Fear for Detente Small Hope for A Settlement

The Middle East war carried with it the distressing potential to damage or even destroy the superpowers' recent progress toward detente. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union wanted this to happen, and both seemed determined last week to guard against it. But Washington and Moscow have obligations in the Middle East, and the fear persisted that through a fluke or miscalculation they could be reluctantly drawn into confrontation.

In marked contrast to the 1967 war, both Moscow and Washington initially went out of their way to avoid confrontation. The Russians did not assert that Israel had fired the first shot in the renewed fighting. Although they excoriated Israel as the aggressor in a general sense and, of course, denounced Israeli bombing of the Soviet Culture Center in Damascus, the polemics were relatively restrained. For its part, the U.S. appeared determined to be calm and polite. Said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "We do not consider that Soviet actions as of now threaten detente." In fact, he said, Soviet behavior, while not "helpful," has so far been "less provocative, less incendiary and less geared to military threats" than during the Six-Day War.

Privately, there were misgivings.

The Soviets, through their advisers in Syria, may well have known about the Arabs' design for war. In the spirit of detente, should not Russia have alerted the U.S. about a crisis that could conceivably lead to global war? Again Kissinger publicly forgave the Russians, suggesting that this sort of big-power cooperation was too much to expect during the fragile infant stages of detente.

In the early hours of the fighting, President Richard Nixon and Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev exchanged private messages, but carefully refrained from using the hot line in order to avoid the appearance of crisis. Later, Washington noted with satisfaction that Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko waited three days before granting a meeting requested by five Arab ambassadors in Moscow--a clear indication to Washington that the Soviets were not overly anxious to abandon detente in favor of the Arab cause.

By midweek, no doubt encouraged by the Arabs' unexpected combat prowess, Brezhnev sent messages to Arab leaders asking them to give "the greatest possible support" to Egypt and Syria. The two countries, he told Algerian President Houari Boumedienne, "must not remain alone in their struggle against a perfidious enemy" and urged him to contribute Algerian combat experience. Arabs read this as both a militant exhortation and a cautionary note urging self-reliance.

More serious were reports that a growing number of Soviet AN-12 and AN-22 transports were airlifting supplies--ammunition, antitank missiles and surface-to-air missiles--to Syria. "If this turns out to be a massive airlift," said State Department Spokesman Robert McCloskey with exquisite delicacy, "it would tend to put a new face on the situation." Soon after, the U.S. admitted that it had begun to ship ammunition and missiles to the Israelis.

Grave Consequences. By week's end Soviet policy was noticeably hardening. Reacting to the reports of Israeli strikes on a Soviet ship, Pravda warned that grave consequences for Israel could result from Russian casualties. The Soviets were also unhappy with President Nixon's vice-presidential nomination of Representative Gerald Ford, whom they know to be a strong supporter of Israel. But, on balance, U.S. officials concluded that Soviet policy still reflected caution. Commented one White House official: "The real test will come when the Arabs are doing badly and the Soviets have to decide what to do."

The Middle East fighting tended to strengthen the Administration's case against the Jackson amendment, which is aimed at withholding most-favored-nation trade status from the Soviet Union until it permits the free emigration of its Jewish--as well as other--citizens. The Administration argues that whatever leverage the U.S. has over Russia should be used in major international situations, such as bringing about a Middle East settlement, rather than expended on matters of Soviet domestic policy, no matter how humanitarian that concern. In an address before a seminar sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Secretary of State Kissinger eloquently detailed the Administration's position.

"Until recently," Kissinger declared, "the goals of detente were not an issue. But now progress has been made and already taken for granted. We are engaged in an intensive debate on whether we should make changes in Soviet society a precondition for further progress or indeed for following through on commitments already made." He asked: "How hard can we press without provoking the Soviet leadership into returning to practices in its foreign policy that increase international tension? Are we ready to face the crisis and increased defense budget that a return to cold-war conditions would spawn?"

A prolonged war most likely would force a terrible--and probably insoluble --problem upon U.S. diplomacy: how to maintain a lifeline of aid to Israel while avoiding even deeper alienation of the Arab world and growing conflict with Russia. The Administration was already under pressure to step up its aid. Senator Henry Jackson had already urged the delivery of Phantom jets and other arms to Israel. Failing this, said Jackson, Kissinger should explain why the U.S. was "withholding the means of self-defense from a friend at war." Actually, given restraint on both sides, such aid need not jeopardize relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union: by joint agreement both sides could limit their resupply to a one-for-one replacement ratio, much as the U.S. has done with North Viet Nam.

