Nowhere is rollback more evident than in U.S. policy toward the Third World.

Third World rollback has come to be named the Reagan Doctrine. However, it is inaccurate to attribute this Doctrine solely to Ronald Reagan or the Right. Third World rollback in the 1980s is little more than an extension of postwar era policy. ... this policy transcends which party holds the office of president or the balance of power in Congress. ... 1) The Reagan Doctrine affirms that Third World rollback is justified as the American contribution to a world-wide democratic revolution; but in fact, the major groups supported by the Reagan Doctrine are anything but democratic. 2) Third World rollback plus Third World containment are being carried out through a total program of political, economic, military and psychological warfare called "low intensity" conflict. 3) The right wing was unable to pressure the Reagan administration into pursuing comprehensive Third World rollback on every possible front because such a policy is not realistic. Roots of the Reagan Doctrine ... U.S. government policy in the 1945-1980 period was containment vis-a-vis the USSR and rollback toward the Third World. In the late 1970s, intense pressure built from the global rollback network, particularly the military-industrial complex and ex-CIA operatives, to reinstate a more aggressive foreign policy. Around 1980, the right wing publicly formulated a resurgent global rollback doctrine meant to supplant rather than supplement containment. The rallying cry for the new rollback came from the Committee of Santa Fe: "Containment of the Soviet union is not enough.... It is time to sound a clarion call for freedom, dignity and national self interest which will echo the spirit of the people of the United States. Either a Pax Sovietica or a worldwide counter-projection of American power is in the offing. The hour of decision can no longer be postponed."

Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of theSoviet Union during the final years of the Cold War. While the doctrine lasted less than a decade, it was the centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backedcommunist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to serve the dual purposes of diminishing Soviet influence in these regions, while also potentially opening the door for capitalism (and sometimes liberal democracy) in nations that were largely being governed by Soviet-supportedsocialist governments. "Rollback" replaces "containment" The Reagan Doctrine was especially significant because it represented a substantial shift in the postWorld War II foreign policy of the U.S. Prior to the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War was rooted in "containment," as originally defined by George F. Kennan, John Foster Dulles, and other postWorld War II U.S. foreign policy experts. In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"[15] Although a similar policy of "rollback" had been considered on a few occasions during the Cold War, the U.S. government, fearing an escalation of the Cold War and possible nuclear conflict, chose not to confront the Soviet Union directly. With the Reagan Doctrine, those fears were set aside and the U.S. began to openly confront Soviet-supported governments through support of rebel movements in the doctrine's targeted countries. One perceived benefit of the Reagan Doctrine was the relatively low cost of supporting guerilla forces compared to the Soviet Union's expenses in propping up client states. Another benefit was the lack of direct involvement of American troops, which allowed the U.S. to confront Soviet allies without sustaining casualties. End of Reagan Doctrine The Reagan Doctrine, while closely associated with the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan and his administration, continued into the administration of Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, who assumed the U.S. Presidency in January 1989. But Bush's Presidency featured the final year of the Cold War and theGulf War, and the Reagan Doctrine soon faded from U.S. policy as the Cold War began to end Reagan Doctrine, 1985 The "Reagan Doctrine" was used to characterize the Reagan administration's (1981-1988) policy of supporting anti-Communist insurgents wherever they might be. In his 1985 State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan called upon Congress and the American people to stand up to the Soviet Union, what he had previously called the "Evil Empire": "We must stand by all our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives--on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua--to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." Breaking with the doctrine of "Containment" established during the Truman administration, President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy was based on John Foster Dulles' "Roll-Back" strategy from the 1950s in which the United States would actively push back the influence of the Soviet Union. Reagan's policy differed, however, in the sense that he relied primarily on the overt support of those fighting Soviet dominance. This strategy was perhaps best encapsulated in NSC National Security Decision Directive 75. This 1983 directive stated that a central priority of the U.S. in its policy toward the Soviet Union would be "to contain and over time reverse Soviet expansionism," particularly in the developing world. As the directive noted: "The U.S. must rebuild the credibility of its commitment to resist Soviet encroachment on U.S. interests and those of its Allies and friends, and to support effectively those Third World states that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States, or are special targets of Soviet policy." To that end, the Reagan administration focused much of its energy on supporting proxy armies to curtail Soviet influence. Among the more prominent examples of the Reagan Doctrine's application, in Nicaragua, the United States sponsored the contra movement in an

