Foreign Relations: A Test of Patience & Resolve

The U.S., with welcome support from Britain, gambled against time last week in hopes of settling the Arab-Israeli crisis before it engulfed the Middle East—and perhaps the great powers as well. The object, as British Foreign Secretary George Brown told a hushed House of Commons, was "to prevent confrontation from bursting into conflagration." But whether the gamble would succeed depended on which would be exhausted first—the diplomatic alternatives to war or the patience of the edgy antagonists. "Time," said Britain's Prime Minister Harold Wilson after an urgent meeting in Washington with Lyndon Johnson, "is not on our side."

Coiled Spring. Taking advantage of the crisis, ten Soviet warships began steaming through the Dardanelles to join a score of others already on the prowl in the Mediterranean. Allied vessels bracketed the crisis zone, with the 50-ship U.S. Sixth Fleet on alert in the Mediterranean, and at least half a dozen British vessels, including the 23,000-ton aircraft carrier Hermes, ready to move into the Red Sea from Aden. The U.S. carrier Intrepid, ostensibly bound for Viet Nam, transited the Suez Canal as anti-American demonstrators waved their shoes at the ship in the Egyptian equivalent of a Bronx cheer. An eleven-unit U.S. antisubmarine group headed toward the Mideast; the British commando carrier Albion broke off maneuvers in the North Sea and made for an undisclosed destination.

The inflamed rhetoric emanating from Mideast capitals heightened the air of unreality that had cloaked the impasse from the outset. "There is no going back," cried the United Arab Republic's Gamal Abdel Nasser. "War is inevitable," echoed the editor of his tame newspaper, Al Ahram. Israel, warned Foreign Minister Abba Eban, "is like a coiled spring," and could only consider Nasser's blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba as a direct threat to "the kind of national interest for which a nation stakes all that it has."

Second Thoughts. Nevertheless, there was hope that—barring miscalculation —the crisis would not pass from the shouting stage to the shooting stage for a while. Nasser has achieved what he set out to win. He has mended his shredded prestige among fellow Arabs, forced Jordan's King Hussein into a humiliating acknowledgment of his strength, and successfully challenged the Israelis—so far. In fact, Cairo's—and the world's—greatest fear is that he will be unable to restrain his more volatile allies, notably Syria and the fanatic Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Russians, having helped egg Nasser on by publicly condemning the Israelis, may now be having second thoughts. In a note to Lyndon Johnson, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin is reported to have urged backstage action by the superpowers to damp down the situation.