냉전 담론 속 중동의 지역적 인종화 -수에즈 위기 전후 미국의 중동 인식을 중심으로-

초록

This article analyzes American perceptions of the Middle East before and after the 1956 Suez Crisis through the concept of regional racialization. Previous scholarship has primarily interpreted the Suez Crisis in terms of the decline of the British and French empires, the rise of the United States, or the dynamics of Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, studies of Orientalism have emphasized how the Middle East has been represented as a cultural “Other” within Western discourse. In addition, some works have examined the racial perceptions of policymakers or analyzed the macro-level racial hierarchies embedded in the international order. However, these approaches remain limited in their ability to explain how the Middle East was concretely constructed and institutionalized as a political space within policy discourse. To address this gap, this study analyzes U.S. diplomatic documents, presidential statements, congressional records, and mass media during the Cold War period to trace how the Middle East was reconstructed as a homogeneous and unstable region. Here, regional racialization does not refer to biological race, but rather to a mode of thinking that hierarchizes regions based on perceived levels of political maturity, capacity for self-governance, and the responsible exercise of sovereignty. This process operates by grouping heterogeneous states into a single category, repeatedly attributing characteristics such as immaturity and instability to that region, and ultimately justifying external intervention under the pretext of stability, order, or management. This article identifies the Suez Crisis as a critical moment in which such regional racialization became visible. While the United States articulated an anti-imperialist discourse, it simultaneously constructed the Middle East as a space requiring management and intervention, thereby seeking to establish a new form of order. In this process, the Cold War liberal worldview functioned as an ideological framework that legitimized hierarchical distinctions among regions. Ultimately, this study argues that the Suez Crisis should be understood not merely as an international political event, but as a turning point at which U.S. hegemony began to operate through the governing technique of regional racialization. In doing so, it demonstrates how the postwar Middle Eastern order was reconfigured into a new imperial structure centered on the United States.

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