ASIA'S REVOLUTION MOVES WEST

...That was the situation when only Egypt was drawn into the direct fighting...

...But not all of the united political and economic forces of the West would suffice in the decades ahead to block the upsurge of Afro-Asian nationalism...

...The actual situation in that part of the world is a maelstrom of turbulent forces which cannot be reconciled to our purposes or controlled by the forces at our disposal...

...The Arab states see the pattern and weigh its implications against the opportunity it offers...

...the majority will of the four Asian members will fix policy instead...

...Short of a rapprochement of that nature, even a reconciliation of differences between Western and Eastern Europe could conceivably redress somewhat the balance between Western civilization and the new forces of Asia and Africa...

...But Egypt, situated in the center of the Arab world, has a role determined by geography—a role not of leadership, but of "interaction" in connection with the building of mankind's future...

...Unencumbered by military alliances outside the Communist bloc, the Soviet Union works assiduously at knitting ever closer economic relations with the arc of "uncommitted" Asian countries from Japan to Iran...

...When the Israeli-British-French attack came at the end of October, the Soviet Union promptly sided with Egypt...

...Fate is indeed no jester...

...The era when the white man might command special status in Asia, whether in terms of "spheres of influence," "concessions," or extraordinary profits, is now coming to its end in the Middle East...

...The answer, where nationalism is concerned, is, "yes, if need be...

...The trend is toward an American clash with Afro-Asian nationalism...

...When the four Asian members of the Bagdad Pact (Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey) on December 5 urged the linking of NATO to the Pact, they noted also the need of Iran and Iraq for more arms...

...Springing from remote beginnings, its progress marked by such milestones as Japan's victory over Russia in 1905, the Chinese Revolution of 1911, and India's winning of independence in 1947, Asian nationalism has gathered great power and momentum...

...It has become increasingly clear, in the light of current developments, that the United States has assumed an exposed and vulnerable political position in the Middle East and North Africa and will inevitably be torn between conflicting forces having little or nothing to do with our presumed strategic aims...

...But the predominant force in the Middle East is Asian nationalism...

...it could as readily be blocked again...

...The long-term prospects are, rather, for further deterioration of the Western position under the impact of immediate problems...

...The first facilitates the second...

...In the Bagdad Pact area, Iraq looks upon Israel as its chief enemy...

...the situation could easily be worse next time...

...It may be asked incredulously, "Would the Arabs cut off their noses to spite their faces...

...Asians have learned refinements of political and economic warfare from two World Wars...

...But the expectation that the European revolutionaries would provide the role of leadership is less surely borne out...

...Now the mediator's role, which proved so thankless a mission for us in China, is ours in the Arab-Israeli dispute...

...The Soviet cause is correspondingly advanced...

...While we watched fearfully for the possible appearance of a "third force" in Europe, the real third force moved through the Middle East to the birthplace of Western civilization—the Mediterranean...

...The Arabs themselves, insofar as they undergo a political renaissance, will probably reject most Western cultural values, capitalistic and communistic alike, in favor of forms derived from their own cultural heritage...

...It is clearly a better than 50-50 chance that the so-called "neutralists" and various other Asians would say, in effect, "let occidentals fight occidentals," and sit back to inherit the earth —if any...

...There is a coldly practical aspect to the matter...

...There are no visible prospects of repairing such losses...

...The oil pipeline traversing Syria was blown up promptly after that attack began...

...Various Arab nations feel that they have need of aid, but they generally make one stipulation—no strings...

...The peoples of Asia and Africa are indeed rising in revolt as anticipated by early Bolshevik leaders...

...Airfields and air passage in the Middle East might be denied to all countries associated with the attackers, petroleum deliveries to oil companies generally stopped, and the boycott extended to other products and other areas...

...The question now facing the West is the effectiveness of the strategy chosen to check the Communist advance...

...The West was not free to reject the issue: "If with wealth, numbers and opportunity, a people still cannot so organize their strength as to hold their own, it is not practical to expect that those to whom wealth and opportunity are lacking, but who have organizing faculty and willingness to fight, will not under the pressure of need enter upon an inheritance which need will persuade themselves is ethically their due...

...The catalytic agents for Arab anti-Westernism are not only remembrances of things past, but experiences of things present, particularly the existence of Israel on Asian soil and the policies and actions of Occidental Great Powers in the Middle East...

...The Arab League of nine member states manifests a sense of communal interest on the governmental level...

...Given the disorder and debility of the Atlantic community, the process can logically be expected to proceed more rapidly—but hardly more smoothly —than in Asia...

...China was accepted by the Soviet Union as a political equal in 1950, five years before Moscow's reconciliation with Tito...

...Can we further ignore the existence of an Islamic world, with which we are united by bonds created not only by religious belief, but also reinforced by historic realities...

...And the chief support of the Pact's "Northern Tier" position was the great British base in the Suez Canal zone...

...Morocco and Tunisia, having won independence from France, are now getting financial aid from the United States...

...In Syria, the Al Ba'ath (designating the Arab Socialist Resurgence Party) works assiduously for the establishment of a federated Arab State reaching from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic...

...Given the notable decline of Western influence and prestige all the way from Japan to Morocco, and the American-Soviet rivalry, the Arab nations have unusual opportunities to advance their own interests...

...Many of the present difficulties encountered by Western Powers in adjusting their relations with Eastern peoples derive from bitter recollections of occidental gunfire...

...and the Israeli, British, and French, who had together received over $13 billion in U. S. economic and military aid, in the end directed their combined might against the Egyptians...

...A number of them were protectorates before...

...In that situation, the Soviet Union pursues with tenacious single-minded-ness its strategy of associating itself with the new nations of Asia and Africa by political and economic opera-dons...

...But, whether the name be Moslem Brotherhood or Al Ba'ath, major Arab political parties now all draw heavily on nationalism...

...In another sector of the Arab world, in Algeria, a rebellion is in progress, with the French using nearly 400,000 troops in the effort to suppress it...

...Would it undertake "massive retaliation" against the Arabs...

...It was the global power struggle that led us to aim the Eisenhower Doctrine against "international Communism" in the Middle East...

...For, "Can we possibly ignore the fact that there is an African continent which Fate decreed us to be a part of, and that it is also decreed that a terrible struggle exists for its future...

...Writing in 1900 on "The Problem of Asia," Admiral Mahan viewed the stirring of ancient civilizations and said that the coming confrontation of the Eastern and Western civilizations would necessarily lead either to amalgamation or to conflict...

...Turkey's overriding present interest, apart from its economic distress, is the fate of Cyprus...

...But the United States is not vested with the legal authority those two states once exercised as protector powers: it lacks the essential imperial right to command obedience...

...This plan requires that the United States arm Asian troops, supply their governments with dollars, and maintain their nations in solvent condition, in the pattern of Formosa, South Korea, and South Vietnam...

...The Gold Coast's transformation in March into the free state of Ghana was a sign of the times: Africa is awakening to its power and advancing toward political self-determination...

...And there is an obverse side of the Arabs' anti-Western nationalism that reflects such a purpose—a pan-Arabism that looks forward to the construction of an Arab federation as an important influence in tomorrow's world...

...And Asia has not advanced westward merely to exchange new Western servitudes for old, whether in the ways of peace or warfare...

...Fate is no jester...

...The history of East Asia—if not the disastrous failure of the October intervention in Egypt—counsels against it: the day when "gunboat diplomacy" could prove effective in Asia is gone...

...In the Middle East and North Africa, it has now got itself bogged down in a morass of irreconcilable issues...

...Now the time has come to remember that one-seventh of the world's people are Moslem...

...there are only about 5,000,000 whites, counting the million Algerian Frenchmen...

...But if either Moscow or Washington thinks that all of Asia would likewise take the suicide leap in sympathy with one side or the other, it would be well advised to take another look at the table of political probabilities...

...The Soviet proposals would have made possible the desired arms control, but were rejected because they were diametrically opposed otherwise to the Eisenhower Doctrine...

...and it must be assumed that, strengthened by U. S. aid, they would still persist in working to achieve their own ends—to overcome Israel, eliminate French political authority from Algeria and British power from Aden and the Persian Gulf, and become undisputed masters in their home territory...

...That was Asian nationalism...

...The Soviet Government is well aware of this...

...These developments were the achievement of independence by the African Gold Coast, the President's signature into law of the Eisenhower Doctrine, rejection by the Western powers of the Soviet Union's February 11 proposal for a joint Four-Power policy for the Middle East, and the announcement from the Anglo-American conference in Bermuda that the United States proposed to participate "actively" in the work of the military committee of the Bagdad pact...

...Soviet policy pivots on the Bandung Conference's central doctrines of political co-existence and economic cooperation...

...The U. S. government is called upon both to satisfy Israeli aspirations and at the same time to convince the Arab nations of its good will toward them...

...in some not-distant tomorrow, it will almost certainly make an important effort to achieve a deeper economic penetration into Africa...

...There exists, in sum, no practicable way of maintaining the political status quo before the floodtide of Asian revolution that has swept across the Middle Eastern land-bridge into North Africa and the Mediterranean area...

...The Soviet Union has clearly let its interest be known...

...Its influence has entered the Arab world...

...The thought that torments the Atlantic partners is that the Soviet Union is gaining influence in what used to be their exclusive preserve...

...The turmoil results in part from the furious Arab-Israeli quarrel, with questions of occupancy of the Gaza Strip, ship passage through the Gulf of Aqaba, and the problem of the Arab refugees all emphasizing the bitterness of the main issue...

...O. EDMUND CLUBB, retired Foreign Service officer, served for two decades in Asia...

...The Suez Canal was blocked by extensive wrecking when Egypt was attacked in October...

...It was an index of the vigor of Arab nationalism that the Syrian spokesman of eight Arab nations should warn the State Department last June against supporting the French in Algeria...

...Here it is important to observe that the Arab states ordinarily have more immediate—and dearer—concerns than fighting either Soviet or Asian Communists...

...There are also Arab Communist parties, depending mainly upon the intelligentsia for their strength...

...Britain, France, and the United States are committed irrevocably to maintaining Israel in existence, and the Arabs are committed to its rigid "containment"—if not extinction...

...Japan now veers away from the American policy line, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will enlist under Moscow's banner...

...but the last of the 80,000-man garrison was withdrawn from the Canal zone last year, and the base, with full depots of military supplies, was seized by Egypt after the October attack...

...It has a firm foothold in Egypt...

...the joint provision of economic aid "without . . . political, military or other conditions incompatible with the dignity and sovereignty of these countries," and "liquidation of foreign bases and the withdrawal of foreign troops" from their territory...

...The Algerian civil war, the Western efforts to recover control of the Suez Canal from Nasser's hands, even the tiny guerrilla war between Yeman and the British Aden Protectorate, will all influence the shaping of relations between the Arab world and the Occident—perhaps long after it will have slipped the Western mind that the Arab nations concerned were once bruised by Western power...

...Asia has risen up to claim political self-determination, in revolt against Occidental colonial domination and political leadership...

...The containment concept infers, in the event of war between the American and Soviet camps, "Let Asians fight Asians"— that is, "our" Asians should fight Communist Asians...

...and Iran values good relations with the Soviet Union highly enough for the Shah and his Queen to have made a state visit to Moscow last June...

...Asians may prove no more ready to die for the Soviet Union than for the United States...

...India has its own viewpoint which, socialistic and partly Western through education, remains as Asian as the Bandung Conference itself...

...The control of the Suez Canal, the Algerian rebellion, the status of Cyprus, and the future orientation of the Sudan constitute other local problems of nearly the same magnitude...

...The Arab nations do not forget Arab objectives...

...In the Bagdad Pact's military committee itself, the United States and Britain together constitute a minority and cannot determine decisions...

