The Unresolved Crisis

...We had failed to become a full-fledged member although the pact was our creation...

...The pact has embittered the Soviets, who fear it as a military threat aimed at their southern borders, and it has infuriated Nasser, who regards it as an instrument to maintain Western domination over the Middle East...

...Four—Creation of a U.N...

...Dag Hammarskjold faces a staggering task in his assignment of seeking peace in the Middle East...

...Six—The development of a far-ranging program of economic aid for all the states of the Middle East under the auspices of the U.N...

...The goals of such negotiation, in our judgment, should include the following: One—Agreement by the great powers to seek the neutralization of the Middle East by refraining from making military allies or fostering military blocs in the region or engaging in arms traffic of any kind...

...There the people have no voice in the formulation of foreign policy...

...Seven—A joint affirmation by the Arab States of non-aggression and non-interference in the affairs of other states—and a pledge by Israel disavowing expansionist ambitions...

...The President's address itself represented a hopeful veering away from the sterile inflexibility of his Secretary of State, but it seemed to many thoughtful observers to fall into the old category of too little and too late...

...Only a clear call for the neutralization of the entire region so as to remove it altogether as a pawn in the cold war struggle could have met the problem directly...

...For years we have pursued a course of military maneuvering in that strategic area designed to prop up unpopular regimes which would play our game as military allies in our obsessive determination to contain the Soviet Union...

...On the contrary, his prestige and his influence throughout the Arab countries, if anything, have gone up...

...peace force to serve permanently in the area, committed to preserving the territorial integrity of the states of the Middle East...

...It would be difficult to conceive a more obvious bit of humbug, especially in view of what happened in Lebanon without notice or debate of any kind...

...The United Nations observers had reported unreservedly that there was no massive infiltration of military support from President Nasser's United Arab Republic or the Soviet Union...

...Our policy in Lebanon was wrong from start to finish...

...A competent and resourceful negotiator, he may well succeed in reaching tentative agreements on some issues...

...And Joseph C. Harsch, foreign affairs analyst for the Christian Science Monitor, noted that "as an exercise in curbing President Nasser little was accomplished...

...Eight—Formulation of a program to deal with the urgent problem of the nearly one million Arab refugees in the Middle East...

...He promised to withdraw U.S...

...That is why we are convinced that there must be genuine negotiations between the West and the Soviets—at the summit if possible—in an attempt to resolve the basic issues at conflict in the Middle East...

...Reporting from Lebanon where he had unusual opportunities to observe conditions first hand, W. H. Lawrence, correspondent for the pro-intervention New York Times, emphasized that "U.S...

...It means that we have guaranteed, among other things, to shore up the regimes in Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan no matter how unpopular they may become with the people of these countries...

...They are the slaves of whatever foreign policy it may from time to time adopt...

...It means that despite President Eisenhower's fine words at the United Nations Assembly our deeds continue to show how little we are prepared to face up to reality and act creatively...

...It was clear to the whole world that we had moved into Lebanon to support a government that had demonstrably forfeited much of its popular support...

...This position evades the basic fact that the Middle East lies at the southern doorstep of the Soviet Union, just as Mexico and Central America sit at our southern flank...

...To negotiate for these agreements, even if we fail, would help at least to banish the stale and sterile atmosphere that envelops the Dulles approach to foreign policy and put us on the high road to affirmative goals...

...The Kremlin cannot be indifferent to the building up of Western military power on her southern borders, through NATO and the Bagdad Pact, anymore than we could remain calm if the Soviets developed a military alliance among the nations which lie to the south of the United States...

...It means that we will continue to allow the Soviets to speak the language of the people's aspirations while we pursue our negative course of building military alliances and dealing with dictators, shahs, and kings...

...On both these counts the President was silent...

...Nothing in the proceedings of the United Nations Assembly, including President Eisenhower's moderately affirmative address, could obscure the fact that the United States has suffered a disastrous defeat in the Middle East...

...In London Dulles proceeded to involve the United States in the Bagdad Pact more deeply than ever...

...Both our Bagdad Pact and the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Administration's only two policies in the Middle East, proved utterly meaningless when the crisis came because neither had any relation to the realities in the region...

...The causes are not difficult to find...

...But here the people are the masters and the government is the servant...

...intervention on either moral or legal grounds did not square with the known facts as reported by the U.N...

...Eisenhower said was the assumption that the whole area could be stabilized by reaching an accommodation with Nasser and his Arab followers while ignoring the Russians...

...We lost heavily in world respect, we weakened our position in Lebanon, and we strengthened the role of Egypt's President Nasser throughout the Middle East...

