In the off-the-record view of some of the State Department's top hands, the most dangerous spot in the world today is Syria. What disturbs them most is the incalculable ingredient in Nikita Khrushchev's makeup: how far this unpredictable, risk-taking Communist boss may go in foreign adventuring, to get himself out of domestic problems. Starting with this substantial concern, the U.S. last week acted with such heavy-handed zeal that even its friends in the Middle East felt compelled to react against the U.S.
In elaborately publicized succession, President Eisenhower proclaimed U.S. "anxiety" over the Syrian situation, U.S. fleet units churned up a show of force in Eastern Mediterranean waters, and U.S. Air Force C124 Globemasters wheeled over Amman in a display delivery of U.S. 106-mm. antitank rifles to Jordan's army. Instead of persuading other Arab countries that the Arab nationalists of Syria were a threat to them, the U.S. display offended them and drove Syria's neighbors to proclaim their solidarity with their Arab brothers. Within 24 hours every U.S. ally in the Arab world had rallied to Syria's side, mindful of the old Arab proverb: "My brother and I will fight my cousin, but if a stranger threatens, my brother, my cousin, and I will fight the stranger."
"Serious Blunder." Lebanon's Foreign Minister Charles Malik, the U.S.'s staunchest friend among Arab politicians, felt compelled to announce that Lebanon opposed the use of force against Syria. That much courted Arab potentate, King Saud, passing luxuriously through Beirut en route to the waters of Baden-Baden, felt the same way, and though the State Department, in beating a later retreat, indignantly denied that King Saud had personally advised the Eisenhower Administration to take it easy, the denial was only narrowly true.
In fact, Charles Malik, flying to the U.S., announced that he had been charged by his Chief of State, "in agreement with King Saud, to intervene during my visit to Washington with President Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles to obtain assurances that the U.S. will not use force in Syria." In Iraq, the only Arab nation formally connected by pact to the West, the controlled press took up the cry, as Baghdad's Al Akhbar warned that the U.S. would commit "the most serious blunder" if it treated Syria as hostile to its neighbors.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Samir Rifai, a man often assailed in the Middle East as a U.S. puppet, held a press conference in Amman, and U.S. prestige took another nose dive. The manner of the U.S. arms delivery, with U.S. Ambassador Lester Mallory and a gaggle of Jordanian notables watching from a special dais alongside the Amman airfield runway, had made an "unfortunate impression" in his country, said Rifai. "We do not feel justified," he said, "in interfering in the internal affairs of Syria." After routinely thanking the U.S. for the arms, he went on to suggest that they might be used by Jordan against any aggressor, including Israel.