United States Lebanon Civil War

LEBANON, 1958

Unrest in the Middle East This paper was written with the intent of the reader gaining a further knowledge of the role the United States intervention played in stabilizing Lebanon in 1958, when the country was on the brink of civil war. The paper briefly gives a summary on the state of Lebanon, how a civil war was nearly imminent, and why the United States got involved. The U.S. military had no idea what they would encounter in country but were prepared for war. Luckily, war did not occur. The paper acknowledges the fact the U.S. intervention did help stabilize the country, but highlights key issues, specifically with the Army’s perspective in mind, that prove the United States
Lebanon is only about as large as Connecticut and at the time had a population of roughly 1.5 million. Lebanon lies east of the Mediterranean Sea bordering two much larger countries; bounded largely to the north and east by Syria, to the south Israel. Lebanon was considered a country at risk. One of the main reasons for this was that it was perceived by its neighbors to be more pro-Western than pro-Arab. With the country nearly equally split between Christians and Muslims, it would only be a matter of time before the neighboring Muslim countries would seek to leverage Lebanon to cut its Western ties and become pro-Arab. (Gilmore,
STRAC had a mission to provide a flexible strike capability that could deploy worldwide on short notice without declaration of a national emergency or full-blown war. Because the deployment of contingency forces from the United States to the Middle East would consume nearly 80% of the Military Air Transport Service’s general war capacity, STRAC would have no part in the largest American troop deployment since the Korean War.” (Spiller, 1981) In late 1957, the Joint Chiefs of Staff began making arrangements to ensure operational readiness of the U.S. European forces to cover down for contingencies in the Middle East. The JCS had established two basic plans. The first was CINCAMBRITFOR OPLAN 1-58, codename Operation BLUEBAT that had two courses of action; one included the use of British ground forces, another the U.S. Marines in place of the British. The second plan was CINCSPECOMME 215-58. It had eight different courses of actions depending on the forces to be deployed. Ultimately, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed