Hot-Line Diplomacy

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Through the dawn and early morning hours, Lyndon Johnson pored over cables on the Arab-Israeli war in his White House bedroom. After two weeks in which the President had bent every effort to avert hostilities, the overwhelming peril was that the U.S. and Russia would now be sucked into a direct confrontation that neither superpower wanted. Around 8 a.m., Monday, the President's bedside phone brought some electrifying and potentially ominous news. Walt W. Rostow, the President's national security adviser, was calling to report that the "hot line" was being activated from Moscow.

Since the hot-line link between Washington and Moscow was first put into operation on Aug. 30, 1963, it had conveyed nothing more dramatic than New Year's greetings and hourly testing messages. Never before had it been used for communication between the U.S. and Soviet governments in time of crisis. Now, at the cable circuit's terminus in the Pentagon, lines of Cyrillic type sent from Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin began clattering in at 66 words a minute on a teletype machine supplied by Moscow (which has a U.S. machine with Roman characters at its own end). From the Pentagon, the machine maintains continuous communication with the President, wherever he may be. A Russian translator on stand-by duty for such an event was rushed to the White House. Concerned, the President hurried to a mahogany conference table in the basement Situation Room of the White House. He was joined there by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Rostow. A map of Viet Nam normally hangs behind the table; in its place hung a huge map of the Middle East.

Kosygin's message was decoded and relayed instantly in Russian from the Pentagon to the Situation Room, where it was rendered into English within minutes. A glance at the rough translation told Johnson what he wanted to know: there would be no face-down between the Big Two. Russia, said Kosygin, did not plan to enter the conflict, but would do so if the U.S. stepped in. Johnson and his aides drafted a reply on the spot, directly assuring Kosygin that the U.S. did not intend to intervene.

"Snootral" Position. Despite a subsequent barrage of Russian bluster against the Israeli "aggressors," that early-morning understanding between the two powers held up through the week. It was further cemented by the exchange of at least a dozen other messages on the hot line, and it underscored a noteworthy point. Though the Israelis and Arabs were able to launch a small but ferocious war on their own turf, the key to a big war remained in the hands of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Given prudence and restraint on both sides, the key will not be turned.

Johnson, to be sure, invited considerable criticism for being too restrained. If the U.S. had moved three weeks ago to break the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba imposed by the United Arab Republic's President Nasser, some observers argue, the Arabs would have backed off, Israel would have been reassured, and war would have been averted. But the President was worried that any such action would force the Russians to leap in, and he urged the Israelis to give him time--first two days, then two weeks--to seek a diplomatic solution. The Israelis doubted that they could wait that long, with 80,000 U.A.R. troops poised on their borders, with Arab armies mobilizing all around them to cheers from Moscow, and with diplomats hopelessly stalled on the talk treadmill at the U.N.

Once the war was under way, however, Washington emphasized that it did not intend to get involved in the fighting. State Department Spokesman Robert McCloskey reiterated that point a trifle too emphatically. The U.S., he said, "is neutral in thought, word and deed." It sounded as if the U.S. were preparing to renege on its commitments to Israel--notably its 1950 declaration, acknowledged by four U.S. Presidents, to protect the nation's territorial integrity. A rumble of protest rose from Capitol Hill and from several big cities.

"What's neutral?" demanded Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. "I call it 'snootral'--when you stick up your snoot at both sides." Seeking to clarify the statement, Rusk declared: "Any use of this word 'neutral,' which is a great concept of international law, is not an expression of indifference. We are not a belligerent."

Papyrus Tigers. The best that Washington could hope for at the outset was a quick Israeli victory that would eliminate any necessity of direct U.S. action. Israel was more obliging than anyone dared predict. By the war's second day, it was clear that the Arab armies were crumpling like so many papyrus tigers. Groping for an excuse to explain their abysmal failure, Nasser hit on a cynical and transparent ploy. "Large-scale air intervention by the U.S. and Britain," charged Cairo, was helping to cripple Arab forces. Furious at the charge, Rusk resorted to some of the toughest language he had ever employed in public. "These charges are utterly and wholly false," he declared.

Nevertheless, quite a few Arabs, loath to acknowledge that Israel could whip their armies unaided, found them persuasive. While howling mobs attacked U.S. and British embassies and libraries in Arab capitals, Cairo followed up its charges by severing diplomatic relations with the U.S. (it broke relations with the British over Rhodesia last year). Six others fell in line: Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and Mauritania. Lebanon downgraded its representation from embassy to legation level. Nine nations--Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Bahrain, Qatar, Syria and Lebanon--cut off the flow of oil to the U.S. and Britain, and Algeria nationalized U.S. and British oil firms.

Evidence of Impotence. But brawls and boycotts could not turn the war's tide. The Russians, alarmed by their protege's swift disintegration, held an all-night Politburo meeting in Moscow. The following day Kosygin was back on the hot line to tell Johnson that the Russians were willing to accept an unconditional ceasefire. For 36 hours, the Russians had blocked action by the Security Council with a demand that both sides withdraw to their prewar positions. Once Moscow came around, Council President Hans Tabor of Denmark was able to get unanimous approval of the original cease-fire resolution in a matter of minutes. It was dramatic evidence, not of the U.N.'s effectiveness, but of its impotence unless the great powers are in accord.

