Word: pact
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Already the U.S.S.R.'s gregarious new Ambassador to the U.S. Mikhail Menshikov, making his rounds of visits from the White House to Capitol Hill, was making headlines with meaningless proposals for a U.S.-U.S.S.R. friendship pact as a step toward "peace on our planet...
Tears & Cheers. People got up on shoulders, crowded rooftops and balconies. Arab nationalists streamed over from Lebanon bearing banners: "We give our lives for you, Gamal." Shouting paraders carried coffins labeled "U.S.A.," "Eisenhower Doctrine," "Baghdad Pact." One old man told the beaming Nasser: "All Arabs love you. You will carry on the glory of our ancestors." "Your feet are more stable than mountains, your hand will make the future," cried one shabbily dressed woman, tears of emotion streaking her cheeks...
...solution that satisfied everybody was to borrow the United Arab Republic's formula that international agreements signed by either Egypt or Syria would remain binding on whichever country had signed them. Under this formula, Iraq could stick by its Baghdad Pact commitment until August 1959, when the treaty provides that all members may reconsider their membership...
...advance that bid, Iraq may still consider withdrawal from the Baghdad Pact. As the northern tier of states united to resist Soviet pressure, the pact has always been viable; it would lose little military cohesion if Iraq withdrew. In its second purpose-organizing the Arab Middle East-the pact has been a failure: far from lining up the Arabs, it has isolated Iraq, the sole Arab member, under a cloud of nationalist distrust...
Freed of the charge of association with what Nasser calls an "imperialist" pact, the new federation could become a rallying point for all Arabs. Wrote Beirut's L'Orient: "The question to examine is whether Iraq can better cooperate with the West inside the pact or by liberating herself from ties which handicap her action in the field of Arabs...