Western Powers and the Middle East To-day 287
die maintenance of the independence of Turkey as an essential
part of its foreign policy, and was opposed to the Soviet aim of
winning exclusive control over the Straits. Henry Wallace's
campaign for the abandoning of American 'support of the British
Empire' and its replacement by 'collaboration with Russia in the
undisturbed economic development of areas in which we have
joint interests, such as the Middle East', was sharply rebuffed by
the electorate in the congressional elections of November, 1946.
The agreement between American and British oil-interests in
the following month for sharing the output of the South Persian
oilfield foreshadowed a closer collaboration; and in March 1947
President Truman called on Congress to take over and augment
the British commitments to Greece and Turkey. In support of
" this policy Senator Vandenberg, the leader of the Republican
majority in the Senate, told that House:
If the Middle East falls within the orbit of aggressive Com-
munist expansion, the repercussions will echo from the Dardan-
elles to the China Sea and westward to the rims of the Atlantic.
Indeed, in this foreshortened world, the Middle East is not far
^enough for safety from our own New York... !l The U.S.A.
has also given moral support to the Persian government in resisting
the Soviet demands for an oil-concession, and is supplying it with
arms.
Until the autumn of 1947 it had appeared that the Middle
East, with its great contrasts of a self-indulgent and arbitrary
plutocracy, an intelligentsia discontented with its economic and
social status, and an urban and rural proletariat living in great
\ poverty, provided an admirable breeding-ground for Communist
propaganda, even though this had not yet had time to produce far-
reaching results. Critics were free with their rebukes to the British.,
and to a lesser degree the American, governments for their apparent
.» attachment to the 'reactionary ruling cliques' of the Arab League
countries, Turkey and Persia, and for their apparent failure to
single out for support more deserving 'democratic' and 'pro-
gressive' elements in the population.2
However, the situation has temporarily, at least, been greatly
* 8 April 1947.
2 The most recent criticism of this kind appeared in The Fortnightly, February
1948, 96 ff., by an American, Professor Hans Heymann. On the political
inadequacy, at the present stage, of Middle Eastern liberal intellectuals, cL
A. C. Edwards, in International Affairs XXIII (1947), 56 f.