• 22 Friday, October 26, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS NEWS Issues of U.S. Mideast policy absent from Presidential debates BY VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK Special to The Jewish News Broad issues of American Mid- All other Middle East issues dle East policy have been con- such as the Arab-Israeli conflict spicuously missing from the de- and inter-Arab rivalries were bate in the Presidential campaign subordinate to this primary goal. now winding to a close. What Plas and policies looking to an argument there has been has in- Arab-Israeli settlement were volved the American reaction to envisaged in Washington primar- the terror bombings and the ques- ily as a means of facilitating for- tion which of the candidates, if mation of a united front against elected, will do more for the State Soviet encroachment. of Israel. This policy failed; the Arab The absence of the Middle East states made it clear that while as a controversial election issue they didn't want the Soviet Union must be ascribed to the fact that to penetrate their living space, the traditional differences be- neither did they want the Ameri- tween conservative and liberal in cans to exercise too much of a American politics do not come __presence even though, like Saudi into play in the Arab-Israeli con- Arabia, they wanted the assur- flict. Almost as many American ance that the United States, in the conservatives are to be found showdown, would be there to pro- staunchly supporting Israel as are tect them. espousing the Arab claims; al- The spectre of the Soviet Union most as many liberals are to be dominates American foreign pol- found advocating the Arab posi- icy in every quarter of the globe tion as are lined up with Israel. today except in the Middle East. Hence there is not the traditional This area, says Daniel Pipes, division on ideological lines. associate professor at the" Naval In the final years of the Carter War College and an acknowl- Administration, under the influ- edged authority on the Middle ence of national security adviser East, "stands outside the great Zbigniew Brzezinski, and in the debate of American foreign policy first part of the Reagan Adminis- since World War II — the dis- tration during Alexander Haig's agreement over the dangers posed tenure as secretary of state, the by the U.S.S.R." Only in the Mid- American objective in the Middle dle East, he points out, is the East was sharply defined. It was U.S.S.R. not the critical center of the creation of a collective secu- debate. rity belt in the Middle East with "Political discussion there," he the avowed purpose of keeping the says, "is dominated by an entirely Soviet Union out and the flow of different and wholly unrelated Persian Gulf oil to the West un- dichotomy — the Arab-Israeli trammelled and uninterrupted. dispute." , ... . .#40461106$160440. ** z.'it 001ties "conservative While businessmen and liberal Demo- cratic senators running for President agree that it is natural and logically consistent that to be conservative is to be pro-Arab and to be liberal is to be pro-Israel," he asserts, "conservatives and liber- als tend to cooperate on Middle East issues; the pro-Arab and pro-Israel lobbies are probably the most thoroughly bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill." The election will not give the President who takes office next January a mandate on policy for the Middle East. What policies he chooses to pursue there, Pipes says, will largely depend on his personal decisions. The President-elect selects his foreign policy aides primarily with an eye to East-West issues and without much regard to their views on the Arabs and Israel," Pipes writes in the fall issue of International Security. "How they feel about the Middle East is therefore a matter of choice." He warns that "the absence of a consensus on the Middle East im- plies greater contention in for- mulating policy" and that "deci- sions depend on who prevails in the bureaucratic struggles" since power flows to the bureaucrats • and the lobbies. "Political appointees are espe- cially few in number in the bureaus that handle Middle East affairs," he points out. "These fac- tors account for the homogeneity 5th ANNUAL DINNER DANCE of the FRIENDS OF ISRAEL CANCER ASSOCIATION Honoring ERIC ROSENOW ON: Sunday, November 11th, 1984 AT: Adat Shalom Synagogue 29901 Middlebelt Rd., Farmington Hills, Mi. Harry Gunsb erg m.c.: Max Sosin Guest Speaker: HARRY GUNSBERG ERIC ROSENOW Music By: ERIC ROSENOW AND HIS CONTINENTALS Cocktails: 5:00 P.M. Couvert $60.00 per couple Dinner: 6:00 P.M. President: ANN EISENBERG Dinner Chairman: SIGMUNT RUBIN Hon. President: DR. ARTHUR FEUER Dinner Co-Chairman: AGI RUBIN Dinner Committee BERT DAN, ALEX GREENBERGER, ROSE KATZ, ALEX KARP, HENRY KUPFER ZOLTAN RUBIN MARY PAPO For ticket reservations call: Alex Greenberger Mary Papo 646-0983 967-4414