The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2014 45 crucial weapon in the U.S. air defense arsenal in the days before American intercontinental ballistic missiles became operational. But for Moroccans, the presence of foreign troops provoked deep resentment. Moroccan anger was also fueled by the behavior of the bases’ American civilian staff. Some of them “got drunk on the plane [from New York],” recalled an American vice consul, “stayed drunk on the plane, arrived in Paris drunk, were transferred to another plane, arrived drunk in Casablanca. Three days later, they were sent home, drunk.” As American and Moroc- can officials argued over the status of the bases, nerves on both sides of the Atlantic were wearing thin despite efforts to relieve tensions. Amb. Yost soon realized that unless a solution could be arrived at, the continued American military presence would complicate—or worse, derail—an otherwise good relationship with Morocco, which had been the first nation to recognize the United States, in 1777. The Crisis Deepens Throughout the 1950s, political protests had torn at the fabric of Moroccan society. The Union des Travailleurs du Maroc (Moroccan Workers’ Union), the Parti Istiqlal (the major political party) and student organizations were all impatient with Morocco’s lack of progress in surmounting its social and economic problems. And all three, Yost informed Washington, were using the American bases as convenient political targets at which to vent their anger. In his early cables, the ambassador also alerted the State Department to the Moroccan left wing’s attempt to remove the army and police from the palace’s purview, a move that would severely undermine the king’s ability to govern. The king’s strategy, Yost reported, was to detach the moderate party members from the far left by conferring government posts on them. If the moder- ates could work with the conservatives, a coalition government might function; or so the king hoped. Yost concluded that Mohammed V was the main force keeping the country from exploding—a weighty responsibility for the 49-year-old mon- arch. In 1958, the UMT called for a general strike in Rabat. It soon spread across the country, and by year’s end, the nation was imploding. Early the following year, the tenuous equilibrium As American and Moroccan officials argued over the status of the bases, nerves on both sides of the Atlantic were wearing thin. At the dinner after President Dwight D. Eisenhower and King Mohammed V signed a joint communiqué ending the crisis over U.S. bases in Morocco in December 1959. From left to right: Ambassador Charles W. Yost, Crown Prince Hassan, President Eisenhower, an interpreter and King Mohammed V. USIA, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum