Fighting Fire

Spread out across the eastern shore of the Mediterranean this week was the greatest concentration of U.S. armed might ever assembled in peacetime. In a historic show of land, sea and air power, the U.S. had moved swiftly to answer the cries for help from the friendly government of a small nation--Lebanon--that stood in imminent danger of overthrow from subversion. Of itself, the show of strength rocked the Communists, who count on subversion to win the cold war, provoked Moscow's Khrushchev into a demand for a summit conference (see below) and titillated him into a threat of nuclear rocket retaliation. Moreover, it thrust on U.S. diplomats the urgent need to clarify U.S. aims and goals in the Middle East, where time was fast running out.

The hard decision to go to the aid of Lebanon came short hours after the nationalist coup in Iraq threatened to set the whole Mideast in flame. In its historic answer to the faraway fire alarm, the U.S.:

P: Threw more than 9,000 marines and Army paratroops, 70 Sixth Fleet warships, 420 Navy and Air Force planes across thousands of miles to help Lebanon, set up secondary lines in nearby Turkey.

P: Sent sweeps of Navy jet interceptors to cover 2,000 British paratroops, and gave Britain full diplomatic-military support, as Britain moved in to help the small, friendly nation of Jordan against subversion. The U.S. also set up an oil airlift to help run Jordan's utilities and defenses.

P: Warned the man who had kicked off the crisis by subverting the friendly government of Iraq and killing its leaders, the man behind the attempt to subvert Lebanon and Jordan--the United Arab Republic's Dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser--that he would face "grave consequences" if he interfered with the U.S. forces in Lebanon.

P: Defended its actions in the United Nations Security Council, in the face of considerable general disapproval of the troop movements; then, after a Russian veto in the Council, proposed to go to the General Assembly, if necessary, to get the U.N. to take over the job of safeguarding Lebanon and Jordan.

Even as the U.S. troops moved to prevent the fire from spreading, Washington was well aware that the very fire fighting itself would scatter embers in a highly explosive area. But U.S. policymakers believed that the alternative of letting the fire spread through Lebanon and Jordan would weaken the free world's whole system of alliances, would weaken also all small pro-Western governments from Morocco to the Pacific. Under the circumstances, and in the light of the West's inability to answer free Hungary's call in 1956, the President's duty to act promptly was clear. So was his duty to act with enough force to handle any eventuality in the area. But with the fire damped, the U.S. policymakers saw their next job as extricating the troops from Lebanon, passing the fireman function over to a U.N. force.

History's judgment on the U.S.'s answer to Lebanon's cry for help would hang largely on what the U.S. did next. The troop movements were final proof that the U.S. was thoroughly committed to the Mediterranean. The long-range value of the whole effort could well be that, as a probing operation, it would enable the U.S. to decide quickly and precisely what its Middle Eastern objectives are and act accordingly.

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