Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau warned that the United States was following a “fallacious” policy in the Middle East of wooing the Arabs at Israel’s expense which could lead to a new war. The political scientist, who is chairman of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, said he supported Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s recent warning that the U.S. would not rule out force to secure Middle East oil sources but said that this in itself was an intimation that Kissinger’s policies have failed.
Addressing a press conference yesterday, called by the Committee, Morgenthau said America’s alternative in the Middle East is “to stand pat and make Israel as strong as possible,” even though that course might lead to a new Arab-Israeli war and a confrontation between the two superpowers. But the Rabat conference and Yasir Arafat’s United Nations speech “have left no doubt that the Arabs want Israel to disappear” and all that remains is “negotiations on the modality of Israel’s funeral,” he said, Rabat he said, made the success of Kissinger’s mediation “if not impossible” at least “a question mark.”
DELIVERING TERRITORY TO THE ARABS
Morgenthau and another member of the National Committee, Prof, Uri Ranan of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, agreed that the American attempt to win the Arabs away from the Soviet Union has failed. Ranan observed that “Egypt is totally dependent on Soviet arms and the U.S. cannot replace it.” He charged that the U.S. was trying to “deliver territory” to the Arabs “to win a Soviet client at the expense of Israel.”
He and Morgenthau also agreed that Mideast peace prospects are currently at an ebb, Morgenthau said an Israeli withdrawal from the strategic Sinai passes would put it at a “military disadvantage” and that a settlement jointly policed by U.S. and Soviet forces was “completely unacceptable.”
A report by the committee charging that U.S. Soviet detente was “grossly violated in the Middle East,” was distributed at the press conference, it warned that the total elimination or crippling of Israel would not assist the American position in the Mideast “but would isolate the U.S. and fatally undermine its influence and security.” The report predicted that “Short of active U.S. involvement, the Middle East would come under total Soviet domination–even without the use of Soviet troops.”
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