The Fruits of Folly
By IAN GILMOUR
How do we prevent the Middle East going Communist? is the question which should be, but is not, preoccupying the West. Those who think the right answer is to support Arab nationalism will gain no comfort from this book*—nor indeed will their opponents. It consists of two essays, one on the Soviet view of the Middle East from 1917 to 1958, and one on Soviet foreign policy since 1955. Mr. Laqueur probably knows more about the Middle East than any other Western writer, he is a fair and reliable historian, and he has the prestige of having previously been proved right; in Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, published in 1956, he stated that the prospects for Communism were better in Iraq than in any other country. What he has to say, therefore, demands
respect. But not agreement. '
Mr. Laqueur's thesis is unobtrusive but his ideas can be summarised in these pro- positions: since 1955 there has been an alliance between Russia and Egypt; this would have happened irrespective of the mistakes made by the West; Israel and Algeria are relatively unimportant; Arab Nationalism is not a barrier to Communism; Communism and Arab Nationalism are not really opposed to each other; Communism is merely one wing of the Arab Nationalist movement, both Communists and National- ists being in favour of the same things, in particular of Arab unity; and owing to the lack of ideology in Arab Nationalism the Communists are likely to take over the Arab Nationalist movement.
All these propositions seem to me to be untrue. To take them in order: Mr. Laqueur says that 'since a fully-fledged grand alliance in the eighteenth-century style had gone out of fashion' the Russian-Egyptian alliance was not called an alliance, taking instead the form of a series of under- standings and agreements. But there have been alliances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as in the eighteenth, and the reason why the Egyptian- Russian agreements were not so called was because they were not alliances. Funnily enough, it was Suez that demonstrated this most conclusively: on Mr. Laqueur's own showing Khrushchev started talking about sending volunteers only when there was scant prospect of him actually having to do so. The events of the last six months have merely confirmed that no alliance existed.
Mr. Laqueur provides evidence also against the second proposition. He points out that Russia was at her most hostile to Egypt and Colonel Nasser at the time of the Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 1954. The Anglo-Egyptian agreement only made sense if it indicated that Britain had at last realised that it was no longer possible for her to dominate the Middle East militarily—that Arabia was no longer a British desert—and *THE SOVIET UNION AND THE MIDDLE EAST. By Walter Z. Laqueur. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 35s.)
had decided to pay attention to the sus- ceptibilities of those who lived in the area. If it really had meant this, it would have been the most sensible thing done by Britain in the Middle East since the war—it would have been more sensible still if the British government had not insisted on such stringent terms, though it can hardly be blamed since it had to contend with the vehement opposition of the Suez group, the Captain Waterhouses and Julian Amerys and other staunch idealists who have since gone abroad or joined the government. That it did not mean this was almost immediately demonstrated by the Baghdad Pact, which made complete nonsense of the agreement. The Baghdad Pact offended simultaneously Arab neutralist opinion (which, as Mr. Laqueur says, long antedated Colonel Nasser) and the basic Arab desire for unity.
As Mr. Walid Khalidi recently pointed out in a luminous essay in Middle East Forum, the struggle between Egypt and Iraq from 1954 onwards was over Syria. The Pact meant that instead of supporting the creation of a united Arab world, Britain was in effect supporting the creation of a united Fertile Crescent under British in- fluence. It was this disastrous policy, to- gether with Israel's Gaza raid of February 1955, and the Western refusal to supply proper arms to Egypt, which produced the Egyptian-Russian arms deal. It was the American refusal to finance the Aswan dam and Mr. Dulles's desire to humiliate Colonel Nasser, which produced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Anglo-French aggression naturally produced anti-British feeling in Egypt. The Eisenhower doctrine and Amer- ica's obligations to Israel over freedom of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba en- sured that Russia, not America, got the credit for the Port Said ceasefire; and American hysteria over Communism in Syria and the aircraft carrier diplomacy of the Sixth Fleet put America in the same dog- house as Britain and France. Finally, when Nasser had bravely and significantly risked Russian displeasure by visiting Tito last summer, Britain and America, by landing in Lebanon and Jordan on the pretext of 'in- direct aggression' by the United Arab Republic, quite literally drove Nasser back to Moscow. At every crisis, therefore, the West did what it could to cement an accord be- tween Russia and Egypt. The accord was produced not by Khrushchev or Nasser but by Eden and Dulles.
It is of course in a sense true, as Mr. Laqueur says, that radical Arab nationalism was bound to be anti-West, since the West was in possession and Russia was not. But the same could have been said about India. Arab nationalists turned against the West because Britain decided to pursue a policy in the Middle East that conflicted with her policy everywhere else in the world. Instead of encouraging the local nationalist move- ment she tried to fight it. If the Anglo- Egyptian agreement of 1954 rather than the Baghdad Pact had been the keynote of our policy, there is no reason to believe that Russia would have had much more influence in the Arab States than she has in India.
