s key foreign policy advisers, namely, McGeorge Bundy as a national security adviser (until 1966), Robert McNamara as the secretary of defense (until 1968), and Dean Rusk as the secretary of state. Throughout Johnson’s presidency, the shadow of the war in Vietnam loomed, even as he tried to implement a series of wide-reaching domestic reforms in major areas like civil rights, social security, and the health care.1 This would have a profound impact on his administration’s policies toward Iraq.