effort to force the leftist Sandinista government from power. And in Afghanistan, the United States provided material support to Afghan rebels--known as the mujahadeen--helping them end Soviet occupation of their country. --- The foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1981 to 1989. It was characterized by a strategy of "peace through strength" followed by a warming of relations with the Soviet Union, and resulting in an end to the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power. As part of the policies that became known as the "Reagan Doctrine," the United States also offered financial and logistics support to the anti-communistopposition in central Europe and took an increasingly hard line against socialist and communist governments in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.[1] --- The Reagan Doctrine Ronald Reagan repudiated both the NixonFordKissinger policy of dtente and Carters even more conciliatory version of it. He understood more clearly than anyone else in American politics the evil essence of Soviet Communism and how to defeat it. He also understood more clearly than most of his supporters the vulnerability of the Soviet system to sustained economic, military, moral, and political pressure. His unabashed defense of political and economic freedom also restored the nations prosperity, self-confidence, and capacity for world leadership. The personal attributes and outlook that account for Reagans success as a statesman had their genesis in his early years. His moral clarity arose from his religious upbringing under the guiding hand of his mother and her church, the Disciples of Christ, an optimistic but non-utopian denomination of Protestant Christianity congenial with his cheerful disposition. Although Ronald Reagan trusted in the inherent decency and collective wisdom of the American people, he also accepted the Christian notion of original sin and its political implications: The danger of evil lurked even in the best of times. So, Reagan insisted, maintaining and expanding freedom required eternal vigilance.[17] Or, as he frequently put it: Freedom is not more than one generation from extinction. We did not pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our childrens children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.[18] Reagan had firm convictions about foreign policy from the start. He believed the United States should actively maintain a favorable imbalance of power against hegemonic threats that imperil freedom and the national interest. He frequently denounced appeasement of Hitler as suicidal dogma.[19] Reagan said of World War II that never in the history of man had the issue of right and wrong been so clearly defined, so much so that it makes one question how anyone could have been neutral. Reagan revered Winston Churchill the archenemy of appeasementfor doing more than any other man to preserve civilization during its greatest trial.[20] After World War II, Reagan concluded that Soviet totalitarianism posed a threat to freedom as odious and menacing as Nazi Germany had under Hitler. The real fight with this new totalitarianism belongs properly to the forces of liberal democracy, just as the battle did with Hitlers totalitarianism. There is really no difference except for the cast of characters. [21] It was, according to Ronald Reagan, the pessimistic proponents of dtente, not the American people, who suffered from malaise. In a series of radio addresses drafted in his own hand between 1975 and 1979 while out of office, Reagan devised a coherent set of ideals that would inform his national security strategy during his presidency.[22] What crystallized as the Reagan Doctrine rested on several core premises transcending the false dichotomy between realism and liberal multilateralism.

1.

2.