Also troubling is the problem of oil blackmail by the Arabs. The Arabs are almost certain to make the U.S. the scapegoat for any Israeli military successes. The oil-producing Arab states now have both the wealth and the will to punish the U.S. by shutting off oil supplies. Only 7% of the oil consumed in the U.S. presently comes from the Middle East, though that figure is expected to rise to as high as 50% by the 1980s. Much of the talk about oil may well be bluff, but the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore it.

No matter how much the superpowers desired detente, the fighting in the Middle East increasingly imposed itself. The options open to Washington and Moscow were limited. For the moment, the Administration contented itself with two modest goals: a cease-fire and the creation of an atmosphere that would permit negotiations. But it had little hope that either proposal would be accepted by the combatants as long as the war continued.

Even Tougher. The Israelis, shaken by the Yom Kippur attack, appeared in no mood to talk about a compromise; if anything, Israel may now take a harder stand than ever against the return of the occupied territories. There was widespread resentment in Israel that the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir had failed to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Arabs, despite the fact that intelligence analysts knew about the Arab buildup (though they misinterpreted its significance). That resentment could translate itself into ballots, bringing an even tougher, more obdurate government to power.

Another possibility, however, is that, beyond the immediate outcome of the war, the shock of last week may persuade growing numbers of Israelis that their security cannot be built on arms and control of territory. The fact is that they are badly outnumbered by the Arabs, who cannot be expected to remain technically inferior forever. Israel's security, as many Arabs and Americans have long argued, rests on accommodation with the Arab states. That inevitably must mean territorial and other concessions by both Israel and the Arabs.

There is always the chance, of course, that a taste of success in the current war will make the Arabs more unappeasable. A more hopeful view is that henceforth they will be more ready to negotiate. Neither the Egyptians nor the Syrians talk any longer about driving Israel into the sea. In fact, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat declared recently: "I am prepared to accept Israel as a state in the Middle East, but not as a new Ottoman Empire." The official position of the Arabs in the struggle is that they are righting for the return of the territories they lost in the 1967 war. Some Arab observers believe that the period immediately after the end of hostilities may prove to be a fruitful moment for negotiations. The Arabs feel that they have already scored a victory by showing the world that they dared to attack Israel and have held their own. Now that their honor has been retrieved, they might agree to forgo the battlefield for face-to-face discussions. Yet the Israelis can hardly overlook the fact that while Egypt talked of accommodation it secretly prepared for the war.

U.S. observers speculate that the ami of the Arab attack was to regain honor and some territory and then accept an in-place cease-fire decreed by the U.N. If the Israelis continued to fight, that would leave them condemned by the U.N.-a propaganda victory for the Arabs and a slap at the Israelis.

Joint Guarantees. One possible solution would be a formula that calls for joint U.S.-Soviet guarantees to Israel of its pre-1967 borders (plus the Golan Heights, which are vital to Israel's defenses), demilitarization of the Sinai and some sort of compromise on the sovereignty of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian problem could be settled by adopting 1) King Hussein's proposal that the West Bank be turned into a semiautonomous region federated with Jordan; or 2) Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba's plan for turning Jordan and the West Bank into one country, "Palestine," and making it a homeland for Palestinian refugees, who already constitute a majority of the region's population. Such a settlement would now seem to be unacceptable to both sides, but in the aftermath of repeated wars, one or the other may have to do some hard rethinking.

Nobody in Washington was proposing terms to the Israelis--let alone the Arabs ---last week. Instead, Kissinger put in 20-hour work days, mostly on the telephone, trying to enlist the support of other countries in working out a ceasefire. The U.S. called for the U.N. Security Council to convene, but Kissinger was unable to build a consensus among the permanent members of the Council--or the warring parties--for a resolution aimed at stopping the fighting. As the week passed without significant progress, Kissinger was obliged to cancel a quick trip to London and Bonn; like detente, "the Year of Europe" remains one of his highest priorities, but for the moment it will have to wait.

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