Foreign Relations: Summit in Smalltown

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Johnson then went to the White House to take his turn before the TV set. Kosygin, the economics expert who typifies the pragmatic new Soviet man, did little in his U.N. debut but rehearse the catechism of Kremlin clichés. He did, hopeful U.S. diplomats noted, leave open a minuscule area for potential negotiation by acknowledging Israel's right to national existence and mentioning the need for a "common language" among the great powers. Otherwise he sounded like a technocrat's Molotov.

Aleks in Wonderland. Kosygin castigated U.S. policy from Santo Domingo to Saigon, worked in West German revanchism and, straight-faced, held up Soviet respect for the right of "every people to establish an independent national state of its own" as an example the U.S. might follow. On the Middle East, he was strictly Aleks in Wonderland. Israel was the "unbridled aggressor," guilty of "unprecedented perfidy" and encouraged, of course, by the U.S. He likened Israel's actions to "the heinous crimes perpetrated by the fascists during World War II." Demanding U.N. condemnation of Israeli aggression, immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces and reparations by Israel to the United Arab Republic, Syria and Jordan, Kosygin introduced a formal resolution that would have the General Assembly appeal to the Security Council to enforce its judgment.

Abba Eban, the Israeli Foreign Minister, answered in ringing Churchillian cadences, coining the word "politicide" (death of a country) as the crime of which the Arabs were guilty (see THE WORLD). He was followed by a group of Arab and European spokesmen who either denounced Israel or admonished it against territorial aggrandizement. Of the rhetorical encirclement Eban is said to have quipped: "Never have so few owed so little to so many."

Politicking v. Realpolitik. U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg introduced an alternative resolution to the Soviet proposals that incorporated the five principles laid down by Johnson and added the suggestion that Arab-Israeli peace talks be assisted by a disinterested mediator. After Goldberg's formal motion, the General Assembly became a kind of Hyde Park Corner for every diplomatic soapboxer in town.

In fact, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet resolution seemed likely to be adopted, and there was talk of a compromise proposal by a group of small powers, perhaps this week. Whatever the outcome, the U.N. session seemed almost surrealistically detached from geopolitics, a sideshow that serves at best as a strainer separating politicking from Realpolitik.

Yet for Moscow it was a necessary exercise, both in terms of the immediate question of the Soviet future in the Middle East and the larger one of its standing vis-à-vis the U.S. in this 50th anniversary year of the Bolshevik Revolution. While the Soviets have been making progress domestically in economic development, they have had little to celebrate in their conduct of foreign affairs for the past 20 years.