Second Thoughts on the Mideast Landings

...As a young Arab sees it, why should he respect such lines drawn around the richest Arab oilfield (in Kuwait...

...but, when the Western powers stood firm and the crisis faded, he was forced at once into tactical maneuvers and, after his Peking journey, into abrupt retreat...

...For a week or so, Khrushchev could indeed proclaim that world peace was in danger, to be saved only by a dramatic summit meeting on his own terms...

...President Nasser, to be sure, is not the creator of the new mood of Arab nationalism but he is its outstanding representative and symbol...

...They enabled the West to reassure the Northern Tier governments of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan...

...At best, the West would have had to talk to the Arab world from a position of apparent defeat and with Radio Cairo breathing triumph and defiant hostility...

...and British forces should withdraw...

...Viewed as a holding action, the landings achieved their purpose in providing a breathing space...

...If some of the regimes hacked by the West are anything but "progressive," Nasser's preference for foreign policy coups before economic reforms has thus far also led to a drop of living standards in both Egypt and Syria, which can only be of advantage to local Communism...

...This surely lends support to the contention that the Anglo-American emergency intervention has served some useful ends...

...First of all, the arrival of the U. S. Sixth Fleet and its Marines in Beirut not only helped toward a local detente but also helped to persuade the new men in Baghdad that it was worth talking calmly to the West...

...The central problem is still that of "coming to terms with Arab nationalism...

...it was certainly also President Nasser's thesis and, at least for a few days, seemed possibly justified by events...

...Fighting there stopped...

...But there are also some awkward factors in the situation...

...His propaganda prestige demanded that the U.S...

...They provided time for the West to talk quietly to the new men in Baghdad, for Ambassador Robert Murphy to spread calm in Middle East capitals, for John Foster Dulles and Selwyn Lloyd to talk to the United Arab Republic's Mahmoud Fawzi m New York, for President Eisenhower to introduce a new look in U.S...

...The result has been the Arab ten-state resolution at the UN approving a Hammarskjold peace mission—a more promising outcome than seemed likely some weeks earlier...

...In a sense, the lines of such a policy have also become clearer...

...How such a policy may be hammered out in concrete cases is a matter for future discussion...

...This might have brought thundering threats of massive Soviet action in the Middle East, with countervailing warlike statements from Washington...

...but it is already much less of a minority view than it was some weeks back...

...This pessimism represented official Labor party thinking...

...Yet the British man-in-the-street also has an instinctive way of making up his mind about military dictators regardless of what he is told by his betters...

...3. Events have borne out a Hungarian friend who said, after Nasser's flight to Russia, that Khrushchev had evidently promised him the same aid that the West gave the Hungarians in 1956: namely, a diplomatic offensive and no more...

...it was proclaimed by progressive and pro-Arab writers in the Manchester Guardian, the Observer, the Spectator and the New Statesman...

...It is, for instance, a fact that the Arab nationalist movements are dangerously lacking in solid social ideas...

...4. The calm in the Middle East following the landings has also forced President Nasser toward a new (and perhaps more constructive) reappraisal...

...One reason is surely their awareness that the Israelis could not passively allow Nasser's forces to arrive on the Jordan-Israel frontier in a wild, hostile rush...

...During the crisis, the Palestine Arabs in Jordan have been notably quiet...

...There is also the awkward lack of any imminent political solution to the problem of the Palestine Arab refugees—to whose upkeep the Soviet Government and other benefactors of the Arab cause have, of course, contributed not a kopeck...

...This inherently delicate task is made more difficult by the fact that the Russians are already on the spot with their handouts of arms and promises...

...Writing during the earlier and critical days, my friend Denis Healey found himself noting a paradox...

...These problems are not insuperable, but they complicate the present Western task, which is that the Western powers should take a positive and sympathetic attitude toward the Arab nationalist demand for unity and social-economic reform, while at the same time seeing to it that progress toward their aim should be constructive rather than merely militarist, anti-Western and anti-Israel...

...2. As against this, the emergence of the first U.S...

...At this juncture, I think it is most important to distinguish between the immediate emergency measures and the long-term requirements of a constructive Western policy toward Arab nationalism and the Middle East...

