Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918-1961

As director of the State Department's division of Near Eastern and African affairs, Loy Henderson (1896-1986) played an important role in the creation of the Truman Doctrine which, according to Brands, served as ``the blueprint of America's anti-communist empire.'' Henderson's distrust of Soviet intentions caused him to oppose U.S. support for a Jewish state in Palestine; he argued that America's future lay with the Arabs both because of their oil and their strategic position in terms of containing Soviet expansion. As ambassador to Iran he decided that prime minister Mohammed Mosadeq's squabbles with the British would ultimately benefit Moscow, and his recommendation to Washington that Mosadeq be deposed resulted in the CIA-engineered coup in 1953. Brands, an associate professor of history at Texas A & M, shows how Henderson's narrow focus on the communist threat contributed to the essentially negative U.S. foreign policy of the early Cold War years. His well-researched portrait of this colorless, humorless, one-track-minded Cold Warrior will be of interest to specialists. (Apr.)