Big Four Meddling in the Middle East

...To a large degree, the answer seems to be the underlying mistrust by one side of the other's motives...

...What is more, this fear seems a bit beside the point, for the Arabs are already waging war as best they can...

...But if the specter of global misfortune triggered by a Middle Eastern war is questionable, so also is salvation by the Big Powers (two, four, or more...

...This is on a par with the unthinking assumption of journalists and military experts who have invariably allowed some five to 10 years after a conflict for the Arabs to erode the so-called "technical" edge of their foe, and have invariably proved wrong because the edge is rooted in profound societal differences...

...Carrying their faulty perception a step further, Yost and others also raise the specter of Israel's doom by ultimately modernized Arab hordes...

...Yost's view rests on the premise that the Middle East is tottering on the brink of a new war that could involve the superpowers in global conflict...

...One need not impute any particular moral weakness to a public official—American or foreign—to point out that a war scare can be extremely useful in promoting a formula involving great pressures on Israel —especially in a generally pro-Israeli climate...

...In contrast, and as a consequence, Israel exists in near isolation...

...into pressuring Israel sufficiently to redeem their obligations to the Arabs...

...to them, both sides appear capable of producing war, with the Israelis merely better at it for the time being...

...The Israelis' profound insecurity is similarly dismissed...

...And the Nixon Administration's acceptance of a Big Four approach to the region has both vindicated this obstructionism and further encouraged CHARLES W. YOST the Arabs to hold out for total victory over their victors...

...After all, even in a notoriously "explosive" contemporary Middle East, war has broken out only once a decade, not every two years...

...In our own foreign service, where Yost made his career, Israel is similarly perceived...

...Both leaders had been kept afloat by the Jarring mission, almost universally conceived in the Arab World as being charged with "eliminating the traces of Israeli aggression...

...It is one thing to talk down Israeli anxiety for peaceful purposes, and quite another to draw borders as if that anxiety really did not exist...

...Permanent Representative to the United Nations contradicted the established dynamics of the conflict in the region...

...if they were prepared to escalate their intervention in the case of a predictably futile Arab military effort, they probably would do so on any pretense whatsoever...

...it has actually widened and is likely to continue to do so...

...We agree with the Israelis that they cannot possibly trust international guarantees, yet in the same breath insist that they should ask for them —exactly as Yost did in his Atlantic article...

...We merely need to convince the Arabs of the error of their belief...

...This is not to say that it is entirely powerless in the international community, merely that it is consistently outweighed by the Arabs...

...One year earlier, in an article in the January 1968 issue of Foreign Affairs, Yost had himself acknowledged these irrational roots of war in the Middle East, referring to the Arabs' inability emotionally to face up to Israel and to the traumatized Israeli reaction to them...

...In fact, his premises and prescriptions constituted a thrust to replace the troubled, but essentially secure, cease-fire lines with virtually the same conditions that produced three large-scale wars in the area in the last 20 years...

...This would not transcend the limits of sedentary, sporadic warfare...

...The same applies to exaggerating Arab moderation...

...Neither is mention made of the intolerable implications of their impotence for Arab self-esteem and even identity, especially by invidious comparison with their successfully modernizing foe...

...When one realizes that the strategic imbalance before June 5, 1967, has been reversed, any conceptualization of future conflict in the light of pre-June conditions becomes extremely unrealistic...

...or one may regard it as an encouragement to Arab designs on Israel, regardless of the intent of the foreign powers themselves...

...If it is as subtle and sophisticated as some would have us believe, the Nixon foreign policy might henceforward simply go through the motions of the Four Power gambit, perhaps to demonstrate to Middle Easterners that it is futile to seek solutions to their problems outside the region...

...On the other hand, some would argue persuasively that all of the Nixon Administration's vaunted finesse will have small impact on the Yostian scheme...

...What, then, has been stalling the Four Power talks in New York...

...The Soviets, however, have demonstrated remarkable restraint in the face of Arab military defeat...

...While we may finally realize that an Israeli sense of security is basic to war or peace in the Middle East, our commitments to the Arabs, as well as to our own "moral" standards on the acquisition of territory, prevent us from meeting that crucial requirement...

...There is no indication of the Israelis' apprehensive awareness that twice before Jewish dominion in the land was terminated by genocide...

...in part by the natural inclination of officials and observers to take a safe (read: pessimistic) stance...

...It has acquiesced in the Arabs' waging war to the best of their ability, consistent with the capacity to restrain Israel from waging war to the Gil Carl AlRoy, a new contributor, is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, New York...

...And now, as President Nixon completes his first 100 days, it is becoming obvious that the Yostian design represents a virtual blueprint of the new Administration's Middle East policy...

...In either case, violence is likely to be stepped up by the intrusion of the powers, not the other way around...

...There is little hint, for example, of the anxiety about sheer physical survival of the most victimized people in history...

