THE TABLET August 23rd, 1958. VOL. 212 No. -6170

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER* & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 23rd, 1958

N1NEPENCE

Running before Walking: A fter the Greek Reply on Cyprus Incitement in Iran : Soviet Propaganda from Berlin. By Wilfred Ryder The Nuclear Debate : An Advocate of Unilateral Disarmament. By Christopher Hdllis

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE ASSEMBLY AT A LOSS

C O far the effect of carrying before the General 4>' Assembly of the United Nations the question of withdrawing American and British troops from the Lebanon and Jordan has been one which Mr. Khrushchev cannot have intended. The crisis which the Russians proclaimed has shrunk to very minor dimensions. The Americans and the British profess their readiness to withdraw, if the local Governments are ready to see them go ; and although everyone knows that this means that the Americans will more easily leave the Lebanon than the British will leave Jordan, the offer is taken in the conciliatory mood in which it is made. The whole temper of the Assembly is a fortunately unexcited one, with a Norwegian resolution welcoming the withdrawal having the best chance of a two-thirds majority. By its charter, the United Nations is concerned with States—that is, with Governments—and these may not be identical with the nations which the institution professps to bring together on the basis of agreed tenets. This divergence, the fact that States are not necessarily the same as nations or peoples, and that Governments can be quite unrepresentative, and yet be the only voices to be heard in the United Nations, accounts for a large part of the confusion and uncertainty which marks the debate

The General Assembly has as yet no collective traditions, and most of its members represent Governments very uncertain of themselves inside the United Nations, wanting international institutions, but also intensely jealous both of their sovereignty and of material interests. They are not at all sure what they think about foreign troops, whether they want to keep open the possibility of inviting friendly aid to keep themselves in the saddle, or to rule out the whole procedure. M. Kadar, for one, can have no doubts there is only a Communist Government in Hungary, as in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Rumania, because Communist rulers, who have far less local support than King Hussein of Jordan, have the Red Army behind them and at call. The whole Communist bloc is in no position to deny that Governments are entitled to invite foreign aid to help them remain masters of their own unwilling people. On the whole, the Afro-Asian bloc can be aligned against the idea of foreign troops, because it assumes today that the foreign troops in question will be British or American or French, and its members do not see the issue in general and abstract terms, but in a particular historical setting.

Jordan was as much an invention of British policy as the Republic of Panama was of American policy, a republic created for the Panama Canal. But it is very dangerous for most of the Afro-Asian States to pay much regard to the historical truth that the frontiers of the Middle East have nothing sacrosanct about them, and are recent and arbitary divisions. What matters more to all small States is that all frontiers, however recent, shall command respect, or only the very few States that are also islands, like Great Britain, can feel secure. The divisions in Central and South America, in the main an inheritance from Spanish Colonial organisation, can be criticised as needing rectification if not abolition, as dividing peoples who are essentially the same each side of the line, who will be happier and more powerful if they are united. South America would be a very different place today, its citizens with a World Power outlook, if the revolting colonies had kept together, and had made their federal capital.

While the ‘present United Nations reflects a vested interest in sovereignty, it does not follow that all movements to make some federations and larger units either are or will be of their nature bad. On the contrary, the most politically mature part of the world, Western Europe, in which nation States have flourished for centuries, is also the part where there is the strongest movement to draw neighbouring countries together, and to create common institutions, to plan defence jointly, to establish free trade, instead of building fortresses and erecting tariffs.

We print on another page some account of the Soviet propaganda being directed from Berlin against the Government of Iran. The Iranian or Persian Communists find no facilities in the Middle East, and it can be doubted how many Iranians can or do tune in to a German station. But the point is important when President Eisenhower suggests methods of radio control, that it is not only from neighbouring States that this propaganda can be emitted. If the Russians judged it worthwhile, they could, of course, build a station in Russian Azerbaijan, as they would no doubt have done for a