Stability and Such

The other day, Secretary of State Shultz referred publicly to the installation of SA-5 missile sites in Syria, manned with Soviet crews, as a "de-stabilizing event" in the Middle East. There were two things that bothered us about that statement:

Firstly, it is the very sort of remark which the Israelis could choose to regard as a "green light" for making a move to knock out those missiles, Soviets or no Soviets. The possibility that such a move could bring the U.S. and the Soviets to the brink has seldom if ever in the past deterred the Israelis from taking reckless action. If they went ahead and knocked out the missiles—and somehow were lucky enough to do it without setting off World War III—they would probably argue that not only had they received a green light to "re-stabilize" the region but had done the U.S. a service, just as they had claimed they did by invading Lebanon.

But Mr. Shultz's statement also bothered us on substantive grounds. The very idea that a strong Syria, capable of defending itself against Israel, is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East is legitimate only if one accepts the principle that Israel should be able to impose its own solutions on the area, whether or not the U.S. and most of the rest of the world think they are the right solutions. We do not happen to think that Israel's solutions are either fair to its neighbors or in the interests of long-term peace. It seems to us that if the presence of the SA-5s deters Israel from running rough-shod over Syria and occupying Damascus as it did Beirut, this would be a stabilizing, not a destabilizing factor in the region. We also believe that it is our own government which has been responsible for most of the destabilization there during the past umpteen years. We have done it by strengthening Israel far beyond the needs of its own defense, to the point where we have created a dangerous imbalance of forces—one which allows Israel to raid, invade or conquer almost at will, and to kill, imprison or disperse, little by little, a people whose apparently unforgivable crime is that they were unlucky enough to be born on land which Israel wants for itself.

Is this what you mean by stability, Mr. Shultz?