...Moslem-ism is dominant in North Africa, and is spreading rapidly southward, so that now there are some 30 million Moslems in the savannah belt south of the Sahara...

...Admiral Alfred T. Mahan a half century ago offered some sound advice: "Never attempt to straddle, to do two things at the same time," he said, "unless your force is evidently so supreme that you have clearly more than enough for each...

...When disorders spring from such nationalistic movements, and foreign (perhaps American) interests are endangered, what is the United States to do...

...Israel, according to Nasser, "is but the result of imperialism...

...Barring such a fiery denouement, the ultimate choice confronting the United States and the Soviet Union is the same: to change course so as to re-join the "neutralists," or to be left increasingly isolated by holding fast to ideological sovereignty...

...The United States has disregarded Mahan's basic principle that strength should be concentrated where it counts...

...and in December, after the cease-fire, a series of explosions occurred in the oil installations in Kuwait, which was the source of over half of Britain's crude oil imports...

...The Arab-Moslem-nationalistic fervor will probably spread rapidly in Africa—as Nasser foresees...

...none wishes to occupy that status again...

...The United States, on its part, is torn between its conflicting loyalties to Israel, the Bagdad Pact quadrum-virate of Middle Eastern Powers, the anti-Bagdad Pact Arabs, and its NATO partners—including Greece and Turkey...

...leftist groups like the Istiqlal (Independence Party) of Iraq, and the rightist Moslem Brotherhood of Egypt—violently anti-Christian and anti-foreign...

...Aramco oil payments to Saudi Arabia in 1956 were about $300 million, but King Ibn Saud was reported to have visited Washington recently with expectations of U. S. aid measured at about $200 million over five years...

...Egyptian President Nasser has set forth some vague but suggestive ideas of his own in the book Egypt's Liberation...

...It offered in February to join Britain, France, and the United States in adopting common policies for the preservation of peace in the Middle East, including a joint commitment to refuse arms to the countries in that area...

...While it held the Palestine Mandate (1922-48), Britain found it impossible to reconcile the rival demands of the antagonists...

...The question arises: how much will such unencumbered aid strengthen the anti-Soviet front...

...That Arab warning also pointed up how U. S. military aid is sometimes deployed against adversaries other than our own...

...West of Egypt, with its center of influence in Tunisia and Libya, the moderate Maghreb movement aims at the organization of a North African Arab federation...

...Political philosophies to support such relationships are growing...

...But the ever-present considerations behind British, French, and American actions in the Middle East have been 1) military control of that highly important communications crossroads and 2) maintenance of access to the region's petroleum...

...The so-called Arab-Asian bloc remains "neutralist"—independent of both Great Power combinations...

...Britain's long-time protege and close ally, Jordan, was lost as a result of the attempt to pressure it into joining the Bagdad Pact, and the British are now evacuating the excellent air bases at Amman and Mafraq and the base installation at Aqaba...

...Pakistan arms more against India than against China...

...Should the two white titans, the United States and the Soviet Union, loose their thermonuclear weapons against each other, they would in all probability destroy themselves, and Western civilization, in a matter of days...

...Communist chief Khrushchev warned the British and French envoys in Moscow August 23 last year that "the Arabs will not stand alone," that "volunteers" would come to their help, if war broke out in the Middle East...

...The conflict of civilizations foreseen by Mahan is now being joined...

...The continent holds some 200 million Africans...

...For France employs NATO equipment and American helicopters against the Algerian rebels...

...The Anglo-French-American Tripartite Declaration of 1950 was designed to stop any arms race between Israel and the Arab nations and keep the peace between them...

...For the Asians have minds and wills of their own...

...This is not to say that the Soviet Union is winning the struggle by our default...

...Armed action by an occidental power against an Arab nation inevitably affects adversely the Western position in both Asia and Africa...

...The Doctrine is a plain projection of the concept of containing the Soviet Union by use of military force —in the present case, to keep it out of the Middle East...

...As the British and French have been forced out of various Middle Eastern positions in the postwar period, the United States has rushed to "fill the vacuum...