...The obvious answers to these questions are not necessarily the correct ones...

...On the contrary, the Arabs would have been foolish to enter serious peace negotiations so long as it seemed likely that the "deviant" power, the United States, might be cajoled, maneuvered, or perhaps coerced back to the "normal" pattern of Big Power involvement in the Middle East...

...Two genetically different societies are thus presumed to be similar in the activity that probably tests social systems as few other tests can...

...and they appear confident that sooner or later they will be able to maneuver the U.S...

...But there is no good reason for the Israelis to react to Arab provocation in 1969 as they did before the radically new circumstances brought about by the Six Day War...

...they are not likely to risk for the Arabs what they clearly refrained from risking for the Vietnamese and Cubans...

...Indeed, the very way the term "war" is applied reflects the international community's reaction to the Arab-Israeli violence...

...No amount of euphemisms or "improved" guarantees can change this vital fact of international life...

...Of course, deliberately fabricated visions of a suddenly sanitized Middle East might facilitate the peacemaking process...

...it would continue to require an all-out Israeli response to produce war...

...Close ties to Israel often are a diplomatic hazard for small powers, and a source of embarrassment for great ones...

...And assuming peace between the Jews and the Arabs is possible at this point in history (a dubious assumption), is it made more, or less, likely by United Nations intervention...

...The British could raise their hopes for an early opening of the Suez Canal, as did the Soviets, who could only be elated by Washington's new direction...

...If one could entirely remove the impact of the international community from the Jewish-Arab conflict, the preponderance of Israeli power would be so overwhelming that the most militant Arabs might deem armed resistance hopeless...

...It would appear, therefore, that far from being rooted in the realities of the region, the extraordinary concern over the dangers posed by the Middle East is externally motivated—in part by popular reaction to the Vietnam trauma...

...Since Israel cannot hope to defend itself in the distant future, Yost argues, it would be wise to opt now for indefensible borders in the hope of gaining the goodwill which alone might deter its otherwise certain destruction...

...THINKING ALOUD Big Four Meddling in the Middle East By Gil Carl AlRoy Charles W. Yost's article in last January's Atlantic, "Israel and the Arabs: The Myths That Block Peace," takes a renewed interest in the light of the current Big Four talks seeking a formula for easing Middle East tensions...

...In reality, the gap between Israel and the Arabs has not only failed to diminish over the last 20 years...

...They do not like Israel, of course, but they will listen to reason...

...And with so much sophistication around, the danger is that we will not even notice that we are winning almost exactly what we eagerly sought to avoid...

...All the powers further agree on yet another United Nations Emergency Force and other international guarantees, though despite some new window dressing these would merely recreate the conditions that led to three wars: the same indefensible lines that sorely tempt the Arabs into triggering Israeli "miracles...

...the then just designated U.S...

...In his memorable "Moment of Truth" (Encounter, November 1967), Hourani wrote "that the rate of technological and scientific advance is so rapid in the modern world that even if in 20 years we can catch up with the military standards of today, we shall still be outdistanced by the Israelis...

...the same proliferation of predictably troublesome demilitarization arrangements, UN presences and other equally obfuscating devices, multiplying the opportunities for deadly brinkmanship...

...To be sure, every war is one too many, but why should war be especially imminent today in the Middle East...

...The Soviets are currently intervening in the Middle East to the extent that they consider consistent with their security and effectiveness...

...Still, we are now asked to believe that 23 months after the Arabs' most catastrophic debacle, they are ready to wage the kind of struggle they have never been able to wage...

...In addition, catastrophic vision helps to mobilize public support for the imposition of a Big Power settlement expected to embody the Arab position...

...Thus there is nothing intrinsically desirable about Big Power intervention in the Middle East...

...With the country only nine miles wide at the middle, and lacking any room for defensive strategy, a blitz-type breakout into enemy territory was the sole acceptable strategy...

...The probable outlines of a Big Four agreement are not difficult to imagine...

...If the President's chief Middle East adviser has not grasped this, Cecil Hourani, adviser to a number of Arab leaders, certainly has...

...There is little suggestion of the intensity, the bitterness, the deeply obsessive nature of their rejection of Jewish statehood...

...best of its ability, and so has come to regard Arab actions as nonwar—reserving the opprobrious term for the Israeli variant...

...Of course, one could concede all this and nevertheless deem war imminent on the theory that the Arabs, whatever their weaknesses, might provoke the Israelis to full-scale battle...

...Crucial as this notion is for all that follows, no attempt is made to demonstrate its validity, and amid the current chorus of similar dire warnings it may well sound axiomatic...

...They make no distinction between the unintegrated, premodern society of the Arabs—inherently unable to go much beyond sedentary forms of warfare (brigandage, marauding, artillery barrages, etc...

...The Arabs in his piece appear on the scene looking rather like good Presbyterians...

...And since the factors favoring the Arabs are greatly magnified in the United Nations, the blockage of recourse to even such a hostile "court" only encourages direct action by Israel against its enemies...

...There is no reference to the impact of this trauma on Israeli relations with the international community or with the Arabs...

...After 18 months, its credibility had grown dangerously thin, making an appropriate substitute necessary...

...There is no mention of their associating Israel with the painful humiliations Islam has suffered at the hands of the resurgent West in the modern age...

...Nor is there any meaningful difference between the ambiguous statements Washington would require from the Arabs in return, and the even more ambiguous declarations that would satisfy Moscow...

...Previously, the indefensible armistice lines placed almost all of Israel's population within rifle shot or cannon range of the Arabs...

...In any event, the Four Power approach to the Middle East has offered some obvious gratifications to each of the participants...

...The flood of dark forecasts from Arab, Soviet and Western sources is invariably linked with calls for exactly such a settlement...

...It is the intrusion of the international community that gives life to the Arabs' struggle against Jewish statehood...

...will be duped again, as in 1957, and may also be finding it difficult to reconcile its declared objectives with its means of achieving them...

...Nor is any reference made to the fact that the very manner in which Arabs have learned to make this outrage psychologically bearable has reinforced their stake in uncompromising rejection of Israel...

...Above all, the two superpowers moved to jointly salvage their gravely jeopardized investments in the Arab East, Nasser and Hussein...

...For there the Arabs dwarf their foe, in numbers, connections, resources, alliances, and influence...

...Unfortunately, Yost and others do not seem to recognize its illuminating implication...

...The same basic disparity of strength in the international community explains why international guarantees for Israel have never worked and never will...

...There is no indication of their utter inability to come to terms emotionally with what they profoundly hold to be the most monstrous outrage in history...

...One may regard this as a just and desirable situation that saves the Arabs from facing alone aggressive and rapacious Israelis...

...Admittedly, even stillborn Arab campaigns are dangerous, for they might suffice to trigger Soviet military intervention...

...Nixon was able to please the Soviets in the hopes of opening the way for greater stakes...

...The semantic adjustment is not unrealistic insofar as it suggests that only one of the sides is capable of waging war...

...The moment the Big Four ambassadors met for the first time in New York, the Arabs were reported to have pressed UN peace representative Gunnar Jarring with more extreme demands than they had raised during his entire mission...

...But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Yost's article is that it is an analysis of violence without any awareness of the very roots of that violence...

...Instead, the Arabs' rejection of Israel is represented as some erroneous "conviction," as a "myth" that, once unmasked, can be made to vanish...

...Having portrayed the Jews and the Arabs as being tragically locked in a mounting dialogue of senseless violence, Yost and others maintain that only the Big Powers can put an end to this danse macabre...

...Yet, one could as easily argue the opposite on equally superficial grounds...

...There is no mention of their outrage at the silent world that watched six million of their brethren go to slaughter...

...and the industrial society of Israel—increasingly unable to produce anything other than modern war...

...It would take a considerable act of faith, or much self-delusion, to square the American determination not to return to the conditions of June 4, 1967, with the actual terms of settlement we envisage...

...in part by influential segments of American opinion (ecclesiastics, Orientalists, diplomats, businessmen), who are unhappy with American policy since the June War and insist that the failure to restore Arab losses, as in 1956, is leading to disaster...

...Most important, there is no indication of its role in the policy of retaliation, or in the decision to go to war...

...Yet, has Middle Eastern violence intensified because of their presumed absence, or precisely because of their very real involvement...

...For despite a surface evenhandedness...

...Now it is the Arab capitals that are in jeopardy, and the Israelis can employ the Arabs' hit-and-run tactics...

...Washington is clearly fearful that the U.S...

...One has reason to worry, though, lest the terms of the actual settlement be shaped by the fabrications...

...The French acquired the illusion of major power status...

...In effect, we are Hamlet in this play, trapped by the ambiguities of our position...

...A supreme Egyptian effort might involve an attempt to establish a beachhead in Sinai, or intensified artillery barrages across Suez, or even air raids, or all of these...

...Whether or not Yost and others in our foreign service can make these vital distinctions, can realistically appraise both Arab hostility and Israeli insecurity, remains to be seen...

...There is little that separates the almost total Israeli withdrawal envisioned in the American position from the virtually total withdrawal of the Soviet position...

...And the sheer nature of the new geomilitary setting restricts Israel to more localized, defensive, second-strike type actions...

...And in a book published in 1968, The Insecurity of Nations, he wrote: "In foreign policies of nations it is necessary, in the very first instance, to take account in both leaders and peoples of the factors of passion, frustration, and habit which spring from deep instincts and emotions, which are not subject to rational rebuttal . . ." Did Middle Eastern "factors of passion" become "subject to rational rebuttal" in just one year...