The U.S. in the Middle East
CAMPBELL, JOHN C.
The U.S. in the Middle East THE CHANGING PATTERN OF THE MIDDLE EAST By Pierre Rondot Praeger. 221 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by JOHN C. CAMPBELL Council on Foreign Relations; author, "Defense of...
...Surprisingly, all the false starts and wrong turns have not led to the total defeat that might have been anticipated...
...While he may overrate "the paroxysm of panarabism" and the Palestine problem as determining all Arab thinking, surely he is right in believing that we underestimated them, to our own discomfiture...
...The fallibility of the Soviets inevitably came to the fore when success in pushing out Western influence transferred some of the same burdens and dilemmas to their own shoulders...
...New evidence may change our views on some of these episodes, but it is doubtful if any amount of research will make it necessary for Rondot to withdraw the needles he has inserted here, there and almost everywhere in the record of American policy...
...Yet the feared forward march of Soviet power into the Middle East has not taken place...
...Pursuit of the dream of aligning Gamal Abdel Nasser with the West, all the while adopting policies that turned him against the West...
...author, "Defense of the Middle East" At a time when French power and prestige in the Middle East have been reduced almost to zero, it is remarkable that much of the best work on the area is being done by Frenchmen...
...Iraq's continuing independence has had the effect of exorcising the two specters that haunted Washington for a decade: a Russian-controlled Middle East, and a "Nasserist" Arab world solidly united against us...
...policy...
...Oil is still flowing westward...
...True, the West has lost a number of bases and privileged positions...
...Only in that way can the strengthening of the independence of the Middle Eastern nations, which has long been a cliché of official pronouncements from Washington, take on meaning as the purpose of an effective U.S...
...The futility of the Eisenhower Doctrine and the attempt to isolate Nasser in the Arab world (he has since done a better job of it without our help...
...But that conclusion, while comforting, would not be entirely justified...
...The linking of Arab nationalists with Communists as our joint enemies in the Middle East, making it virtually impossible for any Arab government, except one dependent on Western subsidies, to be friendly to the West...
...Somewhat unexpectedly, two additional factors have worked in our favor, partly as a result of the loss of U.S...
...The attempt to organize a broad Middle East defense organization in the early 1950s...
...policy...
...And, although French policy is judged as severely as any other, there is just a trace of self-satisfaction in his strictly objective account of how badly the West, first under British and then under American leadership, has fared in the Middle East since France gave up its last foothold there in 1946...
...His criticisms are made in a friendly, somewhat offhand manner—not as an indictment but as a part of his story— and should be taken as a challenge to review our own policies rather than to reply > in self-justification...
...Consider the many policies and ventures that backfired or turned out wrong: • The handling of Palestine in 1947-48...
...The second factor is the reaction of radical Arab nationalism to the new situation which followed its triumphs in 1958...
...Nothing is certain in the Middle East, not even disaster...
...it has not succeeded in building a firm alliance system against the Soviet Union...
...to help stabilize the Arab-Israel conflict through this touchy period when no settlement is possible...
...A major virtue of Rondot's book is that, in discussing the past, he throws a searching light on the gaps in Western thinking about the future...
...The leaders of the Iraqi Revolution have managed both to resist Soviet imperialism and to confront successfully the realities of political power in the Arab world...
...But the book is no polemic...
...Published originally in France three years ago, it is actually an authoritative and masterful (though not infallible) survey of the sweep of events in the Middle East over the past two decades, with occasional forays into history or into the details of a particularly intriguing crisis...
...Mishandling the Aswan Dam affair and the Suez Canal dispute that followed so badly that we were forced to choose between our ties with West European allies and our obligations to the United Nations...
...For obvious reasons Rondot has more to say on British policy than any other...
...The Arab nationalists have not invited or allowed the Communists to take over their countries, nor have they cut all their ties with the West...
...And the Kennedy Administration, in the privacy of its own councils, is undoubtedly reassessing Middle Eastern policy...
...One might conclude that American policy has been a model of how to make enemies and alienate people, and still come out even...
...Opening the door to the Soviet-Egyptian arms deal, and the tepid response to it...
...If it can avoid the extremes of total inactivity and spectacular action for action's sake, the Administration may be able slowly and surely to find a more realistic perspective on Arab unity...
...It is only fair to add that, in the three years since Rondot wrote his book, the American record has been better...
...It is disappointing only in its cursoriness...
...Despite our selfassurance and our many experts in the field, we were, as he says, incredibly naive, wrong in our judgments and often simply unintelligent...
...The reliance on Nuri es-Said's Iraq as a pillar of strength in the Baghdad Pact...
...Pierre Rondot, a pupil of the late Robert Montagne, writes with a perspicacity rarely matched in England or in this country...
...Yet American readers will be interested in the barbs he aims at one or another aspect of U.S...
...position and prestige in the Middle East...
...The technique of quiet diplomacy has enabled the United States to adapt to the new situation and make the most of unexpected windfalls...
...the governments that have been its friends have shown dangerous political weakness, and those that were unfriendly have not ceased to denounce Western imperialism at every opportunity...
...to develop an understanding of the role of the military in the Middle East and of the new kinds of institutions now developing...
...One is the Soviet capacity for miscalculation and error, which Rondot, incidentally, underplays in his natural admiration for the skill with which the Kremlin exploited the West's mistakes and weaknesses...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 8
