REMAPPING THE COLD WAR: ARGENTINE-ARAB WORLD TRANSNATIONALISM, 1946-1973 by DAVID ALAN GRANTHAM Bachelor of Arts, 2000 University of South Florida Tampa, Florida Master of Science, 2009 Troy University Troy, Alabama Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences Texas Christian University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, December 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Professor Peter Szok for his unwavering support for my work. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this dissertation. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my Ph.D study. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank Dr. Hanan Hammad for her guidance and critique of my work. Dr. Hammad’s support instruction played a vital role in the formation of this dissertation. I would like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee: Professor Peter Worthing and Professor Alex Hidalgo for their insightful comments and encouragement. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my wife for her unfailing love and support during this time consuming process. Despite long hours of work and time away from home, she always showed immense patience and continuous encouragement. Thank you. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….ii I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1 II. Argentina, the Arab World, and the Partition of Palestine 1946-1947…………………..35 III. Argentine-Arab World Relations in the Aftermath of the Partition……………………..65 IV. The Year of Decision: Argentina in the Middle East, 1949……………………………..92 V. The Trouble of the 1950s………………………………………………………….........131 VI. Defining Times: the Eichmann Affair, Six-Day War, and the Return of Perón………..170 VII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….210 VIII. Reference Material………………………………………………………………….223 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..223 Vita…………………………………………………………………………………232 Abstract……………………………………………………………………………..234 iii Introduction Reflecting on the closing years of the Cold War, scholar Melvyn Leffler wrote that “most of us were astonished by the turn of events” when the international system “was reconfigured and an ideological struggle that had engulfed the globe for almost a half century was ended.”1 The clash of ideologies had a sense of permanence. David Nichols characterizes this feeling of immutability as the “never again” mindset. Those who had endured World War II or colonization refused to tolerate any “conditions they believed” would lend themselves to a repeat of history.2 As a result, governing strategies took on new life immediately after World War II. American democracy and Soviet communism morphed into personal and collective identities, and supporters often defended them with religious-like intensity. Likewise, the nontraditional style of warfare fostered this sense of permanence. Foes did not fight necessarily to capture territories or repel invading armies. Conflict was not designed necessarily to commandeer a strategic location or capture an area rich in valuable natural resources. The Cold War was a fight for “for the soul of mankind.”3 Proponents stood firm, unwavering in their beliefs, and thus, entrenched in their pursuit of ideological dominance. Struggles dominated by ideology become moving targets with tactical objectives that are difficult to articulate. When the esoteric overshadows the practical, policies emerge that rarely offer a clear end. As in the case of the Cold War, the struggle over the minds of the people proved difficult to strategize. Disconnects existed between goals and actual implementation. Despite that lack of clarity, the spread of ideology proved to be the dominant 1 Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviets, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), 2. 2 David Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis, Suez, and the Brink of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 2-3. 3 Ibid, 146. 1 national interest for both the Soviets and the Americans. Each saw their respective “mission as a part of a world-historical progression towards a given goal.”4 For superpowers, spreading their respective form of government overshadowed standard issues of trade and economic exchange. Both parties determined diplomatic relationships largely through whether an ally embraced or rejected their governing process. More importantly, an ideology’s adaptability and palatability meant that it knew no borders. Therefore, no region fell outside the superpowers’ “geostrategic orbits.”5 The fight for the soul of the mankind played out in all corners of the globe. From China to Central America, South Africa to Germany, ideological and physical conflict ensued. Historian Jason Parker succinctly states that “the Cold War was a comprehensive struggle – geographical, ideological, and psychological – there was no dimension of international or domestic society it could not potentially touch.”6 There appeared no place immune to the Cold War conflict. This was especially true in those defining years between the late 1960s and the 1980s when brute determination overrode practical considerations. Strategy and circumstances propelled First World nations - namely the United States and the Soviet Union - into locales largely unidentifiable by their own constituencies. The United States found itself stuck, literally and metaphorically, in the thick of the Vietnam forests, while the Soviets’ quagmire in Afghanistan left them few options, but retreat. By its end, the Cold War had truly enveloped the entire world. Yet, even as scholarship gives more attention to the global nature of the war, the greater international community remains an appendage to the ideological narrative of the war. Although the tenants of each ideology remained largely consistent on an international level, the consequences of their implementation 4 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 72. 5 Robert McMahon, ed. The Cold War and the Third World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 139. 6 Jason Parker “Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Post-Columbian Era,” in The Cold War and the Third World ed. Robert McMahon. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 125. 2 were neither uniform nor logical. The global consequences reflect the particularities of each nation and region. The Cold War was greater than just a delicate, ideological stalemate between nuclear foes; it was a global battle over self-determination and identity in the Third World. Odd Arne Westad articulates this reality brilliantly in his 2007 retelling of the global Cold War. Westad examines the linkages that bound the First and Third World together in a truly international struggle. Economic, political, and military interventions in developing nations defined First World strategy, he argues, which has had a lasting impact until today. The decolonization process that emerged soon after World War II inspired nationalist movements that exposed cultural and geographical fault lines in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Territorial disputes, largely the product of colonialists’ artificial border creations, led to sporadic conflict, while nation-building brought representation to some and alienation to others. Newly formed governments aggressively pursued modernization programs that improved some standards of living, but exacerbated other inequalities. Developing nations built their own collective identities at the same time that First World governments injected Cold War ideologies into the development process.7 The multilayered, somewhat chaotic atmosphere contributed to the remaking of the international order, conceived new political movements, and incited regional conflict. This complex evolution and exchange came to define much of the Third World in such a dramatic fashion that developing nations created their own Cold War. Surprisingly, however, with such a particular experience, ongoing debates surrounding Cold War studies continue to focus almost exclusively on the First World. Melvyn Leffler offers a comprehensive account of the Cold War by retracing the progression of the entire conflict in order to explain the evolution in Cold War ideologies and 7 Westad, The Global Cold War, 1-7. 3 how the resulting competition became a fight for the soul of mankind. Leffler relies on a host of different perspectives to form an international narrative that portrays the war as an escalation of force - a graduation from mere political posturing to threats of nuclear exchange – without much sense of why or how. His approach ensures that readers grasp the war’s global ramifications. His chosen perspectives, however, are those of the major powers. His narrative relies almost entirely on the experiences of superpower leaders, like Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. “My focus is on leaders,” he states plainly in the introduction.8 Leffler is not alone. Jeremy Suri’s monograph likewise underscores the war’s global complexities by weaving together the histories of Europe, the Soviet Union, Asia, and the United States into a tremendous picture of interconnectedness. The thrust of his project deals with the interaction between domestic protest and Cold War politics. Suri offers a multitude of government perspectives arguing that détente emerged in the early 1960s as a result of world leaders’ inabilities to manage domestic unrest. Détente