Reagan considered the Soviet regime a totalitarian statea malevolent Leninist entity with unlimited aims and ambitions not a traditional great power, as Nixon and Kissinger deemed it, or a defensive one driven to aggression by the arrogance of American power as Carter deemed it. Like President Harry Truman, the architect of vigilant containment, and like the great Soviet dissidents, Reagan believed the root cause of Soviet aggression lay in the Soviet Unions internal structure, in the nature of its regime and ideology. The Soviet Union would remain an existential danger to freedom so long as it was a totalitarian state with no public opinion or checks and balances to limit the ambitions and actions of a small cadre of tyrants running the regime.[23] Reagan believed there were no substitutes for American powereither surrogates or multilateral institutionsto protect vital U.S. interests in geopolitically critical regions. Like all of his Cold War predecessors, he rightly ranked Europe and East Asia as the major power centers of his day, the areas where the absence of freedom and the triumph of tyranny could most menace American ideals and self-interest. Reagan radiated supreme confidence in the moral and practical superiority of democratic capitalism. He insisted that Americas greatest days lay ahead, that the American economy could compete successfully with any type of regime, so long as the United States curtailed big government and unleashed the dynamism of the private sector through a combination of deep tax cuts and substantial deregulation.[24] Reagan grounded his grand strategy and his conception of the national interest in a compelling synthesis of power and principle. His staunch commitment to promoting stable liberal democracy when possible and his unremitting public condemnations of the moral evils of Communism put him squarely at odds with unrealistic realists such as Nixon and Kissinger, who discounted the significance of ideals and regime type. Reagans emphasis on maintaining the primacy of American military power and his recognition of the ubiquity of evil as well as the potential for good in politics put him squarely at odds with liberal idealists, such as Carter, who discounted these permanent things and exaggerated the natural harmony of interests among men and states. Reagan defined the objective of American grand strategy not just negatively as resisting tyranny, but positively as promoting freedom, prosperity, and democratic institutions when possible and prudent. For Ronald Reagan, both ideals Americas dedication to libertyand self-interest impelled the United States to promote human rights and regime change in the Soviet Union. Yet Reagan also assailed the Carter Administration for selectively and counterproductively applying human rights sanctions more vigorously to Americas less dangerous, less repressive authoritarian allies than to its more dangerous, more repressive Communist adversaries. Like Jeane Kirkpatrick, his ambassador to the United Nations, Reagan

3.
4.

5.

