The Need for Arab Unity

...Denis Healey, a regular New Leader contributor, is Labor Member of Parliament for South East Leeds...

...On the other hand, Egypt's genuine sense of mission, which inspires much of its policy for Arab unity, is allied with an insensitivity to the views and traditions of others which may ultimately cost President Nasser dear...

...Indeed, the conflict between the Ba'ath and Nasser shows every sign of becoming as fateful for the Arab world as the conflict between Moscow and Peking for the Communists...

...Desirable though Arab unity may be, it is most unlikely to be achieved except by agreement between the various Arab governments...

...Europe would have little to fear from a united Arab policy toward the sheikdoms, since they have no other possible consumer for their oil and Europe has alternative sources of oil and other power...

...Thus, not only is it most unlikely that the April agreement on an Arab federation will be carried out, but now the stage seems set for a drawn-out struggle between the Ba'ath and Nasser for leadership of the Arab unity movement...

...and it has yet to win the confidence of the civil service and technical elite...

...Meanwhile Israel, feeling that any change of regime in Jordan is likely to be for the worse as far as it is concerned, is continuing its efforts to inhibit such a change...

...Despite the confusion shrouding some central issues, the major factors in the political situation emerged clearly enough...

...It is at least worth the effort to try to find the answers to these questions at a moment when Russia seems readier to envisage such cooperation with the West than it has been for many years...

...But however much Britain may wish to disengage itself from its old imperial obligations in the Gulf, it cannot safely do so unless the major Arab states are agreed on what will happen afterward...

...Essentially, it is a conflict about how to organize Arab unity and social change in general —and not simply a collision between the national interests of Egypt and Iraq and Syria...

...I myself was agreeably surprised by the economic progress made in Jordan in recent years, and by the extent to which this had helped to integrate the third of the population who are refugees from Israel...

...It is in the field of security and arms control that the Western powers still face some difficult decisions in the Middle East...

...NASSER, THE BA'ATH AND THE WEST The Need for Arab Unity By Denis Healey London I have just returned from a fortnight's tour of the Middle East, during which I had long conversations with the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Israel...

...Nasser may well fear that a federation which allows the Ba'ath influence in Egypt would be dangerous even to his position at home...

...At the moment, for instance, Iraq and Saudi Arabia each lay claim to the fantastically wealthy oil sheikdom of Kuwait, while those of the local population who do not wish to remain independent would probably prefer Nasser to either...

...With no immediate prospect whatever of reaching a political settlement with the Arabs, Israel still gives security an absolute priority in its foreign policy...

...And besides claiming the same general political and social objectives as Nasser himself, the Ba'ath appeared to be the sort of organized movement which could provide the smoothly functioning transmission belt between government and masses so clearly required in other Arab countries...

...And the last crisis over Kuwait showed that this is very far from being an imaginary danger...

...To take the example of most concern to Britain, it is urgently necessary to bring up to date the network of political and commercial agreements through which Europe at present obtains its oil from the archaic sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf...

...Ignoring the residual influence of the Suez trauma on some aspects of British policy, the West has gained considerably by taking a more relaxed attitude toward developments in the Middle East and by ceasing to swim against the tide of Arab nationalism...

...That is why the recent Ba'athist revolutions in Iraq and Syria seemed to offer far more chance of building an effective Arab federation than the circumstances in which the first United Arab Republic was formed...

...Yet they are still grossly underrepresented at the higher levels of Jordanian administration, and as such they constitute a fertile field for external propaganda...

...The fulfillment of this desire would contribute greatly to the stability of the Middle East as a whole as well as to the legitimate objectives of Western policy in the area...

...Even Egypt, by far the strongest military and economic power in the Arab world, does not have the capacity for ruling other Arab countries against their will...

...The only real threat to Europe's legitimate interest in a continuing supply of oil at a reasonable price would be a war between the Arab states over the future of the Gulf in which oil production ceased and the installations were destroyed...

...During the years of its repression, the Ba'ath Socialist party had developed from a discussion group for middle-class intellectuals into a tightly organized underground movement with powerful support in the army...

...Past Western attempts to guarantee the security of the Middle Eastern nations broke down because the Soviet Union saw that it was in its own interest to upset the local balance—though it can be argued that it was the Western decision to set up the Baghdad Pact which provoked the Soviet arms deal with Egypt...

...Moreover, the Ba'ath claims to have branches in Libya and all the Arab countries of the Middle East except Egypt...

...Would Khrushchev demand too high a price in other fields for such cooperation...

...The circumstances that allowed a group of 100 officers to take power in Egypt and to carry out a major economic and social revolution without serious opposition for 11 years do not exist in any other Arab country...

...Together with the other third of the population from Palestine, who have always lived on the west bank of the Jordan River, these refugees constitute two-thirds of the country's 1.7 million population...

...Is there any chance today that Russia might join the West in attempting to stabilize at least the military environment of Middle Eastern politics...

...This explains the implicit Israeli threat that any change in Jordan might compel it to advance right up to the Jordan River...

...The Ba'ath has no comparable leaders...

...But the area remains one of the more unstable in the world...

...There is an obvious danger, therefore, that the Ba'ath and Nasser will treat Jordan as a political battlefield and compete to bring about the downfall of King Hussein's regime...

...it faces daunting administrative problems in Iraq and Syria, where political instability has brought economic activity almost to a halt...

...At present, the Israelis are encouraging speculation that they may seek to provide themselves with an atomic deterrent, even though in the long run the nation stands to gain nothing from starting a new twist in the vicious spiral of the Middle Eastern arms race...

...Though President Nasser admits he has given money to his supporters in other countries, outside Egypt he does not possess the sort of political organization which can bring down a hostile government and then administer it effectively...

...In fact, however, the new Ba'athist organization and the political theory it expresses have proved to be totally incompatible with Nasser's outlook...

...The desire for Arab unity is still the strongest single political force among the Arab masses in all countries, severely limiting the ability of the ruling groups to pursue either purely national or class interests...

...It is virtually a minefield where internal revolution always carries with it the possibility of conflict between states, and where local war might always involve the great powers against their will...

...Ba'athist reluctance to hit back in kind at the barrage of criticism now directed at it from Egypt also seems to indicate the party's uncertainty about the extent of its popular support...

...AT first sight the conflict between the Ba'ath and Nasser appears to offer a welcome respite to Jordan and Israel, the two small countries which are odd men out in the Middle East...

...For any external guarantee of Middle Eastern frontiers, whether through the United Nations or by unilateral Western action, is in the long run likely to require at least the toleration of the Soviet Union...

...In such a struggle Nasser has great assets: a charismatic personality with mass appeal throughout the Arab world, and a record of real social and economic achievement in Egypt itself...