Myth of Detente Becomes a War Casualty

The myth that Soviet intentions in detente are to keep the world at peace without political and economic profit for itself appears to have become one of the first casualties of the new Middle East war. And the Nixon Administration’s public reaction to the explosion of that myth has been strangely ambivalent: The White House talks tough while the State Department demonstrates almost infinite patience with Moscow’s blatant aid and encouragement to the Arab war machine. It is conceivable that both of these reactions are a carefully calculated part of American strategy in the new crisis, intended on one hand to warn the USSR against wrecking detente and on the other to keep detente from freezing back into the cold war. No doubt exists in political circles here that detente no longer is what the pronouncements following the Soviet-American summit conference in Moscow 17 months ago and last June in Washington represented it to be. The question is the degree to which this door to hope for a lasting peace has been unhinged by Soviet words and deeds in recent days and whether it can be repaired without calamities.

Sen. Walter F. Mondale (D.Minn.) who typifies those who support both detente and justice for Soviet Jews and dissidents, told the Senate that Soviet actions “violate the third principle of the basic principles of relations” signed in Moscow in 1972 and are “seriously undermining the current detente.” Epitomizing the views of numerous colleagues in both branches of Congress. Rep. Hugh L. Carey (D.NY) goes further, saying that “the Soviet Union by encouraging, abetting, and supporting renewed aggression in the Middle East, has proved anew that detente is an empty, academic phrase sounding great but signifying nothing.” Tracing the causes of the war, Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D.Wash.) holds that “without Soviet support and material encouragement, without Soviet training and equipment, without Soviet diplomatic and political backing, this war would not have been started.”

In their approaches to the Soviet wreckage of the principles of detente as Americans had understood them, the White House and the State Department seemingly are in clashing public positions, probably by design. Nixon, significantly, recalled a few days ago that when he was Vice President, Pres. Eisenhower sent 10,000 Marines to Lebanon to prevent a radical overturn of Lebanon’s leadership, and that he himself moved warships into place to help Jordan’s King Hussein frustrate the Palestinian radicals in his domain. Following Nixon’s statements, his chief domestic advisor, former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, declared bluntly that the Soviet Union “has not been performing as if detente is here” and has been “disruptive” of “opportunities to achieve a cease-fire and an immediate settlement.”

These strong views from the White House were tailored to much softer lines at the State Department. Laird was pictured as being without any authority in the Middle East. Showing the world, especially Moscow, that it is trying to save the framework of consultations with the Soviet government and detente, the Department, led by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger continues appeals for restraint even while Soviet bellicosity increases and more Arab countries join the war against Israel. Thus, on the third night of the war Dr. Kissinger devoted almost his entire major speech to a defense of full U.S. trading concessions to the Soviet Union without a guarantee of emigration freedom. Before beginning the resupply of weaponry to Israel, he waited five days for the Soviet Union to relax its “massive” airlift which Moscow did not. Seven days after the Kissinger speech, the Soviet government pledged, during Algerian President Hourari Boumedienne’s visit to Moscow, to “assist in every way” the Arab offensives. But the State Department refused to comment on that pledge. Neither would it comment on the Oct. 16 Sadat speech.

The-Department’s purpose in public quiescence is to avoid offending the Soviet hierarchy and the Cairo government. The theory is that “quiet diplomacy” which did little to help Soviet Jewry, will help Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and his friends ward off hard-liners like Marshal Andrei Grechko who have ho liking for Soviet liberalization. This appeasement policy has long been used by pro-Moscow elements in the West to wring concessions from Western governments. The bullying of Israel at the United Nations and through the Moscow propaganda apparatus is discounted at the State Department as being nothing compared with the rhetoric in 1967, as if that is comforting to pro-Israelis. Nixon’s referral to American actions in the Middle East in 1958 and 1970 brought demands in the Senate from some Senators, including Sen. Jacob K. Javits, that while resupply to Israel should be maintained, the Administration must avoid sending troops to the Middle East without the consent of Congress. (Israeli Premier Golda Meir told the Knesset on Tuesday that the U.S. deserved the gratitude of the people of Israel for its aid, but added, “We do not wish anybody to fight for us, even if we needed somebody to help.”)

Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D.Mont.) proposed that the six major powers impose a settlement in the Middle East. Since five of them are pro-Arab, this idea is regarded as synthesizing the views of a powerful Congressional minority as a means to put Israel back into its vulnerable 1967 position of exposed borders subject to easy attack by its Arab neighbors and ultimately resulting in Israel’s destruction. It is in essence not far from the majority view in the United Nations. A showdown seems certain within the next few days either by a decisive military factor on the fighting front or by a Soviet move back towards the principles of detente. The question will-be how far the Nixon Administration, itself eager for an accommodation with the Arab states, will be willing to pressure Israel into retreating from its insistence on defensible borders, custody of Jerusalem and direct negotiations with its Arab neighbors that she rightfully believes is essential for a lasting peace.