A New Strategy for the Mideast

...The one policy from which nothing but catastrophe can ensue is to drift along hoping that somehow a "settlement" will emerge in the Middle East from patient appeasement of Colonel Nasser...

...and such an enterprise would have to be one which could be represented as aid to an oppressed people against Western imperialist domination...

...The quick termination of the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt forestalled the Soviet intention to send "volunteers" to fight there, but there are other possibilities of intervention in the Middle East which may shortly mature...

...He has been victorious, lie is full of hate and ambition, and he lias Russia behind him...

...India is opposed to the Baghdad Pact not so much because of any general principle or disapproval of military alliances—Delhi has never expressed condemnation of the military alliance between the Soviet Union and Communist China—as because it strengthens the position of Pakistan...

...It is held in some quarters that the moral crisis and disarray of world Communism due to de-Stalinization, the revolt among the satellites and the divisions among the Soviet leaders have so weakened the regime that the danger of any new aggressive move is less than it was...

...for Arabs it holds out the hope of Soviet support for a war of destruction against Israel, while at the same time it stimulates the particularist tendencies of ethnic minorities such as the Kurds who have no state of their own...

...Consequently, the weight of India is thrown always in the direction opposite to that which Pakistan happens to be following...

...Furthermore, Britain was in no position to make an effective intervention in the region between the Euphrates and the Indus...

...If such clear American guarantees are not given, then the whole of the Middle East must be written off...

...One of them writes to a British newspaper: "There were reports today that Colonel Nasser had given the LTnited States hope during discussions in Cairo that he was ready to work for a permanent Suez settlement and for a modus vivendi or 'peace without settlement' with Israel...

...Lacking either the oil resources of Iraq or the agricultural and commercial wealth of Egypt, Syria has hitherto been a relatively weak and uninfluential member of the Arab family and a field of rivalry for influence between Cairo and Baghdad...

...for there to be a real danger requiring action, there would have to be a will and capacity on the part of the Soviet Union to take advantage of a situation of weakness on its southern borders...

...Hence the overpowering fear in Washington of doing anything which might offend the Saudi Government—and nothing would offend it so much as a treaty of alliance covering Iraq...

...But surely it should not be necessary in the year I'ViT for anyone to make the discovery that Colonel Xas-er is determined not to agree to any terms but his own...

...Syria comes into this picture as a subordinate factor, but one, nevertheless, which because of Syria's geographical position may come to be of primary importance...

...Optimists might indeed hope that in the end the United States would enter the war rather than witness a decisive Soviet victory, but this could only mean that a local war had grown into a world war with all its risks of atomic conflagration...

...Washington's declaration that it would view "with gravest concern an attack on any of the countries adhering to the Pact is not enough to deter possible aggression in the absence of any indication that America is willing to undertake definite commitments for the defense of these countries...

...But with the British withdrawal from the Canal Zone, leaving the canal under the control of an Egypt bitterly hostile to both Britain and Iraq, Britain was strategically cut off from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea except by the long sea route round Africa and left virtually without any base from which help could be given at short notice to Iran or Iraq...

...During World War II, Britain had had military bases in the Indian subcontinent, in Egypt and in Palestine, but none of these now remained...

...But Iran and Iraq were not prepared to incur the ill will of Russia by joining in such a pact unless it obtained stronger backing than could be offered by Turkey alone...

...In this context Egypt has emerged victorious, partly because of a great superiority in propaganda—organized by Colonel Nasser with the aid of German experts formerly in the service of Dr...

...If Iraq could be broken away from the Baghdad Pact, it is unlikely that Tran would remain in it...

...all the rest fall within the second...

...must shield Baghdad Pact nations from Soviet attack The countries of the Middle East may be divided into two groups—those which have a common frontier with the Soviet Union and those which have not...

...To the first category belong Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan...

...When it came to questions of detail, it was clear that Colonel Nasser meant that he was ready to agree to a settlement on his own terms...

...It is not too late for the United States to underwrite the Baghdad Pact, but every week that passes with a continuing inactivity of American policy increases the danger that all the elements of stability in the area may be swept away...

