THE NAKED EMPERORS' CLUB

In contemporary world politics, there is a bizarre symbiosis in the relations between Great Powers and their vassals. Appearances notwithstanding, the Powers often lumber into positions in which the little fellows begin to call the tune and to pull the strings. This role inversion may already have occurred in the Middle East and in the alternately Two and Four Power Conference that seeks to solve the region's problems.

A strange hubris has come to overshadow the sporadic meetings of the Conference. It is widely assumed that if the Powers can only reach agreement among themselves, they will be able to impose a settlement or some form of lasting peace on the belligerents of the region. But short of invasion, long-term occupation, and extensive sociopolitical remodeling (all quite unthinkable), neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is capable of decisively influencing the outcome of events in the eastern Mediterranean; the ultimate dynamics of the region are not a reflection of Great Power struggles but are independent and, in many ways, autonomous. In the area itself, there is a symmetrical distortion. For millennia, Middle Easterners have construed their strife as the earthly counterpart of great divine or cosmic conflicts, and it is convenient and consistent with tradition to explain contemporary Mediterranean clashes in terms of good versus evil, capitalism versus communism, colonialism versus nationalism, and so on. But human conflict does not lie in the stars; it derives from much meaner and more accessible sources. The perspectives of Washington and Moscow are more childlike in their egocentricity: events acquire significance only insofar as they affect the power centers from which they are viewed, and events are part of reality only so long as the power centers continue to view them as such.

One hard look at the Middle East will see through these illusions. Each of the Great Powers has its protégés; by cutting off vital supplies, each can cause its current vassal to postpone objectives or to change strategies, perhaps even to shop for a new protector. But no more than this. The nuclear powers are simply musclebound. They are overequipped in "fate control" — the capacity to decide whether or not to obliterate the region — and under-equipped in "behavior control" — the capacity to influence, in a significant and lasting way, the political actions of Israel and the Arab states. Power relations are always complex and are remarkably reciprocal. Without a deep psychological submission, supremacy is always temporary; even with such submission, it is relative. The grandest power is whittled by distance, by time, by crisis, by the inexorable demands for cooperation, and, often, by its own overextension.

We have enormously magnified the influence-potential of the Russians over Syria and Egypt; the Russians, for their part, seem to have evolved a complementary view of our ability to influence Israel. In fact, there is no evidence that the Soviet Union has constrained Egypt to do anything which it would not have done in any case. For all their efforts, the Russians did not succeed in preventing President Nasser from initiating the June war. The American press has recorded that it is feverish Soviet diplomatic activity that has since kept Nasser from launching a second, equally suicidal bout. But it is just as plausible to construe the situation contrariwise. Nasser may well realize that he is not in a position to undertake a successful follow-up war; the dense presence of Russians in Cairo have permitted him to be a verbal militant and, at the same time, to blame a short Soviet leash for his relative inactivity. The more violent his rhetoric, the more nervous the Russians have become and the more anxious to extend even further their ruble and MIG diplomacy. It requires no small amount of credulousness to believe that a promise made to Mr. Kosygin would deter President Nasser from starting another war when he thinks that circumstances are ripe.

If there is a single factor that now influences President Nasser or, for that matter, any erstwhile moderate in the Arab camp, it is the spokesmen for the most extreme position. Effective political propaganda ultimately captures the propagandist himself; and once the dogmatic frame of mind is insulated from compromise with adversaries, it is thoroughly vulnerable to a more dogmatic position, precisely because it has been inculcated with dogma. It is neither Israel nor the United States that hardens or softens the heart of Pharaoh; it is Mr. Arafat and, increasingly, his own extremist fleas.

