SUEZ BRINKMANSHIP
ONCE bitten twice shy' is evidently not a maxim that appeals to Western politicians. The Suez disaster was great enough, one would have thought, for the West not to want to repeat it less than two years later. But incredible though it may seem, Mr. Dulles has made it plain that armed intervention in the Lebanon is being seriously considered in Washington. No conceiv- able Western interest would be served by such an action. It is true that if the Lebanon were to be absorbed by the United Arab Republic, President Nasser would control all the oil ports of the Eastern Mediterranean. But as all the pipe- lines to Lebanon run across Syria they are in the last resort already controlled by bi°' The Lebanese rebels have certainly been het?, by supplies of arms and men from Syria, but I (0.1 so has the Lebanese Government with supplies . arms from America. The present regirne Lebanon is pro-West, but unless it can coo the inhabitants of the country and be on terms with its neighbours, this fact is of no 1 to the West; and if the West intervenes to up President Chamoun the second condition certainly no longer be valid. The Leban' financial prosperity will disappear and she become an economic as well as a pOill liability to the West. Attempts have been made to portray the Lebanon crisis as one in which the pro-Western democratic regime of President Chamoun is being subverted by some Arab national extremists who are acting at the behest of Nasser and who want to force the Lebanon into the United Arab Republic. None of this picture is true. The elec- tions of last year were rigged, and there is no doubt that President Chamoun intended to have the constitution altered so that he could be elected in September for a second six-year term. Saeb Salaam, the opposition leader, and his fol- lowers are certainly pro-Nasser, but there is no more reason to think that they want to join the UAR in the immediate future than there is that the UAR wants them to join it. Egypt has got quite enough on her hands at the moment without adding the Lebanon. Lastly, the head of the largest Christian community in the Lebanon, the Maronite Patriarch, opposes President Chamoun, and he can hardly be thought to be an Egyptian stooge.
The regime is at least as much in the wrong as the opposition, and for the West to intervene in what is essentially a rather unsavoury internal Political struggle would merely confirm the belief that is already all too widely held in the Arab world—that as the West is incurably imperialistic, the Arabs must look to the East.
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