Table of Contents

Introduction: "This Is the American Policy" US Interests in Lebanon Causes of the Lebanese Civil War The Course of the Conflict, 1975-76 1. Sparks in the Tinderbox: The United States, the June War, and the Remaking of the Lebanese Crisis Lebanese Domestic Tensions on the Eve of the June War The United States and Lebanon in the 1960s Lebanon's Six Day War Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot The Beirut Airport Raid 2. Compromise in Cairo: The Nixon Administration and the Cairo Agreement "Trying to Be Helpful" The August Attacks and the Rogers Plan October Crisis and the Cairo Agreement 3. From Cairo to Amman: The United States and Lebanese Internal Security Post-Cairo US Assistance to Lebanon Implementing the Cairo Agreement The Kahhale Ambush and the Exodus from the South Causes of the Calm 4. Plus ca change: International Terrorism, Detente, and the May 1973 Crisis The New International Terrorism A New Request for Support The Israeli Raid on Beirut and the May Crisis The Aftermath 5. Reckoning Postponed: From the October War to the Civil War The October War and the Start of Negotiations Lebanese Domestic Politics after the October War Diplomacy on the Rocks 6. Disturbing Potential: The United States and the Renewed Conflict The Outbreak of Conflict The Military Cabinet and Syrian Mediation Sinai II and the Resumption of Violence in Lebanon The January Cease-Fire 7. Reluctant Interveners: The Red Line Agreement and Brown's Mediation The Constitutional Document and Shifting Alignments The Non-Negotiation of the Red Line The Brown Mission and the PLO From Election to Intervention 8. Taking Its Course: The Syrian Intervention and Its Limits Reacting to the Syrian Intervention Assassinations and Evacuations The New US-Syrian Dialogue The Second Syrian Military Offensive and the End of the Conflict Red Line Redux? Epilogue: The Cycle Continues

About the Author

James R. Stocker is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Trinity Washington University.

Reviews

"As we survey the current turmoil in the Middle East, we are all the more in need of careful, dispassionate, and insightful historical scholarship on US interactions with that region, and particularly with the small but pivotal nation of Lebanon. James R. Stocker gives us that, and more. Spheres of Intervention is a richly researched, perceptive, and skillfully crafted book about a diplomatic relationship that has powerfully shaped Middle Eastern politics down to our own day. Resourcefully mining recently declassified USgovernment documents, and incorporating Arabic- and French-language sources seldom found in Anglophone accounts, Stocker provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment we have of official USinvolvement in the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1976."-Salim Yaqub, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East "Spheres of Intervention is a necessary and very valuable contribution to our knowledge about Lebanon's recent history, Lebanese-American relations, and US Mideast foreign policy. This book is a must-read for those with a special interest in Lebanon and for historians of US policy in the Middle East. In the first book to take extensive advantage of the declassified US diplomatic cables of the period, James R. Stocker fills an important gap in our understanding of Lebanon's foreign relations during the decade and a half leading to its collapse in 1975."-Paul Salem, Vice President for Policy, Middle East Institute, author of Bitter Legacy: Ideology and Politics in the Arab World "Before the collapse of the state in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen there was Lebanon's descent into prolonged and costly civil war. James R. Stocker has meticulously examined the record of US involvement in Lebanon's drift toward war in the years 1967-1976.He rightly concludes that Lebanon per se was rarely central in the thinking of American policymakers, especially Henry Kissinger. But what the United States did or did not do in the surrounding region had important spillover effects in Lebanon. The unwillingness of the United States to tackle the Palestinian issue, which was of key importance to the Lebanese, meant that it was very hard to stabilize Lebanon once the civil war began in earnest in 1975. This is a sobering account of the destruction of a country on the margins of American grand strategy. Today's crises in the Middle East have far too many resemblances to the story told so authoritatively in these pages."-William B. Quandt, author of Peace Process