She would have had some more, if only because of Israel and Algeria. Rather naturally, if with some logical inconsistency, Mr. Laqueur grossly under-estimates the importance of Israel as a factor helping Russia and hurting the West in the Middle East. This is inconsistent of Mr. Laqueur since he believes that Communism in the Middle East is not a matter of Marxist- Leninist dogma but of nationalism and anti- Westernism. And there is no doubt that the chief count in the Arab indictment against the West is the creation and support of the State of Israel. Algeria is also of major im- portance. If an Arab's attention is drawn to Russian behaviour in Hungary, he will almost certainly answer by pointing out that it was not really any worse and of very much shorter duration than French exploits in Algeria. Israel and Algeria are crucial issues for the West in the Arab world, but Mr. Laqueur has to play them down since his thesis is that the Russo-Arab axis was not the result of Western policy but of deep underlying causes.
Mr. Laqueur argues that it is unlikely that Arab nationalism is a barrier to Com- munism, since the Soviet leaders would hardly build up a barrier against themselves. Here he is arguing against himself. He says in his preface that 'all attempts to account for Soviet foreign policy without due regard to the ideological factor are ultimately sterile'. Marxist dogma tells the Soviet leaders that Communism will eventually prevail everywhere. It is not open to them to believe that Nasserism, say, will be a per- manent barrier against Communism; so that unless one accepts the same dogma, the existence of Russian support does not of itself refute the theory that Arab nationalism is a barrier against Communism. After all, Russia—as Mr. Laqueur shows--supported Mustafa Kemal in the Twenties and even built factories in Turkey, but there is no suggestion that Kemal was in fact blazing a trail for the Communists. The West, with its pactomania, and Mr. Dulles's belief that neutralism was immoral, gave Russia her chance in the Middle East by falling into the old Soviet fallacy that the world was divided into two camps—allies and enemies. At the same time Russia was adopting the correct view (which it had also held in the Twenties) that there were three camps— allies, enemies and neutrals, and that to alienate the last was senseless. The disasters the West has suffered since 1955 have proved Khrushchev abundantly right, and even if he were capable of believing that in the long run Arab nationalism was a barrier to Communism, he might still think the building of the barrier a small price to pay for them.
Mr. Laqueur's belief that Communism is but one wing of the nationalist movement and that Arab Communism believes in much the same things as Arab nationalism, in particular Arab unity, is the result of looking at the Middle East in ideological terms: he has so steeped himself in Marxist dogma that he has become infected by it. Of course Russia and the Communists would favour Arab unity if the united Arab world was going to be controlled by Communists. Similarly Britain would have favoured Arab unity if it had been achieved under the auspices of Nun i es-Said. But neither Russia nor the British government favour a united Arab world controlled by President Nasser. Mr. Laqueur's book was written before Mr. Khrushchev, owing to Communist successes in Iraq, had openly opposed Arab unity and —with a hypocrisy worthy of the British and American governments last July—had said: 'the question of union between states must be decided by the people of the state con- cerned'. Mr. Laqueur should, nevertheless, have had some idea of Russian mistrust of Arab unity, as the Russian Embassy in Damascus had opposed the formation of the United Arab Republic until warned by the Arabs to desist (Mr. Laqueur's accounts of the Syrian-Egyptian union and of Syrian Communism are the only occasions that he is blatantly unfair).
The Cairo-Baghdad quarrel is the strong- est argument against Mr. Laqueur. If the nationalists and the Communists really have so much in common, it is surprising that they don't get on a little better. It is all very well for Mr. Laqueur, poring over his docu- ments and books, to decide that Com- munism and nationalism are very similar, but large numbers of Arabs on the spot, who do not have the same knowledge, evi- dently think the two things are very different indeed and are prepared to die for their beliefs.
The last of Mr. Laqueur's ideas, that Arab nationalism is likely because of its lack of ideology to be taken over by the Communists, is the most plausible. Every- body knows that the Communists are a dedicated, disciplined and highly competent minority and that the Middle East is fertile ground for Communism. Unless therefore there is a strong nationalist movement for unity in the Arab countries, unless the nationalists have a leader, the idea of unity, and some prospect of success, and unless the West gives the nationalists the chance to be neutral, the Communists are likely to have a series of local successes. Arab unity is the West's last best hope, yet almost in- credibly the West, at least until very recently, was concerned to frustrate Arab unity and to defeat the nationalist leader.
Lack of ideology is not unique to Arab nationalism. Communism apart, it is rather difficult offhand to think of a politician or a party which has got an ideology; Mr. Laqueur over-estimates its importance. Philosophically, Arab nationalism is rather inchoate, but logical inconsistencies do not necessarily lead to Communism. And the very lack of ideology in Arab nationalism is as likely to repel it from Communism as to attract it. Mr. Laqueur says that Middle East Communists have abandoned the class war; yet only last week President Nasser said that it was odd that Communists de- manded peaceful co-existence among nations but opposed it among classes. If a vacuum in political ideas produced Communism, the world would be Communist by now. And if the Middle East goes Communist, it will not be because of the ideological defects of Arab nationalism but because of the folly and bad faith of the West.
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