Behind the Headlines Detente Has Failed in the Mideast

The success or failure of U.S.-Soviet detente may be a debatable subject in other areas, but in the Middle East its failure is now beyond doubt. Soviet efforts to undermine Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s step-by-step peace strategy in this region are clearly visible. The Russians aren’t blocking Kissinger in the political arena or on the diplomatic level. They are openly sabotaging his every move toward peace by increased incitement to war. Moscow’s chief instrument in this is the Syrian regime of President Hafez Assad.

The Russians are pouring huge quantities of war materiel into Syria, fully support Assad’s demands for total Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, and the Syrian leader’s all-out support of Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. If there is any doubt of the Soviet strategy one has only to note that neither the Russians nor the Syrians made any attempt to conceal the fact that last Friday alone there were 20-25 Soviet and Eastern European Communist bloc merchant ships discharging weapons and ammunition at the Syrian port of Latakia.

The Russians are also shipping increased quantities of war supplies to Egypt, not waiting for the January visit of Soviet Communist Party Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev to Cairo to begin rehabilitating the Egyptian war machine, especially the air force, which was severely battered in the Yom Kippur War.

TURNING TABLES ON KISSINGER

Kremlinologists may ponder the Russians’ motives. It seems clear, however, that Moscow is attempting to turn the tables on Kissinger who only last spring, was single-handedly banishing Soviet influence from the Middle East. That influence had been all-pervasive since the Six-Day War when the Russians totally supported the Arab side, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and began re-arming Egypt and Syria. But Moscow-Cairo relations had begun to cool before the Yom Kippur War. President Anwar Sadat ousted Russian advisors and technicians and accused the Kremlin of reneging on weapons shipments.

After the Yom Kippur War, the U.S. stepped into the breach. The Geneva peace conference at which the U.S. and USSR served as co-chairmen, was to be the setting for a Middle East peace pact. But Kissinger preferred to go it alone. He upstaged the Russians with his whirlwind personal diplomacy in the region, achieving the seemingly impossible–disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and Syria, both involving small, but highly symbolic Israeli territorial withdrawals.

Kissinger may have been too clever. The Russians are now retaliating by the methods they know best–increased tension, encouragement of Arab intransigence and incitement to a new war. The United States is in an extremely vulnerable position because a new war, almost inevitably will bring a renewal of the Arab oil embargo.

SOVIET PRESTIGE RISING IN MIDEAST

President Ford and Brezhnev will no doubt discuss the Middle East at length when they meet in Vladivostock this weekend. They are expected to seek a formula to relax tension in the area and reduce the risk of a pre-emptive strike by either side. This may be accomplished, but on Russian terms.

Soviet prestige is rising again in the Middle East as a result of Moscow’s backing of the PLO. Brezhnev’s Cairo trip may completely heal the breach with the Egyptians. The U.S. continues to back Israel diplomatically and militarily, but there is growing uneasiness in Washington about American involvement in a new round of Arab-Israeli fighting. The Arab oil weapon could severely damage the U.S. and Western Europe, already under economic stress, partly as a result of the previous oil embargo.

Diplomatic observers expect a joint U.S. Soviet statement to come out of the Vladivostock meeting. Moscow presumably will seek backing for a Palestinian state. The U.S. is considered unlikely to bend much on this matter. But the possibility exists that the Geneva conference may be reactivated with participation of the PLO at Russian insistence. Whatever becomes of detente in the rest of the world, it has already lost all meaning in the Middle East. Kissinger may still support detente, but it is apparent that the Russian definition of that high-sounding word is quite different from his.