preferred a stable liberal democratic outcome when possible but would settle for the lesser evil of authoritarianism to avert the greater danger of totalitarianism when necessary.[25] In January 1981, Reagan came to the presidency determined to defeat rather than merely contain or accommodate the Soviet regime. [26] He succeeded magnificently. Although there are many heroes of the Cold War entitled to acclaim, Ronald Reagan was pivotal. He possessed a unique combination of courage, vision, the ability to inspire, and the political skills to generate overwhelming pressure on the Soviet Union, giving it no plausible option but to capitulate. President Reagan laid down the gauntlet at his first press conference when he said that Leninist ideology compels the Soviet Union to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve its ultimate objective of global domination. In a commencement address in May 1981, he predicted: [T]he years ahead will be great ones for the country, for the cause of freedom, and for the spread of civilization. The West will not contain communism, it will transcend communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we will dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose final pages are now being written.[27] From start to finish, Ronald Reagan pursued indefatigably a policy of vigilant containment and ideological warfare against Communism, despite intense opposition at home and abroad. He secured a massive modernization of the American military, doubling the size of the American defense budget, badly straining the Soviet economy, and wiping out the military advantage the Soviets had so painstakingly achieved during the 1970s. Facing down skeptics even within his own Administration and defying the potent nuclear freeze movements that had taken to the streets and intimidated many democratic statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, Reagan persuaded the NATO allies to deploy ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershing intermediate-range ballistic missiles to counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.[28] Despite intense diplomatic pressure culminating in the Soviet walkout from arms control talks, Reagan persevered, ultimately compelling the Soviet Union to accept his Zero Option as the basis for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty of 1987, eliminating an entire category of nuclear weapons. Reversing three decades of arms control theology that derided the practicality and desirability of ballistic missile defense, Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet military feared enough to propose unprecedented concessions to eliminate it. Facing down the opposition of his own National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, Reagan refused to sacrifice SDI even for Gorbachevs promise of sharp reductions in Soviet nuclear arsenals as a quid pro quo. Reagans perseverance induced the Soviet Union to make concessions on arms control that it had routinely and cavalierly rejected when the more conciliatory Nixon, Ford, and Carter Administrations had proposed them.[29] Correspondingly, Ronald Reagan intensified economic pressure on the Soviet regime by cutting American trade and credits to the USSR and collaborating with Saudi Arabia to reduce the price of oil, depriving the oil-exporting Soviets of desperately needed hard currency. In the same vein, the Reagan Administration supported opposition groups resisting Soviet clients in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. President Reagans National Security Decision Directive 75, signed in the summer of 1983, made changing the Soviet regime, which it identified as the root cause of the Soviet Unions insatiable ambitions, the object of American grand strategy. President Reagan sought to achieve this goal by applying unrelenting and comprehensive political, economic, ideological, and military pressure.[30] Ronald Reagan also employed public diplomacy as a vital dimension of his grand strategy. Addressing the British Parliament in June 1982, he forecast the demise of the Soviet Union: In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisisa crisis where the demands of economic order are colliding directly with the demands of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free non-Marxist West but in the home of MarxismLeninism, the Soviet Union.[31] Today, these remarks seem prophetic. At the time, however, intellectual elites assailed Reagans remarks as arrogant, ignorant, and bellicose. Ronald Reagan remained undaunted by such criticism. Speaking before the Council of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983, Reagan shocked the foreign policy establishment once more, calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, to the great joy of imprisoned Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.[32] Finally, Sharansky wrote, the leader of the free world has spoken the trutha truth that burns in each and every one of us.[33] Refuting the Revisionists: Reagans Crucial Role in Winning the Cold War Many commentators and liberal academics still deny the obvious: that enormous credit goes to Ronald Reagans moral clarity, vigilance, and assertiveness for winning the Cold War. According to a revisionist school of thought whose ranks include James Mann, John Patrick Diggins, Jack Matlock, Michael Vaisse, and Beth Fischer, the Soviets fell for internal reasons, with Gorbachev the main hero.[34] Revisionists consider Reagans most important, though secondary, contribution his willingness during his second term to abandon the belligerent policies of his first. According to Beth Fischers variant of this argument, an enlightened and sensible Gorbachev induced Reagan to compromise; this defused the spiraling cycle of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, tension which Fischer blames on the hard-line policy of the early Reagan.[35] According to James Mann and Michael Vaisse, Reagan dissociated from hardliners and switched from a bellicose policy to a more realistic policy of peace.[36] This revisionist interpretation ill-fits the evidence. True, Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher recognized sooner than most other hard-linersor realists such as former President Nixon and his Secretary of State Kissingerthat Gorbachev was a different type of leader. When circumstances changed during Reagans second term, he adjusted his policiesbut not the premises underlying them. He responded positively to the changes in the Soviet regime during Gorbachevs tenure. Ultimately, Gorbachev and the Soviet Union agreed to end the Cold War not on their terms, but on Ronald Reagans. American pressure on the Soviet Union did not abate at any point during the Reagan presidency, despite his view that engaging Gorbachev could facilitate the implosion of the regime. Reagan refused to abandon SDI or the Zero Option calling for the elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe; Gorbachev capitulated. American defense spending continued to rise, peaking at $302 billion in 1988 (6.6 percent of GDP). The Reagan Administration continued to aid freedom fighters, draining Soviet resources in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Nor did Reagan relent in his assault on the moral legitimacy of the Soviet Regime. In June 1987, over the objection of his so-called more realistic advisers, he called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, excoriating it as the symbol of Soviet totalitarianism. [37] Reagans understanding of himself also demolishes the revisionist interpretation of his motives and policies. Summing up his foreign policy legacy to students at the University of Virginia on December 16, 1988, he welcomed the improvement in SovietAmerican

