MIDDLE EAST: On the Go Again

If ex-Diplomat Adolf A. Berle's hunch is right. Communist Russia has been operating its foreign policy by localized five-year plans—1945-50 for Europe, 1950-55 for Asia, 1955 on for the Middle East. Nasser let his new Soviet equipment be chewed up too quickly, and the Eisenhower Doctrine, which followed the Suez invasion, was a definite check to Soviet Middle East ambitions. Nonetheless the Russians were on the go again last week in the Middle East. Items:

>Moscow signed a $65-$100 million military-aid program with Syria (the most far gone of Arab states) under which Syria will get two submarines (the Egyptians have just received three) and six torpedo boats, along with Communist missions to show them how to steer. Egypt and Syria are now Russia's major arms depots in the Middle East.

> In Lisbon, Vice Admiral Charles R. Brown, commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, took public notice of greatly increased movements of Soviet cruisers and destroyers through the Dardanelles into the eastern Mediterranean. The Russians are thought to have established a base, complete with floating drydock, on Albania's Saseno Island.

> London reported that another shipload of Communist arms—the seventh since January—recently arrived at the Yemen port of Salif, where, under the telescopes of watchers on the British Kamaran Islands in the Red Sea, Egyptian officers directed the unloading of T-34 tanks, piston-engine trainer planes, antiaircraft guns, military vehicles and small arms. The British, already in trouble fighting the Imam of Oman at the eastern end of the Arabian peninsula, now face the possibility of difficulty from the Imam of Yemen on their Aden borders. In supplying arms to the Imam of Yemen, the Russians counted on their use for outside mischiefmaking: as the leading head-chopper among Arab potentates, the Imam has little domestic opposition. The Imam of Yemen is hardly abreast of the 4th century, but the Communists can nonetheless be expected to continue complaining that it is the U.S. that backs reactionary and feudal Arab rulers.