On several other occasions during the week of crisis, the hot line was pressed into service to reaffirm both superpowers' determination to damp down the crisis. Another notable use of the direct wire occurred after the U.S. communications vessel Liberty was strafed and torpedoed off the Sinai coast, with 31 dead or missing and 73 wounded. Ten of the 200 planes aboard Sixth Fleet carriers America and Saratoga scrambled to go to her aid. Johnson got on the line to Kosygin at once to inform him that the planes were not entering the war but trying to help a stricken ship. As the dispatch was going out, Israel flashed word that its forces had attacked the vessel accidentally and offered an apology. Johnson tacked Israel's mea culpa onto the message that was being wired to Moscow. Kosygin sent an immediate acknowledgement.

A second hot line came into use. Not to be upstaged by President Johnson's talks with the Kremlin, French President Charles de Gaulle announced that he, too, had "been in personal contact with M. Kosygin" over the so-called "green telephone"--which, like Washington's, is actually a direct telex circuit to Moscow. But nobody was paying much attention. The real business was being conducted on the White House-Kremlin line.

Folded Tents. Moscow's turnabout on the cease-fire question at the U.N. signaled a general folding of Arab tents. Israel and Jordan quickly agreed to honor the ceasefire. Next day, the United Arab Republic's bullet-headed U.N. Ambassador Mohamed el Kony scrapped a 20-page diatribe against the Jews and slipped Secretary General U Thant a meek, 60-word note announcing Cairo's acceptance of the ceasefire. Damascus held out until Israel turned its wrath on the Syrian-held highlands north of the Sea of Galilee, then accepted the U.N. resolution. However, the Syrians kept right on shelling border towns, and the Israelis, moving in to silence their guns, sent tank units thrusting toward Damascus. Nonetheless, to all intents, the war was over as soon as Syria, the last major combatant, officially accepted the ceasefire.

The task of achieving a real peace promises to be infinitely more protracted. After years of futile, ruinous enmity toward Israel, the Arabs conceivably might decide that their best hope for the future lies in neighborly relations between the heirs of Isaac and Ishmael. More probably, envenomed by their latest defeat, they could embark on a new orgy of irredentist fervor, thereby proving once more, as Radio Algiers put it last week, that "the only language between Israel and the Arabs is the language of iron and fire."

The Israelis, in turn, could make a genuine effort to solve the problem of the 1,300,000 Palestinian refugees who lost their land in previous clashes. But the Israelis have more pressing priorities. Their first goal, as Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it last week, is "the acceptance of Israel's statehood." They are likely to demand the right of passage through Suez and to insist on keeping some of the real estate that they picked up during their four-day blitz--most notably Old Jerusalem, the highlands west of the River Jordan running from Jenin through Bethlehem to Hebron, and Sharm el Sheikh, which controls access to the Gulf of Aqaba.

America First. For the U.S. and Russia, the bargaining period could prove a perilous one--or a real opportunity to cool off the Arabs and lay the foundation for a durable peace. Both Washington and Moscow are in disrepute among the Arabs. As Israeli columns closed on Suez, Radio Cairo repeatedly shrilled that the Arabs were fighting "America first, America second and America third"--and many a fellah believed it. Washington is thus looking for some way of regaining a measure of influence in the petroliferous Arab world without sacrificing Israel's interests.

The Russians, whose "scandalous capitulation," as Cuba's radio put it, cost them incalculable prestige among the Arabs, sought to repair the damage by severing diplomatic ties with Israel and by warning, after a Moscow meeting among the leaders of seven Communist states, that they would help the Arabs "administer a resolute rebuff" to the Israelis unless they relinquished captured territory. But the defeated Arabs are not likely to forgive very soon the Russians for failing to bail them out. "What has come over you, friend?" asked the Baghdad daily Sawt al-'Arab. "You made us promises, and now that the time has come to fulfill them, you evade. We shall thank you, friend, because you have taught us a lesson we shall never forget."

The sequel could be a dangerous new arms race in the Middle East, or else a windfall of economic aid for the area. To help develop "cooperative programs for the economic and social development of all the countries of the region," and to keep an eye on the strategic situation in the Mideast, Johnson set up a special subcommittee of the National Security Council, patterned after the ExCom machinery installed by John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Summoned back from his post at the Ford Foundation to serve as the group's executive secretary was McGeorge Bundy, a former White House foreign-affairs adviser under Kennedy and Johnson.

Power Duopoly. There is an outside chance that some long-range benefits may shake out of the war. The two superpowers proved that they could cooperate to a limited extent, at least when it came to defusing a situation fraught with real danger to both. The lesson could be applied equally well toward Viet Nam, where Washington and Moscow seemed on the verge of a joint move toward peace last autumn, then veered off into a new round of hostility. If Russia and the U.S. could work together on the Arab-Israeli war, Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton declared, "it might be the same power duopoly that could bring Viet Nam to the conference table." Agreed Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield: "We are veering in the direction of two-power concerts. We might see a new approach to Viet Nam." With all other diplomatic avenues to peace apparently blocked off, such an approach could well prove to be the one that works--as it did in the Middle East.

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