Looking Past the Embassy Garden

By John Kohan

Moscow disappoints its friends, but waits for the U.S. to stumble

For the second time since the invasion of Lebanon, Israeli shells falling short of their mark pounded the Soviet embassy in West Beirut last week, ripping through walls and shattering windows. After the bombardment, the Kremlin brusquely warned Israel that the Soviet Union could not be indifferent to what was going on in the Middle East. But at a time when efforts to end the Israeli encirclement of West Beirut were reaching a critical stage, the message from Moscow seemed a minor diplomatic footnote. If anything, it only underscored one of the more curious aspects of the war in Lebanon: the Soviet Union's unwillingness--or inability--to offer credible support to its battered friends in the area. Says a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization: "We have stopped thinking about Moscow. All the Soviets seem worried about are a few shells landing in their embassy's garden."

Moscow did issue one pointed reminder last week that it thought it still had a major role to play in the Middle East problem, when Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev put Washington on notice that any decision to send U.S. troops to Lebanon, however briefly, would force the Soviet Union to "build its policy with due consideration of this fact." But as Washington quickly noted, last week's message was not nearly as strong as the Soviet Union's support for the Arabs in 1973 during the October War. At that time, Moscow airlifted military supplies to Syria and mobilized its forces, prompting President Richard Nixon to respond by putting U.S. troops on worldwide nuclear alert.

Last week's letter to Reagan seemed vague enough to leave the Soviets the option of doing nothing at all. Indeed, despite official protestations at the beginning of the conflict that the Soviet Union supported the Arab cause "not in words but in deeds," the Kremlin fortunately has shown a greater willingness to use harsh rhetoric than to intervene on behalf of the two participants who depend heavily on Soviet political and military support, Syria and the P.L.O.

One explanation for Moscow's hands-off policy is that the aging leadership in the Kremlin already has enough worries without looking for more in the Middle East. While some 100,000 Soviet troops remain bogged down fighting guerrillas in Afghanistan, Moscow must keep a watchful eye on Poland's precarious military regime. And although the U.S. and the Soviet Union have finally begun arms-reduction talks in Geneva, relations between the two superpowers are getting increasingly strained. The latest irritant is the Reagan Administration's ban on the sale of equipment that Moscow badly needs to build a gas pipeline to Western Europe.

Moscow's influence in the Middle East has been on the ebb ever since Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled an estimated 17,000 Soviet technical advisers and military personnel in 1972. After the 1973 war, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger effectively shut the Soviets out of all Middle East negotiations. By supplying weapons to the P.L.O., Syria, Iraq, Libya and Algeria, Moscow tried to regain a voice in the region's affairs, but with little success. Ominously, the Soviet Union has shifted its attention to Iran, which has been told it will have Moscow's support in any future fighting with Iraq (see WORLD).

The Soviet Union has also been cool to Syria's peace-keeping efforts in Lebanon, and presumably felt that supporting Syria in Lebanon now was not worth taking the risk of worsening relations between the superpowers. Under the terms of a 1980 friendship treaty, Moscow is obliged to consult with Syria on issues of national security, but it has steadfastly resisted Syrian efforts to make the military ties more binding. Even though the Kremlin has promised to make good Syria's war losses, Western diplomats noted last week that military shipments have not been sufficient to replace the 101 MiGs and SAM6 antiaircraft installations destroyed in the opening days of the war.

Syria's poor military showing has proved an acute embarrassment to the Kremlin. A high-level Soviet military mission traveled to Syria last month to assess fully the damage to Soviet-built weapons systems. In an unusual move, the official Soviet news agency TASS declared that all rumors that Soviet military equipment was inferior to the American-made arms in Israel's arsenal were "deliberately false" and a form of psychological warfare. Kremlin Spokesman Leonid Zamyatin went out of his way to explain in a television broadcast that "more than 100 Israeli tanks were knocked out and the Syrians didn't do it with their bare hands." Zamyatin blamed Syria's defeat not only on the speed of the Israeli attack but on Arab disunity. The Soviets are known to be upset that few Arab nations have rallied to the Palestinian cause.

If Moscow can foresee any good coming from the present crisis, it is that a weakened Palestinian movement may be more dependent on the U.S.S.R. The Kremlin also hopes that growing disenchantment with U.S. support for Israel will ultimately cause such moderate Arab states as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to follow a foreign policy line more independent of Washington. Almost daily, the Soviet press has been hammering out the message that the Israeli invasion would not have been possible without U.S. support.

Moscow may believe that by waiting it can benefit if the U.S. fails to resolve the impasse in Lebanon. But there are signs that such a strategy may ultimately backfire. Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi called East bloc ambassadors in for an angry lecture, warning them that "we have no answers to give our masses about the attitudes of our friends toward Zionist aggression." The effects of Moscow's reticence could also be far-reaching. Said a P.L.O. official bluntly: "Perhaps the Soviets feel they have not lost much in Lebanon, but I assure you they have lost something all over the world. Every liberation movement now knows that they do not keep their promises." --By John Kohan. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Roberto Suro/Beirut

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Roberto Suro

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