JORDAN: Doomed to Die?

“It is doubtful Jordan will last out the year as an independent state,” cabled a New York Times reporter last week. It might not come to an end that soon, but now that Jordan has lost its usefulness to the British as a base, the little desert kingdom has also lost its chief historic excuse for existence.

Since the Suez invasion, Iraqi, Syrian and Saudi Arabian troops have moved into Jordan to “protect” it; the Syrians and Saudis are still there. The Israelis watch edgily from across a 330-mile border, and at some future date might not mind advancing to the Jordan River, a natural frontier some 30 miles east from the present boundary, if they thought they could get away with it. The unceasing Arab nationalist agitation among Jordan’s large Palestinian refugee population has moved young King Hussein to offer to give up his throne if that would advance the cause of Arab unity. Admitting that “Jordan cannot live forever as Jordan,” Premier Suleiman Nabulsi two months ago called for federation with other Arab states.

Last week Nabulsi’s Parliament unanimously ratified the Cairo agreement, by which Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia are supposed to pay the equivalent of about $36 million a year to Jordan in place of the old British subsidy. But nobody in Amman who knows the score thinks the new deal is worth much because the “donors” themselves are pinched and overdrawn, even the oil-rich Saudi Arabians. The State Department expects King Saud to tell President Eisenhower this week that only Saud can save Jordan, and that the only way to do it is to give him the money to pay Jordan. On Saud’s heels will come Iraq’s Crown Prince Abdul Illah, who will undoubtedly argue that the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan should be linked with Hashemite Iraq. Neighboring Syria would also like to gobble up Jordan in a greater Syria. The U.S. may soon find that the first task of its new Middle Eastern policy will be to arbitrate the fate of Jordan.