The Middle Eastern Crisis in the Perspective of World Politics

Author(s): Eugene V. Rostow

Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) , Apr.,
1971, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr., 1971), pp. 275-288
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2613928

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 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
VOL. 47 APRIL 1971 No. 2

THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN THE

PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS
Eu ge ne V. R os to w

This article is being revised for publication in January 1971, at a critical

moment in the protracted conflict between Israel and some of her Arab
neighbours. That poignant phenomenon is not the cause of the Middle
Eastern crisis, however, but its symptom and its conseqlence. The heart
of the crisis is the process of Soviet penetration in North Africa and the
Near East. Without Soviet influence, there woiuld have been peace long
ago between Israel and her neighbours. Whether the current round of
Arab-Israeli tension is resolved by another outburst of open warfare, or,
as is more likely, by a political agreement generally consistent with the
Security Council Resolution of November 22, 1967, the Soviet campaign
of expansion in the Middle East will be a major problemn of Amiterican and
NATO policy for years to come, unless the Soviet Union should finally
accept (or be forced by events to accept) the logic of peaceful co-existence,
and of detente.
* * *

T | aHE Middle Eastern crisis is not a regional quarrel about Israel's

right to exist. It is, on the contrary, a fissure in the foundation
of world politics-a Soviet challenge to the relationship of West-
ern Europe and the United States, and therefore to the balance of
power on which the possibility of general peace depends.
In its modem form, the Russian interest in the Middle East was
evident during the war, and has been a constant, if fluctuating theme of
Soviet policy since the war. In the Ribbentrop-Molotov meeting of
1940, Molotov asserted Russia's desire for influence in Egypt as well
as in Turkey and the Persian Gulf. And the first post-war crises-the
warning bells of the cold war-concerned Iran and Turkey. But Soviet
policy reached far beyond the border states, even in the period of its
exhaustion at the end of the war. The Soviets sought a mandate for
Libya in 1945, and gave Israel decisive help in the first Arab-Israeli
war of 1948. Soviet policy has been to push at open doors in the Middle
East. In recent years it has become a much more sustained and massive
affair-a genuine campaign, rather than a policy of taking advantage
of opportunities on the cheap. It is no longer a shadowy feint that
could be reversed without embarrassment, but a major investment of
resources and prestige, involving the deliberate assumption of major
risks.
The first purpose of the Soviet effort is to achieve strategic and
275

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276 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

tactical control of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Persian
Gulf area. On that footing, the next step would be to drive the United
States out of Europe, and to have NATO dismantled.
One of the Soviet Union's chief weapons in the process has been the
exploitation of Arab hostility to the existence of Israel as a catalyst of
turbulence and of revolutionary feeling in Arab politics. There is no
magic which could persuade the Arabs to give up their sense of griev-
ance about the existence of Israel. At best, that bitter feeling will take
many years to fade. It will not fade, but will become worse, if it
continues to be used as an engine of radical take-over throughout the
region, both by the Soviets and by their Chinese rivals.
Arab opinion is convinced that the creation of Israel was an injustice
to the Arabs; that Israel is the spearhead and agent of Western imperial-
ism; and that sooner or later Israel will have to be destroyed. All must
give lip-service to this thesis; many believe it. Few could oppose the
dream of a Holy War when opinion is inflamed by the call to battle.
Many Arab leaders would be relieved to make peace with Israel. They
realise that the idea of revenge against Israel is sterile and destructive,
and that its true purpose is not the destruction of Israel, but the radicali-
sation of Arab politics, and the extension of Soviet influence. But no
Arab leader, however moderate, dares advise his people publicly that
the creation of Israel has been ratified by history, and that its existence
is a fact of life Arabs ought to acknowledge. The most difficult of all
conflicts are those where both sides assert claims which are generally
conceded to have merit.
* * *

The possibility of Soviet hegemony in North Africa and the Middle

East is not a prospect the United States and its NATO allies can view
with merely academic curiosity. The people of the West have long been
interested in the development of Israel as a progressive democratic
state and society. And their governments have assumed moral and
political responsibilities which cannot be evaded, both in sponsoring the
establishment of Israel in a hostile Arab world, and in committing
themselves repeatedly to uphold her freedom, and that of other states
in the region. These moral, human, and political aspects of the West-
ern relation to Israel and other friendly states of the area should be
viewed as reinforcing the security interests of the United States and of
its European allies. Under present circumstances, the destruction of
Israel, or its serious enfeeblement, would be a long step towards Soviet
control of the region between Morocco and Iran. And Soviet bases
throughout the region would call into question the position of the United
States, and of NATO as a whole, in Europe and the Mediterranean.
On the other hand, if peace is achieved under the Security Council

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THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS 277

Resolution, in accordance wi,th the principles on which the United

States and Great Britain have insisted since June 5 and June 19, 1967,
Western interests would have a new opportunity throughout the area,
and the appeal of the expensive Soviet connection would diminish in
Arab politics.
It is hardly remarkable that in his first formal message to the
Congress on the state of American foreign policy, President Nixon said
that ' the United States would view any effort by the Soviet Union
to seek predominance in the Middle East as a matter of grave concern'.
In the language of diplomacy, that sentence embodies a strategic truth,
and states a formal warning. Unless present trends in the area are
checked, and allowed to find their own level in Arab politics, Soviet
'predominance' is a likely prospect. President Pompidou was right
when he said recently that the Mediterranean was ' the soft underbelly
of Europe', and compared the Soviet presence there to the Cuban
missile crisis. These are words of tremendous resonance. But they are
not exaggerated.
President Nixon's warning is backed by the Eisenhower Middle
East Resolution, passed by Congress in 1957, and reaffirmed in 1961.
That resolution authorises the President to use force to protect any
country of the area against ' armed aggression from any country con-
trolled by international Communism'. The sentence covers both overt
attacks, like that in Korea, and the toleration of guerrilla raids, for
which, of course, the host state is responsible in international law.
The phrase 'international Communism' is an echo of the Dulles era;
whatever elese it may mean in a contemporary context, it would surely
include the Soviet Union. Nor can there be much doubt today about
the existence of Soviet 'control', in the sense of the Resolution, in
countries like Egypt and Syria. It is significant that in 1970 the Senator-
ial sponsors of proposals to cancel or reduce American commitments
in the world decided, after careful consideration, not to recommend
the repeal of the Middle East Resolutions of 1957 and 1961.
Since 1965 or 1966, the pressure of Soviet policy in the Middle East
has been increasing at a geometric rate. It is now too strong to be
contained by anything less than the full influence of the United States
originally with the support of its NATO allies.
Within recent months, the process of transformation has gained in
momentum, despite the setbacks of President Nasser's death, and King
Hussein's important victory over the guerrillas, and over hostile forces
in Syria and Iraq.
Through guerrilla groups responsive to their influence, the Chinese
have been trying to force a confrontation between the United States
and the Soviet Union over the Middle East. Until the summer of 1970,

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278 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

at least, the Soviets were prisoners of their own Juggernaut, as they

were in 1967, and lurched towards the abyss, confident that the United
States and its allies would not act in time to prevent the irrevocable.
That judgment of Western policy seemed to be confirmed by the
absence of any Anglo-American or NATO reaction to the liquidation
of American (and British) bases in Libya, and by the comparable failure
to react to Nasser's resumption of hostilities against Israel in April 1969.
Since mid-summer 1970, the Soviet Union has drawn back a little, or
paused, seemingly impressed by change in atmosphere of American
policy, and by the risks of American intervention. It remains to be seen
how long that pause lasts, and how long, too, President Nixon can
make his deterrent threat credible.
The possibility of change in Soviet policy should be judged against
the background of the recent Soviet decision to assign its own pilots
and anti-aircraft personnel to combat duties in Egypt. That step has no
parallel in Soviet policy since the attack of Korea, or the Cuban missile
crisis. It is more audacious-and more malign-than the deliberate
circulation by the Soviet Government in May 1967 of false reports
that Israel was about to attack Syria. As President Nasser has testified,
those false reports triggered the six-Day War. The false intelligence
reports of 1967 were a deliberate incitement of proxy war. But now the
Soviet Union has dropped the mask of proxy war, in an area far out-
side its western marches. With that step, world politics entered a new
era.
* *

If the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the whole of the Middle Eastern

crisis, it is nonetheless one of its central features. And peace between
Israel and its neighbours would surely help to reduce the poisonously
dangerous level of tension in the region, and allow more benign tend-
encies in Arab politics to come to the fore. The problem of achieving
peace between Israel and its neighbours-a peace fair and dignified for
Israel, for the Palestinian refugees, and for the Arab nations alike-is
therefore worth separate examination.
In the Middle East, as in other parts of the Third World, the
dissolution of Empire gave rise to a large number of weak and vulner-
able states, struggling to master the techniques of modern wealth and
social organisation. The nations of the area vary widely in resources,
political outlook and capacity for effective self-government. They are
united by ties of culture and religion, by historic memories, and above
all by pride in their Arab heritage, and by hostility to the colonial idea.
They are divided by jealousies, and their rivalries are often tinged by
violence. Some are monarchies, or traditional societies of an older kind;

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280 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

some, like Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Tunisia, are progressive Western
societies based on capitalism; others-Syria, Algeria, and perhaps
Egypt and Libya as well-are communities governed by one or another
sect of the faith that calls itself Socialist, and controlled by a state
apparatus which has driven older elites into exile. Almost all have
military forces of increasing strength and influence, whose officers are
trained either in Europe or America, or in the Soviet Union.
Starting in 1955, Soviet policy acquired new dimensions. The Soviet
Union took advantage of Eygptian conflicts with Great Britain and the
United States to supply arms and, later, economic aid to Egypt on a
large scale. In time this policy was extended to other countries-to
Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Algeria and the Yemen. And it led to the massive
intrusion of Soviet experts in most of these countries-both military
and non-military experts-and, at a later stage, to a Soviet naval and
air presence at what are in effect permanent bases. Reversing
its alliances, it abandoned Israel as a friend, and became its enemy.
The Soviet arms supply to Egypt was the proximate cause of the
1956 war in the area; false Soviet intelligence, coupled with massive
supplies of Soviet arms, played the same role in the tragedy of 1967.
The development of a pro-Soviet orientation in Arab opinion, despite
Muslim religious antipathy to Communism, was a considerable psycho-
logical achievement. It managed to encapsulate the fact that the Soviet
Union had joined the United States in the fateful votes which launched
the state of Israel, and that without Czech arms for Israel, the war of
1948-49 might well have taken another course.
American policy in 1967 had the advantage of a comprehensive study
of Western political and strategic interests in the area, directed by
Ambassador Julius Holmes. That study concluded that the rising tide
of Soviet penetration, and the trends in Arab politics which that pene-
tration encouraged and fortified, threatened major American and allied
interests in the region; that the Soviot presence in Syria, Egypt, Algeria,
Iraq, the Yemen and the Sudan already constituted a substantial cloud
on allied interests; and that a continuation of the process, which could
involve the Nasserisation of Jordan, the Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, would present the United
States and NATO with a security crisis of major, and potentially of
catastrophic, proportions. NATO military positions were being out-
flanked. Communications between Europe, Africa and Asia were
threatened. A disturbing Soviet fleet roamed the Mediterranean. Oil
essential to the European (and Japanese) economies could be used as a
lever of political coercion. And the spectre of an all-out attack on
Israel, with its implicit risk of general war, was becoming more and
more possible, even likely. The process of Soviet penetration, and the

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THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS 281

phenomenon of what the Soviets call ' ultra-extremism' in Arab politics,

were difficult to control or reverse, since penetration had rested thus
far, save in the Yemen, not on international aggression, but seemingly
on internal coups d'etat, and then on political steps taken by Arab
governments themselves.
In the light of that analysis, an Arab-Israeli war was perceived not
as a local conflict, but as a stage in a process which threatened the
security of Europe and the United States. The protection of American
and allied interests-to say nothing of decency, and the duty of per-
manent members of the Security Council-required a major effort to
prevent the war, and, after twenty years of waiting, to fulfil the urgings
of the Security Council, and the promises of the Armistice Agreement of
1949, that the parties make peace. Only on that footing could one
hope to halt or reverse the process of Soviet expansion.
As the crisis deepened, choices narrowed. When Nasser closed the
Straits of Tiran in May, there were only two courses open to the United
States and its allies: to allow the war to explode; or to take respon-
sibility for opening the Straits of Tiran, by escorting merchant vessels
through the Straits, past the gun emplacements at Sharm-al-Sheikh. If
nothing were done, Nasser's decision to close the Straits made war inevit-
able, in the light of the agreements of 1957 which resolved the Suez
crisis. The critical character of the problem reflects both the inherent
importance of the area to Israel, and the history of its struggle to
survive.
Sharm-al-Sheikh controls access through the Straits of Tiran to the
Israeli port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba. Since Egypt had kept the
Suez Canal closed to Israeli shipping, despite two Security Council
resolutions, the Straits of Tiran was Israel's only direct route to East
Africa and Asia, and its most important source of oil. Closing the
Straits was in effect an act of blockade.
* * *

Egypt's announcement that it would use force to close the Straits

had another set of consequences. In 1957, in deference to Arab sen-
sitivity about seeming publicly to 'recognise' Israel, to 'negotiate-' with
Israel, or to make 'peace' with Israel, the United States took the lead
in negotiating understandings which led to the withdrawal of Israeli
troops from the Sinai, and the stationing of UNEF forces along the
Sinai border, in the Gaza Strip, and at Sharm-al-Sheikh. The terms of
that understanding were spelled out in a carefully planned series of
statements made by the governments both in their capitals, and before
the General Assembly. One of the terms of that understanding was
that the Straits of Tiran would be kept open as an international
waterway.

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282 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

The United Arab Republic, it is true, never took formal public

responsibility for this understanding, as it refused to recognise Israel, or
to deal directly with her. In every other sense, however, Egypt was a
party to and beneficiary of this arrangement, through which Israeli
withdrawals had been secured. But the Egyptian commitments of the
period were broken one by one, the last being the request for the
removal of UNEF and the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli
shipping, in May 1967. That step, it was clear from the international
understandings of 1957, justified Israeli military action under Article
51, as an act of self-defence.
As President Johnson remarked at the time, 'if any single act of
folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, I think it
was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of
Tiran would be closed'.
From the moment the Straits were closed in mid-May, the United
States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and a number of other
states sought to head off imminent war with all the speed they could
muster. They pressed the Security Council for a resolution which would
have called on the U.A.R. to keep the Straits open. France's refusal
to support this resolution-a signal of French Middle Eastern policy
well before the Six-Day War '-meant that the issue could not be forced
to a vote, to test the Soviet's willingness to exercise its right of veto.
A statement of the maritime powers was prepared, affirming the inter-
national character of the Strait. Talks with the United Arab Republic
and other states were urgently pursued, in quest of an understanding
which would have restored the agreements of 1957. And against the
contingency that *these political efforts might fail, the United States,
Great Britain, Australia, the Netherlands and some other countries
began to prepare an allied naval escort operation to keep the Straits
open, and thus defuse the crisis.
While these approaches, and others, were urgently pursued, events
took over. Mobilisation and counter-mobilisation pushed the closing of
the Straits to the periphery of the crisis. Algerian and Iraqi troops moved
into the menacing circle around Israel. Jordan's armed forces were
placed under Egyptian command. The cry of Holy War was sounded.
Meanwhile the planning and political preparations for the allied naval
action proceeded, but the risk of further delay grew more and more
ominous. The explosion occurred before the naval escort plan could
be put into operation.
On the first day of the fighting in 1967, President Johnson
announced that American policy was to move not only for an end of

It is sometimes said that France turned against Israel because in President de

Gaulle's view that country did not follow his advice ' not to fire the first shot '.

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THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS 283

hosilities, but for a beginning of peace. The Arab-Israeli conflict, he

said two weeks later, had become a burden and a threat to world peace.
The time had come to insist on bringing it to a definite end.
On November 22, 1967, the Security Council passed a unanimous
Resolution calling on the parties to reach an agreement which would
definitively settle the Arab-Israeli controversy, and establish 'just and
lasting peace' in the area.

* * *

I shall not review here the terms and meaning of that Resolution,
which I have discussed elsewhere.2 For present purposes, it suffices to
recall that the Resolution, like the Armistice Agreements of 1949, con-
templates agreed modifications of the Armistice Demarcation Lines of
1949 as part of the transition from armistice to peace. The parties
could 'agree to such modification in the interests of establishing '
and recognised boundaries', or guaranteeing maritime rights through
the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran. The Israelis would withdraw to
these ' secure and recognised ' boundaries, as part of a ' package deal '
which included agreed solutions for the refugee problem and for
Jerusalem, security arrangements, and the conditions of peace.
Until Secretary of State Rogers' proposals of June 1970, however,
it was not possible to initiate the final stages of the processes of
consultation and negotiation which are necessary to the fulfilment of th
Resolution; and it is too soon, at this point, to know whether that
initiative will succeed.
The reasons for the stalemate between 1967 and 1970 were obvious,
but rarely stated in public. The basic obstacle was the continuation
and intensification of terrorist activities supported or condoned by Arab
governments, and the policy embodied in the Khartoum formula
approved by the Arab states in 1967, 'No peace, no recognition, no
negotiations'. The principal tactical responsibility for the absence of
peace in that period was the policy of the Government of the United
Arab Republic. It said it was ready to carry out the Security Council
Resolution 'as a package deal', in all its parts. But it would not make
clear its willingness to implement the provision of the Resolution requir-
ing it to make an agreement establishing peace, nor its acceptance of
any practical procedure for reaching such an agreement. It refused to
accept procedures of negotiation accepted by other parties to the dispute.
And, in words and in military actions, it proclaimed the view that
the Resolution required Israel to withdraw to the lines of June 4,

2 Legal Aspects of the Search for Peace in the Middle East (1970) 64 Proc.Am.J.
Law 64.

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284 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

1967, without more, before it undertook to carry out even the vaguest
and most impalpable of counter-steps.
In April 1969, the Egyptian position moved far beyond a passive
refusal to implement the Security Council Resolution of November
22, 1967. At that time, Nasser denounced the cease-fire established by
the Security Council in June 1967-a cease-fire which Nasser had of
course accepted at the time, and agreed to respect until peace was
made. It was that cease-fire which stopped the remorseless surge of
the Israeli armed forces in June 1967. But in 1969 Nasser proclaimed
a 'war of attrition' against Israel, and tried to carry it out.
Inexplicably, the United States and its allies did nothing. They
did not even summon the Security Council into emergency session, to
call on the parties to respect the cease-fire, and carry out the peace-
making Resolution of November 22, 1967. Nor did they concentrate
their fleets in the Eastern Mediterranean, and put mobile reserves on
the alert in Germany, in Malta and in Libya, where the United States
and Great Britain still had bases.
The paralysis of American policy at this point strengthened the
impression that the United States would do nothing to resist the destruc-
tion of Israel, and Soviet domination of the entire Middle East. From
such impressions, fatal miscalculations grow.
Israel, of course, reacted to Egypt's renewal of open warfare. In a
devastating series of raids, she asserted supremacy in the Egyptian air
space, and inflicted heavy casualties on the Egyptian armed forces. To
this development, the Soviet Union responded early in 1970 by assign-
ing Soviet pilots to combat roles in Egypt, and by supplying more and
more sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, while rejecting all efforts to
restore the cease-fire of 1967. Meanwhile the Arab guerrillas, especially
those influenced by China, sought to prevent peace, to destroy the
regimes in Jordan and in Lebanon, and indeed to precipitate general
war.
Nonetheless, in the summer of 1970, Secretary of State Rogers
obtained Soviet and Egyptian assent to the renewal of Ambassador
Jarring's mission, in the setting of a cease-fire and stand-still agreement
for at least ninety days. The formula for a negotiating procedure
accepted by Nasser in 1970 was considerably stiffer, in terms of the
vocabulary of Arab politics, than one he had refused in the spring of
1968.
Why did the Soviet Union and Egypt decide to accept the American
proposals, even nominally, in 1970? Military events, Chinese pressures
and Egyptian second thoughts about the risks of complete Soviet con-
trol in their country all must have played a part in the decision. But

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THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS 285

concern about American intervention must have been decisive. While

the introduction of Soviet pilots and missiles improved the Egyptian
military position somewhat, the event had aroused President Nixon,
Congress and American public opinion. Senators who opposed the
President on Vietnam publicly urged him to take a strong stand in the
Middle East, and pledged their support for such a policy. And President
Nixon issued warnings whose credibility was enhanced by his successful
actions in Cambodia.
At a minimum, Soviet uncertainty about the future course of Ameri-
can policy indicated a cooling-off period. But should one assume that
there is no more to Soviet policy than a cynical zig or zag? Objectively,
one should judge the conjuncture of events in the summer and late
autumn of 1970, and the winter of 1970-71, to be more favourable to the
possibility of peace than has been the case for a long time.
The death of President Nasser and the outcome of the explosion
in Jordan strengthen the chance for peace. President Sadat cannot
hope to claim Nasser's Pan-Arab prestige for a long time. And he
should be more cautious and more concerned with internal problems
than his predecessor. King Hussein's position in Jordian is stronger
than it has been. He has demonstrated that both the military and
the political strength of the guerrillas was exaggerated. As for Syria
and Iraq, both countries were suddenly required in 1970 to confront
military realities. There has been a noticeable shift in the temper of
Arab politics since the autumn of 1970, despite the steady military
build-up along the Canal. The withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Jordan,
reported in January 1971, is, if true, perhaps the most significant and
most hopeful straw in the wind since 1967.
As this article goes to press, the firmness of American policy is
being roughly tested, in the normal pattern of Soviet diplomacy. The
Soviets and the Eygptians have openly violated their stand-still agree-
ments by moving missiles into the Suez area, thus making an invasion
of the Sinai conceivable. The situation recalls President Kennedy's
failure to insist on the fulfilment of the Laos Agreement of 1962. From
that moment of hesitation, the tragedy of Vietnam stems. If President
Nixon fails to insist that the Soviets carry out their promises to him,
and withdraw the missiles, or take an equivalent step-for example, by
restoring the 1967 cease-fire, or supporting a Security Council call to a
conference of the parties under Ambassador Jarring's chairmanship-
Secretary Rogers' plan will be dead, and the Middle Eastern crisis will
move closer to general war.
It is never too late to make peace. But the odds on peace diminish
as Soviet penetration proceeds. And some of the Chinese-oriented
guerrillas, suspecting a Soviet-American agreement, have used tactics

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286 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

of desperation, like the hijacking and destruction of planes, and can

be expected to use them again, to achieve the goals of their own
policy.
The details of a peaceful settlement in the Middle East have been
exhaustively canvassed. There is no mystery about them. And with a
will for peace they should be easy to resolve. So far as Egypt is con-
cerned, the problem of peace is simplicity itself. Egypt has no claim
to the Gaza strip, which it occupied as a result of the fighting twenty
years ago. Israel has no substantial historic claim to the Sinai. It
does have a claim, under the Security Council Resolution of November
22, 1967, to arrangements which would 'guarantee' Israel's right of
passage through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran. And it has a
claim, under the same Resolution, to security arrangements, including
demilitarised zones, which would assure the safety of the ' secure
and recognised' boundaries to which its forces would eventually
withdraw.
There are many ways in which these ends could be assured. The
complete demilitarisation of the Sinai, patrolled by United Nations
forces, or conceivably by joint Israeli-Egyptian patrols, would perhaps
be the simplest and most effective. And complete the militarisation of
the Sinai is the only prudent basis for a restoration of Egyptian civil
rule in the area. Short of such a solution, the leasing of security positions
by Egypt to Israel at Sharm-al-Sheikh, and elsewhere, represents another
practicable possibility.
* * *

