The Reagan administration appears to have given up its search for a “strategic consensus” in West Asia. It was a wild goose chase from the very start. Anyone with the slightest intelligence and knowledge of the region could have predicted that all US efforts to that effect will end up in failure. It just did not make sense to expect the Arabs, however intense their suspicion and fear of the Soviet Union, to accept the American proposition that Russia and not Israel constituted the greatest threat to their security. The oil-rich conservative sheikhs were doubtless alarmed over Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and felt it necessary to strengthen their ties with the United States. But on that account they could not have possibly forgotten their three-decades-old conflict with Israel, especially when Tel Aviv under Mr. Begin would not make the slightest concession to them on any issue. In the event, Israel’s behaviour has been unduly provocative, it has not only refused to modify its stance on the twin issues of autonomy for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza strip and Jewish settlements in these forcibly occupied territories but done something much worse. It has formally annexed the Golan Heights. The Reagan administration could have assuaged the hurt feelings of pro-West regimes such as Saudi Arabia’s if it had put pressure on Israel and impelled it to be more reasonable. But it has done nothing of the kind. Indeed, it concluded an agreement with Israel on military cooperation. Moreover, events have demonstrated that such is the power of the pro-Israeli lobby in the United State that the administration dare not give up its pro-Tel Aviv tilt even if it is so inclined. As it happens, the Arabs have lost some of their clout in view of the oil glut in the world, the decline in their share of production in the non-communist world and the fall in crude prices.
Judging by what the US secretary of state, Mr. Alexander Haig, has said at meetings of senior officials, America has no overall West Asia policy. Mr. Haig appears to be convinced that the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt will soon come unstuck. Once Cairo has got back the Sinai on April 25, it will try and get back into the Arab fold, leaving the United States isolated in the region. He is, of course, angry with the “yellow-livered” Europeans because they are not willing to back Israel in its intransigence and favour talks with the PLO. But that cannot help him produce a viable policy for the area. More recently the US defence secretary has visited Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia. The result has not been particularly impressive from the American point of view. His statement that America may be willing to sell F-16 aircraft to Jordan has drawn such fire from the Israelis that he has had to run for cover. There is not a chance of Congress approving such a sale. In Riyadh he did not even raise the question of military cooperation. One of the officials accompanying him talked of the need to “re-direct” American policy in the area. This has been interpreted to mean that Mr. Weinberger has come to believe that internal subversion may be a greater security threat for America’s friends than overt or covert Soviet “aggression”. But it is above all Israel’s intractability which is promoting unrest and instability in the region. The Reagan administration has no solution to offer. And if the Iranians get the upper hand in the war with Iraq or if the Assad regime in Syria goes down to the Islamic fundamentalists, the situation will become even more complicated for the United States to handle.