An uncertain peace
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington The American balloon puffed itself up with hot air and went to Europe; the President Put on his smile and went fishing. When those three New Mexican land promoters touched ground we were told it was Lindbergh all over again and we should be Proud. We've been trying but it's not the kind of feat it's easy to get all steamed up over. And actually, of the two endeavours, the President's vacation was by far the more ihapressive feat. To go swooshing down a river-gorge in Idaho for three days, hundreds of miles of mountains have to be rigged with electronic equipment, secret service men and what the news reports somewhat mysteriously call 'logistical backuP'. The logistical backup didn't include the four-engine jet from the strategic air cernmand which circled over the Carter falnilY while it caught fish and ran the raPids. To have to take a vacation with hundreds of people, pursued down canyon torrents by reporters in rubber boats, with air arrnadas overhead, emphasised what a not so splendid misery the job is.
. Before going off into the wilds of the North West, Mr Carter showed his jocose t
_a.h sPect by informing the ever avid media at he had given orders there were to be no World crises during his holiday. There has 9_een a domestic crisis, however, so the Presirdent is cutting eturn short his sojourn in nature to to Washington to tussle with Congress over energy legislation for the nth Labe. If not an international crisis, a an st him in a few days when he will be The An Sadat and Menachem Begin. %te White House is acting as if somebody has already having second thoughts"about the Meeting. We're being informed that 4 Probably won pictures ,11°Wed 't be any , and that we mustn't build our r,_Pes up. In fact it is the White House ;inch should be on guard against that. ;:ewer and fewer people outside it have any 'topes left
One build up. To them this is but ite more in an infinite sequence of dip lomatic reunions, all of which are becoming highly patterned. As with previous meetings, the news of it was followed by an Israeli announcement that more colonies are to be planted in the Arab occupied territories. Washington reacted with ritual dismay; the Israelis, as is their habit, said that they would wait till the meeting was over, and Washington thought that quite 'moderate'. Naturally, after the meeting is over, the Israelis will go forward with their implantations, the PLO will detonate a bomb in a Haifa market, the Israeli air force will reciprocate by bombing an orphanage, and shaaboom! we'll have another crisis calling for another meeting at the highest level to speak of the lowest things. It is this repeated sequence of events which Mr Begin refers to as 'the peace process'. He can get away with it because he holds the high cards and it doesn't matter that Mr Sadat won the American media war. It's the only war the President of Egypt is likely to win, and the fruits of victory have turned out to be small in number unless you call having immediate access to Barbara Walters a plum. The trip to Jerusalem, as well as Mr Sadat's other travels and utterances, have gained him admiration here and have ended the period of Israel's propaganda monopoly in America. But that still leaves Egypt as far as ever from having American power applied against the Israelis. Nor will the Camp David meeting change that. We'll sell Egypt slightly less than up to date war-planes, and ship in enough food to keep the rioting down and the elected monarch of the Nile on his throne, but that's all he will get. Certainly in moments of exasperation with the deeply unlovable Mr Begin, the President has thought of putting a great deal of pressure on Israel. He can't get away with it, however. Like his quite sincere desire to get America out of the ignoble munitions business, he has found he can't. This year's arms sales abroad will be the largest ever. The difficulty in pulling the United States around to a new perspective on the Middle East can't be laid solely at the door of dev ishly clever Zionist zealots. As the Congressional wrestling over whether or not to
sell modern jets to the Saudis showed, the Israeli lobby can be beaten, but much of the time the Israelis don't stand alone. There are people in oil, banking, the military and• the State Department who think that the permanent and perpetual crisis in the Middle East is the best guarantor of America getting what she wants.
Not only does Washington have a proxy army in Israel, and therefore military supremacy over the oily sands without the use of American troops, but the Israeli hosts also drive countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to ask us for help. As an added bonus the money we pay them for oil we frighten right back out of them in arms sales. Such nasty calculations aren't spoken aloud but they are at work, sapping the sense of an immediate need for a sweeping and conclusive peace. In his autobiography Mr Sadat, doubtless captured by too firm a faith in his own star, wrote that 'Politics may be defined. . .as the art of the impssible'. At Camp David he'll have his chance to prove what kind of an artist he is.
In the waning of the summer, it isn't the forthcoming meeting which is on the public mind but inflation — something which depresses rather than infuriates people — and more and more news about how America is soiling her diapers. Item: an outbreak of miscarriages in a logging area of the Pacific North West has led to a suspician that the lumber companies use a herbicide which poisons the pregnant women. Item: a vile odour in a sub-division near Niagara, New York, caused all manner of illness to the inhabitants, especially the children. Investigation revealed the homes had been built on land formerly used for waste disposal by a chemical company. Item: in Arizona a mixup of seed resulted in the marketing of afflotoxin -pain ted milk. Afflotoxin is considered to be a terribly dangerous cancer causing fungus.
While we splashed in our chemical bath, for the first time since anyone can remember a president has vetoed an arms procurement authorisation bill. Mr Carter did it because it contained money for yet another atomic aircraft carrier. There are four already floating about, without any purpose except to be so vulnerable that Idi Amin could pull the plug on one and sink it. At the same time there is a howl going up about the new, quarter-of-a-billion-dollar Senate office-building. Mind you, the Senate already. has two very large office buildings, so nobody can figure out why a mere ninety-nine men and one woman should need a third one. Since there's no crossing the will of the Senate, the best solution is to convert the carrier into the Senate office building. Better than a transatlantic balloon. America could feel proud she had the first seaborne, atomic-powered legislature.
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