...The Teheran Government would then probably he eon fronted with Soviet demands designed to convert Iran into a Soviet satellite, and with a hostile Iraq in its rear could hardly do otherwise lhau submit...

...The question is what, if anything, can be now done to provide against the contingencies which are likely to occur...

...Without this participation, the Soviet rulers might well believe they could get away with an aggression in the Middle East without having to reckon with the U.S...

...Thus the USSR has been able to pose to the Arabs in the role most congenial to a regime claiming to inherit the revolutionary doctrines of Marx and Lenin—that of the champion of an oppressed people against imperialism...

...Discredited by association with Britain, accused of insufficient hatred of Israel, and denounced for leading his country into an alliance against the friend and protector of the Arab peoples, he is threatened with internal revolt aided from across the borders of Syria and Jordan...

...Many foreign correspondents in ashington have the idea that this is still the only clear American Middle Eastern policy in existence...

...It is clear that Britain is no longer in a position to do anything effective to counteract a Soviet threat in the region of the Persian Gulf...

...Soviet prestige in the Middle East has been enormously enhanced by the events of the last two months...

...So far, however, there has been no evidence that the U.S...

...Communism in the Middle East today has no doubt its hard core of Marxist-Leninist adepts, but its appeals are mainly to ultra-nationalists...

...Colonel Nasser aspires to a federation of the Arab world under the leadership of Egypt, and Iraq is the only other Arab state with sufficient strength and prestige to dispute this primacy...

...Syria was a relatively unfriendly state, even before the recent advances of Communist influence there, because of the old Turkish-Syrian dispute over the port of Alexandretta...

...The aim of Indian diplomacy ever since India and Pakistan became independent states has been to counter as far as possible the influence which Pakistan as a Moslem state —actually the most populous of all Moslem countries— naturally exerts in the world of Islam...

...All eyes are now turned on Washington to see what policy will eventually emerge from the rethinking and reappraisal which have presumably been going on since the Presidential election in the White House and the State Department...

...Even more serious in the perspective of world strategy was the lack of commitment to the Baghdad Pact by members of NATO other than Britain and Turkey, and particularly by the United States...

...On the principle basic to the NATO alliance that the best hope of averting such a catastrophe is to make it certain that full-scale war against a coalition including the United Slates would be the automatic result of a Soviet attack on anv one of a number of designated countries, the participation of the United States in the Baghdad Pact would be the strongest possible deterrent against any Soviet military adventure in the Middle East...

...But strategically the new alliance was hardly a strong 0110...

...It was Turkish, not British, diplomacy that took the initiative in the making of this alliance...

...After all, why should he...

...At present, the two Arab countries following a pro-Soviet orientation—Egypt and Syria—are separated from the Soviet Union by the belt of territory comprising Turkey, Iran and Iraq, which are combined under the Baghdad Pact...

...The Turkish General Staff, therefore, had good reason to fear that, in the event of Turkey being involved in a war against the Soviet bloc, the Turkish forces would have to cope not only with attacks across the existing frontiers with the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, but also with an outflanking movement through northwestern Iran and Iraq to thrust into southeastern Turkey, perhaps with Syrian support...

...All the rest are formally "uncommitted" in relation to the main power conflict in world politics, and two of them, Egypt and Syria, are under such strong Soviet influence that they must be reckoned today as auxiliaries of the Soviet bloc...

...The combination of the four Asian nations with British support was on paper quite an imposing array, and appeared to extend to the Indus the containment zone of which NATO formed the western sector...

...The American Government did not use warlike language, as Moscow did, and the Arabs do not believe that anything but a threat of force would have stopped the force that was being used...

...But this was no adequate solution of the strategic problem, for the greatest danger was that of a thrust along the eastern borders of Anatolia which would cut off Turkey from the Persian Gulf and leave all the oil fields of the Middle East in subjection to Soviet power...

...But if this barrier could be broken through and Iran and Iraq brought under Communist domination, the Soviet Union would be able to give direct support overland to the pro-Soviet elements in Syria and Jordan and would be able to establish its power within a short distance of Egypt...