American relations with Israel are roughly symmetrical to Russian relations with Egypt. The United States was not successful in forestalling an Israeli preemptive strike on the morning of June 5, 1967, nor has American pressure deterred Israel from effective annexation of the Old City of Jerusalem or from retaliatory strikes in response to commando incursions. An arms embargo or limitation of specified items to Israel cannot seriously change the power balance, if all the factors of military competence are taken into consideration. Even an embargo on jet planes and parts would not turn Israel from a course of action it judged to be vital for its survival. The Israelis have proved themselves to be a remarkably resourceful people; it is difficult to imagine that they have failed to develop alternatives for just this sort of contingency. This is not to suggest that the Israelis do not incorporate projected extra-regional responses in the formulation of their own policy: they patently do. What it does mean is that Israel, like Egypt, is unlikely to be coerced into doing something it deems to be against its interests. It may, however, be influenced to adopt policies conducive to its interests, it may be persuaded to view its interests in a different light, and it may be presented with new "package" interests that include components provided by states outside the region.

United States and Soviet Interests

Regional violence need not acquire global dimensions. There are scattered pockets about the globe in which small wars grind on; they have only immediate local significance precisely because the major Powers, through either neglect or choice, do not transform them into proxy wars. To an extent, this has been the essence of an unenunciated and perhaps reluctant Big Power consensus in the Middle East since 1948. The states of the Fertile Crescent have been permitted to fight and to make minor border rearrangements, on the condition that the established political entities be maintained. The moment major changes have been asserted or the existence of one of the states has appeared to be in jeopardy, the Power that had designated itself protector has indicated that it might be obliged to intervene. Hence, rough boundaries to the scope of conflict have been sustained: maintenance of established entities and tolerated local conflict short of Superpower intervention and confrontation. The unanimous Resolution of the Security Council of November 22, 1967 — the world's major policy statement regarding the Middle East since the June war — is simply a detailed reiteration of what has been, for all practical purposes, the shared policy of the Powers. Significantly, the difficulties of implementation have not derived from the United States and the Soviet Union; they have come from the local states themselves.

In the course of two years, the uneasy cease-fire of June 12, 1967, has deteriorated into what United Nations Secretary-General U Thant now calls "open war." This trend of events is neither surprising nor inconsistent with the Superpower consensus. A First-World-War, "Western" style front on the Suez Canal is only a difference of degree. If the Powers are able to restrain the local combatants from trying to push each other back, the Suez line may be maintained indefinitely. Unfortunately, they cannot; Suez is an unstable border for several reasons. Having begun to recruit its army from the city rather than from the still preindustrial countryside, Egypt has reached the "take-off point" of garrison statehood: it can continue to mobilize, but it cannot demobilize without serious economic dislocation and probably political revolution. As mobilization continues, the military machine acquires an autochthonous dynamic that can rush it into hopeless war. And even before this point is reached, Israel, stung by Egyptian provocations, may cross Suez and bring the war to the enemy. Israel, for its part, is rapidly tooling itself into a significant military manufacturer and supplier. It will, reportedly, manufacture a French prototype jet within two years and its own supersonic fighter-bomber before the decade ends. Overlooking for the moment the very real possibility of a qualitative change in weaponry, it is increasingly clear that Israel itself may generate a war dynamic if its own continuing sense of insecurity is not assuaged now. Deflecting the Egyptian and Israeli trends will require innovative thinking within and outside of the Middle East. And it will require cooperation.

It is an idiosyncrasy of international law and international relations as well as of the mass-media web of communications that primary focus is placed upon conflict. In fact, contemporary international relations, viewed comprehensively, manifest much more cooperation than is appreciated. In vast areas of international exchange, there is effective and stabilized interaction; and even limited conflict must be premised upon broad agreement on the parameters to which hostility will be limited. American-Russian relations, for example, are a peculiar blend of conflict and collaboration. In the Middle East, the United States and the Soviet Union each pursue — or at least believe that the other pursues — a hostile policy incompatible with its own; successful realization of the other's policy, it is believed, would cause an intolerable imbalance of power. Hence, there is conflict within severe limits. If the entire system is costly, it is nonetheless worthwhile, in terms of the strange, indeed absurd, logic of international politics, so long as other vital interests are not jeopardized and broader, unlimited conflict is prevented.

