THE MIDDLE EAST: The Trouble with Unity

Only last summer, when revolt blazed in Beirut and Baghdad, most of the prophets on the scene forecast that the racing fires of Arab nationalism must shortly fuse the Arab East into one great state. Realists urged the West to quit backing losing friends and to get right with the winners. They pointed to the miserable conditions in the lands ruled by Western allies, but had less to say about the unchanging misery in the lands of the winners. Nasser himself seemed almost plausible when he shouted that scheming colonialists had split the...