...Alternatively, if there were civil war in Iraq, and disturbances spread to the Kurds of northwestern Iran, the Soviet Union could soon find a pretext for military intervention...

...But its bitter hostility to Iraq is indirectly a most potent factor in favor of Soviet expansion into the Middle East...

...Antagonism to the Baghdad Pact, however, brought Egypt closer not only to Saudi Arabia, but also to another and much greater Asian power not otherwise concerned in the affairs of the Arab world...

...Government is prepared to face the unpleasantness in Riyadh which might result from any move toward formal endorsement of the Baghdad Pact...

...For Britain, participation reflected traditional British concern with the security of the Persian Gulf area and the vital importance of oil supplies from it...

...Britain and France, 011 the other hand, have deprived themselves of whatever influence remained to them, first by invading Egypt apparently in collusion with Israel and then by stopping short of their objectives when threatened by Russia...

...This was a situation in which defeat for the Baghdad Pact allies was almost certain, and Britain would be faced with the prospect of submarine warfare against her shipping and perhaps bombing and rocket bombard men t of her cities from the Soviet Zone of Germany without anv reasonable expectation of being able either to keep So\ iel forces out of the Middle East or to strike back effectively against tile Soviet Union...

...The only means, therefore, for Britain to give military aid to Iran or Iraq in an emergency was by reinforcement of Turkey...

...Since the Baghdad Pact links Pakistan with Iraq...

...How much longer will Washington pursue the mirage of agreement with the Mussolini of the bazaars while the nations directly in the path of Soviet power are left unsupported...

...India becomes the friend of Egypt and Saudi Arabia...

...If anyone in the Middle East ever imagined that the United Nations had authority in itself, apart from the relations between the Great Powers, the spectacle of General Wheeler, as representative of the world organization, going on his hands and knees to Colonel Nasser to obtain his gracious consent to the clearing of the Suez Canal must by now have disillusioned him...

...The construction of the NATO defensive system left Turkey as the most easterly outpost of the coalition, with a frontier to the northeast with the USSR, but to the east and southeast with Iran, Iraq and Syria...

...so primitive, indeed, remains the society in which it is established that the word has hardly as yet any meaning for it...

...The Saudi royal house is not, of course, pro-Communist...

...Goebbels—but also because of the activity of the Communists, who have had more success in Syria than anywhere else in the Arab world...

...Russia, Syria and Egypt are working in concert to overthrow by any means the government of Nuri as-Said...

...The Baghdad Pact meant that Britain was in certain circumstances formally committed to go to war with the Soviet Union without aid from either her principal European allies or America...

...Moreover, the Moscow declaration that the Israeli action against Egypt "calls in question the very existence of Israel as a state" struck just the right note for winning the support of the pan-Arab extremists for whom the objective is nothing short of the total destruction of Israel...

...The best precaution against this danger seemed to lie in an alliance with Iran and Iraq, which would insure that the three countries made a common resistance to any such strategy...

...But it is at least equally arguable that the very reverses which the Kremlin has suffered have created a strong temptation to attempt a restoration of prestige and morale by means of a foreign adventure more in keeping with Marxist-Leninist ideology than the suppression of Hungarian workers...

...As long as Britain retained military control of the Suez Canal zone, it was at least possible to sustain operations in the Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean by sea round Arabia or to send aid to Iraq via the Gulf of Aqaba and Jordan...

...Or doe- it require another world war to teach W estern diplomats that it is more important to strengthen one's friends than to placate one s enemies...

...It is universally believed in the Middle East, as a result of the highly publicized Russian threats of military intervention, that Soviet pressure was the decisive factor in compelling Britain and France to desist from their invasion...

...Pakistan's decision to join was prompted by a general apprehension of an advance of Soviet power in the region and in particular of the inimical Soviet influence in Afghanistan...

...A special feature of Communism in Syria is its hold on the Kurdish minority —potentially an instrument of great subversive power beyond the borders of Syria on account of the distribution of Kurds as an ethnic element also in Turkey, Iran and Iraq...

