Troubles & Wrong Moves

In the off-the-record view of some of the State Department's top hands, the most dangerous spot in the world today is Syria. What disturbs them most is the incalculable ingredient in Nikita Khrushchev's makeup: how far this unpredictable, risk-taking Communist boss may go in foreign adventuring, to get himself out of domestic problems. Starting with this substantial concern, the U.S. last week acted with such heavy-handed zeal that even its friends in the Middle East felt compelled to react against the U.S.

In elaborately publicized succession, President Eisenhower proclaimed U.S. "anxiety" over the Syrian situation, U.S. fleet units churned up a show of force in Eastern Mediterranean waters, and U.S. Air Force C124 Globemasters wheeled over Amman in a display delivery of U.S. 106-mm. antitank rifles to Jordan's army. Instead of persuading other Arab countries that the Arab nationalists of Syria were a threat to them, the U.S. display offended them and drove Syria's neighbors to proclaim their solidarity with their Arab brothers. Within 24 hours every U.S. ally in the Arab world had rallied to Syria's side, mindful of the old Arab proverb: "My brother and I will fight my cousin, but if a stranger threatens, my brother, my cousin, and I will fight the stranger."

"Serious Blunder." Lebanon's Foreign Minister Charles Malik, the U.S.'s staunchest friend among Arab politicians, felt compelled to announce that Lebanon opposed the use of force against Syria. That much courted Arab potentate, King Saud, passing luxuriously through Beirut en route to the waters of Baden-Baden, felt the same way, and though the State Department, in beating a later retreat, indignantly denied that King Saud had personally advised the Eisenhower Administration to take it easy, the denial was only narrowly true.

In fact, Charles Malik, flying to the U.S., announced that he had been charged by his Chief of State, "in agreement with King Saud, to intervene during my visit to Washington with President Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles to obtain assurances that the U.S. will not use force in Syria." In Iraq, the only Arab nation formally connected by pact to the West, the controlled press took up the cry, as Baghdad's Al Akhbar warned that the U.S. would commit "the most serious blunder" if it treated Syria as hostile to its neighbors.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Samir Rifai, a man often assailed in the Middle East as a U.S. puppet, held a press conference in Amman, and U.S. prestige took another nose dive. The manner of the U.S. arms delivery, with U.S. Ambassador Lester Mallory and a gaggle of Jordanian notables watching from a special dais alongside the Amman airfield runway, had made an "unfortunate impression" in his country, said Rifai. "We do not feel justified," he said, "in interfering in the internal affairs of Syria." After routinely thanking the U.S. for the arms, he went on to suggest that they might be used by Jordan against any aggressor, including Israel.

By this time it was glaringly apparent that no Arab neighbor was going to pick a fight with the Syrians, and at his midweek press conference Secretary Dulles noticeably softened his remarks about the Syrian "emergency." Things "probably will work out," he said. "That is partly a belief based on faith." This change of tone, while welcome to U.S. supporters in the Middle East, was headlined everywhere as DULLES RETREATS.

Egypt's President Nasser, who had been biding his time in some concern over Syria's getting too deeply committed to Moscow, now saw his chance to grab for his old Arab world leadership. He leaped in with a splash. As soon as he saw there was no risk in saying it, he promised "unlimited and unconditional support to Syria." In a play to the street crowds, he asserted that the U.S. had made an "artificial uproar" over Syria to "take the pressure off Israel, divert Arab attention," and "convert the Middle East into a zone of influence subservient to American policy." As if to reinforce Arab suspicions, the Israelis picked this moment to occupy a Syrian border village for 24 hours, over the objection of U.K. observers.

Simply Magnificent. The Russians, like Nasser, also saw their chance to leap in without risk and rack up some cheap credit. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called a press conference to charge that the U.S. had put the Turks up to massing troops on Syria's border, and Premier Bulganin dispatched another of his "rocket" letters to the Turks warning that it would be "dangerous" to attack Syria. Syrian Premier Sabri el Assali called Gromyko's assurances to Syria "simply magnificent," and a Damascus newspaper, with swollen ego, proclaimed a joint victory: "Syria and the Soviet Union are guiding the peoples of the world to liberation and peace."

In time to come, the Arab world may come to see that 1) it has in fact been infiltrated by the Communists, and 2) that this soft-spoken infiltration will not further Arab nationalist aspirations. But at the moment, the Russians have successfully played upon two governing emotions of the Arab world--nationalism, which includes hatred of Israel and Western tutelage, and Socialism, with its hatred for the propertied and ruling classes. These emotions are so powerful that Arab potentates dare not defy them publicly; their thrones would rock.

Without local commitments, the Soviet Union can appeal more readily to these emotions than the U.S., which is committed to friendship with Arab and Israeli alike, and must, furthermore, support Middle East governments in whose soil oil is to be found. It may be that the U.S. takes a sounder view of the Russian danger than Arabs do, but last week's inept handling put it in the light of a nation seeking to involve the Arabs in its own cold war quarrels, rather than helping the Arabs in theirs. And by characterizing as Communist those patriotic but misguided Arab nationalists who play with the Communists (and in time may learn their mistake), the U.S. in effect dismissed them all as already lost to the other side.

Soldiers' Pilgrimage. At Nasser's invitation, the two leaders of last month's Syrian army coup, Major General Afif Bizri and Lieut. Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj, turned up in Cairo. Bizri called the trip a "pilgrimage" to reaffirm military ties between Egypt and Syria, explaining: "It is the first duty of a soldier to contact his commander." Cairo newspapers said that the Syrian officers had assured Nasser that Syria had no intention of using Soviet arms aggressively; and Serraj told the newspaper Al Akhbar: "I am not a Communist, and there is not one single Communist officer in the whole Syrian army." Then the two officers flew back to Damascus to see whether they can get $500 million from the Soviet delegation that is coming to negotiate with them for the economic aid promised by Moscow.

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