It is probably impossible to make progress on the terms of a peace

between Israel and Jordan in the absence of a movement towards peace
with Egypt. The dynamics of Arab politics and rivalry are generally
thought to be too volatile to permit such a development. But in the
Jordanian case, again, the elements of peace are obvious: some agreed
adjustments in the Armistice Demarcation Lines, as part of the move-
ment from armistice to peace; demilitarisation of the West Bank; an
open economy, and free movements of peoples between the two coun-
tries; access to the Mediterranean for Jordan; and a special regime in
Jerusalem that would give suitable recognition to its relationship to
both countries, and to the international religious character of the Holy
Places. Ambassador Lewis Jones has suggested that an international
private foundation be established to take administrative charge of the
Holy Places, and to preserve and restore them as monuments available
to all the world. It is an idea worth exploring. So far as Gaza is
concerned, it could well become part of Jordan, in a context of
peace.
An American or NATO guarantee of peace agreements conforming

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THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD POLITICS 287

to the Security Council Resolution could give Egypt, Jordan, the

Lebanon and other Arab signatories an alternative to Soviet protection,
and an opportunity to seek a new orientation for their policies.
It is not yet evident that either the Soviet Union or the United
Arab Republic is now interested in peace. They have gained positions,
and aroused forces, which seem for the moment to enhance their
influence, and diminish that of Egypt's Arab rivals. Arab raids and
Israeli reprisals have generated an atmosphere of turbulence and violence
which is dissolving many sectors of Arab society, and bringing more
and more extremists to positions of influence and power. As President
Nasser said shortly before he died, recent changes in Libya and the
Sudan are basic changes in the whole Middle Eastern situation.
Despite the attractions of continued war and proxy war in *the
Middle East to Soviet and Egyptian policy-makers, however, they should
also be conscious of its risks, which directly threaten the life of Israel,
and other state interests of the United States and its allies. It should
be apparent both to Egypt and to its Soviet guardians that the Syrianisa-
tion of the region could well arouse the West's instincts of
self-preservation.
One consequence of President Nixon's recent statement of concer
over the possibility of Soviet predominance in the Middle East should
be to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, and no miscalcula
tion, on this critical point. The Soviet Union does after all have an
interest in limiting its rivalry with the United States. But it has no
always been easy to convince her of the fact.
In this area, the most significant basis for hope is the political
consequence of the SALT talks.
I have contended elsewhere that a nuclear understanding between
the United States and the Soviet Union could have significant implica-
tions for peace. 'Manifestly, the project . . . could rest only on Soviet-
American agreement with respect to a subject of fundamental import-
ance to both nations, and to the world. The fact of that agreement
should be a cohesive political force, tending to prevent serious division
on lesser problems. It would make the world political system more
manageable, and reduce the risk of nuclear war, and indeed of any
general war '.
But there is another view-that a nuclear understanding between
the Great Powers would in effect remove the ultimate restraining pres-
sure against adventurous Soviet programmes of expansion, like that in
the Middle East, and thereby increase the risk of endless trouble in
Asia, Africa and Latin America.

3 Law, Power atnd the Pursuit of Peace (1968), p. 87.

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288 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

By any rational calculation, the long-term interest of the Egyptian

people is surely one in peace, and in close economic and political
association with Europe and the United States. The risks to Egypt
of a career as a Soviet tool are illustrated in the history of 1956 and
of 1967. It should be a major task of Western diplomacy in the
months 'and years ahead to make this fact apparent to the Egyptian
Government.

Eugene V. Rostow is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Uni-

versity, and (1970-71) George Eastman Visiting Professor and
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. As Under-Secretary of State
(1966-69), Professor Rostow was responsible for the development
and execution of Middle Eastern policy in the latter days of the
Johnson Administration. Another version of the article has
appeared in Affari Esteri, of Rome.

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