relations but urged Americans to keep our heads down and keep our skepticism because fundamental differences remain. He attributed that improvement to his policy of firmness, not conciliation: Plain talk, strong defenses, vibrant allies, and readiness to use American power when American power was needed helped prompt the reappraisal that the Soviet leaders have taken in their previous policies. Even more, Western resolve demonstrated that the hard line advocated by some within the Soviet Union would be fruitless, just as our economic success has set a shining example.[38] Reagan contrasted his policies with the more conciliatory policies of his predecessors during the 1970s: We need to recall that in the years of dtente we tended to forget the greatest weapon that democracies have in their struggle is public candor: the truth. We must never do this again. It is not an act of belligerence to speak of the fundamental differences between totalitarianism and democracy; it is a moral imperative. Throughout history, we see evidence that adversaries negotiate seriously with democratic nations when they know democracies harbor no illusions about their adversaries.[39] Reagan hailed the democratic and free-market revolutions that had occurred in the eight years that he was President. He closed his presidency with a new sense of excitement, even perhaps felt by those who lived in Jeffersons time: a sense of new possibilities for the idea of popular government. Only this time, it is not just a single nation at issue: It is the whole world where popular government might flourish and prosper.[40] Secretary of State George Shultz marveled in retrospect at Reagans foresight: I recall President Reagans Westminster speech in 1982that communism would be consigned to the ash heap of history. And what happened. Between 1980 and 1990 a number of countries that were classified as free or mostly free increased by 50 percent. Open political systems have been gaining ground and theres good reason for it. They work better.[41] It is hard to see, too, how Gorbachev and a policy of conciliation deserve more credit for ending the Cold War in Americas favor than Reagan and his policy of vigilance. The restoration of American power under Ronald Reagan gave the Soviet Union little choice but to take the risk of choosing a reformer such as Gorbachev, who recognized that the Soviet Union could no longer compete against a rejuvenated, self-confident United States unless it liberalized at home and pursued a more conciliatory policy abroad. Nor was Gorbachev a genuine democrat. He aimed only to reform Communism, not to abolish it. His regime began to implode under the cumulative effect of decades of U.S. containment, Reagans confrontational policies intensifying American pressure at a critical moment, and the mortal contradictions inherent in the Soviet system. Whereas Gorbachev did not intend the breathtaking collapse of Communism that his domestic reforms unwittingly unleashed, Ronald Reagan expected and dedicated his political life to achieving this outcome.[42] True, Gorbachev deserves credit for decency unique among Soviet leaders, for not resorting to the use of force to stave off the Soviet Empires demise as all of his predecessors likely would have tried to do. Gorbachev thus rendered an important contribution, but one that was secondary to that of the main hero of the Cold Wars endgame: Ronald Reagan. The Soviet archives have vindicated Reagans assessment: The Soviet Union was indeed an evil totalitarian empire.[43] The Cold War was indeed a moral as well as geopolitical struggle in which the United States was on the right side of history. As Russian President Boris Yeltsin told the U.S. Congress in 1992: The world can breathe a sigh of relief. The idol of communism, which spread everywhere social strife, animosity, and unparalleled brutality, which instills fear in humanity, has collapsed.[44] The more conciliatory policies that Reagans critics proffered as alternatives prolonged rather than hastened the Soviet Unions collapse. Under Nixon, Ford, and Carter, dtente elicited nothing but an acceleration of the Soviet Unions military buildup and intensification of its global expansionism. Conversely, Ronald Reagans relentless exploitation of Soviet vulnerabilities convinced Soviet leaders that the Soviet Union could not outbuild or outbully the United States as it had done during the 1970s. Former USSR Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh and other major ex-Soviet officials have cited Ronald Reagans military buildupand SDI in particularas vital initiatives hastening the Soviet Unions benign collapse.[45] Similarly, in his magisterial study of the Cold War based on recently released Soviet archives, Cambridge University Professor Jonathan Haslam concludes: In a critical sense, whether one likes to admit it or notthe Reagan buildup in counterforce systems, the anticommunist zeal within the Reagan Administration, and the obsession with space based defense played a key role in the unraveling of the Soviet security system across the board.[46] Americas victory in the Cold War also owed much to the resurgence of American economic power that Ronald Reagans policies catalyzed.[47] Reagan rejected Keynesian macroeconomics and traditional Republican fiscal orthodoxy in favor of what is known as supply-side economics, focusing on the way individuals invest their labor and capital in the market. He gave primacy to cutting taxes, reducing the rate of domestic spending, and deregulating the economy rather than to shrinking the size of government or the welfare state. The downside was a steady growth in deficits because federal spending increased even more than the significant increase in revenues that the Reagan pro-growth tax cut generated. The vastly larger upside of Reaganomics was the tremendous economic dynamism it unleashed, lasting for the next 25 years. Between 1983 and 1988, the American economy grew by one-third. Manufacturing grew by 12 percent after a 10 percent decline during the 1970s. The American economy created 18.5 million new jobs during the 1980s, compared to a net increase of zero in Western Europe. No President is perfect, and Ronald Reagan was no exception. Although his propensity to delegate and disengage after setting a clear course usually served him well, it sometimes turned out badly. Witness the IranContra scandal, the worst of his Administration and the perfect storm of Reagans managerial shortcomings. Although Reagan rightly considered the Middle East important though secondary in the Cold War, ranking significantly below either Europe or East Asia, and although he established sound geopolitical priorities for the regionpreventing either Iraq or Iran from attaining regional hegemonythe implementation of his policies left much to be desired. The credibility of Reagans tough rhetorical stand against terrorism suffered tremendously because of the ill-fated arms-for-hostage deal that culminated in the IranContra scandal. The American intervention in Lebanon in 19821984 ended in debacle. After Iran and Syria aided and abetted terrorists in blowing up the American Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 267 Americans, the Reagan Administration withdrew precipitously. Later, Osama bin Laden invoked Lebanon in his litany of American defeatsVietnam in 1975, Mogadishu in 1993, the embassy bombings in Kenya in 1998, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 1998leading him to write off the United States as the great but decadent Satan, too irresolute to fight. Reagan himself was the main culprit for the inconsistencies of his Administrations policies toward the Middle East. On one hand, Reagan vowed to resist terrorism in all of its manifestations; on the other hand, he conceded being a soft touch on the subject of civilian hostages.[48] Even so, Reagans successes and virtues dwarf any failures and shortcomings. He was, indeed, freedoms champion.

