How to Deal with Nasser

...This illusory appearance has been due in part, of course, to the fact that the crisis has arisen over the Suez Canal and not over Palestine, but the effect has been intensified by the deliberate policy of the Western powers in excluding from their case against Colonel Nasser the most obvious and telling point at their disposal-namely, the violation of the 1888 treaty and defiance of a Security Council resolution by Egyptian closing of the canal to shipping bound for Israel...

...Rather, they urged Israel to cede territory and talked soothingly about guarantees for "agreed" frontiers, thereby leaving Israel exposed to attack until such lime as the Arabs should be satisfied with the cessions made to them-which, if any credence is to be giv.'ii to the declared aims of their leaders, would be never...

...The situation in the Arab world differs in three important features from that which has been produced in other parts of Asia and Africa by nationalist movements aiming at emancipation from Western colonial rule or economic ascendancy...

...Under Nasser's direction, Egyptian radio propaganda has become a factor of incitement and disturbance throughout the Middle East which bears striking testimony to the dictator's understanding of the potentialities of modern media of mass communication...

...the coercion of Egypt in 1956 would be war, and a war which it would be impossible to justify under the Charter of the United Nations...

...In standing on a demand for broad international, non-profit-making control of the canal, the Western powers are clearly on stronger ground than they were in merely objecting to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, but this still does not give them any title forcibly to impose such a system of control on a sovereign Egypt...

...The case put to the conference was that an entirely new institution was needed and that a waterway of such vital importance to world trade should not be left under an unrestricted national sovereignty, but should be placed under some form of international control and administration...

...The attainment of independence by the former dependencies of Britain, France and Holland east of the Arabian Sea has had some painful economic consequences for those nations, but none that can be said to involve their economic well-being in a vital way...

...indeed, a socialist state is as vulnerable as any other to embargo and blockade, as was shown by the former Cominform blockade of Yugoslavia...

...Behind this avoidance of commitment there is a calculation in Washington and London that it is best to keep out of the line of fire, and that the more Arab energy is expended against Israel the less will remain to be directed at Britain, France and America...

...The Suez crisis has to some extent obscured the essentials of the Middle Eastern situation, because it has put Egypt's quarrel with Britain and France in the foreground and has almost eliminated the Arab-Israeli conflict from the picture...

...since the decision to withdraw from Suez had been defended on the ground that it would remove the main cause of contention between Britain and Egypt, the increase of Egyptian hostility since the evacuation discredited his judgment and rendered him politically vulnerable to the I-told-you-so of his critics...

...This change of ground was diplomatically successful, as was shown by the fact that 18 out of the 22 nations attending the conference supported proposals based on these principles, including five Asian and African states...

...moreover, its high command will have the advantage of complete unity as against the forces of a coalition of states...

...But this is an assumption against the probabilities of the case...

...A liquidation of colonial or semi-colonial controls is bound in any case to affect adversely, or at least to threaten, certain investing and trading interests in the metropolitan country, but as long as these are confined within certain limits from the standpoint of the total national economy the country concerned is likely to accept without too much dismay the adjustments which have to be made...

...The historical German and Italian analogies are especially appropriate because Nasser's Egypt has so clearly been cast for the role of a Piedmont or Prussia in the unification of the Arab world, which according to Nasser's idea is to be combined in one national state extending from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf...

...The age of "gunboat diplomacy" is over...

...But even allowing for the most extreme cynicism in British and American officialdom, it is hardly conceivable that the Western democracies would ever go so far as actively to join in the violent destruction of the Israeli state...

...But in the long run the knowledge that an attack on Israel will mean war against the Western powers is the only thing that can turn Arab nationalism hack from its hysteria of anti-Zionist incitement to ways of peaceful progress and development...

...But the longer the tension continues the more uneasy public opinion in the Western democracies has become at the prospect of using force for such a purpose...

...In the first place, pan-Arabism is a movement which aims at amalgamating -if necessary, against the will of their present rulers- a number of already sovereign Arab states no less than at removing the residues of British and French colonial rule in those parts of the Arab world where they still remain...

...the negotiations with Egypt following the London conference have broken down...

