West Asia: An ominous future

The art of statesmanship, Charles de Gaulle once remarked, is to understand the trend of history. What will be the trend of history in the strategically vital Middle East with the passing of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) from West Beirut?At this moment, the future may seem to be more kaleidoscopic than illuminating. But Middle Eastern political alignments must change significantly with the Israeli military victory in Lebanon. The Arab states have virtually cooperated with Israel and the United States to eliminate the PLO as the Arab world's only populist-radical actor.American diplomacy backed by Israeli military might has reduced the PLO as an organised fighting force for quite some time to come; the Palestinian nation has become the Palestinian Diaspora. In the years immediately ahead, a major realignment of forces in the Middle East will test and challenge American leadership.Now that the PLO has been reduced to a shambles, the majority of the Arab regimes in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf will be willing to collaborate with the US if the Reagan Administration seriously addresses itself to the task of a comprehensive peace settlement between the Arabs and Israel. If the US fails to use the opportunities created by the dispersal of the PLO army from Lebanon to bring about a comprehensive settlement of the Middle Eastern issues, the new alignment will break up, and the region will invite a conflict between Israel and the Arab masses some time in the not-too-distant future. Because even in its darkest hour, the PLO has blazed a trail which may one day inflame the Arab people and burn down not only Israel, but also the Arab regimes that looked away for 75 days in the summer of 1982 as Israeli troops and American weapons made a rubble of West Beirut.Arab Betrayal: The immediate impact of the PLO's defeat, however, will be very different. The frontiers between the so-called moderate and radical Arab states virtually disappeared during the Israel-PLO war: the vast majority of the 21 Arab countries that belong to the Arab League clubbed together to allow Arafat's shadow Palestinian regime to collapse.How differently many of these countries had reacted when 50,000 Iranian troops crossed into Iraq in the second week of July. High anxiety swept the oilfields of the Persian Gulf, from neighbouring Kuwait to Saudi Arabia; observations made by American electronic surveillance planes with the help of satellite pictures were pooled to clear the haze of rhetoric obscuring the conflict. Money poured into Baghdad from the oil-rich Arab Governments, while Jordan and Egypt sent volunteers to fight with the Iraqis.But not a single Arab regime bestirred itself, even as the 8,000 guerrillas of the PLO doggedly resisted the mighty Israeli war machine for 75 days. And when they finally agreed to offer hospitality to the humbled PLO men evacuated from Lebanon, each Arab country took great care to take only the minimum and from its own point of view the least dangerous elements. The Arab regimes, then, have made it clear that the Islamic revolution in Iran is a greater threat to them than Israel, and the Iran-Iraq war has posed far greater danger to their stability - even survival - than the war between the PLO and Israel.Now that the pi o has been reduced to a shambles, the majority of the Arab regimes in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf will be willing to collaborate with the US if the Reagan Administration seriously addresses itself to the task of a comprehensive peace settlement between the Arabs and Israel.Even if Algeria and Libya stand aside, most of the other Arab states may now subscribe to the Camp David Accord if Israel offers political autonomy to the 2 million Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza, thereby creating the foundations of an eventual Palestinian state.Concerted Effort: The Arab regimes will expect the United States to persuade or compel Israel to meet the Palestinian demands halfway. Whether the US will be able to make Israel fall in line is, however, a very different question. In Lebanon, the fundamental objectives of Israel and the Reagan Administration - namely, elimination of the PLO as a threat to the Jewish state - converged. The two powers acted in tandem, despite some frowns on Reagan's forehead caused by certain brutal Israeli military actions. Throughout the war, the White House remained on Dear-Menachem-Your-Friend-Ron terms with Israel. Apart from indefinite suspension of the supply of cluster bombs to Israel, Reagan's much publicised displeasure with Begin found no expression in action. By invading Lebanon and conducting a ruthless war for 75 days against a few thousand guerrillas of the PLO, Israel might have fallen in the eyes of the world, driven European governments to anger and lost the support of sections of the American people and even some American Jews. But it continued to obtain the full diplomatic, political and strategic backing of the Reagan Administration, without which it could not have won a victory - one that proved to be more costly than anyone in Israel was prepared for.It is not at all certain, however. that the US can or will compel Israel to concede to the Palestinians even the rudiments of a national home. Israel is helplessly dependent on American funds and weapons; only by threatening to cut off supplies of both can Washington force Israel to follow its leadership in building a regime as envisaged at Camp David in the Middle East. The Reagan Administration will not even consider such a punishment, certainly not in 1982-84, which is America's election season! In fact, Israeli defiance of American wishes and policy preferences has never cost the Jewish state a drop in US military and economic aid even though the last five years have witnessed many strains in Israeli-American relations. In the last 14 months alone, Israel bombed and destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor, bombarded the Palestinian quarter of Beirut, annexed the Golan Heights, established new settlements on the West Bank, dismissed elected Arab mayors there and in Gaza, demolished each building in southern Sinai before handing the territory back to Egypt, and finally invaded Lebanon on June 6 and reduced West Beirut to rubble - all against American wishes and advice! And during this five-year period, the US extended Israel $9.8 billion in military and $4.7 billion in economic aid. Gripped by a fever of extreme nationalism, the Israelis may even threaten to stand on their own feet and pursue their own policies and dare the White House to cut off military and economic aid.The first quarrel between Israel and the US may break out over the future of Lebanon. If Israel insists on keeping its military presence in Lebanon until a "strong" government headed by a chosen Christian leader has been imposed on that country, reducing it to a puppet of the Jewish state, the United States will be torn between its obligations to the Arab regimes that have helped in the reduction of the PLO and its loyalty to Israel.If Syria refuses to pull out its 35,000 troops from Lebanon till such time as the latter's political character has been determined, and if the Israeli guns now trained on Damascus are ordered to fire, what will be the role of the US in the next Middle East war? Will America connive at an Israeli victory over Syria as it has connived at the Israeli victory over the PLO? In that event, there will be no Camp David-style regime in the Middle East, but an Israeli regime maintained by Israeli military might - and it will be an invitation to an eventual war between Israel and the Arab people who outnumber the population of Israel 40 to 1.Russian Factor: American opportunities in the Middle East in the wake of the PLO's dispersal from Lebanon are all the more promising because the Soviet Union has lost all clout in the region by its inability or unwillingness to come to the help of the PLO. The Soviets are seized by a Sadat complex; they haven't recovered from the shock of Sadat's expulsion of thousands of Russians from Egypt in 1972 and his renunciation of all debts to the Soviet Union. As the Soviet leaders scan the Middle East in the summer of 1982, they cannot identify a single reliable ally or friend.The Arab national liberation movement lies prostrate. Even Syria had to work out with the US - along with Saudi Arabia and Egypt - the modalities of the PLO evacuation from West Beirut. It can be predicted with certainty that the Soviet Union will not rush to Syria's defence should Israel invade Syria now or in the near future. Only in the event of an American invasion of Iran will the Kremlin invoke the Soviet-Iranian treaty of 1921 and march its troops into northern Iran, taking at least the province of Azerbaijan.Comprehensive Review: The imminent realignment of forces in the Middle East poses pressing foreign policy questions for India, because India's security as well as economic prospects are strongly tied up with that region. Mrs Gandhi made this point clear repeatedly during her recent tour of the US. She remonstrated with the Reagan Administration for not doing enough to leash the Israeli war machine in Lebanon. But now that the PLO is no longer what it used to be, Mrs Gandhi has ordered a comprehensive review of the Middle East situation created by the Israeli victory in Lebanon, and is said to be thinking of summoning Indian envoys from the region, as well as the Persian Gulf, to a conference in New Delhi shortly.The prime minister's talks with the Soviet leaders will doubtless cover the Middle East, giving her an insight into Soviet opportunities - or lack of them - in the region as well as Soviet foreign policy strategic thinking. Nobody in the External Affairs Ministry is in a position to talk about India's Middle East policy with any clarity of vision at this point of time. The burden of officials' response to questions is: Let's wait for the prime minister's visit to Moscow and for the situation to clear up a little. Even so, it is conceded by officials in private conversation that India will now have to work with the 'moderate' Arab states, because moderation is likely to be the wave in the Middle East in the wake of the PLO's defeatIndia's Options: According to one line of thinking in South Block, it would do India no good to be more anti-Israeli than the majority of the Arab states. On the contrary, India should do whatever it can to promote a comprehensive Middle Eastern settlement on the basis of Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist within secure frontiers, with Israel agreeing to grant political autonomy to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.If cooperating with moderate states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait (and perhaps Syria and Iraq in the post-Lebanon situation) means in effect working for or with an American-sponsored and US-supported regime in the Middle East, India should not shrink from it, for the simple reason that the Soviet Union is incapable of playing a significant role in the region now and will remain so for some years to come. India's main interests in the Middle East are: assured supply of oil and increasing trade and economic relations with the Arab states. Cooperation with the moderate Arab states may be unavoidable, and profitable, for India if it is placed by chance to formally lead the nonaligned movement.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Aug 27, 2013 15:36 IST--- ENDS ---

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West Asia: An ominous future

The art of statesmanship, Charles de Gaulle once remarked, is to understand the trend of history. What will be the trend of history in the strategically vital Middle East with the passing of the PLO from West Beirut?

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