Foreign News: Hot Winds & Frail Borders

The harsh winds of crisis shifted north from Suez to the sandy reaches that in a lusher day were known as the Fertile Crescent (see map). There sit three nations—Syria, Iraq and Jordan—whose borders were drawn largely by the British, largely on sand. Last week, with Britain's last shreds of authority being blown away, these three Arab states were exposed in all their perishability to the full blast of nationalist bent and Soviet propaganda.

Headline writers and TV commentators acted as if war might break out any moment there, but the likelier consequence was...

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