Year 1960 - Part 8: The Collapse of the Paris Summit After the U-2 Incident

Tuesday the 17th: The Paris Summit of the Great Powers

The political situation is in real crisis, on account of what people call the "Cold War," a state of neither peace nor war, one in which armed conflict might break out at any moment, setting the whole globe alight, with scarcely any distinction between combatant and neutral, nations like our own miserable one included.

Our own situation may well be worse still, since the owners of these weapons of mass, catastrophic destruction can at least protect themselves and their own citizens, relatively speaking, with anti-missile missiles, say, while we have no protection at all beyond our own righteous prayers.

The two warring camps are all but choking on the sheer stockpiles held in their own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction: atomic and hydrogen bombs, guided and intercontinental missiles, biological weapons, laser weapons, and others besides, kept, perhaps, in secret stores known only to their own owners, and to the intelligence agencies watching them.

Who knows, the fuse of war might well have been lit during the Suez crisis of 1956, when Khrushchev delivered his own terrifying warning to Britain and France to withdraw from Egypt, or else face crushing, back-breaking blows.

The world holds other explosive flashpoints as well, not least Jordan, Lebanon, and the Far East.

To head off the striking of a single match that might set the whole world ablaze, the leaders of the two warring camps agreed to hold a summit together, in Paris.

Khrushchev, the sharp-tongued Soviet leader, did indeed arrive in the French capital, along with Eisenhower, President of the United States, Macmillan, Prime Minister of Britain, and General de Gaulle, President of the French Republic.

It was expected that they would seek out ways to relieve this "Cold War," restoring calm to human hearts and reassuring people that these satellites cutting through the depths of space, carrying with them the fires of death, would not come crashing down upon their own heads while they remained unaware of them.

The Soviet Union had already sent a veiled warning to its own Western counterparts, launching into space a vessel weighing four and a half tons, completing a full orbit of the earth in just ninety-one minutes.

The Western allies understood the message sent to them, and grasped its own meaning well enough. But bad luck played its own destructive role in wrecking the summit.

The Russians shot down, over their own territory, an American spy plane that had taken off from an American base in the Turkish city of Adana, landed at Peshawar airport in Pakistan, and from there flown north to pass over the Soviet Union, all the way to Norway. The purpose of this venture was to photograph military installations, both known, exposed ones and unknown ones, across the vast expanse of Soviet territory.

The Soviet Union's own air-defense systems managed to shoot it down.

The Soviets seized on this unfortunate occasion, and Khrushchev announced the withdrawal of an official invitation he had extended to Eisenhower to visit Moscow, launching a crude, indeed vulgar, attack on him by any standard of quiet diplomacy, and set three conditions for attending the summit hall:

That America declare it would henceforth refrain from sending American spy planes to roam the skies of the Soviet Union.

That the American president offer a formal apology for the incident.

That the officials who organized this operation be punished.

Eisenhower announced he accepted only the first condition. Khrushchev would not accept this, refused to shake Eisenhower's hand, and decided to boycott the conference. The exhausting efforts made by Macmillan and de Gaulle to dissuade him from this decision were of no avail.

The summit, on which humanity had pinned such enormous hopes, collapsed.

Khrushchev traveled at once to East Germany, and threatened to conclude a peace treaty with it.

And what would this threat mean, should this peace treaty actually come about? It would mean the whole world holding its breath, fearing a global catastrophe:

East Germany is an "independent" state orbiting within the sphere of the communist "Second World," and the city of Berlin is divided among the four powers that defeated Nazi Germany, occupied its territory, and split it into four sectors, whose administration was entrusted to these same four powers: the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and Britain.

Should Khrushchev announce a peace treaty with East Germany, the three Western powers would never agree to cooperate with this state, and friction would then begin around the city of West Berlin itself, under Western occupation, yet surrounded on every side by German territory under Soviet occupation.

At that point, either the Western powers would withdraw from West Berlin, something they would never do, or they would have to reach it solely by an air bridge, should the East German state block the passage of Western equipment and convoys across its own territory.

Herein lies the real danger of a dangerous confrontation, especially should the Western allies decide to force their own way through to Berlin, something the Soviet Union could never accept.

On the 19th, the Soviet Union lodged a complaint against America with the Security Council, over the violation of its own vast airspace by a spy plane.

Tuesday the 24th

The Vice President of the Republic, overseeing the organization of the National Union, Field Marshal Amer, issued Decision No. 103, dated this same day, forming a Palestinian National Union in the Northern Region.

With this, the Palestinians gained a national union of their own, through which they could carry out political activity in Syria without becoming Syrians themselves, or giving up their own Palestinian nationality, so that Israel could never seize on any opportunity to claim that the Palestinians were simply Arabs who had merged into their own kinsmen, leaving no further grounds to pursue either a Palestinian homeland or the refugees' own right of return.

Syria was the only state to grant Palestinian refugees every right enjoyed by Syrians themselves, including entry into public office, the ownership of property, and the practice of trade.

Yet it did not open its own doors to naturalization on any wide scale, so that the Palestinian identity itself would not simply dissolve away.

This was to keep it alive on the international stage, in pursuit of the Arabs' own legitimate rights in Palestine, in keeping with the Arab League's own resolutions against granting citizenship to Palestinian refugees in the Arab countries to which they had fled.

For a far less "humanitarian" purpose, aimed at easing the pressure on Israel, the United States, and Canada in particular, opened their own doors to Palestinian immigration, to absorb large numbers of them and grant them citizenship.

Wednesday the 25th: The Anti-Fraud Law

A presidential decision was issued yesterday, Law No. 158 (published in the Official Gazette on 31 May), concerning the suppression of fraud and deception in the Syrian region.

Its issuing is considered a complement to Law No. 123, dated 26 March of this year, aimed at protecting consumers and preserving the reputation of national production.

Article 1 required producers, factory owners, and those transporting or selling food, drink, and other products covered by this law to hand over two samples to the officials concerned, the moment they are requested, and these officials may take them by force should the person concerned refuse to hand them over.

The sample is sealed with red wax, and a report is drawn up on the matter, referred to the Ministry of Supply, which orders it examined.

Articles 10 and following provided for deterrent penalties against those committing fraud, ranging from three months to a year in prison, along with a fine of up to two thousand lira (before the runaway financial inflation that followed).

Among the offenses this law penalizes, for example, are:

Deceiving, or attempting to deceive, one's own contracting party.

Defrauding him as to the quantity, size, amount, or weight of goods.

Defrauding him as to the goods themselves, their essential qualities, or the useful components entering into their own composition.

Adulterating food meant for human or animal consumption.

Adulterating medicinal drugs.

Fraud in agricultural produce.

To close every door in the face of those committing fraud, this law departed from the customary legal principle that innocence is the presumed rule, with Article 11, Paragraph 1, presuming instead "knowledge of the fraud and corruption where the violator is engaged in trade."

One wonders, were this law's provisions applied with real rigor, how many of those dealing in foodstuffs and the people's own basic sustenance would remain outside of prison at all.

Saturday the 28th

This is a wise, humane measure, issued as Law No. 162, amending Article 44 of Legislative Decree No. 85 of 1949 governing income tax.

This article, before its amendment, exempted 100 Syrian lira from the tax on salaries and wages for anyone whose net monthly income was 200 Syrian lira.

These employees make up a large segment of the state's own workforce.

The new amendment raised this exemption to 150 lira.

It is our own intention to make up for what the state will lose from this by improving the collection of this tax, which does not currently bring the treasury a fair return.

But the measure itself is a just one, favoring, as it does, the state's own junior employees, and those in a similar position.

Monday the 30th: A Military Coup in Turkey

During this period, a military coup took place in Turkey, led by General Gürsel. The Arab Republic is extremely sensitive to whatever happens within the borders of this neighboring state, which stands stubbornly and firmly on the side of the very Western powers hostile to us.

The Western view of Syria, back when it was still a separate state, was that it was sliding rapidly toward communism, and that it was hostile to them for having refused to place the yoke of the Baghdad Pact around its own neck.

Turkey often massed its own forces along our border to threaten us.

The Soviet Union always rushed to our own defense, restraining Turkey's own aggressive impulses. Our own hostility to Turkey is not a matter of ethnic prejudice, but a matter of national policy, since it backs Israel, openly at times and always in secret, to please its own allies within the Baghdad Pact and NATO.

We found ourselves wondering: might there be a shift in Turkish policy toward Israel following the coup, given the overthrow of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who had shown himself so hostile to us?

The answer was not long in coming. Gürsel announced that his own coup rested on two principles:

The first: an absolute commitment to the Atlantic alliance, meaning the continuation of tensions with the Soviet Union and its own friends.

The second: allowing no one to exploit religious sentiment.

This second principle is worse than the first, for it removes the Turkish-Israeli relationship entirely from the realm of the Islamic faith, turning it instead into a purely political relationship built on mutual interest. So there is, in truth, no change at all in Turkish policy toward us.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, visited Damascus, arriving from Turkey by way of Beirut, together with his own daughter Indira, who had married an Indian man named Gandhi and taken his own name, though he came from a family unrelated to that of the slain leader Gandhi, the man who fought the British armed with nothing but a goat and a spindle of wool. After her father's death, she became Prime Minister of India herself, and was later assassinated by one of her own bodyguards, with no one ever announcing the reason behind the crime.

We received him at the Syrian-Lebanese border.

I bear witness that the reception was a rather lukewarm one, even though Nehru was one of the pillars of the Bandung Conference that established the bloc of positive-neutrality nations, our own country among them.

Riding with me in my own car were Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj and the Indian ambassador, himself a Muslim. This ambassador spoke of Abdul Karim Qasim, saying: he deceived and cheated them, despite carrying the Quran with him at all times.

At the dinner reception the President of the Republic held for him in the palace garden, Nehru delivered an address in English on the affairs of the East, showing a real mastery of the language. But the political side of his own address struck a "balanced" tone between the Arabs and Israel, and for this reason it found no favor with us.

At the dinner reception I held for a Soviet economic delegation, at the Sharq Club, the Soviet consul general whispered in my ear, remarking on the coup in Turkey:

"This new situation in Turkey will be no worse, for our own state, than what came before it."

I whispered back to him: "And no worse for us either."

Saturday, 4 June 1960

Today is the blessed Eid al-Adha, falling on the tenth of Dhu al-Hijjah, 1379, and I spent all four of its days in Damascus.

It was not a joyous feast for the people, owing to the poor agricultural seasons, which had greatly reduced the cash liquidity in people's own hands, and weakened activity in the commercial markets.

The situation would, without doubt, have been far worse still, had the state not eased the burden on citizens by lowering a number of taxes and fees, and had it not opened its own coffers to employ growing numbers of workers on road-building and other government projects, and to provide assistance to the hardest-hit regions.

This poor economic state besieges me personally as well, for requests for state employment never let up, growing worse by the day.

I cannot simply "open my own hand" and scatter the state's own money about, for that would mean certain bankruptcy striking it, and the humiliation of the national currency.