In the Middle Eastern situation, the regional dynamic over which the Powers have no control is eroding the boundaries of the conflict and now threatening vital interests shared by the United States, the Western nations, and the Soviet Union in a variety of ways. The most obvious interest endangered is the use of the Suez Canal. For the Socialist states, closure of the Canal represents an impediment to interlocking political and trade goals. The political objectives of Western Europe and the United States in East Africa and the Far East are quite different from those of the Soviet Union. But they are, nevertheless, affected by the state of the Canal. Western commercial and trade stakes in the Canal are even greater. And, obversely, various Asian states in whose development the West has taken a considerable interest are undergoing severe transportation difficulties because of the Canal's blockage.

A second shared interest now threatened is control of the arms race and weapons escalation. It is no secret that Israel is a prime candidate for membership in the nuclear weapons club, and it is only wishful to imagine that Israel will not take that step if its perception of gross insecurity continues. It is difficult to believe that the United Arab Republic will not follow suit. The lid of Pandora's box will be completely opened. Such a sequence would involve the radical restructuring not only of a regional arena but of the entire world arena. This clearly runs counter to shared American-Russian policy. The continuing high level of insecurity in the Middle East may also undermine the wobbling restraints on the use of chemical and gas weapons, the contemporary bargain basement of sophisticated armaments.

These developments threaten a material confrontation of the Great Powers in the Middle East and underline the failure of the consensus strategy in this region. In terms of game structure and bargaining theory, the pattern of consensus in the Middle East can work only if no local participant, with objectives different from those of the Great Powers, is in a position to start another war, involving all and terminating in what gamers fear the most: a "final score" and the end of the game. But now this is precisely what can too palpably happen. In short, the consensus cannot work. The dramatic poses and windy rhetoric that have been used to camouflage the persisting consensus among the Powers no longer provide even an illusion of control. Much more must be done, and it is in the interest of both the Soviet Union and the United States to do it. Yet the limited influence-potential of the Powers seems to bar both agreement and implementation.

A New Perspective

As the belligerents and powers move toward detailed negotiations, it is obvious that a radically different perspective is required and that new, more realistic, and more achievable goals must be formulated. As a matter of policy, we must quite seriously ask ourselves what ought to be done, and as a matter of practical politics, we must dispassionately determine what can be done. Diplomats and lawyers regularly respond to crisis situations by invoking the mystical nostrum of status quo ante. Where the circumstances of the past indicate with cyclical eloquence that they regularly degenerate into violence, it is hardly wise diplomacy to return to them. Unfortunately, this seems to be the agenda for the Middle East.

Insofar as there is shared commitment to breaking out of the vicious circle of Middle Eastern war, four major revisions must be made immediately. First, the proclaimed goal of "peace" should cede its place to one of minimum order. With or without Israel, the Middle East is and will remain a volatile arena, ambivalent to all outsiders and, in particular, suspicious of Western Europe and the United States. There are enough flaring conflicts of ambition between the elites of the different Arab states to insure continuing unrest and violence in that region for years to come. In these circumstances, the realistic challenge is to secure some system of minimum order, which at once permits Israeli existence, Arab social and economic development, and the participation of the East and the West in their crossroads.

Second, the assumption of the monolithic or integrated nature of the problems of the Middle East must be reexamined. Participants within the region as well as many states outside it have assumed, as a matter of course, that there is a single problem with two adversaries: the Arabs and the Israelis. Influenced by the rhetoric of Pan-Islam and by the identity of language and cultural heritage among the Arab states, we have come to assume that there must be a single, encompassing answer to a single, encompassing problem. But a problem is formulated by the problem-solver; depending upon the facts and policies involved, the problems in the Middle East can be integrated or fractionated. The need for "packagism" is, of course, recognized by the Powers and by many of the Middle Eastern states themselves; yet even this notion often assumes that the same essential problem is recurring in a number of different fronts and contexts. In fact, the situation in the Middle East is composed of a variety of separate issues, many of which converge with Israel, but each of which requires a separate approach and a distinct diplomatic strategy: the relations between Israel and Egypt, between Israel and Syria, between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Arab people, and the status of Jerusalem. Each of these four problems has a different history, involves different political and moral factors, and is susceptible to a different solution. Securing peace in the Middle East is as difficult as securing it anywhere else in the world. But creating the groundwork for a system of minimum order may be possible, if separate problems are identified.