During the Eisenhower presidency Middle East hands began to work their way up the career ladder working in embassies and consulates where their Arabic language skills and area expertise were badly needed, as well as in the State Department's regional desks in Washington, where they replaced the older generation of generalists. When Foreign Service officer (FSO) William Brewer left Washington for language training in Beirut in 1947, he stopped to ask the desk officer for Lebanon what it was like to live and work there. The officer-in-charge of Lebanese affairs told Brewer he did not know because “[t]he closest I've been to Beirut is Addis Ababa”. A decade later Brewer conducted a review of the experience of the desk officers at the Bureau of Near East Affairs (NEA): the 1947 staff had a combined total of five years of Middle East area experience. A decade later Brewer's colleagues had a total of 110 years of area experience.

The challenge of developing area expertise was highlighted in the Wriston Report, a study of State Department personnel. Some staff had remained in Washington posts working on policy for an area they had only read about. Others worked abroad by relying mainly on contacts with the English or French-speaking elites (a particular problem in the Middle East). These generalists were able administrators in embassies but were limited in their ability to do political reporting.

In 1954 Middle East hand Raymond Hare was appointed inspector general of the Foreign Service and charged him to carry out the Wriston Report reforms. He and Parker Hart, another skilled Arabist, were then the only senior Arabists at the administrative level in the Eisenhower years, but neither was appointed to the top post of assistant secretary of NEA by Eisenhower although the position was open several times. Eisenhower first relied on a brigadier general, Henry Byroade, who had experience during the occupation of Germany and who then ran the Bureau of German Affairs. Ike later appointed George Allen, a generalist with experience in Iran, Yugoslavia and Nepal. In 1956 he chose William Rountree, a former treasury budget clerk and lend-lease administrator, who had some experience in Palestine and the wartime Middle East Supply Center. But Rountree spoke no Arabic. Eisenhower's final opportunity led him to select G. Lewis Jones, another generalist.