Workers World, Vol. 10, No. 25, December 27, 1968
Slowly but surely, the U.S. government is orienting the people toward a new war in the Middle East. “The Middle East is all set to blow again. Peace looks far away. More fighting is a virtual certainty with each dawn.” The quotation is from the December 16 issue of U.S. News and World Report. “The first testing area of Soviet-American relations under the Nixon administration,” writes C.L. Sulzberger in the Nov. 29 New York Times, “may well be the Middle East.”
Scarcely a day passes without there being one or another type of grim warning of the steady deterioration of U.S. influence in the Mediterranean area and of the “growing peril” of Soviet naval strength and of the need of the imperialist allies for a united front to counteract it.
As always in the past, the ideological preparations for imperialist war are preceded by loud warnings of an “imminent trend towards isolation” and the dire consequences of such a course for the fate of finance capital. And as always in the past, the warnings against isolationism are followed by swift moves towards intervention.
Thus when Secretary of State Rusk unburdened himself on December 1 of his much publicized warnings against isolationism, the Pentagon followed up by dispatching into the Black Sea two U.S. destroyers in violation of the Montreaux Convention of 1936, which prohibits the entry of warships into the sea if they are equipped, as these ships were, with guided missiles. But lest this appear too warlike a move, the diplomatic advisors to the new administration found ways to soften the severity of the war atmosphere and put on a pacifist mask to deceive public opinion.
Like Rusk’s neo-isolationist alarums, Scranton’s “even-handed” remarks following his trip to the Arab countries and to Israel were also calculated to deceive the broad masses of people at home and abroad. Scranton, it will be remembered, set out on Dec. 2 on a ten-day mission on behalf of Nixon, which took him to Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
He held a press conference in Jericho at which time he announced that it was important for U.S. imperialism to become more “even-handed” in dealing between the Arab people and the Israeli puppet regime. The remark was widely interpreted to signal a change in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. This remark appeared even more authoritative when he repeated it at a press conference following his meeting with Nixon several days later.
This meeting with Nixon took on special significance – first, because Nixon refused to disavow Scranton’s statement, and secondly, because the Nixon advisors took special pains to have it publicly known that Walter Lippmann was sitting in on the proceedings. Lippmann’s presence was calculated to convey the impression that the Nixon administration was turning towards a policy of moderation in foreign affairs. Lippmann, it must be remembered, was considered a primary opponent of the war against Vietnam in the camp of the bourgeoisie and an advocate of so-called moderation in the Mediterranean area.
Lippmann’s presence served the same purpose as Rusk’s phony alarm about neo-isolationism. Even the meeting of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan with Nixon a little later could not quite erase the impression left in the public mind that the new administration was indeed seeking a new approach to war through Scranton’s “even-handed” policy.
One has, however, to see the Nixon-Scranton ploy in the light of the fateful day preceding the launching of the U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Arab people on June 6, 1967. For on that day, a bare 24 hours before the murderous assault launched by the Israeli Air Force, the State Department made a special announcement that has historical significance and exceptional relevance in relation to Rusk’s neo-isolationist maneuvers as well as the Nixon-Scranton “even-handed” approach. The State Department on June 5, 1967, released through its spokesman Robert McCloskey, a statement that the United States government was “neutral in thought, word and deed.”
Any Arab leader who took the statement at face value was certainly bound to mislead his people. A more insidious, a more treacherous approach by the architects of U.S. imperialist diplomacy is scarcely conceivable in light of what followed in the next 24 hours. There is nothing in the record of U.S. foreign policy to indicate that the same crafty servants of the U.S. monopolists who concocted the McCloskey deception are not doing the very same thing today with the Nixon-Scranton Middle East remarks.
Worldwide speculation has been aroused by the sudden visit of Andrei Gromyko to Cairo allegedly bearing a so-called “peace plan” which imperialist journalists believe can be imposed on the Arab people with the support of the U.S., Britain and France. Whatever the case may be, it is the duty of the Arab liberation movement to seek and obtain assistance wherever they can get it. It is also their duty to retain an independent revolutionary policy towards imperialism and towards those who seek to conciliate with it. These two aspects of the anti-imperialist struggle are indissolubly connected.
Aside from the flagrant deception that is involved in these maneuvers, there is yet a more dangerous aspect to them because of the manner in which the formulation of the issue is framed.
The U.S. is represented as a sort of outside friend of both the Arab and Israeli people, and as desperately trying to mediate issues that concern them exclusively. The U.S. has not stake at all in the area. Therefore, it logically follows – if U.S. foreign policy were “even-handed” between the Arabs and the Israelis, the issue could be resolved. Once again, as in the decades since the establishment of the Israeli state, the conflict in the Middle East is presented as one between the Arabs and the Israelis.
Even the U.S. News and World Report, which is more outspokenly imperialist than other Wall Street spokesmen, remarks with a straight face that “the oil interests are vitally concerned that everything be done to prevent an outbreak of major war in the area.” Of course, the oil monopolies are in a certain sense interested in preserving the peace in the area, provided that their vital interests are not threatened. This, however, is just the point.
It is utterly impossible to liberate the Arab people without ejecting the imperialist monopolies from the Arabian Peninsula. The importance of Israel in the struggle lies in the fact that it acts as a base for imperialist attack wherever and whenever the Arab liberation movement seeks to tear the mass of the people free from the imperialist yoke.
Bourgeois liberals who disdain to look upon the struggle in the Middle East from a class point of view invariably look at it either from the viewpoint of “tiny Israel” struggling for existence against the millionfold armies of the Arab nations, or view it in light of purely legalistic formulas as to who is the aggressor – such as “Who shoots first?”
The criterion for a Marxist is not who shoots first, but who is the oppressor! Which class or nation is the oppressor, and which class or nation is the oppressed. It is the duty of the oppressed to seek their liberation by any and all means which will accomplish the purpose.
The most dangerous aspect of the developing imperialist aggression in the Middle East is that there is so little understanding of the Arab cause here and even less sympathy. In no area of imperialist endeavor has the U.S. propaganda machine succeeded so well in capturing the minds of the millions on its side as it has in this case.
When the U.S.-Israeli aggression broke out 18 months ago against the Arab people, there was scarcely any protest at all in this country. Some account for it on the basis of the preoccupation of the anti-war movement in this country exclusively with the Vietnam war. But that is a false analysis. The real answer lies in the fact that the Vietnam anti-war movement has not taken on an anti-imperialist character – has not really fought against the Vietnam war as a war of imperialist aggression, a war that grows out of the needs of monopoly capitalism to expand and dominate the earth in its insatiable appetite for profit.
The Ad Hoc Committee on the Middle East, however, did hold a demonstration in New York. And Youth Against War & Fascism held one at the U.S. Mission to the UN at the very height of the hostilities. With the exception of actions by Arab students, these are the only sympathy demonstrations we know of in the United States.
It should be noted that the Conference for New Politics held in Chicago over the 1967 Labor Day weekend introduced a strong resolution defending the rights of the Arabs. It matters not what the future evolution of this organization may be; this was a highly progressive act.
A principled struggle against imperialism also implies invariably unconditional support to all the liberation movements that struggle against imperialism. The Arab liberation movement is an integral part of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle, and there is no reason whatever to regard the Arab liberation struggle as different except in national and cultural matters from the liberation movement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Fighting against U.S. imperialist aggression in the Arab lands is as vital and as necessary as the struggle against the imperialist war against Vietnam. The difference between the role of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, Santo Domingo or the United Arab Republic is only one of degree, not of kind. This is what had to be brought home to the anti-war movement most urgently and speedily.
Last updated: 11 May 2026