...And this view can be summed up as follows: 1. The landings probably prevented a far worse crisis...

...True, such feeling played a part, and President Nasser has also had a hostile British press...

...and the remarkable muting-down of the chorus of criticism against Macmillan shows that there have been substantial second thoughts among British left-wing opinion, too...

...Similarly, there is something in the flamboyant picture presented by President Nasser himself—his dramatic coups, his microphone addresses to vast, delirious crowds, his journeys to Russia and his incitement against Israel and the West—which has made the British voter distrust him profoundly...

...But the chorus failed to influence either British Government policy or the imperturbable Prime Minister Macmillan...

...It is obvious that the ideals of Arab nationalism — independence, unity, a fairer division of the oil wealth and social progress—deserve sympathetic Western support...

...Had nothing been done after the shock of the Baghdad revolution, disorders in an already embattled Lebanon and precarious Jordan might have flared into civil war...

...In the resultant chaos, the Israelis might have had to take action to safeguard their frontiers...

...Conversely, the view of those who (like myself) believed that the American-British intervention prevented a far worse situation may still be a minority view among Middle East specialists, even if not among the British public...

...At any rate, Khrushchev's remarkable volte-face over summit talks has thoroughly dispelled the notion that events in the Middle East crisis have presented him with any sort of "triumph...

...Even on the vexed problem of the Arab attitude toward Israel and the Arab refugee problem, a first glimmer of new daylight may have been thrown...

...When it became clear that they could not be budged by mere anti-Western polemics, Cairo circles also realized that negotiation might offer better prospects...

...Even if the ambitious young Arab officers are not Marxists, their inexperience may lead them to go further with local Communists than they wish...

...On the face of it, the frontier lines drawn across the Arab Middle East, mostly after the First World War and by Britain and France, cannot be treated as permanent...

...The problem of working out a sensible Western policy toward the Middle East remains as urgent as ever...

...It is a gain, too, that interested NATO powers like West Germany and Italy may now be asked to participate in international economic aid for Middle East development...

...Since Russia has been signally unable to take positive action in the crisis, Cairo governing circles may also have come to the first realization that they will have to make some constructive proposals about the economically unviable population of 1.5 million Arabs in the areas which make up the state of Jordan...

...I don't think this paradox is explicable, as Healey suggests, by primitive patriotism—the famous "Suez spirit"—in favor of the Anglo-American military action...

...Even the problem of loyalty to Western-protected populations is less simple than made out by the advocates of no longer "supporting outworn feudal relics of the past...

...All the fulsome official praise of Mussolini in the Thirties failed to make any dent in British popular dislike of the Duce...

...For example, should the urban Arab population of Aden, coveted by the rulers of Yemen, simply be handed over to one of the most barbaric of contemporary states...

...Marines on Beirut beach brought sudden and astonishing calm...

...And is there not some basis for this mistrust...

...Yet, there are also favorable factors in the situation...

...Middle East policy to the United Nations, and for Dag Hammarskjold to set out on his exploratory peacemaker's mission...

...But the Western military intervention was a limited holding action...

...While Labor spokesmen thought the intervention "as catastrophic a failure as any single event in diplomatic history," Gallup Poll figures in Britain showed that Macmillan "occupied a higher place in public esteem than at any time since he took office...

...If not, what are the safeguards...

...For instance, Denis Healey's claim (NL, August 18-25) that the American-British military intervention in the Middle East had been a "catastrophic failure," playing into the hands of Soviet Premier Khrushchev, is a view which was widely held in London during the July days immediately following the Baghdad revolution and the landings in Lebanon and Jordan...

...and, by now, the idea that the landings were a failure is certainly much less strongly entertained here...

...King Hussein's Government in Jordan was temporarily steadied...

...All these factors provide a favorable opportunity for a sensible Western policy toward the Middle East, but not more...

...Paradoxically, Healey concludes by saying that the chances for a sensible Western policy for the Middle East are now better than at any time since 1945...

...it proved possible to elect General Fuad Chebab as Lebanese President...

...And he personally has gone far along the road of demagogic saber-rattling and accepting Soviet arms...