-- Eisenhower Doctrine
The term Eisenhower Doctrine refers to a speech by President Dwight David Eisenhower on 5 January 1957, within a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East". Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state[1]. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces "to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against covert armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism."[2] In the global political context, the Doctrine was made in response to the possibility of a generalized war, threatened as a result of the Soviet Union's attempt to use the Suez War as a pretext to enterEgypt. Coupled with the power vacuum left by the decline of British and French power in the region after the US protested against the conduct of their allies during the Suez War, Eisenhower felt that a strong position needed to better the situation was further complicated by the positions taken by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was rapidly building a power base and using it to play the Soviets and Americans against each other, taking a position of "positive neutrality" and accepting aid from the Soviets. On the regional level, the intent was that the Doctrine would help to provide the independent Arab regimes with an alternative to Nasser's political control, strengthening them while isolating Communist influence through isolation of Nasser. The doctrine largely failed on that front, with Nasser's power quickly rising by 1959 to the point where he could shape the leadership outcomes in neighboring Arab countries including Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but in the meantime Nasser's relationship with the Soviet leaders deteriorated, allowing the US to switch to a policy of accommodation. The Eisenhower Administration also saw the Middle East as being influential for future foreign policy for not only the United States but also its allies. The region contains a large percentage of the world's oil supply, and it was perceived that if it were to fall to communism, the United States and its allies would suffer immense economic consequences. Eisenhower's protests against long time allies the United Kingdom and France during the Suez Canal Crisis meant that the US was the lone Western power in the Middle East and placed US oil security in jeopardy as the USSR filled the power vacuum. The Eisenhower Doctrine was a backflip against the previous policy, however, the US now had the burden of military action in the Middle East to itself. The military action provisions of the Doctrine were applied in the Lebanon Crisis the following year, when America intervened in response to a request by that country's president.