...Iran and Iraq were friendly to Turkey but as weak and isolated neutrals could hardly be relied on to refuse passage to Soviet troops through their territories in the event of a general war...

...oilfields and all, and that goes for Saudi Arabia as well as Iran and Iraq...

...These are the basic facts of the situation in the Middle East...

...Iraq defied Egypt by joining the Baghdad Pact after Egypt had committed herself to a neutralist policy as between Russia and the West, and this defiance which brought Iraq into a grouping of states indifferent or inimical to Egypt's pan-Arabism intensified the dislike between Baghdad and Cairo...

...The United States by its attitude may have escaped the odium incurred by Britain and France, but it has not thereby won the position of protector of the Arab cause...

...It is true that the vulnerability of the area is only one side of the question...

...But it is at the same time the owner of the richest oil deposits in the world, and these have so far been—unlike the deposits in Iran, Iraq and Kuweit—kept as a preserve of American enterprise...

...If Pakistan were the ally of Egypt, the reverse would be true...

...Nothing less is likeh to deter Russia from moving in force into the Middle East if a suitable opportunity offers itself—or is created —in the near future...

...This reluctance was overcome by the willingness of Pakistan and Britain to adhere to the pact...

...Communist China was only deterred from attack 011 Formosa when President Eisenhower obtained Congressional approval for a clear undertaking to commit American forces if the attack were made...

...Two nations of the first group, namely Turkey and Iran, and two of the second, namely Pakistan and Iraq, are combined in the defensive alliance known as the Baghdad Pact for security against Soviet expansion...

...Although recent events have inevitably focused the world's attention on Egypt and the Suez Canal, the area of the greatest importance from the strategic point of view lies further to the northeast—in the region between the Black Sea, the Caspian and the Persian Gulf...

...The Saudi kingdom is the enemy of Iraq for reasons which are rooted in an old feud between two rival royal dynasties...

...In this situation, there is an acute danger to the survival of the existing political regime in Iraq, and with it of the Baghdad Pact as an alliance for resistance to Soviet conquest...

...Their significance can best be appreciated by comparing their logical implications for a policy aimed at containment of Soviet power with the policies actually being pursued by the Western nations which are supposed to seek such containment...

...It was impossible to reach Iraq by air or ground from Cyprus across Syria without violating the neutrality of the latter...

...Turkey was the only one of the five nations which both possessed formidable military strength on the spot and could he expected to use it to the full in an emergency...

...Russia thus appears in Arab eyes as both supremely powerful and thoroughly pro-Arab...

...Neither Iran nor 1 rat] possessed important armed forces...

...This hostility, moreover, aligns Saudi Arabia with Egypt, whose dictator is, for different reasons, also an enemy of Iraq...

...this threat required that defense be organized in the area of the Persian Gulf itself and not merely from Turkey...

...Whereas in Europe Russia has lost ground, as a result of the intervention in Hungary, even in quarters formerly inclined to be pro-Soviet, Suez has provided Moscow with an immense propaganda triumph...

...In Damascus it has been stated that Syria will not allow the pipeline from Iraq—on which Iraq's oil revenues depend—to be reopened until the Iraqi Government has been "reconstructed...

...Pakistan was somewhat stronger, but was not likely to be able to concentrate its strength in the Middle East as long as the conflict with India was unresolved...

...The Baghdad Pact itself originated in the Turkish fear that something of this kind might happen...

...The plain truth of the matter is that Britain is no longer able, and the United States is not yet willing, to provide the most vulnerable part of the Middle East with the degree of protection which would insure its stability...

...The refusal of the American Government to join with Britain in underwriting the Baghdad Pact has been mainly due to the special American connection with Saudi Arabia...

...Further, it would gain control of the great oil resources of Iran and Iraq and would closely threaten those of Kuweit and Saudi Arabia...

...It is perhaps the strangest paradox of contemporary world politics that American Middle Eastern policy is virtually dictated by the dynastic interests of the most archaic feudal state of Asia, even apparently at the cost of sacrificing the overall cause of containment of the Communist powers...