TH E TABLET. Ju ly 26th, 1958. VOL. 212, N o . 6166.

¡THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER "& REVIEW

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Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

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JULY 26th, 1958

N1NEPENCE

The End of the Mandate Era; The New Revolt in the Desert

American Reappraisals : After the Eisenhower Doctrine. By Ion Ratiu Middle Eastern Views I Conversation about President Nasser. By .). E. Alexander Two Armenian Patriarchs l A Middle Eastern Contrast. By Czeslaw Jesman Tl'ianon and Lourdes l Varying Interest in the Supernatural. By Sir Arnold Lunn Meininisse Juvat l An Encyclical Letter Calling for a Novena of Prayer Critics' Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE UNITED NATIONS SETTING

I’T 'H E Government have come through the first hectic week of the crisis precipitated by the Baghdad coup d'état very well up to date ; but the next river to be crossed is Jordan, and, decisive as are the arguments for using the available forum, and the charter, of the United Nations, there should be no illusions about what will be discussed and with what conclusions.

The British Government has steered a reasoned middle course so far. The United Nations are brought in to counter-balance the landings. The Labour Party should reflect that Mr. Dulles has conceded much to the British view in favour of a meeting, because AngloAmerican solidarity had been demonstrated when we followed the American landing with one of our own. The first essential for Western policy is that the two countries should act as one.

Unless it should prove that the c o u p 1 d'état in Baghdad is not the end inside Iraq, the main purpose of the United Nations meeting will be to talk about the future of Jordan and the Lebanon, in which British and American troops have taken up positions. It is not within the competence of the United Nations to guarantee that unpopular rulers shall continue indefinitely in power. All that the United Nations can do is to supervise plebiscites while its whole Charter rests on conceptions of sovereignty. Its members can help each other against external aggression, it can watch frontiers, but it cannot watch the effects of propaganda on the minds of citizens or subjects, or get very far with the conception of ” indirect aggression.” Least of all can it say that, however unpopular a Government is, it must be maintained because its complexion pleases some outside Powers. That is the claim the Russians make in satellite Europe, and the United Nations inevitably refuses to endorse it.

Discussions at the United Nations will be about the conditions on which (he Americans and British will agree to withdraw the troops they put in last week, and it will be hard for them to turn down proposals that the United Nations shall supervise elections in the Lebanon or a plebiscite in Jordan. The landings were an im mediate, as it were an instinctive, reaction to a great reverse. The British landing was, as Mr. Macmillan said, a most difficult decision, and on the whole the position today might well be worse without it. But it is not a policy in itself, and immediately poses the question what we do next. Here the Government will have more trouble with their own back-benchers than with the Opposition as the implications of a United Nations policy begin to be appreciated.

A British occupation of Kuwait, the most important of the Anglo-American oil-fields, where the oil goes straight into the tankers and there are no vulnerable pipe-lines, and with the frontier defending the oil-field a short one, would have been another military reaction, with much to be said for it, if there were to be any military landings at all. But the troops in Jordan are not guarding any frontier, or oil field.

The practical effect of their presence is to stop risings by Jordanians. But Mr. Selwyn Lloyd came back from the United States last week talking about “ the security, independence and integrity of J o rd a n ” being “ what we want to see,” where the harsh facts are th a t Jordan cannot be independent. It is not viable by itself, and has to live on a subsidy. It has no oil or industries, Israel cuts it off from the sea, and half its population is made up of Palestinian refugees. The young King renounced the British subsidy, as he dismissed Sir John Glubb, to placate public opinion. He then made the dynastic union with Iraq, and that policy is in ruins, and his opponents can claim that, if it was ever in the interests of the people of Jordan, it should be continued, and that, as the King is the obstacle to its continuance, it is he who should go. There is more of a case for trying to devise