...Leaving out of consideration the ethical and legal aspects of such a policy, its expediency as Realpolitik depends entirely on the assumption that an Arab-Israeli war would end in a decisive Arab victory after a brief struggle...

...or he will be persuaded by economic inducements and pressures to agree to some kind of compromise which would be damaging to his prestige, and in that case he will have to seek compensation by a spectacular success elsewhere...

...As a clear example of how control of the canal can be used by Egypt for political ends, it is the one precedent which can be invoked in justification of Western fears of the consequences of leaving Colonel Nasser in unrestricted possession of this vital artery of commerce...

...There is, however, a third characteristic of Arab nationalism which, in spite of the world's preoccupation with the Suez crisis, remains the most important of all...

...But when Egypt bypassed the Western arms monpoly by obtaining weapons and munitions from the Soviet bloc, the reaction of the United Stales and Britain was not to impose a deterrent on aggression by a guarantee of existing frontiers...

...While an ex-Nazi who formerly worked under Goebbels in the latter's Ministry of Propaganda is now retained in Cairo as an expert adviser in anti-Jewish publicity, oilier radio voices, some of which reveal the influence of Marxist-Leninist modes of thought on a section of the new Egyptian intelligentsia, daily denounce Western imperialism for all the sins which it has and has not committed...

...It is understandable that the existence of Israel as an ultimate consequence of a British policy to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine is regarded by the narrowly nationalist Arabs as a residue of Western imperialism, and that it is easily forgotten by Arabs that the present Arab states of Asia, except for the interior of Saudia, owe their emancipation from the Ottoman Turkish empire to the same war which created the Jewish national home...

...Unfortunately, the exacerbation of the enmity is a political necessity for pan-Arabism, and particularly for Nasser and his clique, because it is only through a rallying of the Arab League under Egyptian leadership against Israel, and ultimately through a successful war against Israel, that the particularism of the Arab states is likely to be overcome and the unification of the Arab world brought about...

...A Western guarantee of the existing frontiers of Israel as a basis for settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict would no doubt provoke an outburst of intense Arab resentment and perhaps reprisals against Western oil interests...

...If, on the other hand, Nasser remains defiant and nothing is done to coerce him, his prestige will be enormously enhanced and Britain and France, with their highly publicized troop concentrations in Cyprus and Libya, will be left looking extremely silly...

...Thus, the classic picture of a colonial nationalist movement emancipating itself from the yoke of foreign capital is replaced by that of an ex-colonial country using a natural monopoly to obtain an economic stranglehold on a former metropolitan power...

...On either hypothesis, the most probable sequel is a war against Israel in the near future, and it will take much more than the well-meant touring of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to avert it...

...But the anti-Israel concentration of pan-Arabism is also indirectly anti-Western, because, in the absence of positive Western support for the political campaign against Israel, the Arabs can only equip themselves adequately for war by turning to the Soviet Union for armaments, and if the war, once launched, were to be prolonged, the dependence on Soviet support would become very much greater...

...to achieve victory, they will have to seek aid from the Soviet Union on virtually any terms that Moscow chooses to impose...

...In this way, Soviet domination of the Arab world would rapidly become an accomplished fact, and Western neutrality would be powerless to affect the course of events...

...This apparent identification of Britain and France with such a vested interest of international capital provided a perfect opportunity for Moscow and Peking to make all the textbook points of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and to rally to the side of Egypt the sympathies of every ex-colonial or underdeveloped country from Morocco to Indonesia...

...Either Nasser will remain obdurate and no new negotiations will be undertaken, in which case he will be left free to go ahead with the next stage of his pan-Arab program as an irresistible, ever-victorious leader...

...Both in Britain and in France, therefore, the reaction to Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company was determined in the main by considerations other than the actual measure of taking over the administration of the canal...

...The fact, however, remains that Israel today has nothing whatever to do with Western imperialism, having achieved its existence as an independent nation in the teeth of British opposition, and further that its people are resolved to fight to the finish for the piece of territory they have made their homeland...

...Had the Western powers waited for Nasser to take some action in violation of the treaty of 1888, they might have had an adequate pretext for going to war...

