World Events in a Month

This month, international events followed hard upon one another in an astonishing manner that calls for depth in analyzing their causes and complications. What helped stir up these events were the contradictions and divergences they contained, all of which showed the extent of the influence and effectiveness that the cold war standing between East and West exerts on the course of international developments in the various regions of the world. They also showed that the cold war has taken on a new form between the discordant camps, the like of which the preceding years have not witnessed.

Perhaps one who passes among the stages those events lived through, or those that came in their wake, will realize well that among the sum of causes making up the vicious circle around which the existing international problems revolve is the desire of the contending parties to draw the greatest possible number of partisans and supporters to the camp to which each belongs, or with which it deals. If the West presents a plan for disarmament and for the banning of atomic bombs and guided missiles, the Soviet Union, or one of its followers, confronts it with a plan for creating a prohibited zone in the heart of Central Europe; and if a call arises in the West to unify a divided country — Germany, for example — People's China leaps to announce that it will reduce its armed forces in North Korea, and then calls upon America's allies and the international command to withdraw the international troops from South Korea, in preparation for holding elections and restoring unity to Korea.

And if the events of the month of February were distinguished by such a class of matters that give no cause for optimism, they were also marked by two important events upon whose continuance, whose flourishing, and whose contribution to the peaceful, eternal, and vital development of the Middle East the Arabs pin their fondest hopes and dearest wishes, namely: the proclamation of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria, with the election of President Gamal Abdel Nasser as its president; and the proclamation of the union between Iraq and Jordan, under the headship of His Majesty King Faisal II, monarch of Iraq. Whatever the value of the commentaries of the press and of the Arab and foreign political circles on the proclamation of these two unions, the Arabs in their various homes and countries have welcomed both steps and considered them a good beginning in the development of Arab relations.

But against this development in the Middle East stands a grave cause for anxiety, which came near to threatening international relations with the worst of consequences, but for the wisdom of leaders and diplomats: the Franco-Tunisian crisis grew acute because of the bombing of the village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef, and another crisis broke out between Egypt and the Sudan over the border. Yet none of this was such as to destroy the hope that these tangled questions might be solved by peaceful means: Egypt announced the postponement of consideration of its dispute with the Sudan, and America and Britain succeeded in persuading France and Tunisia of the necessity of returning to negotiations to resolve the dispute standing between them.

However, the question of questions, still being passed back and forth between Britain on the one side and Greece and Turkey on the other — we mean the question of Cyprus — is the most important matter occupying Britain at present, and it drives her foreign minister to pack his ministry into a suitcase, shuttling between Ankara and Athens... until God brings to pass a matter that was destined to be done.

Among the most notable happenings with which these events closed was the visit of President Gamal Abdel Nasser to Syria, for consultation on the formation of the Executive Council for the Syrian region.