George W. Ball

The Honorable George W. Ball is not a specialist in Middle East affairs. He has never held a job that dealt exclusively with that region. Nor has he ever lived there. But there are very few Americans who are called upon so often to give their views on what is likely to happen in the Middle East—and when Mr. Ball talks, people listen.

Not everyone agrees with him, of course. Many who are fervent supporters of the policies of Israel's Begin government regard him as hostile to the very existence of Israel. Mr. Ball, however, who visits Israel from time to time and says he has many good friends there in the political establishment, regards this kind of criticism as nonsense, and shrugs it off.

"The Middle East policies which I advocate are not anti-Israel—they are policies which I believe are in the best interests of the U.S.," he says. "It so happens that they would also be in the best interests of Israel itself."

Why They Listen

One reason Mr. Ball gets a close hearing on Middle East issues is that he is not only a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations but served nearly six years as U.S. Undersecretary of State—which at the time (January, 1961 through September, 1966) was the number-two job in the State Department, the equivalent of today's Deputy Secretary. Another reason people listen is that he is articulate, penetrating, sometimes sardonic and always plainspoken—qualities which are reflected in his frequent articles for the mass media and for such publications as Foreign Affairs, and which make him a natural for TV talk-shows and keynote speeches at foreign affairs gatherings. Mr. Ball may well have appeared on NBC's Meet the Press more often than any other guest during the more than 30 years the show has been on the air, and is a frequent panelist on such other news programs as public television's MacNeil-Lehrer Report and the David Brinkley show. Asked whether he gets bothered by sharp questioning from the likes of commentator George Will, who is an acknowledged fierce partisan of the Begin government, Mr. Ball says with a twinkle: "Why should I be bothered? Mr. Will has a constitutional right to be wrong on some subjects."

Mr. Ball is now retired from his various careers as public servant, lawyer and financial advisor—having finally last October left his partnership in the Wall Street investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, after telling the board that he had discoverd there "were many books that I had neither read nor written."

Mr. Ball now lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey, from which he commutes to New York City on the average of one day a week to keep in touch with friends and associates and to attend a variety of functions. He travels abroad frequently but is also finding time to work on a book dealing with the problems of nuclear weapons and U.S.-Soviet relations.

It is this global perspective of Mr. Ball's that gives him his absorbing interest in the Middle East. As he sees it, anyone with a broad view of international relations and of the problems of maintaining world peace must necessarily focus a great deal of attention on the Middle East for obvious strategic and economic reasons. But it is all part of a greater whole, with the pieces fitting together. "Our policies on the Middle East bear intensely on our relationships with Europe," he says. "And you can't, of course, look on the Middle East in isolation from East-West problems—although I think it was an enormous mistake during the early days of this Administration for it to have regarded the East-West question as the primary one in the area."

The Arab-Israeli conflict is, of course, the preeminent one in Mr. Ball's view, and like many others he believes that Israel's continuing settlement of the West Bank is a "disastrous" policy which will lead only to protracted struggle and is damaging to the interests of both the U.S. and Israel itself. Should the U.S. "pressure" Israel to stop?

Subsidies for Israel

Answers Mr. Ball: "It confuses the issue to use the word 'pressure,' because it implies that the subsidy which is being given to Israel by the U.S. is something Israel is absolutely entitled to—that we're somehow imposing on Israel's rights. The real question, though, is not whether we should use 'pressure' on Israel by reducing aid; it's whether we are prepared, as responsible citizens, to have our money used to subsidize activities that are against our national interests."

Mr. Ball was born in Iowa nearly 74 years ago, and after taking B.A. and law degrees from Northwestern University he moved to Washington during the early days of the New Deal to work as a government lawyer, later practicing law in Chicago. After Pearl Harbor he rejoined the government and served in a number of wartime agencies. After the war he became founding partner of a law firm in New York and was active in international law for several years until returning to government service under President Kennedy, first as Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and then as the Undersecretary. He is the author of three books.