...It seems incredible that the Western powers will be prepared to sacrifice the integrity of their moral position, which they have hitherto maintained so scrupulously through the strains and stresses of the "cold war,' and line up in opposition both the Sino-Soviet bloc and a majority of Asian and African states, by embarking on an unjustifiable course of military coercion even for so important an objective as safeguarding freedom of passage through the Suez Canal...

...The Arab purpose is not at all limited to the termination of Western colonial rule or spheres of influence, the unification of the various Arab states or the independent control and development of the natural resources of Arab countries...

...It is only now that their own interests appear to be threatened that they become alarmed over Egypt's power to interrupt traffic through the canal, and even their proposals for international control do not specifically provide for a termination of the blockade of Israel...

...In this he was strongly seconded by France, where Egyptian political and material support for the anti-French extremists in North Africa had produced a growing exasperation against the Nasser regime and a conviction-exaggerated, but not altogether groundless-that a settlement could be reached in Algeria, as well as in Tunisia and Morocco, were it not for interference from Cairo...

...Its most intense aspiration is for the destruction of a non-Arab nation whose territory forms an enclave within the Arab world...

...even though the historian may see a certain poetic justice in such a situation, it is clearly not one that is any more conducive to international peace than the opposite one of colonial exploitation...

...Agitation against the Western powers cannot be more than secondary to this end because of the various complications of individual Arab state interests which make it difficult to form a stable united front in this direction...

...Elements of coercive power have, of course, been ostentatiously assembled by Britain and France as "precautionary measures" and perhaps they would be sufficient to subdue Egypt...

...The negotiations in Cairo between President Nasser and the committee of the London conference majority ended in failure, and the next steps seem unclear...

...But before the eyes of the world the Anglo-French indignation was occasioned by the nationalization of an enterprise which had been a classic example of the blending of private capitalist finance and imperialist governmental policy in the overseas expansion of 19th-century Europe...

...No good case could be made in international law against Egypt's right to nationalize the company...

...A second feature of contrast between the projected transformation of the Arab world and the changes which have already taken place in South and Southeast Asia is the much greater international economic dislocation which can be brought about by extreme nationalist policies In the former case than in the latter...

...The paradox of the pan-Arab movement is that, while making the most of anti-imperialist principles, it draws its strongest driving force from hatred of a nation which has no economic or political control over Arab lands outside its borders, but is now just as rooted in the soil of the Middle East as the Arabs themselves...

...Insofar as Britain's liability to interruption of maritime communications at the will of Colonel Nasser had increased by July of this year, it was the result of the withdrawal of British forces from the Canal Zone rather than of any change in the actual administration of the canal itself...

...But if in the end, why not at the beginning, before war breaks out and before the Arab stake is too high for retreat...

...They have always indeed hoped to avert a new Arab-Israeli war, and their method for achieving this end -effective as long as there was no political competition- was originally to restrict supplies of arms to the Middle East...

...That it has arisen especially in connection with Arab nationalism and not in relation to India, Indo-China or Indonesia is due to the geographical facts of location of the world's largest deposits of oil and the world's most essential intermarine canal...

...On the other hand, the need of industrial Western Europe, and above all of Britain, for regular supplies of oil at moderate prices has become so imperative that interruption of the traffic from the Middle East by hostile control either of the oilfields themselves or of the principal artery of transport threatens a major economic catastrophe, and it is this which primarily accounts for the intensity and violence of the British reaction to Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company...

...In fact, neither the British nor the French Government was much concerned about the rights of the company- even though the former was a large shareholder in it- and both rapidly extricated themselves from the role of being its champions, so that by the time the London conference met it was already understood that there was no longer any question of restoring the company as the authority for operating the canal...

...There are still in British and American official circles not a few policy-makers who believe that the West can regain the friendship of the Arab world, safeguard Western oil interests and keep the Arab states out of the Soviet orbit by maintaining a benevolent neutrality toward intended or actual aggression against Israel...

...Once the battle is joined, it will be a contest which its promoters cannot afford to lose...

...Such an attitude is in keeping with their policies in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict over the last few years...