...Two—United Nations and great power guarantee of the existing borders of the states of the Middle East —including Israel—except for changes resulting from negotiated agreements among the states concerned...

...Only a willingness to thaw out our frozen policy toward the Soviet Union could pave the way for negotiations with the Kremlin designed to seek fundamental solutions in the Middle East...

...The result has been to alienate large masses of Arabs who hunger for a better life and to make enemies of Arab nationalists bent on wiping out Western colonialism and developing Arab unity...

...The nation and the world were simply confronted with an accomplished fact...

...Implicit in much that Mr...

...The presence of our troops there has served in a curious way to weaken, friends of the United States and strengthen the Lebanese opposition...

...He discussed the broad outlook in the Middle East, but he ignored altogether the problems of Israel in the midst of a hostile Arab world...

...In the case of Lebanon, and in other instances in the recent past, the people and their elected representatives in Congress seem to have had as little to say as their counterparts in totalitarian societies...

...One of the most shocking aspects of our military intervention in Lebanon was the Eisenhower Administration's failure to consult Congress, the United Nations, or our allies in NATO...

...troops from Lebanon when requested by Lebanon or when Lebanon is freed of danger "through action by the U.N...

...He talked of investigating the possibility of avoiding a "new arms race spiral" in the Middle East, but was silent on the frequently extended Soviet offer to negotiate a complete arms embargo in the region...

...Perhaps the most serious weakness in the President's address was its failure to come to grips with one of the most compelling facts of life in the Middle East—that we must share power and leadership with the Soviet Union, however distasteful that fact may be...

...Five—Agreement by the great powers and the U.N...

...This is the alliance he put together several years ago as part of our network of military pacts designed to contain the Soviet Union...

...Its findings were clearly confirmed by Secretary-General Hammarskjold...

...Not only was intervention in Lebanon immoral and illegal, but impractical and self-defeating if our purpose was purely one of power politics...

...Now Dulles made us a "full partner," although still not an actual member, for membership would require Senate approval...

...The net result of Dulles' diplomacy has been precisely the opposite of the goals sought, for we have gravely weakened our own stature among the Arab peoples, who regard us as hostile to their aspirations, and we have greatly strengthened Soviet influence in the entire area, for the Soviets shrewdly talk the language of the people and as shrewdly refrain from demanding military bases or alliances...

...Subsequent efforts to discuss and debate the action were met with the response that the die was cast, that there could be no turning back, and that there was no patriotic course but to support the President...

...The new commitment obligates us to defend against direct and indirect aggression a 3,000-mile frontier of mountain and desert extending from the Turkish Caucasus to Pakistan's Khyber Pass...

...Three—Establishment of Jordan as a neutralized ward of the U.N.— to serve as the base of all U.N...

...The crisis, brewing for so long, remains unresolved...

...Secretary of State Dulles showed how little he had learned from the whole experience by hurrying off to a London meeting of the surviving members of the Bagdad Pact...

...We are under no illusion that it will be easy to agree on these policies, but whether they are attainable or not, they seem to us to represent the minimum objectives which ought to form the basis of American foreign policy in the Middle East...

...When Representative Henry Reuss, Wisconsin Democrat, rose in the House of Representatives to wonder why Congress was not consulted, he was shut up by Speaker Sam Ray-burn, Texas Democrat, with this wholly undemocratic rebuke: "In times like these we had better allow matters to develop rather than make remarks about them...

...peacemaking operations in the region...

...But we believe the larger hope for lasting settlement will elude him so long as the great powers maneuver for position in the region...

...military intervention backfired politically in Lebanon...

...Split into bitterly warring blocs, the Assembly could not come to grips with the basic issues, but the fact that it could meet and provide a forum for debate served as a safety-valve in a time of extraordinary tension...

...to facilitate the peaceful merger of willing Arab states into a Pan-Arab federation...

...Its Arab-sponsored, unanimously approved resolution, moreover, struck an affirmative note in emphasizing Arab League pledges against noninterference in the affairs of other Arab countries, providing for a ban on inflammatory broadcasts beamed from one Arab nation to another, and approving the principle of the regional economic program along the lines suggested by President Eisenhower when he addressed the Assembly at the beginning of the deliberations...

...or otherwise," but his efforts to justify U.S...

...At its recent emergency session the United Nations Assembly doubtless did the best it could under the circumstances—which consisted, in effect, of turning the whole problem over to its able Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold...

...In this connection it is noteworthy that in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Secretary of State Dulles said the other day: "Expediency and opportunism in policy are possible in an absolute despotism...

...We had no moral right or legal sanction to pour our troops into that unhappy country, for there was no doubt that this was an internal conflict—not a case of international aggression...