Appeasement in the Middle East: Nasser Hoodwinks Western Diplomats
Laqueur, Walter
Failure to understand his real aims may bring disaster Nasser Hoodwinks Western Diplomats By Walter Z. Laqueur London Since Western policy in the Middle East is not likely to change for some...
...Throughout Asia and Africa, in fact, the belief is increasing that neutralism with an anti-Western slant now pays higher dividends than collaboration with the West...
...In this comtext, everything Marx or Lenin ever said about the shortsightedness of the capitalists seems only too justified...
...But the guiding principle of the oil companies seems to he "Apres nous le deluge" today's profits count much more than tomorrow s disaster...
...The keys to the future of Western Europe, therefore, are now in Cairo...
...Colonel Nasser has been most successful in concealing his imperial ambitions and anti-Western convictions from almost all Western visitors...
...Arab statesmen may be primitive and unsophisticated, but they know that nothing fails like failure, and the rush onto the Moscow-Cairo bandwagon is proceeding with growing momentum...
...Though Western diplomats may realize this, they apparently do not know how to cope with it...
...However, instead of mending their ways at this late hour, they are preparing alibis: "The New York Jews are responsible for the loss of the Middle East...
...In all fairness to present Western statesmen, it must be remembered that it took Western diplomats about five years to realize that they could not do business with Hitler...
...The King, incidentally, is heavily overdrawn...
...It also took quite some time after World War II for them to come to similar conclusions about Stalin...
...as Mossadegh kicked the British out of Iran...
...King Saud receives about $258 million a year from Aramco...
...It may be too much to expect Henry Byroade and Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, the U.S...
...Egypt's success in playing the major blocs against each other has produced all kinds of neutralist gestures...
...this year, the proportion is expected to increase...
...It is impossible with a regime like Nasser's, which follows an aggressive, imperialist policy and sees the expansion of its sphere of influence as its main task...
...The course followed by the oil companies in Saudi Arabia in recent months amounts to a major scandal...
...and British Ambassadors in Cairo, who are the main proponents of the pro-Nasser line, to make a realistic appraisal of the Egyptian regime in so brief a period...
...Furthermore, the fact that Western help has been so lavishly supplied to aggressive, neutralist, antidemocratic forces in the Middle East has caused considerable chagrin from Burma to Turkey...
...In another three to five years, those who favor the present line will undoubtedly come to their senses...
...The decisive question now is whether they can be awakened in time...
...Western diplomats, it must he pointed out...
...If not for them, everything would have worked out fine...
...Khrushchev said so in a recent interview with Labor MP Harold Wilson, and Mikoyan devoted a whole section of his speech at the 20th Party Congress to this issue...
...that Neville Chamberlain was mistaken...
...They come away, as one correspondent recently put it, impressed by his good manners, his simple nature, his sense of duty to his own people, and his sweet reasonableness on almost every subject imaginable...
...About a tenth of this is used for the country's economic and social development...
...A month ago, attention was focused on the possibility of an Arab-Israeli war...
...For there is little doubt (except, perhaps, among professional diplomats) that the desperate efforts to appease Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria for fear of losing the oil will produce exactly the effect feared most...
...Israel's exasperation with Western policy is understandable...
...This is hardly ever the case where Western diplomats and visitors are concerned, and results are daily more disastrous...
...Israeli officials reportedly commented after General Glubb's ouster: "Even we never suspected that the West had so many cheeks to turn for further Arab slaps...
...In a year, however, Iraqi oil may no longer be available...
...The Jordan debacle itself may be of minor importance, but it is an indication of things to come: the downfall of the Nuri as-Said regime in Iraq, which will spell finis for the Baghdad Pact, the loss of remaining Western bases in Arab countries, and the probable loss of much of the Middle East's oil...
...Now, if by this time somebody fails to understand why Moscow prefers slave traders from Yemen and Saudi Arabia to a socialist government in Jerusalem, explanations will hardly be of any help to him...
