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By this time it was glaringly apparent that no Arab neighbor was going to pick a fight with the Syrians, and at his midweek press conference Secretary Dulles noticeably softened his remarks about the Syrian "emergency." Things "probably will work out," he said. "That is partly a belief based on faith." This change of tone, while welcome to U.S. supporters in the Middle East, was headlined everywhere as DULLES RETREATS.
Egypt's President Nasser, who had been biding his time in some concern over Syria's getting too deeply committed to Moscow, now saw his chance to grab for his old Arab world leadership. He leaped in with a splash. As soon as he saw there was no risk in saying it, he promised "unlimited and unconditional support to Syria." In a play to the street crowds, he asserted that the U.S. had made an "artificial uproar" over Syria to "take the pressure off Israel, divert Arab attention," and "convert the Middle East into a zone of influence subservient to American policy." As if to reinforce Arab suspicions, the Israelis picked this moment to occupy a Syrian border village for 24 hours, over the objection of U.K. observers.
Simply Magnificent. The Russians, like Nasser, also saw their chance to leap in without risk and rack up some cheap credit. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called a press conference to charge that the U.S. had put the Turks up to massing troops on Syria's border, and Premier Bulganin dispatched another of his "rocket" letters to the Turks warning that it would be "dangerous" to attack Syria. Syrian Premier Sabri el Assali called Gromyko's assurances to Syria "simply magnificent," and a Damascus newspaper, with swollen ego, proclaimed a joint victory: "Syria and the Soviet Union are guiding the peoples of the world to liberation and peace."
In time to come, the Arab world may come to see that 1) it has in fact been infiltrated by the Communists, and 2) that this soft-spoken infiltration will not further Arab nationalist aspirations. But at the moment, the Russians have successfully played upon two governing emotions of the Arab world—nationalism, which includes hatred of Israel and Western tutelage, and Socialism, with its hatred for the propertied and ruling classes. These emotions are so powerful that Arab potentates dare not defy them publicly; their thrones would rock.
Without local commitments, the Soviet Union can appeal more readily to these emotions than the U.S., which is committed to friendship with Arab and Israeli alike, and must, furthermore, support Middle East governments in whose soil oil is to be found. It may be that the U.S. takes a sounder view of the Russian danger than Arabs do, but last week's inept handling put it in the light of a nation seeking to involve the Arabs in its own cold war quarrels, rather than helping the Arabs in theirs. And by characterizing as Communist those patriotic but misguided Arab nationalists who play with the Communists (and in time may learn their mistake), the U.S. in effect dismissed them all as already lost to the other side.