...It was this outpouring of rancorous malevolence, utterly at variance with formal protestations of amity at higher governmental levels, which, taken together with the financial recklessness of the Nasser regime, caused the American Stale Department ultimately to withdraw the American oiler of aid for the Aswan High Dam: this act in turn precipitated the crisis oyer the Suez...

...Egypt, nevertheless, has had plenty of hatred to spare for the Western pwers...

...It cannot be said that the British and French Governments showed either prudence or skill in their handling of the problem with which they were confronted...

...The company's operation of the canal had not sufficed to prevent the closing of the canal against Israel, for that had taken place while the canal was being not merely administered by an international concern but guarded by British troops...

...The threat of an Arab-Israeli war, the intense anti-Western radio propaganda from Cairo, the Russo-Gzech arms supplies to Egypt, the revolts in French North Africa, the coup against Glubb Pasha in Jordan, the Buraimi oasis conflict, and finally the crisis over the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal-all have added up to a major upheaval which has for the time being diverted the world's attention from the affairs of both Europe and the Far East...

...With Soviet arms and technical training, the forces of the Arab League will undoubtedly soon have the strength to launch an assault on Israel with the material odds in their favor...

...In these circumstances, it is reasonable to expect that the struggle would be a protracted one...

...It is far more likely that they would in the end be driven to thwart the Soviet-Arab combination by coming to the rescue of Israel...

...At the moment, Suez is the central issue...

...In his resentment at the Egyptian response to what had been intended as a supreme gesture of conciliation, and in his desire to forestall the attack on himself as the man who had abandoned a vital British interest for nothing, Eden turned overnight into the strong man resolved to maintain Britain's stake in the canal, by force if necessary...

...It is not simply Arab racial emotions which are involved in the vendetta against Israel...

...To turn Arab nationalists into peaceful channels, the West must make it clear that war against Israel can only bring the destruction of the aggressor How to Deal with Nasser By G. F. Hudson LONDON FOR THE LAST YEAR, the focus of world politics has been on the countries of what is known as "the Arab world...

...Except, however, in the unlikely event of Britain and France using force to impose international control of the canal, there appear to be two possible outcomes...

...they have striven to avoid any commitment on behalf of Israel which might accentuate Arab antagonism toward-the West...

...The threat of disruption of oil supplies would be just as great a menace if the British economy were fully a socialist one...

...Canal and the head-on collision between Egypt and the West leaving the Arab-Israeli conflict in abeyance for the lime being...

...But it has yet to be demonstrated that there is any way, without the use of force, of inducing Colonel Nasser to accept such a scheme...

...But even if a working compromise can yet be reached over the specific question of the operation of the Suez Canal, the general problem created by the emergence of militant pan-Arabism as a serious international factor will remain in all its gravity...

...if that were so, there might be some hope that time and diplomacy would gradually assuage the conflict...

...All the experience of recent history goes to show that firm defensive commitment is safer than a policy of "keeping both sides guessing...

...Only against Israel can Arab policies be mobilized without strong dissenting reservations...

...In this respect, the historical analogy with the German and Italian national movements of the 19th century is closer than that with the recent developments in South and Southeast Asia, where the attainment of national independence has meant either (as in Indonesia) a continuation or (as in India and Indo-China) a parlition of a previous imperial unity...

...In this case, it is not principally the profits of a private capitalist concern that are at stake (in view of the substantial assets held abroad by the company and the British control of Egyptian sterling balances, it would be exceptionally easy to enforce the payment of compensation if Nasser were to try to evade it) but an economic interest of a genuinely national character, affecting the employment and living standards of an entire people...

...But the Western powers cannot officially now denounce Egypt for the blockade of Israel, because they have connived at it for several years and have done nothing to press Egypt into desisting from it...

...But Israel will be fighting for survival and its resistance is likely to be of the most desperate character...

...But it was precisely the withdrawal from the Suez base which had involved Sir Anthony Eden in a bitter conflict with a section of his own party-the so-called "Suez group"-which had opposed this policy...

...But he has not so far violated it except in the case of Israel, which the London conference powers have agreed to ignore...

...The West would be able to counter the Soviet penetration in only one of two ways: either by intervening on the side of Israel-and thereby risking a major war-or by competing with Russia in intervention on the side of the Arabs...