...And a political correspondent in Ha'aretz, the country's leading independent daily, wrote on March 6: "Israel will be able to ask the Soviet Union for a guarantee of the status quo in the Middle East...
...At present, about two-thirds of the Middle East's oil comes from countries allied with Britain Iraq, Iran and Kuwait...
...The rest is devoted to ostentatious spending for the King and his large family, bribes for anti-Western statesmen and journalists in other Arab countries, support of Communist and Communist-front organizations throughout the Middle East, and the general fomenting of trouble from Baghdad to Amman and Beirut...
...To really understand Colonel Nasser, of course, one must possess an intimate knowledge of the intricacies of the Levantine mind...
...Unfortunately, however, the struggle for the Middle East may well be decided by then...
...The Russians have realized for a long time that this is the West's most vulnerable point...
...This may not prove disastrous for Aramco, because there are other oilfields in the world, and America's needs can be covered by American sources...
...Thus, Davar, the Histadrut daily and the largest newspaper in Israel, said on February 24: "We have never understood why the Soviet Union thinks there is such a great contrast between itself and progressive, democratic and peace-loving Israel...
...Some of the more obstinate representatives of the old school sense this...
...His regime has certain progressive features (just as Peron's had), and there are several good reasons for being mistaken in the manner, say...
...Regardless of how many defeats they suffer, they will never wake up...
...Then King Saud will throw the company out...
...As the London Economist noted recently, "It has undermined the faith of all Western allies in Asia...
...Nevertheless, Aramco will probably reach the limit of its patience one of these days and refuse any more advances...
...Indeed, the Communists can be expected to do everything in their power to break this lifeline for Western Europe...
...at least partly, based on a desire to apply the good idea that the West should support national movements in the uncommitted countries of Asia and Africa...
...The recent Communist demonstrations in Jordan, for example, were financed with revenue due to him in 1958 or '59...
...Meanwhile, millions of Western dollars which could be put to far better use in practically any other Asian country are being pumped into Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria in a vain attempt to appease them...
...Among officials who defend current Western policy in the Middle East, there are undoubtedly some who are merely pretending to be asleep...
...But agreement is only possible with democratic national movements which are primarily concerned with putting their house in order...
...But this exasperation with the West, however justified, has of late produced dangerous illusions about Soviet intentions in the Middle East...
...After all, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser is neither a Hitler nor a Stalin...
...There is an Arab proverb which says that it is possible to awaken people who are asleep, but impossible to awaken those who pretend to be asleep...
...Failure to understand his real aims may bring disaster Nasser Hoodwinks Western Diplomats By Walter Z. Laqueur London Since Western policy in the Middle East is not likely to change for some time, it seems fairly certain that the successive setbacks it has already suffered will end in total defeat...
...But last year about 77 per cent of the oil required for Western Europe came from the Middle East...
...The chief question today is whether Britain and Western Europe will be able to manage without Middle Eastern oil...
...What is more, if somebody believes the Soviet Union will guarantee maintenance of the status quo for Israel, despite Moscow's constant assertion that it opposes this, he can hardly charge Western diplomats with excessive naivete and gullibility...
...have no monopoly on folly...
...But most are asleep pure and simple...
...They see the inevitable declaration of bankruptcy of their policy...
...All this is not exactly new, but in recent weeks the emphasis has shifted in the Middle East crisis...
...Even Kuwait, now the largest producer, may no longer be a British protectorate if the West's retreat in the face of the Cairo-Djedda-Damascus axis continues...
...If not, America will probably receive a more severe shock than it got seven years ago from events in China...
...It can also he argued that this mistaken policy is...
...But now most observers seem convinced that Israel will somehow keep afloat, even if attacked by the Arabs and despite active Soviet hostility and Anglo-American abandonment...
...Which again shows that committing follies is by no means the exclusive domain of any single country or camp...
...In addition, armies commanded by Communists or fellow-travelers are being outfitted with Western jet planes and tanks...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 13
